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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
• • •» ••
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
General Literature and Science
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. LXXXV.
APRIL, 1907, TO SEPTEMBER, 1907.
NEW YORK :
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
120 West 60th Street.
1907.
CERTAINTY IN RELIGION.
Bv Rev. HENRY. H. WYMAN, Paulist.
■ • • • • • • ■
« • • • •
• •■ « • •• • • ■•• _•.•
•••••:. .. .. •;•;»• ..... . • : ■ .... —
•.:• -ii ■; ,i - -•• • •.!.•••• • .• - • •.-•■ • ■ •
" Especfcd£«dfca fcr «sVibutt» atn#ng ■•n-tfa'tfr^icls:-— -rfw Arini.- • : -
" The author U a dear-eyecfiapd itV?n£fy£ejs&ei)t.tttiOto.*'-M*i. Reel. Review.
• • # • ^ • « • . ■ ••"•• .
" Certainty in Religion is pronounced hy competent authority to he one of the best apolo-
getics that has been published in years." — Intermountain Catholic.
"An excellent book for the Catholic to put into the hands of his Protestant neighbor."—
N. Y. Freeman's Journal.
" This little book is calculated to do much good among non-Catholics." — Western Watch-
" A masterly marshaling of his subject by the author." — S. F. Chronicle.
"An earnest plea, clearly and plainly written, for the Catholic Faith. "—Irish Monthly.
" The book has a tone of dignity about it not common to such unpretentious volumes, and
it will appeal most strongly to persons of education." — Am. Cath. Quarterly.
" In comparatively small compass Father Wyman has given reasons for the faith that is
in him, and they are reasons that should prove convincing to unprejudiced minds. His
method is direct and telling."— Liverpool Catholic Times.
" It is destined to do a vast amount of good, if it is made known and judiciously distri-
buted by the priest on the mission." — Catholic University Bulletin.
1274(vi
Paper, I O cents per copy. Postage, 3 cents extra.
Cloth, 60 " " " 4 " "
IOO copies (paper edition) 85.
Remittance Must Always be Sent with Order.
THE COLUMBUS PRESS,
120-122 West 6oth Street, New York.
CONTENTS
Enigmatic Vision, The. — Rev. Thomas
J. Gerrard, 349
Along the Track.— M. F. Quintan, 621
As the Sun Went Down,— A'. F. Degi-
don. 98
Author's Post Bag, An. — Katharine
Tynan, 75
Bazin, Rene, The France ol.— l r irjrinia
At. Crawford, 225
Brunetiere, Ferdinand.— Abbe" Felix
Klein, 65
Cinderella's Sister. — Jeanie Drake, . 366
Columbian Reading Union, The, 139, 284,
4TO, 574, 718, 862
Current Events, 129, 273, 420, 562, 707, 854
Economic Motive, The. — William /.
Kerby, Ph.D , 323
Encyclopedia, The Catholic. — James J.
Fox, D.D , 522
Faith and Science. — Francis Aveling,
D.D., 470
Foreign Periodicals, 120, 263, 410, 554,
697, 844
France, Recent Developments in. — Max
Turmann, LL.D , . . 389, 529, 668
French Revolution, Some Victims of the
Great.— Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B.,
87. 211, 335
Human Nature and Property. — William
/. Kerby, Ph.D., . . .145
Human Nature and Social Questions. —
William J. Kerby, Ph.D., . . 41
International Arrangement, An. — Kath~
arine Tynan, 642
Is the Modern Spirit Anti-Religious ? —
John A. Ryan, D.D., . . 183
Italian Press, The.— Its Partial Perver-
sion. — R. E. y 721
Laodamia. — Mrs. Wilfrid Ward, . . . 159
Lisheen ; or, the Test of the Spirits. —
Canon P. A. Sheehan, D.D\\ 15, 194, 303,
452i 581 » 728
Literary Spying. — Louise Imogen Gui-
ney, . . . 577
Love A-Soldiering. — Mary Catherine
Crowley, 495
Manning's Domestic Side. — Wilfrid
Wilberforce, 433
Mia-Mias Out Back, In the. — M. F.
Quintan, ....*. 770
New Books,* 103, 247, 396, 538, 675, 825
Newman. John Henry, The Spirit of. —
H. P. Russell, 609
Old Testament, A Word for the.— John
F. Fenlon, D.D., .... 53
Old Testament, The Religious Spirit
and the. — John F. Fenlon, D.D., 377
Paris and French Politics. — Abbi Felix
Klein, 778
Present Hour, The Duty of the, . . 125
Psychical Research, The Recent Results
of. — George M, Searle, C.S.P., 1, 170, 289
482, 631, 792
Roman Chant, The Old.— Ethelred L
Taunton, 237
Socialism, Aims in. — William /. Kerby,
Ph.D., ...... 500
Socialism, Attitudes towards. — William
J. Kerby Ph.D 654
Syllabus, The New (Latin and English), 804
Two Catechisms. — Francis Aveling,
*>>D., 754
Unanimity, The Fallacy of. — Vincent
McNabb, OP., . . . .815
Vacation with the Micmacs. — William
T. Russ It, 512
POETRY.
Children.— fohn Jerome Rooney, . . 97 Requiescat. — Cornelius Clifford,
Flying Wheel, The. — A'aMar/'ns Tynan, 225
• #>S
iv
Contents.
NEW PUBLICATIONS,
Advanced Civirm 676
American ProM* m», . . . ,257
Ancient lr*lan<J, a Smaller Social His-
tory of, . 247
Apologia Fro Vita hua, , • «tt
Aunt jane of Kentucky, . CM
Blessed Sacrament. The Sublimity of the, 6^6
Book of Psalm*, A Critical and kxegeti-
cal Commentary on the, . 406
Bridget ; or, What** in a Name ? . ,105
Brunetiere, Ferdinand, .... 075
California and the Old Southwest, 1 be
Millions of, 6*4
CaWin, John : The Organizer of Re-
formed Protestantism, 1509-1564, . 350
Canzoni, . .... 547
Catholic Church with the French Re-
public, The Conflict of the, . . 609
Christ and the Gospel*. A Dictionary of.
— Aaron to Knowledge, 1 17
Christian Dogma, Meditations on, . 694
Church of Kdrae, The Censorship of
the, 553,839
Confessor at Court, The ; or, the Mar-
tyrdom of St. John Nepomucene, . 6cp
Congo, The 1 ruth About the, . 840
Contemplative Prayer. Ven. Father
Augustine Baker's Teaching thereon :
from •• Sancta Sophia," ... 839
Country House, The, . ... 680
Courts, In 1 hy 682
Crise, Morale des Temps Nouveaux, La, 834
Devil's Alley, In the, . . .103
Disciple of a Saint, The, ... 835
Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca — A For-
gotten Worthy, 696
English Catholic Missions, Historical
Notes on, 681
Examen Critique des Gouvernmerts Re-
presentatifs dans la soctete Moderne, 110
Far Horizon, 1 he, 538
Father Gallwey, 833
Flower of the Mind, The, . . . 691
France, Church and State in, 1300-1907, 396
Freedom 1 h rough the Truth, . . 843
From Bull Kun to Chancellorsville, . 685
Gate of Death, The 111
Great Fundamental Truths, 1 he.— The
Church an Infallible Guide, . .112
Great Riches, 401
Greek Anthology, Select Epigrams
from the, 684
Happiness, The Way to, ... 402
How Christ Said the First Mass; or, the
Lord's Last Supper, .... 252
Human Personality and its Survival of
Bodily Death, *54
Hypnotism and Spiritism, . . . 403
Immortality of the Human Soul Phil-
osophically Explained, The, . . 253
Indexed synopsis, An, of the "Grammar
of Assent," . . . .116
Indulgences: Their Origin, Nature, and
Development, 251
Interior Castle, The ; or*, the Mansions
and Exclamations of the Soul to God, 107
International Development of Europe,
A History of Diplomacy in the.— The
Establishment of Territorial Sover-
eignty, 2 59
Ireland, History of, from the Earliest
Times to the Present Day, . . . 248
j r j-v - ~rv, Studies in, i6o3-i649» • 2 49
vica ()n<* Thousand Years
tubus, The, • . • 249
l»rae»*» I,a«»and Legal Precedents, . 688
Jeftuft-Chmt, l.a f ranjMendefc«.e de, . 399
Joftephior's 1 rouhl**, .... 103
Joutel • Joorr.ai of La Salle's Last
Voyage, 10*4-7 2 5°
L'Ami-cIericalume, .... 544
Leading Event* of the History of the
Church —Later Modern Times, 260
Life and Literature, Atonement in, 258
L* I nqu tuition. fc%»ai historique et Cri-
tique sur le Pouvoir Coercitif de
l'Lglise 829
L*Jnqui»»tion, Ses Origines. Sa Pro-
cedure, 829
Literary Forgeries, . . -256
Malefactor, 1 he, 404
Mary, Mother of Christ, in Prophecy and
Fulfilment 695
Master Touch, The, .... 836
Mother 677
Mt. Carmel, The Ascent of, . . 838
Mystics, The 550
Newer Ideals of Peace, .... 677
Newman, Selections from, . 1 16
Ninth Hour, After the, .... 690
O f Hagan, The Illustrious, 104
Opal sea, The, 408
Other Miss Lisle, The, .... 690
Ought to Be's, 1 he, . 1 05
Pariah, Papers of a, . 542
Patron Saint*- for Boys 690
Patron Saints tor Catholic Youth, . 690
Patron Saints for Girls, .... 690
Plain Sermons, 828
Poems by Coventry Pat more, • . . 407
Press, Writing for the 682
Propzdeutica ad SacramTheologiam in
Usu Scholarum, 105
Questions d'Enkeignement Superieur
Ecclesiastique, 686
Readings from " Law's Serious Call, . 405
Rebecca, New Chronicles of, . . 693
Religious Belief. Psychology of, . . 255
Religious Worship and some Defects in
Popular Devotions, On, . . . . 113
Round the World, 690
Said the Rose, 827
St. Alphonsus de Ligouri, The Life of, 400
St. Benedict, The Rule of, . • 680
St. Bernardine of Siena, . . . 838
Sermons by the Most Reverend Dr. Mo-
riarty. Late Bbhop of Kerry, . . 828
Shakespeare, William. The Complete
Dramatic and Poetic Works of, . 262
Short Sermons by the Rev. F. P. Hickey,
O.S.B., 828
Society, The Sins of 108
Spiritual Conferences, The (St. Francis
de Sales). . . ... 257
Spiritual Life, I aws of the, . . . 259
Steps of Life, 1 he, .... 549
Stimulus Divini Amoris : that is, 1 he
Goad of Divine Love, . . . 548
Story of My Heart, I he —My Autobio-
graphy. ...'.. 684
Treaty With Honor, In, # . 104
Vieux Monde par un Etudiant de
Chicago, La Dccouverte du, . . 109
When Love is Strong 690
Wilberforce, Father Bertrand, r f the
Order of Preachers, The Life and Let-
ters of, ic6
Winona, 6c
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. LXXXV. APRIL, 1907. No. 505.
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P.
III.— WRAITHS; OR, PHANTASMS OF THE DYING.
1HE telepathic explanation of phantasms of the liv-
ing, of which a few examples were given in our
last number, would seem to be in general the
most reasonable one, and perhaps the only ad-
missible one as yet proposed, if all such phan-
tasms are to be explained in the same way. For a purely
mental idea, or an imaginary one (in which a picture simply
of the "mind's eye" is transferred from agent to percipient),
or an auditory phantasm (like that of Mr. Fryer), can hardly
be accounted for on any other hypothesis. But for visual
phantasms there is, as noted in our last article, another theory,
which probably occurs first to most persons considering the
subject. This theory is that in some mysterious way an objec-
tive reality, formed possibly out of the ether supposed to fill
space, is produced by the agent near the percipient, and seen
by the latter with the ordinary mechanism of the eye. It is
quite conceivable that this objective reality may be invisible to
one person, though plainly seen by another; or, in other words,
that the percipient's eye may be in a condition to see it, while
an eye (even his own) in its ordinary state would not. Such,
for example, would be the case if the rays proceeding from the
Copyright. 1907. The Missionary Societt of St, Paul the AvQVHA
in ths Stats of New York.
vol. LXXXV,— 1
2 Recent Results of psychical Research [April,
phantasm were in the ultra-violet region of the spectrum, and
the percipient's eye had for the time an extra sensitiveness,
enabling it to perceive such high-toned vibrations.
The only way in which this theory could be fairly well
shown to be the true one in any particular case, would be a
photographic one. Telepathy is hardly conceived of as affect-
ing a gelatine or collodion plate. If, then, a phantasm should
ever actually be photographed, the conclusion would certainly
be reasonable that there was something there to photograph.
But the mere simultaneous vision of the same phantasm to
various persons would be a very poor basis, simply in itself,
for such a conclusion. For it would have to be shown that
the phantasm presented the appearance that a real object or
person would have from their various points of view ; if it
appeared full face (for instance) to any two of them seeing it
in different directions, this would be fatal to the theory of ob-
jective reality. The only approach to a demonstration of this
theory by the experience of actual vision would be the fulfil-
ment of this condition of the different aspects, as seen by at
least three persons, and the meeting of their lines of sight, as
determined by the background, at one common point. But it
is practically impossible that such conditions can be fulfilled.
And though it certainly is not impossible that a photograph
of a phantasm can ever be secured, we are not aware of any
case in which it has been. Of course there are plenty of so-
called ghost photographs ; but in them we think that the ghost
has not been visible to any one at the time its picture was
supposed to be taken ; and, moreover, as far as evidence to
any one but the photographer himself is concerned, such pho-
tographs labor under an unavoidable suspicion of "faking," as
every one knows that it is extremely easy to produce this
44 ghost " effect. What is wanted is to have a ghost which is
visible (to several persons at once, if the ghost will be so kind),
and to have a kodak ready at the moment.
We may then consider this 44 objective reality " theory as
comparatively improbable, till time may verify it by photogra-
phy, or perhaps in some other way. It is one, however, not
to be simply ridiculed ; it cannot be altogether disproved ; and
it is well worth investigation. We shall see some positive ar-
guments for it later, especially in the case of ghosts properly
so-called, or phantasms of the dead. .
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 3
Let us pass now to the special subject of this article, that
of phantasms of the dying, ot " wraiths." The word " wraith "
is defined by Webster as " an apparition of a person in his ex-
act likeness, seen before death, or a little after." In popular
use, as he notes, it has come to have a wider and less exact
meaning, and to signify any kind of apparition ; just as the
word " cyclone " is used by people generally to mean a vio-
lent storm, the same as " hurricane " or " tornado " ; whereas,
properly speaking, a " cyclone " may be accompanied by very
little rain or wind. Webster gives its correct definition. It is
a pity that words get their corners rubbed off in this way, but
it seems unavoidable.
The definition of " wraith " given above, however, is not
quite as exact as it should be. As it stands, it would cover
the phantasms of the living, already discussed. Instead of say-
ing "before death, or a little after," it would seem better to
say, " a little before or after death, or at the very moment of
death." Furthermore, there seems to be no need of restricting
the term to visible apparitions, as seems to be intended. There
may be auditory phantasms of those near death, as well as
visual ones, and they may as well be called by the same gen-
eral name.
Indeed it is not improbable that auditory wraiths, if we may
use the word in this sense, are more common than visual ones.
The present writer happens to be well acquainted with two
persons, of more than ordinary intelligence, and not at all imag-
inative or superstitious, who have had an experience of this
kind. Both heard moaning sounds, as of a person near death
and recognized the voice of one well known to them (in one
case a brother, in the other an intimate friend), not known at
the time to be dying, and located some three thousand miles
away. News arriving later showed that the persons heard in
this way were actually dying at the time. It is probable that
this sort of experience is not very 'exceptional. But as it is,
of course, less startling than that of a visible phantasm, it is
not so likely to seem, even to the subjects of it, worth putting
into print.
But visible wraiths are not so very uncommon as some may
suppose. They are, we think, more common than genuine phan-
tasms of the living, or of the dead. It has, indeed, been sta-
tistically established by the Psychical Society that apparitions
4 Recent Results of Psychical Research [April,
of the dying, or of those recently dead, are much more fre-
quently reported than those of such as have been dead for a
long time. Of course the sceptical will say that imagination
it more active with regard to those known to be seriously ill,
or recently deceased, than it is about those who are more
probably forgotten or seldom thought of. But an examination
of the actual facts will show that this explanation is hardly
sufficient.
In the first place we have, in the lives of the saints, in-
stances tending to show (at least to Catholics) a special ten-
dency to their appearance just at the time of leaving this world,
as is reported in the case of St. Scholastica, as seen by St.
Benedict, in that of St. Benedict himself, of St. Francis of As-
sisi, of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, of St. Catharine of Genoa,
and others.
An instance, which seems to be very similar to these, is to
be found in Part VI. of the Proceedings of the Society, and is
of so interesting a character that it may be well to give the
greater part of it word for word. It was reported to the So-
ciety by Miss K. M. Weld, of the Lodge, Lymington, one of
the two original witnesses, and is as follows:
Philip Weld was the youngest son of Mr. James Weld, of
Archers Lodge, near Southampton, and a nephew of the late
Cardinal Weld. (The chief seat of that ancient family is Lul-
worth Castle, in Dorsetshire.)
He was sent by his father, in 1842, to St. Edmund's Col-
lege, near Ware, in Hertfordshire, for his education. He was
a well-conducted, amiable boy, and much beloved by his
masters and fellow- students.
It happened that on April 16, 1845, it was a playday (or
whole holiday), and some of the boys went out on a boating
expedition upon the River Ware.
On the morning of that day Philip had been to Holy Com-
munion at the early Mass (having just finished his retreat),
and in the aiternoon, accompanied by one of the masters and
some of his companions, went to boat on the river, which was
a sport he enjoyed much.
When one of the masters remarked that it was time to re-
turn to the college, Philip begged to have one row more ; the
master consented, and they rowed to the accustomed turning-
point.
On arriving there, in turning the boat, Philip accidentally
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 5
fell out into a very deep part of the river, and, notwithstand-
ing every effort that was made to save him, was drowned.
His corpse was brought back to the college, and the Very
Rev. Dr. Cox (the president) was immensely shocked and
grieved ; he was very fond of Philip, but what was most
dreadful to him was to have to break the sad news to the
boy's parents. He scarcely knew what to do, whether to
write by post or to send a messenger.
At last he made up his mind to go himself to Mr. Weld, at
Southampton. He set off the same afternoon, and, passing
through London, reached Southampton the next day, and
drove from thence to Archers Lodge, the residence of Mr.
Weld ; but before entering the grounds he saw Mr. Weld at
a short distance from his gate, walking towards the town.
Dr. Cox immediately stopped the carriage, alighted, and
was about to address Mr. Weld, when he prevented him by
saying :
tc You need not say one word, for I know that Philip is
dead. Yesterday afternoon I was walking with my daughter,
Katherine, and we suddenly saw him. He was standing on
the path, on the opposite side of the turnpike road, between
two persons, one of whom was a youth dressed in a black
robe. My daughter was the first to perceive them, and ex-
claimed : ' O papa ! did you ever see anything so like Philip
as that is?' 'Like him,' I answered, ( why, it is him.'
Strange to say, my daughter thought nothing of the circum-
stance, beyond that we had seen an extraordinary likeness of
her brother. We walked on towards these three figures.
Philip was looking, with a smiling, happy expression of coun-
tenance, at the young man in a black robe, who was shorter
than himself. Suddenly they all seemed to me to have van-
ished ; I saw nothing but a countryman, whom I had before
seen through the three figures, which gave me the impression
that they were spirits. I, however, said nothing to any one,
as I was fearful of alarming my wife. I looked out anxiously
for the post the following morning. To my delight, no letter
came. I forgot that letters from Ware came in the afternoon,
and my fears were quieted, and I thought no more of the ex-
traordinary circumstance until I saw you in the carriage out-
side my gate. Then everything returned to my mind, and I
could not feel a doubt that you came to tell me of the death
of my dear boy."
The reader may imagine how inexpressibly astonished Dr.
Cox was at these words. He asked Mr. Weld if he had ever
6 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [April,
before seen the young man in the black robe at whom Philip
was looking with such a happy smile. Mr. Weld answered
that he had never before seen him, but that his countenance
was so indelibly impressed on his mind that he was certain
he should have known him at once anywhere.
Dr. Cox then related to the afflicted father all the circum-
• stances of his son's death, which had taken place at the very
hour in which he appeared to his father and sister ; and they
felt much consolation on account of the placid smile Mr. Weld
had remarked on the countenance of his son, as it seemed to
indicate that he had died in the grace of God, and was, con-
sequently, happy.
Mr. Weld went to the funeral of his son, and as he left the
church, after the sad ceremony, looked round to see if any of
the religious at all resembled the young man he had seen
with Philip, but he could not trace the slightest likeness in
any of them.
For brevity, we will give merely the substance of the rest
of Miss Weld's narrative ; which tells us that Mr. Weld subse-
quently identified the face of the young man in a picture of
St. Stanislaus Kostka, which he happened to see at the parish
priest's house, when on a visit to his brother, Mr. George Weld,
at Seagram Hall, in Lancashire. This naturally added to the
consolation which he had felt on seeing the happy expression
of his son's face.
The interpretation which would naturally be given by a
Catholic reader, of the very remarkable occurrence just related
(and which is apparently fully confirmed by Miss Weld, as far
as the original vision and its likeness to her brother is con-
cerned), is quite evident. We should be inclined to regard it
simply as a vision of the real Philip Weld himself, accompanied
by St. Stanislaus and probably some other saint, granted in
some mysterious way to his father and sister, for their conso-
lation. But it is also very plain that telepathy may also be
considered as giving an explanation of it. If it is possible for
a person in full health to produce a telepathic phantasm of him-
self in the optic nerve or the brain of some other person, there
is no reason why he should not be even better able to do so
at the moment of death, when the desire to manifest himself
in some way to that other person might be specially strong.
It is, however, true that it does not usually seem that one is
I907-] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 7
able to produce also a phantasm of some other person either
separately, or together with his own. The triple phantasm of
the case just given is an exception to the usual rule. But if
it is possible for an " agent " to produce, by the effort of
thought-transference, a mental image, and perhaps really a
visual one, of a diagram or drawing of any kind, or of some
material object, in the mind of a "percipient," which we have
seen to be a fact fairly well established by experiment, why
should it not be also possible to produce in the percipient's
mind an image, though purely a mental one in the agent, es-
pecially if that image is strongly fixed in that agent by fre-
quent actual vision and memory ?
If then, in this particular case, Philip, knowing that he was
drowning, recommended himself to St. Stanislaus, and invoked
his aid, forming in his mind a representation of the saint from
the very picture which his father saw later on, and which,
though not familiar to him, may well have been so to Philip
himself, it seems possible that this image may have been united
with Philip's own in the telepathic phantasm transmitted to his
father and sister.
It may be remarked, in favor of the telepathic theory in
this case, that the figures seen by Mr. Weld are expressly
stated by him to have been transparent, that of the country-
man having been seen through them. Transparency, as pre-
viously noted, would naturally be a characteristic of the tele-
pathic image.
The following case (also from the " Proceedings ") is specially
interesting, from the circumstances, which seem to make an
imaginary apparition of any kind very improbable, also from
the precise coincidence of the times of apparition and death.
It is from a physician, Dr. Rowland Bowstead, of Caistor, who
says, moreover, that he has never experienced any other hallu-
cination. He says:
In September, 1847, * was pl a yi n K at a cricket match, and
took the place of long-field. A ball was driven in my direc-
tion which I ought to have caught but missed it, and it rolled
towards a low hedge ; I and another lad ran after it. When
I got near the hedge I saw the apparition of my brother-in-
law, who was much endeared to me, over the hedge, dressed
in a shooting suit, with a gun on his arm ; he smiled and
waved his hand at me. I called the attention of the ot\\&t
8 Recent Results of Psychical Research [April,
boy to it ; but he did not see it, though he looked is the same
direction. When I looked again, the figure had vanished.
I, feeling very sad at the time, went op to my uncle and told
him of what I had seen ; he took out his watch and noted the
time, just 10 minutes to i o'clock. Two dajs after I received
a letter from my father informing me of the death of my
brother-in-law. which took place at 10 minutes to i. His
death was singular, far on that morning he said he was much
better and thought he should be able to shoot again. Taking
up his gun, he turned round to my father, asking him if he
had sent far me. as he particularly wished to see me- If y
father replied the distance was too far and expense too great
to send far me, it being over ioo miles. At this he put
himself in a passion, and said he would see me in spite of
them all. far he did not care for expense or distance. Sud-
denly a blood-vessel on his lungs burst, and be died at once.
He was at the time dressed in * skmtiim^ smif % mmd kmd his firm
#v his mrm. I knew he was Ol, but a letter from my father
p rev i ous to the time I saw him told me he was i mpr oving, and
that he might get through the winter ; but his disease was
consumption, and he had bleeding from the lungs three
months before his death.
Rowulxd Bowstejld. M.D.
The italics above are ours. The coincidence of the real
man and the apparition, in dress; seems very remarkable, as he
had been sick and apparently not likely, in the mind of the
percipient, to be so attired. And sorely the moment of the
apparition, just after the boy percipient had " muffed " a bad,
was about the least favorable that could be imagined for ghost-
seeing. His ideas at the moment would naturally be a mix-
ture of disgust at his error and eagerness to retrieve it. It is
also quite plain, as in the previous case, that the time of day
was not one popularly considered probable for apparitions.
The case, however, seems to give a special support to the
telepathic theory. Just before the death of the agent, he is
possessed by a violent determination to see the percipient, to
whom he was much attached; and an emotion of this kind
seems to be a strong factor in telepathic transaasscon.
The next case which we will give is from Mr. Myers' book,
already referred to, quoted from PA*xtzsmts *f thi Lrsirj. The
account is somewhat long, bat seems very weft attested, asd is
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 9
specially remarkable on account of the persistence in time, and
also apparently in place, of the phantasm. It is from Captain
G. F. Russell Colt, of Gartsherrie, Coatbridge, N. B., and is as
follows :
I was at home for my holidays, and residing with my father
and mother, not here, but at another old family place in Mid-
Lothian, built by an ancestor in Mary Queen of Scots' time,
called Inveresk House. My bedroom was a curious old room,
long and narrow, with a window at one end of the room and a
door at the other. I had a very dear brother (my eldest
brother) , Oliver, Lieutenant in the 7th Royal Fusiliers. He
was about nineteen years old, and had at that time been some
months before Sebastopol. I corresponded frequently with
him ; and once when he wrote in low spirits, not being well,
I said in answer that he was to cheer up, but that if anything
did happen to him, he must let me know by appearing to me
in my room, where we had often as boys together sat at night
and indulged in a surreptitious pipe and chat. This letter (I
found subsequently) he received as he was starting to receive
the Sacrament from a clergyman who has since related the
fact to me. Having done this, he went to the entrenchments
and never returned, as in a few hours afterwards the storming
of the Redan commenced. He, on the captain of the com-
pany falling, took his place, and led his men bravely on. He
had just led them within the walls, though already wounded
in several places, when a bullet struck him on the right
temple and he fell amongst heaps of others, where he was
found in a sort of kneeling posture (being propped up by
other dead bodies) thirty-six hours afterwards. His death
took place, or rather he fell, though he may not have died im-
mediately, on the 8th of September, 1855.
That night I awoke suddenly, and saw facing the window
of my room, by my bedside, surrounded by a light sort of
phosphorescent mist, my brother kneeling. I tried to speak
but could not. I buried my head in the bedclothes, not at all
afraid (because we had all been brought up not to believe in
ghosts or apparitions), but simply to collect my ideas, because
I had not been thinking or dreaming of him, and, indeed, had
forgotten all about what I had written to him a fortnight be-
fore. I decided that it must be fancy, and the moonlight
playing on a towel, or something out of place. But on looking
up, there he was again, looking lovingly, imploringly, and
sadly at me. I tried again to speak, but found myself tongue-
tied. I could not utter a sound. I sprang out of bed, glanced
io Recent Results of Psychical Research [April,
through the window, and saw that there was no moon, but it
was very dark and raining hard, by the sound against the
panes. I turned, and still saw poor Oliver. I shut my eyes,
walked through it, and reached the door of the room. As I
turned the handle, before leaving the room, I looked once
more back. The apparition turned round his head slowly,
and again looked anxiously and lovingly at me, and I saw
then lor the first time a wound on the right temple with a
red stream from it. His face was of a waxy pale tint, but
transparent looking, and so was the reddish mark. But it is
almost impossible to describe his appearance. I only know I
shall never forget it. I left the room and went to a friend's
room, and lay on the sofa the rest of the night. I told him
why. I told others in the house ; but when I told my father,
he ordered me not to repeat such nonsense, and especially not
to let my mother know.
On the Monday following he received a note from Sir Alex-
ander Milne to say that the Redan was stormed, but no parti-
culars. I told my friend to let me know if he saw the name
among the killed and wounded before me. About a fortnight
later he came to my bedroom in his mother's house, in Athole
Crescent, in Edinburgh, with a very grave face. I said : " I
suppose it is to tell me the sad news I expect " ; and he said :
" Yes." Both the colonel of the regiment and one or two
officers who saw the body confirmed the fact that the appear-
ance was much according to my description, and the death-
wound was exactly where I had seen it. But none could say
whether he actually died at the moment. His appearance, if
so. must have been some hoars after death, as he appeared to
me a few minutes after two in the morning. Months later a
small prayer-book and the letter I had written to him were re-
turned to Inveresk, found in the inner breast pocket of his
tunic which he wore at his death. I have them now.
It most be acknowledged that in this very clear and, we may
say, cool-headed account there are some particulars which seem
to be against a telepathic explanation. The phantasm, it will
be noticed, remains, as was remarked at the outset, fixed in
place. The percipient goes to the window, and no longer sees
it; when he turns round and looks toward its former place, it
is still there. He walks, as it would seem, right through that
place ; we cannot wonder that he shuts his eyes as he does so.
He does not see it till he looks again toward the same place,
before leaving the room. All this seems very strongly to irdi-
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research ii
cate a real localization of it. Indeed it would appear that a
telepathic phantasm, on the theory which we have mentioned,
and which seems reasonable for it, ought to be still seen and
even better than before^ if the percipient should shut or cover his
eyes ; for it is less interfered with in that case by the ordi-
nary operation of the retina. It ought to occupy the ocular field
alone, and stand out more vividly than before. But when the
percipient, in this case, buried his head in the bedclothes, it
seems to have entirely disappeared. It certainly seems to have
been seen by the ordinary action of the lens of the eye, and to
have had, therefore, an objective reality of some kind.
It may also be remarked that this does not seem to have
been, strictly, a phantasm of the dying, though of course it is
included in the definition of the word " wraith " as given above.
For the storming of the Redan began shortly after noon (pre-
sumably local time, and therefore earlier by English time), and
only lasted about an hour and a half. It would seem that
Lieutenant Colt must have received his mortal wound by or
before noon by English time. But the phantasm does not ap-
pear till some fourteen hours later. It is true that it* was cred-
ibly reported at the time that " the dead, the dying, and the
uninjured* were all lying in piles together," and that the search
for the wounded continued on the morning of the 9th. But
still it seems hardly probable that one who had received a
wound in the temple would continue alive for so long a time
as fourteen hours. Still, from recent researches, it seems pro-
bable that the actual separation of soul and body does not nec-
essarily occur when the ordinary manifestations of life cease,
but may be deferred for quite a considerable interval, especially
in cases of violent death. f
It should also be mentioned that the theory is maintained
by some that a telepathic impression may remain latent in the
mind of the percipient, and not develop itself in the form of a
visible phantasm, or in any other way, till some hours, or per-
haps even days, later. We must say that this hypothesis seems
rather strained ; the explanation just given seems, in the matter
of apparitions of the dying at any rate, a more probable one.
* It so reads in the original.
t This matter evidently has a great practical importance with regard to the administra-
tion of the Sacraments, but this is not the place in which it can be properly discussed, especial-
ly since much has been already published concerning it.
12 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [April,
And also as it is certain that, as there is plenty of evidence, as
we shall soon see, for phantasms of those dead for a long time,
there is no reason why we should hesitate, if need be, to refer
the wraith occurring so long after apparent death that real
death is sure to have occurred, to this regular " ghost " class.
A phantasm somewhat similar to the one last described, but
in some ways still more extraordinary, is described by a Colonel
H , known to Mr. Gurney, of the Society. He states that
a friend and brother officer (initials J. P.), when leaving London
in 1879 for the Transvaal war, had breakfasted with him at
their club, and in reply to his parting hope that they might
meet again, had said : " Yes, we shall meet again." There may
just possibly be some connection between promises of this kind
and subsequent apparitions. At any rate, Colonel H says
that one night, after retiring at nearly one o'clock, and sleep-
ing some three hours or so, he awoke with a start. " Dawn,"
he says, " was stealing in through the windows.*
He thus continues:
The light fell sharply and distinctly on the military chest of
drawers which stood at the further end of the room. Stand-
ing by my bed, between me and the chest of drawers, I saw a
figure, which, in spite of the unwonted dress — unwonted, at
least, to me — and of a full black beard, I at once recognized as
that of my old brother officer. He had on the usual khaki
coat worn by officers in active service in eastern climates. A
brown leather girdle, with sword attached on the left side, and
revolver case on the right, passed round his waist. On his
head he wore the ordinary white pith helmet of service. I
noted all these particulars in the moment that I started from
sleep, and sat up in bed looking at him. His face was pale,
but his bright black eyes shone as keenly as when, a year
and a half before, they had looked upon me as he stood, with
one foot on the hansom, bidding me adieu.
Fully impressed for the brief moment that we were stationed
together at C , in Ireland, or somewhere, and thinking I
was in my barrack-room, I said : " Hallo * P , am I late
tor parade ? % *
F looked at me steadily, and replied : ** I'm shot.
- Shot ! " I exclaimed, ** Good God ! how and where? "
* * : v * m-*$ :■■-* cas* i: swins cer:a:ii that he had siep: such more ttax siree boors ; for
tV s«: s-.. ;Vr ;.-• t ;£ ve*r :S*: :h;$ occcmod. aocs act rise it Lop doc t£E nearto eigfet o'clock,
&rsi syfrt •v.^i: iv r-c c&wt. a: alj a: four.
1907.] Recent Results of Psychical Research 13
" Through the lungs," replied P ; and as he spoke, his
right hand moved slowly up the breast, until the fingers rested
over the right lung.
" What were you doing ? " I asked.
"The General sent me forward," he answered, and the
right hand left the breast to move slowly to the front, pointing
over my head to the window, and at the same moment the
/igure melted away. I rubbed my eyes, to make sure I was
not dreaming, and sprang out of bed. It was then 4:10 a. m.
by the clock on my mantlepiece.
It was found afterwards that the officer (J. P.) was actually
killed, at the battle of Lang's Neck, by a shot in the right*
lung, and that he was wearing at. the time the uniform de-
scribed by Colonel H as seen by him in the phantasm.
It seems also that the time of the vision was on the morning
of the day of the battle. This, at first sight, seems improbable,
as the battle, according to the General's despatch, did not be-
gin till 9:30, which would be a little later than 7:30 in Lon-
don. However, as stated in our note, it is evident that the
time of the phantasm must have been later than that which
Colonel H says was indicated by the clock; and it seems
certain that the clock, if indicating that time, must have
stopped. But there remains some difficulty, for by eight o'clock
it would be daylight. Still, it must be remembered that day-
light, in London, in January, might easily be mistaken for quite
early dawn.
The case for the reality of this phantasm — which was both
visual and auditory — is certainly quite strong ; and as anything
so minute and circumstantial, as to the manner of death, seems
extremely improbable as occurring before the fatal shot was
received, we must conclude either that J. P. was shot early in
the battle, or that the phantasm occurred on the next or some
subsequent day.
A very similar case is that related by Mr. Ira Sayles, of
the United States Geological Survey, to the effect that one day,
in the spring of 1857, his near neighbor and intimate friend,
Mrs. Stewart (now dead), told him that on the night previous
she had awoke her husband (now dead) with a scream. " What
is the matter?" said he. "Why, don't you see Johnny there?
He says to me : ' Mother t they've shot me. The bullet entered
right here '/ and he pointed to a hole right over his right eye "
14 Recent Results of psychical Research [April,
Mr. Stewart saw nothing. But in fact Johnny (their son) had
been actually shot, in Kansas, just above the right eye, about
six hours before the time of his mother's vision. It hardly
needs to be said that she had received no telegram informing
her of the fact.
The cases which we have given are of sudden deaths, which
are, perhaps, best usually as evidence, as apparitions in such
cases are less liable to be telepathic communications from the
living, possibly lying latent for a time. But there are a great
number of well attested cases of wraiths occurring shortly after
death coming from illness. As in the matters previously dis-
cussed, however, a thorough conviction of the reality of these
phenomena can only be attained by realizing the very great
amount of evidence that has been collected for them.
Clairvoyance can be brought in, no doubt, to explain some
of them ; but, after all, this is as mysterious and " uncanny " a
matter as the telepathic or even the objective phantasm itself.
And it will not account for most of the instances, even of
those given above. Moreover it does not seem likely to occur
when the percipient is in an ordinary or normal state.
It is, we think, important that we should convince ourselves
that the stories of wraiths, or of ghosts properly so called, of
which we next have to consider, are not by any means all
mere superstitious fancies. The better we realize this, the bet-
ter we shall understand that the matter of spiritist communica-
tions, the most important, practically, of all those of psychical
research, though mixed with much trickery, no doubt, has
underlying it a very solid and extremely dangerous reality.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.'
BY VERY REV. CANON P. A. SHEEHAN. D.D..
Autktr of" My Nra Curatt" ; " Luti Dclmtgt" ; " Ghnanaar," ett.
CYNIC AND HUMANIST.
ffBOUT two or three fields back from the sea, which
could be seen glimmering from the heights above
Lisheen, and situated on a high knoll, was a
mansion, whose broad pediment, large high win-
dows, and stately porch were indications of that
massive solidity with which country houses were built in Ire-
land in the latter years of the eighteenth century. A terraced
garden lay along the slope fronting the sea; and behind the
mansions a wood of hazels, oaks, and beeches formed the base
of a conical hill that seemed to be always blue- black, even in
the summer suns. This mansion, restored from the general ruin
and dilapidation that had fallen on all such relics of ancient
wealth and splendor in Ireland, was at this time inhabited by
one of those Englishmen who have, of recent years, taken up
their residence in remote places in Ireland, where they reign
like little kings. What the motives or reasons are that drive
so many excellent Englishmen away from their own country,
and even civilization, to take up their abode in such uninviting
surroundings as are to be found in the Clare or Kerry moun-
tains, or Connemara bogs, it would be difficult to conjecture,
did we not know what a vast variety of influences are forever
actuating human minds, and driving men into situations that
seem to the ordinary mind so very undesirable. Perhaps loss
of station or of wealth ; perhaps cupidity and the desire to
utilize the hidden wealth which the blind, dreaming Celt passes
by unseen and undesired ; perhaps the tedium of civilization
* Copyright. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.
1 6 LIS HE EN [April ,
and the hidden passion in most men to get back to the sim-
plicities of a natural life — are amongst the causes that have
brought about this curious exodus, which, strange to say, seems
to be unnoticed. But there the strange fact remains that, in
many places along the western coast, a solitary Englishman and
his family are often the only Protestants in parishes of three,
or four thousand Irish Catholics ; and, for the most part, they
are idolized by the people around. Having no landed interest,
they are not concerned about dragging out the vitals of the
poor, farming population; they often establish valuable indus-
tries, inconceivable to the unenterprising Celt ; they give liberal
English wages ; they are benevolent and humane ; and they as-
sume, a kind of feudal sovereignty, which a people, accustomed
to feudal traditions, most readily acknowledge.
Amongst these was Hugh Hamberton, the ' gentleman who
occupied the mansion on the seacoast described above. He
had been in Ireland about three years; and had already se-
cured a kind ot local kingship in this wild Kerry country.
The mansion had been refitted and refurnished with elaborate
taste and at great expense; he had a large staff of servants,
mostly English; and he had already created, in the cottages
and cabins around, a condition of comfort and a sense of inde-
pendence, which to these poor people, eternally struggling
against poverty, seemed too good to be real. "Too good to
be true," was one of their melancholy adages; and their new
conditions were so happy, that they sometimes rubbed their
eyes to see was it all a dream ; or mournfully shook their heads,
like sad, prophetic Celts as they were, and declared it could
not last.
Hugh Hamberton had been a London merchant, and had
amassed an immense fortune by speculations and in the ship-
ping trade; and, like so many Londoners, he had varied his
business anxieties and ambitions by little excursions into the
vast world of literature, which has a curious exoteric attraction
for many who cannot be numbered amongst its high-priests, or
even its votaries. He numbered amongst his acquaintances
several very distinguished litterateurs; and seemed to take a
special delight in having at his dinner- table not the great stars
of commerce, nor the leading lights in politics ; but the suc-
cessful, and even, more frequently, the struggling, poet or jour-
nalist, who was just embarking on dangerous seas. Rumor had
1907.] LISHEEN 17
it, that he extended to the struggling brotherhood even more
useful assistance than dinners; and even once a grateful poet
had the courage, or hardihood, to speak of him as a Maca^nas
of literature. Like all other literary patrons, he did venture,
once or twice, into the sacred precincts ; but those vergers of
the temple, the reviewers, asked him politely to retire. But
he kept up his interest in the craft to the end.
In religious matters he had no defined beliefs. He pro-
fessed to live the life of Chtist, without any attachment to re-
ligious creeds. One of his reasons for seceding from the An-
glican Church was that, on a certain Sunday, he heard from
the pulpit a certain text from the Gospels; and the preacher,
interpreting the text, declared that its application was limited
to the Apostles, who had to do certain things in order to break
down, by the sheer audacity of their lives, the vast fabric of
Paganism; but that now, when Christianity had conquered the
world, it would be absurd to accept such teaching in its liter-
alness. This amiable and accommodating theory was very grate-
ful to the majority of the well-dressed Christians present, who
had laid up their treasures in Consols, and not in the phantom
Banks of Eternity. But one man arose from his pew, pale with
indignation, and walked down the aisle amidst the startled con-
gregation. Next day he called on that preacher, and put the
pertinent, or impertinent, question :
"If what you say is true, and these words of Christ do not
apply to any age subsequent to the Apostolic, wherein does
Christ differ from Aurelius or Epictetus ? "
And not receiving a satisfactory reply, he did not darken a
church door again ; but read the New Testament, and Robert-
son's (of Brighton) Sermons every Sunday.
It will be seen from this that the man had a terrible taint
in his character, the taint of inability to compromise, the sin
of too great sincerity. And as it is the oil of compromise that
makes the wheels of life revolve with smoothness, it may be
supposed that Hugh Hamberton got many a rude shake and
stumble, as he plunged along the ruts, or rode over the smooth
asphalt of life. It is one of the most shocking things in this
sad world to see a generous, large-minded man compelled to
become cautious and prudent, and sometimes even hardened
and sceptical. That terrible "Timon of Athens," that still more
terrible "Lear" show how the bitter truth had sunk into the
VOL. LXXXV.— 2
1 8 LlSHEEN [April,
•
mind of the greatest interpreter of humanity the world has ever
seen. And if Hugh Hamberton did not receive such rude
shocks as these mighty phantoms of Shakespeare's- imagination,
at least he saw enough of human nature to wish to have as
little as possible to say to men during the remainder of his
life. His business relations showed him brutally and indecor-
ously all the seamy side of human nature ; once he was sav-
agely attacked for an innocent poem that he had foolishly pub-
lished in a tiny volume, and he was not very long in discover-
ing that the attack was made by a hungry poet, who had par-
taken largely of his plate and purse. He made no allowance
(or that exuberant sarcasm which must be interpreted as the
M scorn of scorn/' of which another poet speaks. Finally, he
was dishonored by a wretched creature, a gentleman of fallen
fortunes, whom he had rescued from poverty, and placed in a
confidential position. This was the last straw ; and Hugh Ham-
berton determined to fly from civilization, his only companion
being the criminal's daughter, who was his godchild, and whom
He had adopted as ward and heiress, whilst her father was pay-
ing in enforced exile the penalty of his embezzlements.
Why he had selected this remote spot on the Kerry coast
can only be conjectured from what afterwards happened. Very
probably during some autumn holiday he had skirted this coast
in a steamer, or driven along its splendid roads on an ortside
car. And very probably, whilst his fellow- passengers were lis-
tening to the rude jokes or time-worn anecdotes of the driver,
he had, with his shrewd English eye, seen in the rude seams
where <;aarryn>en had blasted for road metal, or which the
mountain torrents had chiselled amocg the hills, icdicaticcs of
aftineou or stone, that might be wrought into sceethirg profit-
able or nseisl. For just behind that conical hill was seen, at
the period of which me write, a vast qnarry torn open with
pick aisS powder; a»d — most cr.nssal sight in ar Irish lard-
scape — fex$e derricks with great cbairs swirgirg in the air to
Ji:t trott tfce ivweis o: the earth the blocks oc t>cto£vtv asd
« • • *
Mad: arc freer, oarbJes that were tc £11 youoer Irggers. rid-
ing i* the off.r,£, :or exportation to F,ug-auc. Rriuor, too, had
:t that :ro* ore ha<d beer. Cisco verei ; atsd tbcre was a secret
whistler, that was hearc or. v abort tbe f.re5*5es at nicit. tikar
Kafn^rtor. bad t>?ofcec tr some be*cv stores that r^ssrec in
the sa-n^h^. ar>c tha: be had gore bast:.y away friar borne a
1907.] Lis he en 19
few days after the discovery. However, here he was, the
" masther " of this little colony, stern but kind ; exacting a full
day's labor for very liberal hire; and leading a lonely, solitary
life, unbroken save for the companionship of Claire Moulton,
godchild and ward.
She, too, was worshipped; but in another way. She was
worshipped for her extraordinary loveliness that made people
cast down their eyes when they first beheld her; then wor-
shipped for her bereaved condition, that of orphan, as they
believed, an instantaneous passport to the sympathies of an af-
fectionate people ; finally, worshipped because she entered every
cabin, and spoke "like one of theirsels" ; showed the women
how to cook and knit ; " hushoe'd " the baby and rocked the
cradle; and did all manner of kindly offices to the sick. And
they worshipped her all the more, because she was English and
a Protestant; and because, disdaining the gewgaws of London
fashion, she dressed in the plain skirt and bodice of the na-
tives; and, when she went abroad, never wore but that most
becoming of all outdoor dresses, the hooded Irish cloak. True,
she yielded to feminine vanity so far that the lining of her
hood was daintily quilted in red or blue satin ; but that was
all. And she wore no head covering but her hair. One com*
panion she had, an old nurse, who acted as duenna, and watched
over her with incessant and affectionate attention ; and who
could never understand how one so delicately reared could
fraternize so easily and so warmly with these " dirty Hirish."
And the silence of Ireland oppressed her. She yearned for the
roar of London, and the soldiers, and the parks.
Withal, Hugh Hamberton was a melancholy man. All men
are melancholy who think deeply, or who suffer deeply, espe-
cially if they still hold in reverence that abstraction "human-
ity," whilst they have come to loathe their fellowmen. He can-
not be said to have loved anything except his godchild ; and
this was a pure, ethereal love, where there was not a particle
of sense or self; only a perfect, disinterested affection, that
sought the happiness and well-being of the beloved, and no
more. The sole object that would redeem his life from abso-
lute failure was her happy settlement in life. There was a
kind of secondary duty towards these poor serfs that surrounded
him. But this was paramount, and then ? And then — a cer-
tain thought would rise up before him, at first vague and easily
20 USHEEN [April,
put aside ; then recurring with irritating persistence, until it
became at last an obsession. But he hid it away, away even
from himself. He would wait, wait. " Sufficient for the day is
its own evil 11
He had met the old priest, Father" Cosgrove, in one of the
cabins during a hurried visit; saluted him in cold, English
fashion, and no more. Then he made a few cautious inquiries
of his workmen, afraid to touch too closely on that most deli-
cate topic of religion, with the result that, some weeks later,
be asked the priest to his house. Father Cosgrove, in his sim-
ple, bumble way, trying to be " all things to all men," accepted
the invitation. It was winter time, and a huge fire was burn-
ing in the splendid library, whose high windows let in a pale
sunlight from east and south. It was a large room, and liter-
ally crammed with books, exquisitely bound, from floor to the
heavy moulded cornices that ran beneath the ceiling. The fire-
place was framed in white marble, richly cut into all kinds of
Capids and Bacchnses and grapes and roses — ancient splendor
and modern luxury side by side.
After a few commonplace remarks, Hamberton suddenly stood
«p* and standing on the hearth rug, his, hands behind him, he
shot these questions at the priest in a quick, peremptory manner.
" I understand, sir, that yon were at one time rector or
parish priest here ? "
**Yes* yes; at one time, long ago, long ago," said the
priest, repeating himself as if it were a matter -of very little
CMaseqnence to any one.
**Yoxi were siknced?*' said his examiner.
^We*I„ yes, yes, yes; there was a little misunderstanding,
a Jitrie misunderstanding ** — and be waved his band in the air,
as ii to biow :t away.
** Tbea yo* :ecominenced life in your oSc age as cxuate, I
*>noers»nc ? % "
**I c?d, I did, I d:i. Xo resp^ns2£rr5es, yoc know; no
v% An£ arser a time yosu at your cwr request were sent
back tee as cerate anc ir a subordinate pasrrjon. »b c:e yon
bac be?oce tc scfer css^race ? "
' % "Twas irr ^11 wish, irr c wr wish,** saic tbe cod priest,
sbnff;,n£ it. bis cbair. • I warred tc see rbe cod percxre before
tber tutsssc a«rav incever: 1 wartec t-t see tbe bcvs md
I had married, and to see their little families grown up about
them; I wanted to see the little children I baptized, now
young men and women; I wanted to see the old mountains
and the glens, and to run down here sometimes to hear the
sea talking. And so the bishop took pity on me, and sent me
back without any care or trouble, without any care or trouble."
And he waved his hand again in the air.
"That's very good," said Hambeitcn ; "but you have ccme
back in a manner that's humiliating to human nature; and I
believe you are on a much lower stipend, and have all the
rough work ? "
"As to the humiliation," replied the old man, "it is just
about what I deserved, neither more nor less. As to the sti-
pend, I have seven pounds a year and what the poor people
choose to give me; and I want for nothing — absolutely noth-
ing, absolutely nothing. As to the work, I have a purty boy
of a parish priest, who finds every kind of excuse for doing
what I should do. This Sunday he wants to see a certain per-
son in the outlying chapel, and he must go; next Sunday he
wants to see the schoolmaster, and he must go; next Sun-
day he hears there's a leak in the roof, and he must go. He's
just like the people in the Gospel, that found an excuse in
buying farms, marrying wives, etc.; only that they excused
themselves for not going; and he invents excuses for going, and
sparing me the trouble."
Hamberton looked at the old man long and earnestly.
There was nothing very attractive in his appearance. He was
about the same age as Hamberton himself, grizzled too in his
hair, and wrinkled in his cheeks; but there was a strange,
quiet, serene look on his pale face and in his fearless eyes that
Hamberton never saw before.
" But," said Hamberton at length, " I understand you have
to get up at night and go long distances in snow and storm,
and face all weathers, and every kind of disease — "
"There you are again!" said Father Cosgrove, "not a bit
of it! My parish priest has left strict orders to his house-
keeper, on pain of dismissal, to send every night call to his
room. He says he can't sleep ; and he'd rather be out in the
fine fresh air at night. Once or twice I thought to beat him,
but he was out the front door before I was on the stairs. I
sometimes tell him he'll be damned for telling lies!"
22 LISHEEN [April,
"He won't I" said Hamberton emphatically. "Would to
God, it there be a God, that all men were such liars as he ! "
He had become suddenly excited, and had lost, in an in-
stant, and to the old priest's consternation, the equanimity he
had up to this manifested. He turned almost fiercely on the
old man, as he asked:
" Tell me, are there many more men like that in this coun-
try ? M
" Oh, yes ; oh, yes; lots, lots ! " said the priest, " every-
where; everywhere!" And he made circles in the air with his
hands.
" I haven't seen them/' said Hamberton. " Up to this mo-
ment I believed that horses and dogs were the nobility of
creation/'
M Well, horses and dogs are good, too/ 9 said this modern
St. Francis. M Everything is good that the good God has
made—"
" Except men ! " said Hamberton bitterly.
The priest was silent. He had never heard these opinions
before.
•• Look here, sir/' said Hamberton, pointing his finger at
the priest, " what you say may -be true. I'm not in a position
to deny it But I have walked through life, as through a for-
est, where I had to pick my every step for snares and pitfalls ;
and where every moment I might expect to hear the snarl, or
feel the bite, of a wild beast. In the beginning I opened my
heart to men; but I had to shut it with a snap. I wanted to
be generous, to give freely and royally ; I found I was despised
as a fooL Men took my gifts and laughed at the donor. I
brought a wretched, scraggy, half star v ed tattcr~de-iral:on —
but a genius — into my house, clothed his nakedness, fed his
hanger, and opened to him my purse. The frozen wretch,
when he had thawed, bit me. But — let me not do a class an
iajastke. It was only amongst the lower classes, as they are
catted* that I received gfattaade; and hence I hold that it is
cmKtatioa that makes men selfish acd bnitaL There is honor
aara*f thieves: there is lore and kindcess acocg street- walk -
%tSt DM yo* e*er read De Q^iscey ? "
•Xo-f said the ok! priest. "I haves: read =3ch at ail,
ataE!~
~Wc£L tob wtZt read ia his C***issirms coe of the most
1 907. J LIS HE EN 23
wonderful examples of fidelity and truthfulness ever recorded,
which shows that the higher you advance in civilization, the
more hardened and brutal men become ; till deception and ly-
ing are the recognized virtues of good society; and the lower
you go, the more Godlike men become, until, as I say, the
horse and the dog are the nobility of creation."
The old man was silent. These were strange and ominous
sayings. Hamberton was watching him closely out of half-
shut, angry eyes.
" I think," said the priest at last — "No "; he said at once,
as if checking himself on the verge of an admission or an
avowal, " I shouldn't think at all on these matters. They are
beyond me!"
" But they are your experience, too ? " queried Ham-
berton.
" Oh, not at all ; not at all ! " said the priest. " I find
everybody good and kind and generous. Look at yourself,
now*! You never saw me before. Yet you introduce me into
this magnificent house, and speak to me as an equal."
Hamberton would have smiled at this nalvetl. He had
never met anything like it before. But he was too much in
earnest; and too puzzled about this phenomenon.
There was an awkward silence. Then the priest, as if a
sudden idea had dawned on him, said with an air of triumph:
" I have it. It is because you were great and wealthy and
gifted that men envied you and coveted what you have. If
you had nothing, men would love you. Look at me ! I have
no brains; no position; no talents. I am down below most
people. And they look down on me and love me. I have no
money, no lands— only a few books and these old clothes ; and,
therefore, they have, nothing to covet. If you have all that the
human heart can desire, you must not complain because men
would like to have a little share."
"But my horse and my dog don't want a share," replied
Hamberton. "They are content to toil for me, to defend me,
to love me for myself — for what I am, not for what I have."
" True, true " ; said the old priest. " Everything is good ;
everything is good that the good God has made ! "
" Except men ! " repeated Hamberton.
The old man shook his head, and rose up to depart.
"You will come again?" said Hamberton.
24 LISHEEN [April,
The priest was silent. He did not know what to make of
this strange man.
" You'll find me, perhaps, somewhat different from what
you expect," said Hamberton. " Come for your people's sake! "
"I will come," said the priest, about to leave.
" One moment," said Hamberton, his hand on the bell-rope.
" You must see my ward."
" Tell Miss Claire to step here for a moment/ 9 he said,
when the footman appeared.
Claire Moulton was then hardly more than a child. She
was a little more than fifteen years old ; but, being of a dark
complexion in hair and eyes, she looked somewhat older. And
she had acquired all the manners of a young mistress of the
household — quiet, self-possessed, and sometimes imperious. Her
great beauty was set-off, or, as some thought, lessened, by a
quick gleam in her great brown eyes, that might be pride, or
temper, or genius. With this sudden gleam her great eyes
shone when she appeared to answer her guardian's summons.
She had never spoken to a priest before, and bad been trained
by her English nurse to all manner of ugly preconceptions and
prejudices against everything Catholic. Nevertheless, when she
approached the old man, she glanced quickly at him ; and when
her guardian said :
" I want to introduce you, Claire, to Mr. Cosgrove ! " she
bowed. The old priest, in his simple, kindly way, stretched
out his hand. She seemed for a moment surprised ; but in-
stantly, and with great gravity, she raised the priest's hand to
her lips. Hamberton could hardly speak with astonishment*
That evening, before dinner, as the two stood by the fire
in the drawing-room, he suddenly asked her:
" Why did you kiss the old priest's hand to-day, Claire ? "~
" Because he is a good man, and he does not know it,"
she said, looking him full in the face.
" You never kissed me ? " he said reproachfully.
She put her arm around his neck, and drew down his face
to hers.
" You are a good man, too/' she said, " and you don't know
it."
The strong man, his heart hardened and annealed from the
hard blows of the world, burst into silent weeping; but that
was the happiest dinner he had had for many a long day.
Chapter II.
1907.] LlSHEEN 25
A NEW SAINT.
The acquaintance, thus auspiciously commenced, ripened into
something like intimacy. There was hardly a day that called
the old priest away from his presbytery, which did not see him
» installed by that fireside, or wandering for a leisured hour or
more about the grounds, which Hamberton had now laid out
with great taste and at no little expense. And different as these
two men were in temperament and education, they seemed to
have some affinity with each other. Perhaps each supplied the
other's defects. Perhaps Hamberton saw in this guileless man
he simple, unsophisticated, disinterested character he had so
long sought for in vain in the world of London. And to the
priest there was quite a novel attraction in this strange being,
who seemed to his simple mind to have been dropped from
another planet, so different were his habits, thoughts, principles
from everything to which the priest had been heretofore ac-
customed. And although sometimes the latter shrank from ex-
pressions that seemed to him irreligious and even blasphemous,
he imputed the evil to ignorance or inexperience; and here
under his eyes were ample compensations for the crudities and
irregularities that seemed part of Hamberton's education. For
now "the desert had blossomed like a rose." Where a few
years ago was a barren and blighted landscape, wintry looking
even in summer, and fronting a cold and barren sea, was now
a smiling upland, gay with the colors of many flowers, and
feathered with the plumes of handsome trees. And where there
had been but wretched hovels, mud- walled and thatched with
rotten straw, and surrounded with putrid pools of green, fetid
water, were now neat cottages, stone-built, red-tiled, each bright
in front with carpets of flowers, and glowing in the rear with
all kinds of fruit and vegetables. And ail day long to the sound
^of the sea rang the clink of steel upon marble ; and the hiss of
the steam which swung the huge derricks around rose like the
Call of the surf on the shingle and sand beneath. Tourists,
rushing by to Glenbigh or Waterville, stopped their cars, and
rubbed their eyes, and asked incredulously: " Is this Ireland ? "
And many a palefaced and withered and shrunken American
girl, home for the holidays, bade farewell with tears in her
26 L/SHEEA [April
eyes to this little paradise; and looked across the darkening
ocean with dread forebodings in her heart of the life that wa*
before her in the gehennas of Pittsburg or Chicago.
Claire Moulton, too, was a bright and peculiar feature in thii
picture. Scarcely emerged from childhood, she retained a cer-
tain wilfulness of character, a kind of girlish despotism, whict
gave her unquestioned power over these primitive people, whc
feared her for her imperiousness, loved her for her goodness
smiled at her impetuosity, so very like their own impulsive and
emotional ways. She endeared herself to them more particular-
ly, because she never stood aloof from them, but walked intc
their cottages with the familiarity of an equal ; gave her little
impetuous orders, which she helped to carry out; scolded th<
women for untidiness or indolence; and challenged the men ii
ever they were remiss in their duties. Once, when a rude work-
man uttered a profane word in her presence, she slapped him
across the face ; and every one said she was right. The pooi
fellow came shamefaced to the hall door in the evening, and mad<
a most abject apology.
i It was this vein of impetuosity in her character that made
• ' * Hamberton somewhat anxious about her. A firm believer it
t | the inviolable laws of heredity, he knew there was an oblique
| line somewhere in this very beautiful and perfect picture; anc
sometimes he caught himself watching her as she read or workec
' by the fireside at night, or stooped over her manuscripts, copyinj
i
or inditing strange, wild verses, that to him seemed incantations
i She was often, too, the subject of much imtimate conversa
tion between Hamberton and his new friend. For, although th<
latter was absolutely guileless and ignorant of the world and it!
ways, there was a shrewd power of discernment in his charactei
— that kind of intuition which makes children know instinctive
ly who are enemies and who might be friends. Hence, Ham-
berton spoke often to the priest about the girl; and as sh<
grew into womanhood, and all the strong features of her charac
ter became more pronounced and developed, his anxiety in
creased, and she became a more frequent subject of conversation
The Sunday evening on which Bob Maxwell had driven u{
I the cattle to the glen in the hills, the three, Father Cosgrove
Hugh Hamberton, and Claire, were seated around the fire ii
the library. The weather was cold and drizzling without, anc
| although there was no cold within doors, the sight ot the Art
1907.] LISHEEN 27
in the dark evenings was cheerful. They had been talking of
many things; and just then the name of General Gordon turned
up, as having come in some more prominent way than usual
before the British public.
" Voila un Aomme/" said Hamberton enthusiastically. "Yes,
Mr. Crosgrove, Gordon does not bring me around to your optim-
ism, but the existence of one such man redeems the race. Look
now, if Gordon were in your Church, you'd have the whole
tribe of pious Catholics running after him ; and you would
canonize him, and call him St. Gordonius, and put him into
stained-glass windows, and turn him into marble statues, with
a helmet and sword and breast-plate, with Satan wriggling be-
neath his feet, and representing all the d d money-grubbers
through the world. Yes; your Church is a wise Church. She
knows her best men ; and honors them. Macaulay was general-
ly silly ; but he was right there ! "
" I don't know," said Father Cosgrove meekly. " Some of
our saints were never discovered until years after their death.
And some got pretty rough handling during their lives. But
that is only as it ought to be ! "
" How is that ? I don't understand," said Hamberton.
" Neither do I," said the priest, who was always most un-
willing to enter into religious matters with a man whose train-
ing had not fitted him to understand them. " What does Miss
Moulton think?"
" I have but one hero and one heroine," said Claire. " And
they bear out your contention, Father. General Gordon and
Joan of Arc. We English burned the latter. She was trouble-
some and they turned her into bone-ashes. As to Gordon, we
shall probably erect a statue to him, if we can find a niche
somewhere between tallow-chandlers and soap- manufacturers."
" There, there " ; said Hamberton. " Claire must say some-
thing spicy. By the way, you never met Gordon ? " said Ham-
berton to the priest.
" Oh, never, never " ; said Father Cosgrove. " I was never
out of Ireland."
" No ; but Gordon was here," said Hamberton. " He was
around here touring I suppose ; but he kept his eyes open, and
he saw many more things than fifty purblind English statesmen
would perceive in twenty years. Where have you put that let-
ter, Claire ? "
28 LISHEEN [April,
Claire Moulton went over to a table, and picked up a scrap-
book, in which she had pasted every little picture or poem or
extract she deemed interesting.
" Read it for us, Claire," said her guardian.
And Claire read slowly and with emphasis that famous let-
ter of General Gordon's, containing his bitter comments on the
agrarian system in Ireland ; and suggesting remedies which only
now, and slowly and with reluctance, are being adopted. She
read over twice, as if to imprint the words on the memory of
her hearers, the lines:
" ' In conclusion, I must say, from all accounts and from my
own observation, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the
parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the
world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made
as we are; that they are patient beyond belief; but, at the
same time, broken* spirited and desperate, living on the verge
of starvation in places in which we would not keep our cattle.
The Bulgarian, Anatolian, Chinese, and Indians are better off than
many of them are. The priests alone have any sympathy with
their sufferings; and naturally alone have a hold over them."'
When she finished, Hamberton was looking steadily into the
fire, a deep frown on his handsome features. Father Cosgrove
was softly crying. She took the scrap-book over and laid it
aside on the table.
" There, mark you," said Hamberton, as if he were arguing
against an adversary, "that's no partisan, no politician. But
we have seen the thing with our own eyes — ' man's inhumanity
to man 9 — injustice and cruelty legalized.' 9
" Well, no matter, no matter " ; said the priest. " ' Blessed
are they that suffer persecution' — there, I forget the rest!"
" 1 have no patience with that kind of thing, Mr. Cos-
grove," said the Englishman angrily. " That kincf ot religion
doesn't appeal to me. No man is bound to lie down and get
himself kicked, when he can stand up and punish his aggressor.
It seems to me that your religion has emasculated this people,
and turned them from a nation of fighters into a race of whim-
pering slaves. 19
" That's what old Ossian said to St. Patrick, 9 ' said the priest.
.e old pagan couldn't understand why he shouldn't smash
trades in this world and send them to hell hereafter. But
" I know that I agree with that old pagan gentleman thor-
oughly," said Hamberton. " In public or in private, in races
and in individuals, the law of self preservation holds; and that
cannot be if a man is not at liberty to defend himself and pun-
ish his aggressor. But, Claire, you forgot something. Gordon
ended that letter with a comical proposal. Just get that letter
again, and read it."
k Again Claire Moulton took up her scrap-book, and read:
"'I am not well off; but I would offer- or his agent
£1,000, if either of them would live one week in one of these
poor devils' places, and feed as these people do.'"
"A safe offer," said the priest. "That is an impossible
condition, an impossible condition," and he waived it away.
"I think I would marry that man," said Claire laughing.
"That is if the fellow came out of the ordeal alive."
"Who is he, by the way?" asked Hamberton.
"The landlord of a large district many miles from here,"
said the priest. "He has a bad name; but we don't know;
we don't know; we don't know!"
And the old priest dropped into silence, as Claire Moulton
left the room.
Hamberton had noticed that he had shivered when Claire
uttered the word " marry," and had looked towards the girl, as
if beseechingly. He understood well the emotion and the look;
and he closed the door carefully, and came over, and laid his
hand on the old priest's arm.
"Fear not!" he said. "All will come right. Claire will
never marry, and I — "
"How do you know? How can you know?" said the old
priest passionately.
"There, now, don't be disturbed," said Hamberton sooth-
ingly. "You'll find all will be right in the end."
" It cannot be right. It must be wrong, all wrong," said
the priest, still in the passionate tone that contrasted so pain-
fully with his usual meekness. " Oh, how can you think of it
- — you who are so good, so good — whose life is so perfect be-
fore God ? "
"There is no God!" said Hamberton solemnly. "And I
i not good."
" But you are, you are," reiterated the priest. "You cannot
>ceive me. Cannot we see your goodness around us everywhere?"
30 LlSHEEN [April,
"What you, my dear friend," said Hamberton, "in your
simplicity and guilelessness, call goodness, is only selfishness in
another form."
" No, no, no " ; said the priest. " I cannot, I will not, be-
lieve it. Look at all these poor people whom you have made
happy. Look at their cottages, their gardens, their flowers,
their steady weekly wages, where there was but poverty and
dirt and ignorance. And all this the work of your hands.
And you, you," he cried emphatically, " to even think of such
a thing."
" Listen 1" said Hamberton, sitting down and speaking slow-
ly. " I appreciate your kindness and your good opinion ; but
you do me wrong. You impute to me virtues which I do not
possess, which I never possessed. I have money, more than I
know what to do with. I could have gratified myself one way
by purchasing a yacht and fooling around the world; but I had
no taste for seasickness and tarred ropes and danger. I could
have traveled; but I had no fancy for being packed into the
narrow compartments of Continental trains, squeezed between
sweating women, who would not allow the eighth of an inch
of a window to.be raised in the dog days. I could have spent
my money on rioting and dissipation; but I had no fancy to
be racked by the gout; and, thanks to my dead mother, I
abominate uncleanness, physical or moral, in every form. What
then ? I come here. I create a certain beauty out of a certain
ugliness. It pleases my taste, which is fastidious, I admit, by
placing certain pretty pictures before my eyes, where there
but certain deformities. I enjoy all the pleasures of a
>et — a maker of things. I can now look from my window,
nd enjoy the beauty of that harbor and those sands and cliffs,
and that sea, without having the prospect marred by rotting
iping mud- walls, and ragged babies. I have made
'lecem workers out of drunken loafers. I like to
■ chisel, and the hiss of steam, and the
<, Hut I am not such a fool as to call
• itow it is nothing but the selfishness of the
ociety under another form. All this Bi-
nd sometimes, I think, self dis-
nob c I
I lor some time buried in deep
|M silent. These were psychology-
1907.] LISHEEN 31
cal positions never before presented to his mind. Hamberton
continued :
" Believe me, my dear friend, self is the only God — egoism
the only religion. All the great deeds of the world, that sound
heroic, are done simply through selfish impulses. Scasvola put*
ting his arm into the flames — what was this but pride, or van-
ity — the desire of that most contemptible thing called fame?
Sidney giving the drink of water to the dying soldier — what
was this ? The same impulse of ' self ' that made me build yon-
der cottages. And all your patriots, statesmen, churchmen,
masquerading in their rags and tinsel before the world — each
rogue or fool, admitting to his valet or his looking-glass that
he is but an actor — why, he is not even that. He is but a
poor puppet in the hands of that mysterious thing, called Na-
ture, which keeps up its little show, lighted by its little lan-
tern, through the selfish impulses of these marionettes."
"I cannot follow you, I cannot follow you," said. the priest.
These things are beyond my comprehension. But it seems
to me you wrong yourself. You are not the man you have
painted. I saw you the other day take up in your arms and
kiss the child of that unhappy woman — Nellie Gillespie. A bad
man wouldn't do that ! "
"I didn't say I was bad," replied Hamberton. "In fact,
there is no good or bad — "
"And you must admit your affection for Miss Moulton. At
least, there is no self there."
" Right. None, absolutely none. And hence, when I see
Claire happy beyond question, I shall obliterate self and blot
it out forever! "
" Then," said Father Cosgrove, rising, I shall do alt in my
power to thwart every attempt at having Miss Claire settled.
The cost would be too great, ihe cost would be too great."
" You cannot," said Hamberton. " This is beyond your
power or mine. Behind blind Nature is the blinder force called
Fate. If it is Claire's destiny to marry, the mighty wheel of
Fate will turn round slowly and blindly, and place at her feet
the man she is to wed. She cannot escape him, nor can he
escape her. And it isn't you, my dear friend, that can grasp
the spokes of that wheel and stop it, or turn it back."
"But if I tell Claire — Miss Moulton — what will happen after
r marriage, she never will, she never can, marry, "said the priest.
.
32
LlSHEEN
" But you won't, you cannot, tell Claire anything that I have
told you. You know," he continued, laughing, "that we are
taught to believe that all priests are casuists, and can find an
excellent reason for every violation of pledge or honor, or every
contravention of truth. But I know you — know you well, I
won't say but that you are at liberty to thwart Claire's mar-
riage, although you have perceived, I think, that hers is not a
character to be thwarted without peril. But you know th;
you are not at liberty to thwart me by any unseasonable rev<
elation of my principles or purposes."
"Then, may God help met" said the old priest, rising up.
"I am going to say a dreadful thing — I'm sorry I ever knew
you or Miss Moulton. My parish priest, who is only half my
age, often told me to beware of intermeddling in other peo-
ple's affairs. He meant, of course, that I am an old fool.
And so I am ; and so I am ! "
"Well, we mustn't be premature," said Hamberton smiling.
"Let us await the development of things. And I shall be
more complimentary than you, and say that it has been a pleas'
ure and a profit for me to have known you."
"Ah, you're too good, too good," said the priest, shaking
his hand in farewell. " God will save you both ! God will
save you both ! "
Chapter III.
NOT FORGOTTEN.
Like so many others in the hour of their dereliction, Bol
Maxwell did not think that he was still an object of interest-
of hope, or commiseration, or contempt — to many. We are
prone to think, in the hour of agony, that we stand solitary in
is not so. Even as a matter of self interest, we
:', whose images may have faded
'ill
-
cs, at least, where Maxwell was not only
neraory was kept in frequent and
The one was the cabin of the Widow
the burn sparkled across
led from singing even in the
be couch of almost perpetual
1907.] LISHEEN 33
In the little homely conferences, about " ways and means/ 9
between Darby Leary and his mother, the " masther " was often
mentioned. For Darby had very pleasant recollections of that
little camp down there in the glen ; and before the bright, fra-
grant fire of pine logs and turf during that winter, whilst the
wind soughed dismally outside, and whilst his bare legs were
almost scorched and blistered with the heat, his fancy sum-
moned up the long, sweet, summer days in the glen, when he
lay flat in the sun, on a bed of fern, or leaned up against a
sunny ditch, and eat, with a relish unknown to the most fas-
tidious epicure, the mashed potatoes and the rich creamy fat,
that his master had to cut away carefully, by doctor's orders,
from the sirloin or the steak.
It almost made Darby cry, there in his cabin and con-
demned to potatoes and milk, to think of that beef- fat — to
think of his ecstasy when, he held it in his fingers, and watched
its creamy transparency; to think of the bite of the hot po-
tato, which was dry in his mouth, until, oh, ye heavens! he
liquified it with that delectable jelly, and rolled the morsel in
his mouth, whilst the crisp skin crackled under his teeth. No
colored son of Africa with his juicy watermelon, no Esquimo
with his whale-blubber, ever enjoyed such ecstasies as Darby ;
and when he had wiped his fingers on his corduroy breeches,
he wondered, as only a pleasant digestion can make one wonder,
what strange folks these rich people must be, to reject the most
glorious delicacies of life, and limit themselves to lean beef and
soda-water.
His mother had her own interpretation of these anomalies.
" It keeps them from gettin' shtout an 9 fat," she said, " in
ordher to plaze the ladies."
And Darby said : " Begor, m udder, you're right. That's it ! "
He told his mother, too, that the " masther " wanted him
to drink ink from a black bottle; but that he only tasted it,
and spat it out. But he said nothing, wise fool that he was,
about the "wee drap" of spirits which sometimes, but not
often, Aleck had given him on the sly, and which gripped his
throat and made him cough, and then say ecstatically : " Ah ! "
as he rolled his eyes towards heaven.
Very minute and graphic, too, were the stories Darby told
his mother of the "doin's" and "carryin'son " of the great
people; and very great was her wonder when she heard what
▼OL. LXXXV.— J
34 LISHEEN [April,
a complicated thing civilization was. How people could eat
eight or ten courses of soups, fish, entries, fruits, sweets, cheese,
etc., etc., without becoming what she called " pcrpushes," sur-
passed her understanding.
"Where the dickens do they shtow it all away?" she often
asked. " And why are they so shlim and yallow, when they
have the besht of 'atin' and drinkin' every day?"
When Darby told her that the "masther" had two kinds
of " mate " for his dinner, it produced great surprise in the
old woman's mind, who never saw meat but at Christmas and
Easter. But when she heard of the a la Russe dinner, she
decided the world had gone mad.
Then, one day, in a moment of inadvertence and communi-
cativeness, Darby, with a blush mantling his already red neck
and face, told his mother how fine ladies dressed for dinner,
and described their toilettes rather minutely as he had seen
them, after much hesitation and many scruples, one summer
night. The poor old woman, who, in Oriental fashion, wore
several coverings across her breast, and several wrappings
around her head, was slow to grasp his meaning. When she
did, she gave way to a regular paroxysm of passion.
" Be off, you blagard you," she cried, snatching up the bel-
lows, and smiting this unfortunate reporter across the back.
"What do you mane by bringin' sich things into a dacent
house? What the divil timpted you to invint such shtories?
I suppose thim grooms and gamekeepers. Go out and wash
your dirty mouth in the river; or, be this and be that, you'll
niver set down to a male in this house agin."
" Shure, I didn't mane no harrum, mudder," said the poor
fellow, whimpering. " Shure, I only tould you what I saw with
me own two eyes — "
"You niver saw nothin' of the kind, you ruffian," said his
mother. " Don't be tellin' me sich shtories as that. You were
listenin' to them blagards at the hotel talkin' of things that
no dacent Christian ud mintion ; and you want to pershuade
yer ould mother you saw thim yourself."
" Pon me sowkins, I saw thim," said Darby. " And, more'n
that, I saw the gould bracelets on their bare arrums — "
"That'll do now! That'll do now! I want no more of
yere blagardin'. Take that where 'tis welcome. Be the way,
whin were you at yere juty?"
1907.] LlSHEEN 35
" The fust of de mont," said Darby. " I never missed it yet."
"Did ye do your pinnance?" asked his mother.
"I did, begor, twice over, for fear I'd make a mistake";
said Darby confidently.
"Thin, you'll go to the priesht agin next Saturday, and
tell him of your bad talk; an' av I don't see you at the althar
Sunday morning, cut the head atT av me if you inter this cabin
agin ! "
It will be seen from this that Mrs. Leary's temper was
variable ; and really Darby, after all his experience, didn't know,
as he said, "Whin he had her." Sometimes when Darby was
facetious, and put on the airs of a fine gentleman, Mrs. Leary
was amused, and even proud of her poor boy. When, for
example, Darby rushed in with a ploughman's appetite and in
glorious spirits, and demanded, in an affected accent:
"What for dinner to-dee, mudder?" the old woman would
answer good humoredly :
" Oh 1 everything, everything, yer 'anner ; and plinty of it! "
"Shawl we have roshe-beef to-dee, mudder?"
"To be sure, to be sure; an' lashin's and lavin's of it, yer
'anner 1 "
"An' plum-puddin', av coorse ? "
"Oh, yeh; av coorse, yer 'anner. Is there annythin' else
yer 'anner 'ud like?"
" Lemme see ! No ; I think that'll do ! " And Darby
would sit down with a relish to the potatoes and salt, sometimes
improved with a little dip; and the old mother would think:
" Wisha, who knows? Quarer things happen. Look at Mrs,
Mulcahy's boy, that I knew a bare-legged gossoon, like Darby,
a few years ago; and look at him now home from America.
Why the masther is not aiqual to him. And perhaps, who
knows, wan of thim foine ladies may take a fancy to me poor
bhoy — sure, he's straight as a pike-staff, and as light on his
feet as a bird. And, shure, didn't ould Captain Curtis' daughter
elope wid the coachman ? Not that I'd be wishio' that, God
forbid! Shure, his soul is fust and foremost! But, if it was
right, an' they had the priesht's blessin' — "
So the maternal fancy wandered, throwing up its little
castles here and there, whilst Darby, with much M»
gobbled up the floury potatoes and swilled the skim-"''
his wooden porringer.
36 LISHERN [April,
But, once or twice, Mrs. Leary caught Darby suddenly
"doin* the gran' gintleman," and she resented it. For when
she caught Darby in the kitchen, the sugan chair tilted back,
till it nearly upset the centre of gravity, whilst Darby with
crossed legs, and an attitude of ease and voluptuousness, smoked
a cigarette of brown paper or straw, she gave him the bellows
across his back, and sent him howling into the haggard.
But, whilst thus maintaining proper discipline in her house-
hold, and keeping Darby within proper bounds, she never tired
of hearing him talk of the " masther." What the " masther "
did; what the "masther" said; how the "masther" dressed;
what the "masther" ate; the "masther's" fine round curses,
when he was in a passion; the "masther's" acts of generosity,
when he was in a better mood ; these were endless topics
around that humble fireside there amongst the Kerry hills.
And these gloomy December days, when the leaden skies
stooped down and wrapped mother earth in their heavy folds,
and while Maxwell lay, in agony and desolation of spirit, there
in Owen McAuliffe's cabin, many were the conjectures made
by the widow and son about his surroundings and occupation,
and many were the hopes and wishes that the winter would
swiftly pass, and the little bell-tent shine out once more down
there amongst the furze and bracken in the glen.
" 'Twon't be long comin' now, agra," the widow would say.
11 Sure the days will be lengthenin' soon; and thin we'll be into
Aisther; and, sure, 'tis only a lep from that to summer. We
won't know where we are, whin the Scotchman will be up here
lookin' fer you agin."
"That's thrue fer you, mudder," Darby would reply. "An'
shure if the 'masther' doesn't come this time, there'll be al-
ways gintlemen at the Hotel. I hope that foxy scoundrel
won't come, though; or I'll give him a worse duckin' thin he
giv me, bad luck to him ! "
"Sh! Shtop that cursin', Darby. Tis no good here nor
there. An', shure, 'tis always betther say the good thing. An'
the walls have ears."
"The masther wouldn't do it," Darby would reply. "He
was a rale gintleman. No wan knows where the foxy fellow
kem from. An', shure, I hard the byes saying that he tuk the
masther's young lady away from him."
" Begor, thin, she must have the quare taste intirely to turn
L
1 907- J
/,/:■
■SHEEN
37
her back on the masther an' go after an object like him But
I wondher what's the masther doin' now ? "
"Oh, shportin' an' injyin' himself, I suppose," conjectured
Darby. " Yerra, what else has they to do but divartin' them-
selves? They gets up whin we're goin' to bed; and goes to
bed whin we are gettin' up. They does everythin' by con-
trayries. Begor, I wouldn't be shurprised now if the masther
was away in the West Injies, or some out of the way place
injyin' himself; or, maybe, he's rowlin' about Dublin in his
carriage with the Lord Lieutenant himself."
"You wouldn't be afther sayin' that?" said the mother.
" He must be a gintleman out an' out to do that. But, shure,
wherever he is, may God save him. Only for him, we would-
n't have the thatch above us to-day. I wondher will he keep
it out of yer wages, Darby?"
"The masther? Not him. He thinks no more of that five
pounds than you would about a thraneen of male."
" 'Tis a fine thing to be rich and happy and continted,"
the mother would reply. " I suppose we'll have somethin'
ourselves in the nixt wurruld, as we haven't much in this!"
In quite a different manner, and not with less sympathy,
did the Major brood over Bob Maxwell these dark December
days. His thoughts wandered after the young man, although
he had cursed and blowed his folly a hundred times, and had
mentally excommunicated him for his Quixotic ideas and his
treacherous abandonment of his own class, and the great cen-
tral dogma of ascendency.
"'Tis all d d rot," he would often say to himself, "this
talk about justice and equality — all d d Socialism. The
next thing will be the barricades and the guillotine, with all
the insufferable poltroonery of this Government. But this
comes from ourselves — ourselves ! Good God ! to think I should
Jive to see a gentleman so forget himself ! I hope the fellow,
if ever he comes back alive from the hands of these moon-
lighters, will be ostracized, expelled, and blackballed in every
club in Dublin. What will these ruffians think, by that we're
afraid ? And then — 'tis all up. By heavens! They'd think
nothing ot lighting the Smithfield fires again and roasting every
man of us."
But the Major had gentler moods. Thoughts of Bob — Bob,
the son of his old friend; Bob, the splendid sportsman; Bob, the
1% LISHEES [April,
soul of honor, who would no more touch another man's money
than he'd take bis life ; Bob, who challenged that coward, Ellis,
and wanted to bring back that gentlemanly amusement of duel-
ing amongst a retrograde and cowardly generation; and Bob v
who he thought would take Mabel to the altar, and be to him-
self a son and a support in these sad days that were stretching
down the declivities of life — would come back; and sometimes
Freeman, his valet, would detect him talking sadly to himself;
or, be not incredulous, O reader ! for human nature is always
and everywhere the same, wiping his eyes secretly behind the
friendly shelter of the Times. And the Major, too, had mis-
givings about Mabel's future — misgivings which made more
poignant his anger and sorrow for Bob Maxwell. It was not
only the little episode we have mentioned in a former chapter,
but sundry other little things — little revelations of character in
a look, in a word, in a gesture — that made the Major uneasy.
Above all, there was that secret repulsion, that original, intui-
tive dislike for Outram, which he could not explain, which he
strove to conquer, which remained in spite of every effort to
dislodge it. And sometimes, although he hated and despised
himself for doing so, he would speak on the subject to Free-
man.
" No further telegram about Master Bob, Freeman ? "
"No, sir; I was hup at the hoffice yesterday; and they
'ave not an ideer where the master is. They thought once they
'ad 'im ; but they were mistook ! "
11 Oh, no matter ; no matter " ; the Major would say. " Only
I should be glad if he were home for Miss Mabel's wedding. It
would be nice ! "
11 Very nice, hindeed, sir ! I'm quite sure both Miss Mabel
and Mr. Houtram will miss 'im very much ! "
And Freeman moved the Major's couch as imperturbably as
if he were the impersonation of truth.
"Look here, Freeman," the Major would cry, "that's all
rot. That doesn't go down with me. Do you believe that
either Miss Mabel or Outram would care one jot whether Bob
Max well was at the marriage, or half • murdered down in a Kerry
bog?"
" Well, sir, it's not for the likes of me to hoffer hopinions
about those above us. But I thought you would ha' liked to be
told that Mr. Maxwell was still hinterested in Miss Mabel."
I907-] LlSHEEN 39
"And do you think he is? Come now, do you honestly
believe he is ? "
"No, sir; I can't say as I do. When a genelman goes away,
and leaves the young lady halone, and doesn't pay *er those
hattentions that young ladies hexpec's, well, then, he can't
hexpect nothin' in return."
"I'm sorry for Bob Maxwell," said the Major meditatively.
"So am I, sir!" said Freeman. "And so are we hall!"
" Why should you be sorry ? " asked the Major.
" Because you see, sir, he's losing such a splendid gir — ahem
— young lady; but we're sorry for Miss Mabel, too!"
" For Miss Mabel ? Why should you be sorry for Miss
Mabel ? " queried the Major.
" Because we hail liked Mr, Maxwell, or Master Bob, sir !
And because Mr. Houtram — "
Freeman suddenly stopped.
" Well, what about Mr. Outram ? " sharply queried the
Major.
" I beg your pardin, sir. I should not ha' mentioned Mr.
Houtram's name."
" That's all right. But now you have mentioned it, what
is it you were about to say ? "
"Oh, nothink, sir, nothink at all. 'Tis not for the likes of
me — "
" Stop that d- d rot, Freeman ! You know me now too
well to believe that kind of stuff. What were you about to say
concerning Mr. Outram ? "
" Oh, nothink, sir, nothink, hi hassure you. But we do be
saying among ourselves, how it were well for young ladies to
know hall about their hintendeds before taking the big plunge.
The cook is agoin' to be married soon to a feller from Hindia — "
"Yes; I know, I know"; interrupted the Major. "What
has that to do with Mr. Outram?"
"Oh, nothink, sir, nothink; honly hi says to cook, says hi:
'You should know somethink habout the feller's hantccedents.'
'Oh,' sez she, 'the priest must see habout all that.' These
poor Papists believe that their priests knows as much as Hal*
mighty Gawd. 'That's hall right,' sez hi, 'but when the knot
is tied, can the priest unloose hit?' 'No'; sez she, 'not on
this side of the grave.' 'Well, then,' I sez, puttin' it plain like,
' if that feller has a girl or two abroad in Hindia or Haden,
40 LISHEEN [April.
what can the priest do when you diskiver it ? ' ' NothinV sez
she. ' Well then,' sez hi— "
" Look here, Freeman, I want no more of that d d non-
sense," interrupted the Major. "What has all this got to do
with Mr. Outram?"
" Oh, nothink, sir, nothink," said Freeman. " We don't
know nothink about Mr. Houtram ; leastways, we don't think as
how Mr. Houtram — Mr. Houtram is a very nice genelman,
sir ! " " •
" He is — very," said the Major. " When I ask your opinion
about Mr. Outram, Freeman, you can give it."
" I'm sure, sir, I meant no offence. Leastways, I thought
that, maybe, you would like to know what people think—"
" No ; I can think for myself," replied the Major. " I don't
want to hear kitchen gossip. There's always too much d — — d
nonsense and gossip going on downstairs. If we had less talk*
we'd have better dinners."
" I'll tell cook so, sir," said Freeman imperturbably. " You're
quite right, sir. It's not the business of servants to discuss their
superiors' affairs. Shall I move that couch, sir ? A little towards
the fire?"
And the Major was not quite sure whether he ought to
fling a spittoon at the fellow's head, or offer him an increase of
wages.
But he was much disquieted at what he had heard. Clearly*
this forthcoming marriage was much discussed downstairs Clear-
ly, too, it was not highly approved of. There were little in-
uendoes about life abroad, which, to the Major, who had seen
a good deal of Simla, meant a good deal. What if Outram had
had a " past " ? What if his reputation could not bear investiga-
tion ? What if—
Yes ; the Major was disquieted. But what could he do ?
Whom could he consult? There is the evil of being without
friends in this world. For if friends are sometimes trouble-
some, and would like to share with you the material things of
life, they are also useful, and may sometimes give disinterested
advice. You may have to pay for it in one shape or another;
but, then, you must pay for everything worth having. The
world is but a Chamber of Commerce, whether you play with
counters or coins.
(TO be continued.)
HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, Ph.D.
I.
PFTER all arguments against Socialism have been
fairly examined, it is found that one, drawn from
human nature simply as human nature, appears
to be strongest. "Socialism is impossible, since
human nature is what it is. If men were per-
light risk Socialism; but in that case they would
;." Yet, the strongest appeal that Socialism makes
for sympathy is based on that same human nature. "Because
human nature may be perfected Socialism is right and impera-
tive. Socialism alone provides an environment which enables
human nature to realize its best." Similarly, human nature is
alleged in defence of competitive industry. "Only the whip
and spur of necessity can compel any large number of men
to overcome laziness, shortsightedness, and undisciplined emo-
tions." Yet we hear against that, that " competition degrades
man, exalts selfishness, and hardens hearts." When it is alleged
against the labor union, for instance, that its policies are unfair,
and its principles false, its leaders look back of both for the com-
mon human nature which they express, and point to the same
principle of human nature at work in the antagonist, showing that
aim is not nobler, or method more honorable, or abuse more
certain in one case than in the other.
A definition of human nature, as it is thus referred to, is
not easily made, or, if made, defended. But, (or present pur-
poses, it may indicate the range of feeling, emotion, instinct,
choice, valuation, and action which, found in endlessly varying
combinations among men and women, and constituting indi-
vidual temperaments, governs or tends to govern them in the
relations of life. We may set over against this undisciplined
human nature, the culture or spiritualizing agencies which aim
to discipline and co-ordinate human desires and action toward
ideal ends which show the whole reality of life. The State, re-
42 Human Nature and Social Questions [April,
ligion, schools, the home, the community create institutions,
codes, customs, standards, and sanctions in order to produce
ideal individuals who shall be in harmony with others in all
relations of life. But all such institutions, codes, and standards,
containing the note of discipline, self denial, thought of others,
are more or less unwelcome, and human nature recoils from
the obedience, sacrifice, and effort called for. The margin in
motive, instinct, preference, action, which is left in individuals
unconquered and unrelated to ideals, remains a constant source
of disorder, sin, confusion, and is ordinarily had in mind as
human nature, though this use of the term misses all* of the
power for noble aims, brave action, and purest consecration
which is to be found in it as well. The Socialist loves to
dwell on this strength and promise, just as the conservative
finds joy in advertising the meanness, weakness, and disorder
found among men.
The genius of the race has always loved to explore the
human heart, to study its mysteries of motive and passion, of
sacrifice and surrender. Literature is great and noble when the
reading is profound and the narrative sympathetic, because thus
we find humanity — universal experience; and the narrative is
classical because forever true. " Through what is most personal
in each of us, we come upon the common soul ; let any man
record faithfully his most private experiences in any of the
great affairs of life, and his words awaken in other souls innu-
merable echoes. The deepest community is found not in insti-
tutions or corporations or churches, but in the secrets of the
solitary heart " (Bowden, Puritan and Anglican).
Human nature makes revolutions necessary, and then de-
nounces them ; it builds up institutions, and then undermines
them ; it teaches moral codes, and then forgets them. No
nation assembled in council and led by its bravest and wisest
souls, ever decreed a political constitution but that human na-
ture had amended or annulled many a section before the ink
was dry. No state ever enacted a law, vital in interest and
timely in every provision, but that human nature had it in part
repealed before its promulgation. No city of fair fortune and
fairer hope, ever set forth, sanctioned ideals of law and order to
a willing population, but that human nature organized and
policed beneath its foundations another city of disorder, sin,
and shameless joy, to which men might resort and seek free-
dom for passion, encouragement for degradation, and escape
from every noble instinct which might disturb their abandon to
mistaken pleasure. Human nature is everywhere powerful be-
yond description, varied beyond all understanding. Its prob-
lems have attracted an army of students who are giving to the
world masses of literature, but we are far from knowing a!!
that may be known. Human nature is practically the subject-
matter of all Sociology which is seeking the great laws which
appear in the processes of human association. Attention is
directed now to some features of these processes through which
human nature passes, in order to describe social questions and
social reform in terms of human nature thus understood.
II.
Self-estimate is fundamental in the normally developed in-
dividual's life. One does not rise to a sense of moral respon-
sibility, to intelligent self- direction, to a proper sense of pro-
portions, until one has made a conscious self estimate which
will unify views, co-ordinate faculties and aims, and make life a
system of related parts. The first business of an individual is
to find himself; to discover what he is, what is his business in
life, what are his relations; the business of education, religion,
and culture is to lead individuals to this stage in due time.
Not until, with quick and eager glance, the individual has
surveyed the east and the west of life, and has felt the thrill
of it, is he developed or are his judgments his own. When
he becomes conscious of himself, when he recognizes what he
is, what he is becoming, what he may become, idealism is
awakened, ambition and hope fill his mind, and he is trans-
formed. Estimates of fellowmen are formed, views are general-
ized, social judgments are made, and gradually a whole phil-
osophy of life, fixed views of rights and prospects, are adopted.
The result of this process is that society depends on the char-
acter of self estimate which an age is developing among men.
When the institutions and established codes of a people are in
conflict with their self- estimate, the way is prepared for dis-
content if not revolution. When the codes and institutions are
in harmony with the current estimate of the individual, but
the facts of life are in conflict, disorder and agitation neces-
sarily result.
44 HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS [April,
Men are fundamentally alike. A few rudimentary desires
explain all life. Men of like self- estimates are inclined to drift
together, to create a social ideal, to reinforce one another; the
individual ideal is made into the social ideal, and the rights of
the individual become the rights of man, and vice versa. It is
only through attachment to such a social ideal or estimate of
the individual that full inspiration comes to individuals. No
great appeal or noble and impassioned speech was ever made
by any one for his own sole individual interest. It is only in
the name of humanity or great classes that such are produced.
On account of differences of constitution and temperament, and
conflicts of interest, through many accidents of life individuals
are led to differing self- estimates. And most of the conflicts
of life are in last analysis conflicts in the self- estimates of indivi-
duals. Thus we derive individual conflicts, class struggles, clash
of standards, and war of ideals.
A two- fold tendency appears. Culture forces stand or are
supposed to stand for universals; for whole estimates of the
whole individual. Human nature is constantly producing group
views, particular and partial estimates of man. These struggle
to be universalized, and the general estimates seek to modify
and relate particular views in harmony. Thus the general con-
cepts of God's Fatherhood and man's brotherhood seek to bring
about understanding among particular groups, such as national-
ity, capital, and labor, and religious groups, but the employer
would universalize his particular self- estimate; the laborer would
establish his, the socialist, bis. Viewing the social process and
its deeply rooted conflicts, as a whole, it may be seen readily
that human nature is working with tremendous force to over-
come the particular group estimates of the individual, and
establish universal estimates, suppressing the former when it
is in the way, and endorsing it when in sympathy. And the
general or universal, toward which humanity appears to be
working, is derived from its best knowledge of itself, and not
from Christian revelation authoritatively accepted. Hence the
universal questioning of institutional religions, the challenging of
every established interest, no matter what its antiquity, sanction,
or defence. Hence the internationalism of Socialism, seeking
the universal among men regardless of country.
There are certain features of the self-estimate of individuals
which merit notice. When they merge self -estimates into one
1907.] Human Nature and Social Questions 45
social class ideal and each reinforces the other, there is a con-
stant tendency toward exaggeration. An individual feels much
more assured in claiming much for all men than in claiming it
for himself. Hence we find something vague, indiscriminate in
class demands. Equality, as a class demand, seems to mean
one thing to the thousands, yet, concretely understood, it may
lean widely different things to those demanding it.
It is evident that the vast majority of individuals are unable
to form an intelligent progressive self-estimate. Relatively few,
and they men of capacity, reflection, and insight, can do so.
The many must be taught, must act under leadership, learn
lessons, repeat them, and rise to understanding of the ideal pre-
sented. The natural function of leadership is to feel and think
among the larger truths of existence, and to tell the many, in
language which they understand, such truths as best may guide
them. Poet, dramatist, religious teacher, popular champion,
great literature have this great mission: to see for the many,
teach them, lift them.
As far as popular movements are concerned, the estimate, of
the individual, which is to be found among radical circles, is
apt to turn more on rights than duties ; to be, by necessity of re-
action, one-sided assertion against social and political conditions,
in which the self-estimate of many cannot be realized. Culture
agencies aim to teach a whole balanced view of the individual,
but the circumstances of life usually throw particular and inter-
ested views forward, causing great moral and social confusion,
out of which come movements of protest and methods of de-
fence with which observers are so familiar.
III.
Once an individual is clear in his self-estimate; once he
understands what he is and is becoming; naturally the impulse
toward self-realization is awakened. As a rule, nature keeps
the aims and hopes of individuals so far ahead of achievement,
that few reach self realization in a way to bring entire rest or
contentment. Man is always becoming. He always, if normal-
ly progressive, sees obstacles to be overcome, new joys to seek,
higher levels to reach. The individual is incomplete while
life drives all things toward self-completion. In the whole pro-
cess of self-reaiization, many features appear, some of which,
Human Nature and Social questions [April,
touching closely on social questions, property, and socialism, are
the following:
(a) The individual normally resists extinction or diminution.
Self- preservation is at least a first impulse of nature, if not its
first law. To whatever level man has reached, normally he
fights against reduction. Theoretically this is true of every side
of life, physical, mental, spiritual, social ; bat, in fact, it is found
chiefly in the standard of living and social recognition that
men enjoy. Individuals lose ambition for learning, forget what
they once knew, without struggle, possibly without regret. Men
forfeit high spiritual gifts at times, and may cease to feel the
loss, but no normal individual sees himself reduced in the circle
of life where his heart's sympathies linger without resistance,
without a feeling that reduction is annihilation. Nor is great
importance attached to physical self-realization, to perfection of
health, as may be seen in the recklessness with which it is
sacrificed, to many other interests. But when individuals and
classes reach a certain standard of living, a given style and
quality in food, shelter, clothing, and certain social recognition,
they identify these with life itself and resist every force that
might threaten reduction or invite it. Men at 4,oco, 3,000, 2,000
dollars income resist, with equal determination, any reduction,
although it means entirely different things in each case.
When adversity compels reduction, or when a standard of
life is kept up to which income is inadequate, one finds re-
markable ingenuity displayed in so arranging the details of life
that appearances are saved whatever else be sacrificed.
This, then, is to be noted as one feature of human nature;
it clings to what it has achieved. It feels a lasting claim on
what it has once reached. This is nature's device to protect
advance and resist falling back, since, if men were [indifferent,
there would be neither ambition to go ahead nor security in so
doing.
Whether or not an individual or a class will rest content
with a standard of Hie already secured, depends on the estimate
of the individual which they hold. In all cases instinct is ac-
tive, leading men to realize all that they hold themselves to be
by right. The magnitude, intensity, the varied and determined
organization of the discontent of our day may be measured
easily by comparing the ideals of individuals with their circum-
stances, for we find men believing in freedom, yet not enjoying
■9°7]
HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS
47
it; taught equality, and seeing inequality; educated to the
worth of the individual, and seeing that, in the industiial ad-
vance, he is regarded cheaply; convinced of his right to cul-
ture and home, and forced to labor, whose duration and ex-
hausting demands render him unfit for both; taught that man-
hood alone is man's true test, and seeing it half forgotten in
most affairs of life. Thus the conflict between men's self-esti-
mate and the circumstances of life; the setting up of a noble
ideal and the hindering of self-realization in fact, give us radi-
calism, protest movements. When ideals are improved and con-
ditions hinder self-realization, the effect is practically a reduc-
tion in the standard of life, and men resist it. Hence active,
quick resistance against absolute or relative reduction is found
everywhere among social classes.
(b) In the process of self-realization appears also a passion
for distinction. Life is individual ; consciousness is one, self is
isolated. Self is not fully realized when merely part of a mass.
To be a part, a fragment, one of many, suggests incompleteness
which strong active natures resent. The craving for distinction,
the desire to be remarked, recognized, pointed out individually,
as being in some way one apart, is so widely found among
men, that it must be taken as a part of the natural equipment
of the race to work out its ends. It is in human nature for
some race purpose. The tallest man in the county, the young-
est senator, the strongest blacksmith, the handsomest woman,
the brightest boy, all reveal one instinct of human nature, all
find the same delight in this singling out. Men and women
will, therefore, work incredibly, dream, hope, plan, with no
other desire than to win some distinction on which heart is
set. It is human nature working itself out, teasing individuals
on, and getting desired results in some mysterious way. Dick-
ens gives a curious confirmation of this in David Copperfield.
When the boy's mother died, he became at once conscious of
a distinction shaied by no one else. He was the only boy in
school whose mother was dead. He became conscious of new
importance and added dignity, but concluded that he would
treat the other boys as he had heretofore, not permitting any
change in his conduct. And he thought that he was rather
noble for doing so.
Prizes, medals, decorations, rivalries, envies, jealousies, sym-
bols of rank, and proofs of valor, strewn along the paths of
48 Human Nature and Social Questions [April,
history, are monuments that speak this truth of human nature.
As eloquent now in their silent desolation as they were once
sources of fervent inspiration and rewards for great achieve-
ment, they tell how deeply human nature loves to be singled
out, how sweet is reward when it exalts, individualizes, distin-
guishes one from the many.
The forms which this passion for distinction may take on
are by no means alike. It is not so active in circles where life
is dulled by exhausting labor, or darkened by moral indiffer-
ence. In those social Siberias in modern cities, where the son-
light of hope and the cheer of comfort are not found; where
arrested development makes every one socially a cripple and
only too often morally a savage, this passion for distinction
may not be found to be so strong. And yet, the boldest bur-
glar, the heaviest drinker, the toughest character, may derive
some human joy and imagined self-realization in that very
prominence. Where life works on normally, where the horizon
is widened and the fullness of life is seen, then we find this de-
sire for distinction appearing as a normal social force, shaping
more lives than we count, and explaining more hopes than we
might be willing to admit.
(c) Among higher types of men, those gifted beyond the
average, there appears, in the process of self-realization, a pas-
sion for power. When a strong man will be fully himself, self-
realised, he seeks to dominate other lives. There is joy in con-
quest and dictation ; command is sweet. Strong, keen men, with
foresight, intuitional knowledge of men and situations, with
genius for organization and taste for it, find no self-realization
short of sway over men and situations. The great social facts
of leadership show this : the equally striking readiness of the
many to follow, to obey, confirm it. Thus human nature again
provides for her evolution. When great men are seemingly
serving their own ends, and selfishly attempting to capture
power for themselves, they are merely working out some fea-
ture of race purposes and blindly co-operating with them.
There is a wide range in this feeling in man. He is essen-
::.&'. y active; normally he must be doing, satisfying his instinct
:o: workmanship. From occupation, wherein his lore of action
.x.'.v.ir<. :o command of men and situations, there is the fhnda-
n:? :a! ::^i: of human nature at work. Man, when growing,
sel:-:v.;. : r£. when the horircn of life is widening, would be
1907.] HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS 49
active, would be free, self-directing, under no man's authority,
independent of any will save his own; and when all of this is
done, he would assume direction, exercise power over others.
(d) The individual readily sees that life is short, yet desire
to live is strong within him. Hence he seeks to be immortal
in his family. Thus the family enters the scheme of a strong
man's process of self-realization. As he steps into retirement
from active life, his hopes rest on the son who may succeed
him, bear his name, foster his memory. Conditions at one time
may strengthen, and at another weaken, this feeling, lack of
wisdom may defeat the purposes of such men, as it too often
does, yet the desire to establish a family, and live through it,
is deep in human nature, and normally one of her forces at
work serving the purposes of the race.
The thought so far suggested is this : self-estimate is funda-
mental in a normally developing individual. It is his centre of
thought, test of success, the key to his philosophy of life, and
the basis of his ideals. Self-realization, that is, the conducting
of life and controlling of circumstances in away to realize this
self- estimate, is practically the sum of individual life. Select-
ing from the many features of this process, such as bear on
social questions directly, we find among them : (a) resistance
against diminution or extinction; (b) desire for distinction;
(c) desire for power, action, freedom; (d) hope of living on
through family. These are alluded to as forms of desire, gen-
eral traits of human nature which enter largely into life prob-
lems. As human desires, they are not rigidly fixed on definite
objects. The things on which the desires feed may vary with
time, place, and civilization. It is necessary now to look for
the factor which determines or chooses the objects in life and
action in which these desires find satisfaction. Generally they
are fixed by the social valuations to which men are sympatheti-
cally exposed.
IV.
Men usually tend to realize themselves in the terms of so-
cial valuations. Nature adjusts the individual to environment.
Human nature in him seeks adjustment to human nature in the
many. As all life is practically reduced to forms of desire, the
vol. lxxxv.— 4
SO HUMAN NA TURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS [April,
tendency is strong in men to adjust themselves to one another,
in a way to best satisfy desire. Objects declared by common
consent to be most desirable, actually appear so to individuals,
and these consequently seek them. When the individual first
becomes conscious, he is imitating others, seeking praise, avoid-
ing blame, welcoming recognition, conforming to customs, ways,
valuations found about him.
Human nature thus shows a process by which it adjusts the
life and desires of the one to the many. The culture agencies
in life set up absolute valuations, teach their relations, invite,
command conformity, and, in a way, they have success. Ideally
character is more highly valued than success; the kingdom of
God is preferred to earthly grandeur; service of others is no-
bler than service of self; to minister is holier than to be min-
istered unto. Yet, actually, human nature places success, enjoy-
ment, self-service, position, higher; values them more highly,
and the individual is thus left to confusion. Adjustment to
ideal valuations pitted against adjustment to human nature's
valuations; self-realization in the one order against self-reali-
zation in the other. If we listen to Newman in one of his
meditations we discover his valuations in his belief "that pov-
erty is better than riches, pain better than pleasure, obscurity
and contempt than name, and ignominy and reproach than
honor." " I will never have faith in riches, rank, power, or
reputation. I will never set my heart on worldly success or
on worldly advantages. I will never wish for what men call
the prizes of life."
If we compare such valuations with those which human na-
ture whispers to us every hour in the day, we readily see the
sharpness of contrast to which men are subjected, and the di-
vergence which they show, in the whole course of life.
Another way of stating the thought is to be found in ref-
erence to the many potential selves in us. Wherever we live,
whatever we do, whatever our culture, one circle is dearer to
us than any other, one self is supreme — and that is, the self
whose realization brings fullness to life. Speaking of rivalry
and conflict of selves, Professor James, whose thought is here
adapted, says : " The seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest
self must review the list carefully and pick out the one on
which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon be-
1907.] HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS 5*
come unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures
are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame
and gladness with them." He continues: " I, who for the time
have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if
others know much more psychology than I. But I am con-
tented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My de-
ficiencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all."
The self that we make supreme is the self by which we live,
judge, grieve, or rejoice. And that self infallibly selects the
social circles or groups in which our sympathies linger and our
ambitions rest. And the social valuations of that group tend
to become the supreme factor in life. Here are the laws of
life, standards, hopes. Here alone or chiefly we can feel hu-
miliation or triumph. The social valuations in the home have
no power over children whose cherished self is some one other
than of the family or home. The social valuations of a religion
have little power when some self other than the spiritual or
religious is supreme.
If a dozen selves are possible in all of us, and if it is largely
a matter of circumstance which self shall be supreme, the test
of any age, and the heart of its problems and contests, will be
found in some conflict between the self that is actually upper-
most among the people, and the ideal self that culture forces
set up. The ordinary human emotions of fear, shame, defeat,
pain, and of joy, rest, glory, self-respect, reward, are not uni-
formly efficacious on all sides of our being. They are strong-
est only where we have pretensions, and our. pretensions are
mainly in the direction of our preferred self. Human nature
is constantly working forward one set of selves among men,
and culture and spiritual forces champion another set. Social
questions, as ordinarily understood, may be expressed in the
terms of this conflict.
V.
If an age tends to weaken the social groups made up from
nobler and higher selves — groups such as family, religion —
and permits almost universal sway of the valuations which re-
present the lower self, we have in that condition the funda-
mental social question. If an age produce great classes with a
5 a fflMAN XAFVEE AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS [April
self-estimate which is too low, a great social question, one of
stimulating, uplifting, is presented. If a self-estimate is pro-
duced which is relatively too high or indiscriminate, another
social question, fundamentally different, results, one of toning
down, checking, correcting. If in the process of self-realization,
contentment and distinction and power and freedom and sta-
bility of family are made, by social valuation, to rest largely
in money and too little in virtue, or service, or character, still
another distinct problem is found. If social valuations are
stronger than any institution, it is useless to hope for reform
through institutions, when social valuations are to blame. If
the social valuation of money is our great social and moral and
spiritual problem to-day ; if it has become by choice and prac-
tice of human nature, the practical condition of all self- realiza-
tion » a badge of distinction, a reservoir of unlimited social
power, no law so orders, no court so declared, no ruler so
elected. It is the success of human nature against the forces
of culture* In a day when Americans are madly looking to
laws to hinder every abuse and remedy every wrong, it may
be timely to call attention to these other aspects of the social
condition. A study of them will be undertaken in an article
to follow.
A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT.
BY JOHN F. FENLON, D.D.
[HE long reign of the Bible over the hearts and
minds of men gives signs in our own day of
coming to an end. Critics have analyzed its
parts so minutely that they are believed by
many, mistakenly, to have left it little of the
divine or inspiring; a new literary generation has arisen that
knows not Moses, nor the prophets; our colleges, and even our
universities, witness in their students a surprising power ot re-
ststance to the infiltration of biblical lore ; familiarity with the
sacred text, once quite frequent among Protestants devout and
indevout, is now, owing largely to the decay of dogmatic be-
lief, becoming very rare ; while the mass of Catholics, whose
faith in it has been in no wise weakened, show no great intimacy
with the book they revere as the word of God. This last con-
dition is accepted, not regretfully, by some who are well versed
in modern scriptural problems, with their most widely prevalent
solutions; they fear for the faith of the weak and the little
ones of Christ, should they acquire an intimate acquaintance
with these fields of knowledge. If the Bible is a closed book,
on the other hand, their curiosity in things biblical will be
quiescent.
The comparative neglect and discredit into which the Bible
has fallen has naturally had most effect upon the standing of
the Old Testament. We are, in fact, almost in the full tide.
of a reaction against Hebrew bibliolatry and the worship of
Old Testament heroes, so long characteristic of Protestantism.
The old book, till lately so revered, has, with many, practically
yielded its pre- eminence to certain great teachers of our day;
just as the men whom popular devotion made a little less
than the angels, are thought to be found not a little less
than the aveiage upright man. Sharp distinctions are drawn
between the two Testaments; Marcion, who failed in the sec-
ond century in his endeavor to have the Old Testament re-
jected, to-day finds many sympathizers. Catholics, of course.
54 A Word for the Old Testament [April,
are not among them ; still, we saw recently, even in these
pages, some hard words for the ancient volume, while the au-
thor pleaded for the Gospels with the tenderness and grace of
an Irish woman and poet, and the sincerity of a Christian.
No one can question the legitimacy of drawing a distinction
between the two Testaments. It dates back to him who said
on the Mount: "It was said to them of old time, . . .
but I say to you.". It is implied in the word of St. John that
" the law was given by Moses, gfkce and truth came by Jesus
Christ" Upon that idea, too, reposes much of the teaching
of St. Paul. Throughout the ages it has been a sentiment as
well as a doctrine in the Catholic Church.; so that there has
never been any danger of the Old Covenant prevailing over
the New. But more than this is demanded by those who are
attacking or disparaging the Hebrew Bible. They see in it
much that is cruel, revengeful, of the earth earthy ; they re-
fuse to recognize in it any divine authority. They hold it re-
sponsible for religious wars, the product, they think, of a bar-
barous age, beneath the level of our own civilization. Good
books enough there are in the world for all our spiritual needs ;
the Old Testament was divine, if you will, but so was the Jewish
religion ; both have had their day, now let them cease to be.
Why run the risk of lowering our Christian ideals by con-
tact with the very imperfect religion of the ancient Covenant ?
Thoughts and feelings like these are in many minds and
hearts, though not always so clearly defined. Our first duty is
to recognize that they contain much truth and justice. The
Old Testament by itself is not a safe guide in morals ; it does
seem to sanction much that is imperfect, crude, low, and cruel.
It has ever been a commonplace with Catholic writers that the
ordinary man is quite likely to gather out of it false moral ideas,
and so the Church has reserved its interpretation to herself.
By not imposing on her children the obligation to read it, by
not indiscriminately recommending it to all, she has shown her-
self guided by the spirit of truth and holiness that rules over
the New Covenant.
It was a mistaken conception, though a venerable one, to
regard every part of the Old Testament as a contribution by
the Holy Spirit to spiritual and ascetical literature, fit and in-
tended for the daily sustenance of the soul. It would be a
quest dreary and fruitless for many a soul to seek immedi-
rl907.] A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT 55
ate edification in certain chapters of Leviticus, of Numbers, of
Judges, of Esther, and other books. Doubtless for most ear-
nest people at the present day there is more in a chapter or
two of the Imitation to make them catch the echo of God's
» voice, to reveal the secrets of their hearts to themselves, to
lift the soul to God, to unite them to Jesus in love and de-
votion, than they would find after laborious search through
certain entire books of the Hebrew Bible. Doubtless, writers
nearer our own time or of our own day can often move a soul
that is deaf to the voice of Holy Scripture. Considering the
many difficulties of the Bible and the readiness of unspiritual
Christians to grasp an excuse for their low ideals, more harm
than good might easily result to many from any attempt to
oblige them to seek their edification in the Old Testament;
the Spirit breatheth where he will, and some hear his whisper
where to others there is only silence, or even the voice of the
tempter.
Despite these concessions, however, which we make to those
who would restrict or discourage the reading of the Old Testa-
ment, we believe them under the spell of a false idea. For
all the passages which to many are only dreary wastes, for all
its imperfections and crudities, the venerable volume, now as
in the days of St. Paul, "can instruct thee to salvation by
the faith which is in Jesus Christ" (II. Tim. iii. 15). By these
words the Apostle who gave the death-blow to the sovereignty
of the Old Testament points out not only its value, but also
the condition on which it retains that value — its subordination
to the religion of the Savior. Through that faith we ought to
learn a divine alchemy that will enable us to transmute what-
I ever there is of baser metal into pure, refined gold. Most of it
needs no such transmutation, having already been purified in
the fire of the Spirit. But the New must ever remain the stand-
ard by which the purity of the Old is to be tested.
Those who would dig a wide gulf between Old and New,
however, must often be puzzled over the reverence which the
New professes for the Old. Though our Lord so clearly and
unmistakably announces his superiority to the teachers and
teaching of the Old, yet is he as emphatic in vindicating its au-
thority and divine origin, and claiming it as a witness to his own
divine mission. St. Paul, too, the leader in emancipating Chris-
tians from the yoke of the old law — a task which Christ left to
56 A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT [April,
his Church to accomplish — praises Timothy, in that from his
infancy he had known the Holy Scriptures and fitted himself
thereby, though a young man, to rule in the Church of God
over his elders, " to teach, to reprove, to correct, and to in-
struct in justice." Yet in this the Apostle was simply follow-
ing the Jewish ideas of his time, which regarded the Scriptures
as the best means of inculcating in children a virtuous life and
the love of God. Contemporary scholars who began, like Har-
nack, with regretting that the Christian Church adopted and
recanonized the Hebrew Scriptures, have gone on to reject the
authority of the New Testament which honors the Old.
Furthermore, though we may not condemn those whose
spirit and tastes lead them seldom to the ancient fields of Judea,
but rather to fresh fields and pastures new, we are bound to
recognize, nevertheless, that the great masters of the spiritual
life themselves have always preferred the biblical ground, whether
of the Old or the New Testament. Never was there a truer
son of the new law than k Kempis ; still his mind was steeped
in an intimate knowledge of the older books, not only of the
Psalms, which as a monk, of course, he daily recited, but also
of the Prophets, Proverbs, and even — and we may say espe-
cially — of less known books, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, which
the Protestant canon rejects. In most unexpected quarters he
finds flowers for his own garden ; and many a reader uncon-
sciously admires as the finest flowering of mediaeval Christianity
some thought or sentiment that has been transplanted from
Jewish soil. His own advice is to " mislike not the parables of
the Elders, for they are not uttered without cause"; while tor
himself he confesses that " the word of God is the light of my
soul."
Again, if we may take a modern instance, few men have
produced a deeper impression on their contemporaries than
Cardinal Newman. His words burnt themselves into the souls
of men like purifying fires; it was as a spiritual force rather
than as a theologian that his influence was most widely felt.
Now Newman was so deep a student of the Scriptures that be
is said to have known them by heart, Old and New, and nothing
is more remarkable in him than the naturalness with which his
best thoughts seem to grow out of the sacred text, like a
flower out of its stem, so that we wonder why we ourselves
had never perceived the same vision of truth and wisdom.
1907.] A Word for the old Testament 57
Many of his most effective sermons are character sketches of
Qjd Testament saints and sinners, by which he shows us, as St.
Paul showed the Corinthians, that "these things are written
f r our correction on whom the ends of the world are come."
Others are in a great part almost a cento of Old Testament quo-
tations; and few readers, I think, can have risen from a perusal
of his sermons without a new sense of the beauty, the direct-
ness, the depth of spirituality of the ancient volume. And can
w e pay a higher tribute to its superiority than to confess that
even on the page of this great master the best things are usu-
ally the biblical texts? Newmans are rare; but almost invari-
ably it will be found that they who dispense to others the
bread of life have themselves drawn their storejfrom the granary
of Israel.
Nor can it be shown that the masters of the new Israel
have often, if ever, suffered any injury by sitting at the feet
of the Elders. Guided apparently by some instinct of super-
natural selection, they are able to reject whatever may be hurt-
ful to the Christian life, and- assimilate only the nourishing, the
strengthening. And, in fact, the spirit of Christ is so clearly
and directly opposed to whatever is exceptionable in the ancient
Jaw, that the danger of misguidance is slight. The Christian
conscience — that one, at least, which has been formed by the
teaching of the Church — almost mechanically rings a note of
alarm when the danger line is nearing. Our Lord's teaching
on marriage preserves us from sanctioning polygamy, though
the patriarchs practised it ; his condemnation of divorce saves
us from the hardheartedness of the Jews, with which Moses
had to compromise; his "blessed are the clean of heart" lifts
us into a purer atmosphere than prevails in certain parts of
the old law; the command of simple truthfulness in word, "let
your speech be yea, yea; no, no," prevents us from being mis-
led by the double-dealing, the lack of straightforwardness,
found occasionally in some Old Testament characters; "Love
thy neighbor as thyself," with its explanation, while it sums
up the law and the prophets, removes at the same time the
limitations these seem to put to the obligation of charity : " Love
your enemies, do good to those that hate you," brings into re-
lief one of the greatest defects of the ancient religion ; while,
finally, the rebuke to the sons of Zebedee, "Ye know not of
what spirit ye are," when they wished to call down fire from
58 A Word for the Old Testament [April,
heaven, should be sufficient, though as a matter of history, un-
happily, it did not always suffice, to make Christians unlearn
the spirit of Elias the Thesbite.
Thus can we ever find in a few simple words of our Savior
the corrective of whatever is imperfect, of whatever is unde-
veloped in the religion and morality of the ancient Covenant.
The prime necessity, of course, is to know the spirit of Christ;
without it we can easily, we shall inevitably, turn the Old
Testament to our hurt. But it is. equally true that without it
the New Testament can be wrested to our destruction ; and
those who would recommend the one, and be reluctant to
recommend the other, must remember that the most fruitful
source of divisions in the Church has been the wrong use of
the words of Christ and his Apostles. That most beautiful and
touching farewell discourse of our Lord, quoted recently in
these pages, was, in fact, the ostensible foundation of the Mon-
tanist heresy, which seduced the mind of the great Tertullian.
There is nothing that may not prove harmful without the spirit
of Christ; with it " all Scripture, inspired of God, is profitable"
(II. Tim. iii. 16).
The protection derived from a thorough knowledge of the
spirit of the new law may be increased also by the aid of
a new and unexpected ally. This is none other than out-
most dreaded foe, the higher criticism of the Bible. Incalcu-
lable harm, it is true, especially to those who have not the
guidance and support of the Church, has resulted from the
speculations and conclusions of critics; but here again, if only
we will possess our souls in patience, we shall find it true that
The clouds we so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on our head.
For what is the fundamental idea at present in all historical
criticism ? It is the law of growth, of change, of development ;
that there must come first the blade, then the ear, then the full
corn in the ear ; and even that there is a time to plant and a time
to pluck up that which is planted ; that, as our version has it,
all things have their season, and in their times all things pass
under heaven ; that the old order must change, giving place to
the new, lest even a good custom should corrupt the world
I907.] A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT 59
This is, indeed, the method and doctrine of Christ, save that
the new order inaugurated by him should never grow old, but
eternally renew itself. The law of his kingdom was to be
growth, development, for it was to live ; but a growth without
decay, for it was to live forever. And as this law was to pre-
side over the new dispensation, so did it rule over the old.
The Christian church is not a pure creation ; rather Christ
presents his kingdom as the fulfilment of the old Jewish polity,
his doctrines as the legitimate expansion of the teaching of
Moses and the prophets; and with St. Paul, baptism is the
Christian circumcision and the Eucharist the true Pasch ; and
the Apostle, like his Master, teaches that the members of
the Church are the true children of Abraham.
We must, then, allow this idea of growth, of development
{which is Christian as well as scientific), to influence us in our
reading of the Old Testament, by which criticism, in bringing
it forward, does us a real service. This implies that we must
not expect final perfection in the first stages of the growth of
religion ; that we must not be shocked to see God sanction or
permit things which the Christian conscience cannot approve.
The chosen people, it is well to remember, were called out of
idolatry, from a life of low moral standards, and afterwards dwelt
in contact with those who practised idolatry and all that it
means. To begin by teaching and imposing on these chosen
ones the highest spiritual ideals would be to render failure
inevitable. The spiritual training of mankind had to be a slow,
laborious process; with infinite patience God carried it forward,
winking, as the Apostle expresses it, at the times of ignorance.
No great humility of mind is needed to believe that his way
was the best way. Fanciful idealists would have it otherwise;
but when we consider the grossness, the unsubduable stubborn-
ness of the Jews, we cannot wonder that evils were tolerated
which only moral miracles, or the withdrawal of free will, could
remove. One by one the spiritual and ethical lessons had to
be taught; and most often they were as quickly forgotten as
they were learned. A hopeless task, one would think, to get
the knowledge and fear of the Lord into the soul of that
people. As the prophet exclaimed, if we may so apply his
words : " Whom will he teach knowledge ? and whom will he
get to understand the message ? . . . For it is precept upon
precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line;
60 A Word for the Old Testament [April,
hefe a little, there a little." • And the easier lessons had to be
learned first, before the more difficult and higher could be taught
Remembering this, as well as the darkness surrounding the
Israelites, we shall hardly wonder that St. Teresa was not raised
up to teach the ways of contemplation to her sister of old, the
valiant Jahel, or that the doctrine of St. John was not ex-
pounded to Samson and Samgar ; yet these " also defended
Israel."
As the nation's ideals, so her heroes; the men chosen to do
the rough foundation work necessary for building the temple
of God could hardly be of the same type as the perfect saints
of Christendom. The Israelites wanted heroes and heroines who
were, like the poet's wife,
Not too good
For human nature's daily food,
with faults, perhaps, that showed them of the same flesh and
blood as themselves, but with great qualities that proved them
the friends of God. Such were given to them. It would be
foolish as well as unjust to try them rigorously by the counsels
of Christian perfection; that the men of all times and countries
should be judged by the same moral standards, as Lord Acton
held, must be dismissed as an impracticable dream. The short*
comings of Israel's heroes are frankly enough recorded in Holy
Writ ; there is no need of recourse to spiritual or allegorical
interpretations, dear to some of the Fathers, but foreign to our
mental habits to-day, to explain away actions that do not reach
the level of Christian sanctity. They were either almost inevi-
table in that day, or were atoned for; Christians cannot invoke
them as excuse or palliation for their own misdeeds, but are to
regard them as warning examples, or as indications of God's
loving mercy in his dealings with souls. To some, when tbey
regard the condition of the pre-Christian world or of the non-
Christian world to-day, the presence of these imperfections and
sins in the ancient friends of God is one of the greatest of con-
solations. They are judged by their light; we, by so much of
the light from the True Light as we have made our own.
On the other hand, it would be narrow as well as unjust,
because of the sins with which their memory is stained, to deny
greatness of soul, a deeply religious nature, and even sanctity
• Isaias xxviii. 9, 10. (Revised Version — our ownjs obscure here.)
.907.]
A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAME.
to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, and others. Israel
knew and felt that through these men was acquired all that was
great and holy in its history; their great qualities, their faith,
their devotion to God, their prayerfulness, their zeal against
idolatry, their sense of human dignity, their love of justice, their
magnanimity, their sense of sin and of Israel's call to be holy
as God is holy, all these great qualities, possessed by one or
another, were the human means by which religion was kept
alive and fostered in Israel and upon earth. To hunt out and
gloat over detects of character in those ancient worthies is fit
occupation for a small soul; but
We live by admiration, hope, and love,
and those spiritual writers who tried, by an accommodating ap-
plication of allegory, to find the heroes of the Old Testament
as little blameworthy as possible, came nearer the truth than the
men who see in them little that is great or admirable or lov-
able. A nation does not mistake its true heroes ; and a nation
whose ideals were always righteousness and the service of Jehovah
— however far it came short of reaching them — knew which of
its sons were more faithful to those ideals.
It is a unique thing in history, without parallel, I believe,
in ancient or modern times, that a nation's great men should be
judged by Israel's standard of righteousness and piety toward
God. The heroes of other countries are celebrated in song and
enshrined in popular legends for military exploits such as dis-
tinguished the "judges " of Israel; services of a purely worldly
character, looking to national greatness and glory, are usually
their title to the reverence of their countrymen. Much is for-
given them if they have done great things for the fatherland.
Traces of this merely patriotic sentiment in regard to the nation's
defenders may be found in the Bible, which is natural and, as
far as it goes, right ; but when the men are judged, it is, in
general, with reference to their fidelity to Jehovah, their own moral
conduct, and their services to the spiritual Israel. Only those
who excel in these respects live in the heart of the race. We
must find it most remarkable that a people continually at war
should cherish, with a love no modern people can rival, the
memory of such figures as Abraham, the peaceful patriarch, full
of faith and piety towards God, ever faithful and prompt to
obedience and sacrifice, walking with God and entertaining
62 A WORD FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT [April,
angels; or Jacob with his deep trust in God, his vision of the
angels' ladder, his sense of God's presence, his wrestling to
obtain the divine blessing, his condemnation of his sons for their
warlike and revengeful spirit. These are not the figures which
the popular imagination and natural heart of a primitive people
create and love to contemplate.
The deep religious feeling which characterizes the traditions
of Israel's earliest and most loved heroes tinges, or rather domi-
nates, nearly all the history of its great men. Moses, so favored
of God, is punished for a lack of simplicity in obedience, and
Saul rejected for a similar fault. The popular enthusiasm for
their great king, David, is tempered by condemnation of his sins,
and because he is a man of blood he cannot build the temple of
the Lord. Solomon is the Augustus of the Jewish kingdom ; his
youthful piety is lingered over with affection; but though he
conferred on his people the height of worldly glory, this does
not weigh in the balance with his own apostasy from Jehovah.
Down through the ranks of his successors, in both kingdoms,
the same standard of judgment is ever applied. And by this
standard, too, the people themselves are invariably judged. How
differently are praise and blame apportioned in modern works
of history, where the private life and personal religion, especial*
ly of the great, count for so little.
Here then we touch the peculiar greatness of the Old Testa-
ment ; it gives us the history of a race, from its rise to the
beginning of its decline as a nation, and judges all things in
that history by spiritual and unwordly tests, by fidelity to the
moral law and worship of God. It applies these tests continu-
ously, naturally, almost unconsciously, without effort on the
part of the writer, and without weariness to the reader. This
religious atmosphere is the native air of the biblical writers.
God is the centre ; God is God. All things on earth must be
referred to the Creator and Lord of all. Nothing is really
great unless it redounds to his glory, or good unless it be in
accordance with his holy law. God in his turn watches over
all things. He rules the heavens and the earth ; he directs the
destinies of nations, their migrations, their conflicts, their rise
into power, and their decline ; he chooses Israel from among
the nations, teaches its children his law, chastises and rewards
them, and through himself will he bless all the nations of the
earth.
TESTAMENT
Thus does Israel view its own history, its destiny, and its
place in mankind; and the Old Testament, from Genesis to
Machabees, consistently maintains this throughout all the vicis-
situdes of history and stages of religious and moral culture.
And though at times the brightness of that ideal is obscured,
the ideal itself is never lost sight of and never surrendered. It
is essentially the ideal of holiness, of personal and national
holiness. Compare it with any modern national ideal; compare
it with Lincoln's beautiful Gettysburg address; and beside it
how paltry appears the proposition to which we as a nation
are "dedicated," great and cherished though it be. Israel also
was dedicated and consecrated to an idea. Turn to the poor
book of Leviticus, nowadays perhaps the most contemned in
the Bible, and there, in the midst of what some might regard
as a "dreary waste," we come upon this oasis:
"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the con-
gregation of the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them:
Be ye holy, because I the Lord your God am holy."
Here we have the inner meaning of the Old Testament, its
central, guiding, and controlling thought, from cover to cover;
it is the ideal of Israel, and though others may be more elo-
quently expressed, none approaches it in moral greatness or
sublimity. It is often said, however, that the sanctity of the
old law is merely levitical or ceremonial; but we have only
to glance down this nineteenth chapter of Leviticus to see what
it meant by holiness. " Let eveiy one fear his father and his
mother. Keep my Sabbaths. Turn ye not to idols. . . .
When thou reapest the corn of thy land, thou shalt not cut
down all that is on the face of the earth to the very ground,
nor shalt thou gather the ears that remain. Neither shalt thou
gather the bunches and grapes that fall down in thy vineyard,
but shalt leave them to the poor and strangers to take. Ye
shall not steal, ye shall not lie. . . . The wages of him
that hath been hired by thee shall not abide with thee till the
morning. . . . Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before
the blind. . . . Respect not the person of the poor, nor
honor the countenance of the mighty ; but judge thy neighbor
according to justice. . . Seek not revenge, nor be mind-
ful of the injury of thy citizens. Thou shalt love thy friend as
thyself. I am the Lord ; keep ye my laws."
This surely is religion pure and undefiled before God and
<4 A WOMD FOM THE OLD TESTAMENT [April.
the father ; H is the modern gospel et fratoaily and equality
fc*?y#fet d*** fraas the deads of htgb-soaadiag phrases, and
p*i Withm reach of everyday me; it breathes a leader com-
y*yton for the poor and unfortunate; it is almost the Sermon
on the Mount, centuries before the advent of our Savior.
High doctrine each as this is not exceptional in the Old
Testament On the contrary, this is its usual tenor, aad lapses
from it ere the exception. Bat if this be so, whence comes the
prevent widespread prejudice? It can be traced, perhaps,
chiefly to three sources, to a conception that spiritual sefigpon
i§ entirely independent of anything ceremonial; next, to a deli-
cacy, or, in some cases, a prudery, that finds the plain speak-
ing of the Bible repulsive ; and lastly, to an abhorrence of the
cruslty and bloodshed that stain the annals of the Jews and
sesm to have divine sanction. In reply we say, briefly, that a
spiritual religion without rites evaporates into sentimentality,
or dies away from disuse; that only a social religion has
strength and the bond of religious society is a cult, a rite,
and that Christ himself instituted a religion with rites. Then,
though the Old Testament is dreadfully plain-spoken, this was
necessary, and it is equally plain. spoken and unmistakable in
its denunciation of everything evil. It was the criminal code
of the populace, as well as the prayer book of the devout
Finally, war is war, in modern as in ancient times, and the one
is as repulsive as the other to a humane heart; most of us
stand in little danger of desiring to emulate the warlike deeda
and spirit of the Hebrews, or of believing we have a divine call
to preach such a gospel in this day.
Let us admit, then, lapses or imperfections in this long series
of books ; but it would be as wise to resolve not to read the
good Homer, because he occasionally nods, as to leave the Old
Testament unopened because it is not always perfect in reli-
gion. There is variety enough of treasures within it to appeal
to every taste; each may take his choice and leave aside what
does not prove edifying. It has been to numberless souls, in
ewry age and country, a guide, inspiration, and comfort; and
despite the noises of the hour, its inner worth to the earnest
soul* as well as its divine inspiration, will secure it an unend-
ing reign.
FERDINAND BRUNETIERE:
JULY 19, iStg-DECEMBER 9. igo6.
BY ABBE FELIX KLEIN.
the 12th of last December all that Paris counts
famous in the world of letters, and zealous in the
field of religion, conducted to his last resting-
place one of the Frenchmen of our time who
have contributed much to the advancement of
human thought, and who have given generous testimony for
Christ.
The interest and sympathy which the death of one so uni-
versally known and respected would have aroused at any time,
were intensified in their impressiveness, nay, exalted almost to
tragedy, because of a crisis in the country's history. That
same week, that very day, the famous Separation Law was put
into force throughout the whole of France. The new order of
things was inaugurated under such hardships and such threats,
that the clergy decided to conduct the obsequies with extreme
simplicity. Yet they were forced to ask themselves, even then,
would they not be prosecuted for conducting these obsequies
without the declaration demanded by the Government, and pro-
hibited by the Pope ? The funeral chants seemed to mourn as
much for the Church of France as for her valiant defender.
The words of the responsory, sung for the soul of the dead man,
seemed fated with a meaning also for the Church in France:
" Dies irte, dies ilia
Calamitatis et miseri.e."
All our faith and our hope were required to find courage
,nd inspiration in that other verse : " Tuts enim fidelibus vita
mutalur, non tollitnr" — "With thy faithful, O Lord, life ends
not, but changes,"
This comparison between the condition of the Church in
France and the death of her most illustrious convert in recent
years, was that day in the minds of all. Still another youwi
VOL. LXXXV. — $
66 FERDINAND BRUNETIERE [April,.
for comparison may be found in the general interest which both
have aroused in even most distant countries. It has been en-
couraging to us to have our Catholic brethren throughout the
world express their sympathy with us in the trials and perse-
cutions we now endure. It is consoling, also, in this family
bereavement, which the death of M. Brunetiere is to us, to find
that, everywhere, justice is done to his memory. I gladly take
this opportunity to pay my tribute to the late editor of the-
Revue des Deux Monde s.
Work, energetic and unceasing labor to gain his place in
the world of men, and, above all, to win, to champion truth
for truth's sake, and to give it unto others, was certainly the
dominant note in the life of M. Brunetiere. Undeterred by
any obstacles in his path, he journeyed persistently, courage-
ously to the end he had in view. Nothing proved too much
for him. Neither physical hardship and privation in youth, nor
the enmity and dislike aroused by the rough frankness of his-
criticisms from his twenty- fifth to his forty- fifth year; neither
the anger and hostility of politicians, and even of the Govern-
ment itself, aroused within the last twelve years because of the
open, courageous manner in which he defended Catholicism,
could deter him in the performance of duty. Illness itself could
not conquer him. His last two years were an extended agony
of bodily feebleness and suffering, yet, for all that, they were
not the less productive. The preface to his latest work is
dated just one month before his death, when he knew well
that death was imminent; and when dying he completed an
article which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes immedi-
ately after his funeral.
Brunetiere published, during his life-time, thirty volumes
treating of the history of French literature, and of social and
religious questions. Every one of these volumes met with sue*
cess. At least five more volumes could be compiled from his
scattered articles, to say nothing of his notes and his enormous-
correspondence. Brunetiere was, moreover, a professor, a lec-
turer, and the editor of a most important magazine, and ful-
filled every office with extraordinary conscientiousness.
In 1869, at the age of twenty, Brunetiere tried for the
Ecole Normale Supcrieure. He failed. Sixteen years later he
*
entered that same school as a professor. Through 187 1 and
1872 he served in the army of his country. After the war, in
907.] FERDINAND BRUNETIERE 6?
order to obtain a living, he gave lessons in a school whose
specialty was the coaching of students who had already failed
in the baccalaureate examinations.
While engaged in this ungrateful occupation, where Paul
Bourget was his associate in work as he was afterwards in re-
nown and conversion, Brunetiere had four hours a day of class-
work without the usual Thursday holiday of summer vacation.
After class he corrected copy, prepared his lectures, and, by
working at night, succeeded in writing some magazine articles-
This hard and obscure life endured for five years, but it was a
profitable schooling for him.
In 1875 Brunetiere was appointed to the staff of the Revue
des Deux Mondes, as a literary critic, and from the very begin-
ning made his ability felt in the literary world. The most
capable recognized in him a master of what was best in the
past, and what was worthy in the present, a man who, through
conviction, defended classic tradition with living, personal, origi-
argumcnts, and not through a blind devotion or unintelli-
gent habit, or the timid incapacity that is unable to realize the
value of original thought. Brunetiere had but to reveal him-
self in order to receive the sceptre of critic and to rule, per-
haps with less grace, but certainly with greater power, that
kingdom destitute of a sovereign since the death of Sainte-
Beuve.
He re-established therein the enforcement of laws; he re-
stored accurate principles of taste, and made the standard of
judgment objective, and thus prohibited the individual from
appraising a work according to personal and variable sentiments.
On the one side he made clear the profound beauty of the
classic chefs d 'a-uvre, particularly of Bossuet ; on the other,
the impotence of new symbolist and decadent schools, and
particularly the grossness and vulgarity of realists like Zola.
For years his monthly contribution to the« Revue des Deux
Mondes, which was awaited with impatience, provoked the pro-
testations of the fantaisistes, and gave renewed courage to the
defenders of sane tradition. If it be true that there are many
;auses for sadness and depression in France, we may at least
rejoice in the consolation that elevation of thought and good
taste in style are honored to-day as in the best epochs, and this
is due in great measure to the writings of Brunetiere. To this
same achievement his work as professor and lecturer have also
68 FERDINAND BRUNETIERE [April,
been directed. In 1886 the charge of the course in French
literature at the Ecole Normale was given to Brunetiere, and
there, for many years, he formed generations of teachers who
carried his methods and his ideas to all the colleges and uni-
versities of France. In 1893, anc * for some years afterwards,
he delivered a free course of lectures in the large amphitheatre
of the Sorbonne. In these lectures Brunetiere first discussed
the development of lyric poetry and later, with phenomenal
success, the principal works of Bossuet, gaining for the Bishop
of Meaux, in the nineteenth century, a greater triumph than
the Bishop had won in Paris for himself in the seventeenth.
Sought as a lecturer from all quarters of the globe, Brunetiere
spoke in turn in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and in America,
with which he was always in sympathy, at Harvard University.
Brunetiere the speaker eclipsed Brunetiere the writer. In
fact, he was above all an orator. His exact, vigorous language,
full of force and fire, was much better adapted to speech than
to the lines of cold type. He spoke with enthusiasm and vi-
vacity; with electrifying and persuasive power; with decision
of gesture and of moral, almost physical, authority; to these
he joined force of logic and abundance of reasoning and of
proof. As a speaker he exhibited passion, but it was a pas-
sion like that of Pascal, vigorous but restrained and controlled.
In spite of his rare and perfect mastery of the French language,
the unquestionable appropriateness and elegant precision of his
expressions, his vivid presentation of thought and feeling, his
style at first seems complicated and artificial. But the reader,
if he had once heard Brunetiere speak, would then be filled
with admiration for his style. What would otherwise appear as
heaviness in his long periodic sentences would show itself then
as strength and solidity. The additions, the insertions, the
qualifications, it will then be seen, enable one to view the
thought in all its aspects ; to see it more clearly ; prove it,
and exact the mind's assent ; they but show the connection,
the relative value of this idea and of that, so that the mind,
illumined and enlightened, can take in every aspect of the
question under discussion. His many transitions, his "conse-
quentlys," " therefores," and "the same as," his complication
of phrases and dependent clauses, make a page of his writing
appear like an ill-jointed manikin; but when spoken, the rough
places, the ugly joints, disappear, and the whole becomes living,
1907.] FERDINAND BRUNET1ERE
animated, and moves, glows with attractive life and brilliancy.
His written page is like an army in repose, unwieldy, cumber-
some; but spoken, like that same army in action, full ot fire,
and with intelligent order, unison, and purpose, throwing them-
selves in victorious assault upon the enemy's fortress. Those
who have had the privilege of hearing "the lion roar," wiil
ever continue to hear him when reading his pages; so his writ-
ings, inseparable from the memory of his spoken woid, resound
with all the passion and eloquence of his penetrating and com-
manding voice.
A principal merit of Brunetiere's style, and the only one
to which he himself attached importance, is that his words had
but one object, the exact translation of his thoughts; those
words, therefore, are most appropriate, most natural, and the
only ones perfectly adapted to express his thought in its every
shade. As Brunetiere himself has said ; " One cannot separate
the expression of a great writer from the matter of his thought.
In a great writer one cannot separate the expression of his
thought from the matter of the thought; together they have
existence; they are warp and woof; separated they are de-
stroyed."
A decided, uncompromising adversary of the advocates of
"art for art's sake," Brunetiere allows to the thoughts and
sentiments of a book only what interest and importance they
have for practical existence. "Every one must live," he de-
clared, with his habitual energy, "but, as far as I know, no
one is obliged to talk or write; if any one decides to do
either of these, he is eternally responsible to all humanity for
his words and his writings."
Brunetiere always conformed his conduct to his theories; al-
ways considered his profession of author and critic as a social
service; exercised it with perfect loyalty; and remained inac-
cessible to considerations of personal interest and a stranger to
every kind of intrigue and every class ol coterie. Conscien-
tious and earnest, obliged to speak constantly on the national
literature, in which one cannot judge the works of to-day un-
less he has made himself familiar with the writings of the past,
Brunetiere studied the whole of French literature so profoundly
that, on this particular subject, he acquired a knowledge seldom
surpassed in extent or in depth by any human mind. From
his diligent habit of applying his best powers to the consider-
70 Ferdinand brunetiere [April,
ation of every subject on which he spoke, from his keen ap-
preciation of his responsibility as a writer, in a word, from his
constant devotion to truth, Brunetiere rose instinctively from
religious indifference to a growing realization of the truths of
religion, and in the last years of his life to a sincere practice
of the Catholic faith.
Under the reign of the Third Napoleon, when Brunetiere was
making his first study, as well as at the beginning of the Third
Republic, when he made his debut as a writer, the government
of France was certainly much more favorable to the Church
than it is to-day, yet it is equally certain that the intellectual
world and the younger students were hostile much more then
than now. Since then the Church has lost much with regard
to favors from the Government, but she has gained much in
the way of respect and consideration in the opinion of enlight-
ened people.
The career of Ferdinand Brunetiere well illustrates this change
in the Church in France during the last thirty years. At first
Brunetiere entertained the prejudices then current against the
Church, though the innate seriousness of his temperament
insured him against the superficial mockeries of Voltarian-
ism. Brunetiere was led captive by the exegetical and religio-
historical works of Burnouf, Renan, and Strauss. Until after
his fortieth year he considered that the works of Schopen-
hauer, Darwin, Spencer, and Comte would more surely give to
society the moral support which it required, than would the
Gospels of Jesus Christ. In 1892, when he was already a com-
plete master in the control of the Revue des Deux Mondes,
Brunetiere refused to publish an article written by Mgr. d'Hulst,
in answer to the irreligious declarations of Renan.
This was about his attitude when, in 1894, he journeyed to
Italy, partly for pleasure and partly from curiosity. He ended
his journey on the 27th of November by a visit to Leo XIII.,
when he had a long interview with the Pontiff. The meeting
bore good fruit, and materially hastened Brunetiere's conversion.
The way to his conversion had doubtless already been prepared
by his close study of Bossuet, the unconscious yet real influence
of his Catholic pupils in the Ecole Norma/e, Goyau, Giraud, and
Brunhes, and his constant search for the solution of social and
moral questions. His visit to the Holy Father did not fail
to produce a great sensation. It scandalized beyond expression
I
1907.] Ferdinand brunettere 71
the partisans of anti clericalism. Their auger was the greater
because Brunetiere had just been appointed editor of the Revue
des Deux Moitdes, and had been elected a member of the French
Academy. Moreover, he was beyond doubt the professor most
influential with the University students, was generally recog-
nized as the foremost critic of his day, and enjoyed an author-
ity which no one could belittle, and which few could equal.
We must add to this that Brunetiere, free from every vestige
of human respect, carefully made known to the public, through
his articles and his lectures, every step in the development of
his mind, by which the beauty and truth of the Church had be-
come evident to him.
On his return from Rome, February I, 1895, he published
in the Revue des Deux Mondes his now celebrated article :
" After a Visit to the Vatican." The article raised a veritable
tempest. In it Brunetiere demonstrated the impotence of science,
not only to solve but even to state properly those questions
which must transcend ail others: the origin of man, the laws
that govern his conduct, and his future destiny. He recalled
that promise made by Kenan: "to organize humanity on the
basis of science, such is the final word of modern science, such
its audacious and legitimate pretension." Brunetiere proved in
answer that if the natural sciences of themselves were required
to give laws that would govern society, they could give only
abominable ones, all of which would be in favor of the strong-
est against the weakest. He made his own the thought of
Edmond Scherer that "morality is nothing if not religious,"
and, after having summed up the principal teachings of the
encyclicals of Leo XIII., Brunetiere concluded that, since none
of them offended in any way the true principles of science, nor
the legitimate aspirations of the modern world, it would be
but folly to reject the powerful assistance which the Catholic
Church furnished for the maintenance of the future successful
application of those principles without which no society could
live.
Seldom has any single article aroused such anger. The anti-
clericals in France arose en masse, from the most obscure to the
most illustrious, from the village inn-keeper to the great chem-
ist. Berthelot wrote a furious article in the Revue de Paris and
presided at a banquet of protest. Brunetiere was accused of
having declared science to be bankrupt, and was overwhelmed
72 Ferdinand Brunetiere [April,
with the enumeration of all modern discoveries and inventions.
He paid little attention to the talk, and in his answer limited
himself to the statement that he had not denied the progress of
physics and chemistry, but had stated simply that they were
powerless to found a moral code. Encouraged, rather than de-
terred, by so much controversy, Brunetiere continued in the
course on which he had started, and followed his attractive
watchword: " Let the truth rule." He published successively
his article on "The Morality of the Doctrine of Evolution,"
his lecture on " The Renaissance of Idealism," and his preface
to a translation of Balfour's Foundations of Belief in which he
shows that faith only, and not science, properly so called, lifts
us above physical realities into the domain of idealism.
Aroused by the accusations brought in 1898 against the
Catholic Church in America, Brunetiere proved, against the ex-
tremists of the right, that it was thoroughly orthodox, and,
against the extremists of the left, that it accommodated itself
perfectly to democracy, and ended with this significant con-
clusion: "Catholicism has nothing to fear from liberty, nor
liberty anything to fear from Catholicism. This is what Ameri-
can experience has proved." That same year, before a gather-
ing of young Catholics at Besan^on, Brunetiere proclaimed the
necessity of belief, the necessity which weighs upon all to answer
the great questions with regard to human life and destiny, if
all are to participate in organized social life, and the impossibil-
ity to answer them except through the teachings of faith. He
praised Catholicism in that it offered full, complete answers to
these questions, and he let it be understood that he himself
wished to accept Catholicism, but that as yet he could not. In
1899 Brunetiere returned to Italy, and paid another visit to Leo
XIII. In the following year, on the 18th of November, he ad-
dressed a Catholic assembly at Lille on: "Present Reasons for
Belief " ; and announced the happy conclusion of his personal
researches in these terms : " As to what I believe, • . .
ask Rome."
From that moment Brunetiere showed himself a resolute
Catholic in all his writings and in all his discourses. The
Church which he had treated first as a stranger, then for six or
seven years as an ally, he henceforth looked upon as his mother,
and showed himself, of all her sons, the most zealous in her de-
fence, the most humble in her service. It was in this last
.
I9°7.] FERDINAND BRUNETIERE
touching attitude of submission that death overtook him. He
had signed, and it is believed had been the author of, the peti-
tion to the bishops/ in which a number of our most eminent
laymen expressed a desire to see the Church of France adapt
herself to the Separation Law. When the Pope gave a decis-
ion to the contrary, Brunetiere obediently bowed his head, as
did all those who shared in his opinion.
But it would be misleading to represent Brunetiere's last
years as years of passive resignation. The man was consumed
with a passion for activity, a love of contest, a hope for victory.
The volume containing his lectures from 1900 to 1903, all of
which are devoted to the defence of Catholicism, is characteristi-
cally entitled: Combative Discourses, and two of the most beau-
tiful of them have for their subject : " Motives for Hope " ;
and "Religious Progress." Unmoved by the persecutions of the
Government, which deprived him of his professorial chair, and
the stupid opposition of some Catholics, who no longer treated
him with friendliness, Brunetiere courageously continued his bat-
tle against the sectarian politicians and false democrats who still
strive in our unhappy country for the destruction of Christian-
ity. Again and again he proclaimed that human society cannot
exist without morality, nor morality without belief in God, nor
belief in God without a positive religion, nor positive religion,
for intelligent people, without dogmatic Christianity. His ad-
dress at Florence, in 1902, on "Religious Progress in Catholi-
cism," contained these words : " To attack Christianity after
the manner of the freemasons and freethinkers, is to attack the
principles not- only of our moral lite, but also of the progress
of civilization"; and this further sentence, which to Americans
may appear too evident, but which may well be recalled now
in France with profit: " Without these principles atheistic or un-
christian society must fall not only into corruption and deca-
dence, but into, what seems worse to us, stagnation."
Brunetiere was far from despairing over the future of France.
In the preface to his last book, Present Questions, he arose in
indigation against those who accused us of being enemies of the
Republic and of democracy. In the same preface he predicts an
inevitable disappearance of the misunderstandings that have done
so much harm, and adds that if political ends are mixed with
the religion of some Catholics, such Catholics are a small mi-
•See The Catholic World, October, 1906, p. so, NotojiIh
1
74 Ferdinand Brunetiere [April.
nority, and will constantly diminish in number. " After one or
two generations/' he said, " we will meet with them no more.
Then, I trust, will the teachings of Catholicism be seen id their
true value, as the promoters of modernity and of advancement
{since that is at present such a powerful word) ; and that then
Catholicism will be recognized, as it should be recognized, as
the most efficacious instrument of progress that the world
knows."
A month after having traced with trembling hand these
lines, so full of hope and faith, this valiant fighter, this loyal
convert, gave his soul to God. He went to receive his reward
for having contributed more than any other man to the future
triumphs of right reason, of justice, of free thought that is really
free, of that science which alone is wisdom, and of a Republic
and a Democracy really republican and democratic. The con*
test in which he was constantly engaged, and in which he
championed so noble a cause, is, indeed, far from ended, but his
followers and his disciples, though they mourn the loss of their
leader and their valiant companion in arms, are determined,
under the inspiration of his example, to continue unfalteringly
until the final victory has been won.
S^=^5
AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
JHE author's post bag contains many things both
joyful and sorrowful. He finds in it rejections
and acceptances, cheques, bills, begging letters,
charitable appeals, publishers' catalogues, sec-
ond-hand booksellers' lists, press-cuttings which
bring bim, with an awful impartiality, uplifting praise and
crushing blame. It brings him requests more or less flattering
for autographs. It brings him word from unknown correspond-
ents of how he has appealed to them, and occasionally of how
they disagree with him. If he writes verses he receives very
intimate letters from strangers, whom a chance verse has helped
or comforted, whose griefs have found a reflection in his own.
Perhaps to no one else is the post a matter of so much inter-
est and concern. So much of the business of his life is con-
tained in the post bag. In the post bag lie hidden in envel-
opes the love of love, the scorn of scorn, which the author
excites in unknown correspondents. Every man or woman who
writes to him from an unknown milieu either loves or hates
disproportionately something he has written and printed.
There was a time, not so many years ago, when the one
who shields myself as much as may be from the thorns of life,
thought it expedient to withhold my post bag till the contents
had been thoroughly sifted. That was after the publication of
a book of Irish sketches, the intention of which at least was
idyllic. The most thin-skinned people in the world, recogniz-
ing in the book bits of themselves and their belongings, re-
sented it furiously. No matter how idealized the characters or
their surroundings, the outrage was there all the same. It was
not how they were written about that was the question. The
offence lay in their being written about at all. Worse, these
illogical people, if they recognized so much as a nose or an
eye, persisted in identifying the whole thing right through.
They would not believe that a story could be made up of
shreds and patches, a bit of this one, a bit of that one, a bit
76 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April,
of no one at all. They insisted on taking everything as por-
traiture from life; and resented the inaccuracies as libelous.
I remember one old couple, whose house — covered with
roses — I had used as the mise en scene of a story, resenting the
accompanying story furiously. They wrote that I had said
they had a son called Pat who went to Australia, while I knew
perfectly well that they never had had a son; and they took
it very unkindly of an old neighbor's child to have printed and
circulated such falsehoods against them.
Another sketch, quite an idealized one, of a poor fellow with
whose literary aspirations I had sympathized, gave such offence
that his family never forgave me; and, what is more remarka-
ble, never forgave my innocent people, who, of course, knew
nothing at all about it. Nor have the years done anything to
soften this animosity.
There were the most eccentric grievances in those days among
my Irish readers. One lady threatened me with an action for
libel for a vague and amiable suggestion I had made that she
might be related to a famous beauty of the eighteenth century,
whose social status she thought inferior to that of her own family.
Another time a mere suggestion, in an article highly eulo-
gistic of my countrywomen, that the Irish girl, having all the
other gifts and graces, was not a good housekeeper, brought
such vials of wrath upon my head as cannot be imagined in
this less sensitive country. The respectable Irish newspapers,
referring to the article, treated me rather with sorrow than with
anger. A less respectable organ exhausted itself in vitupera-
tion, suggesting finally that I had been obliged to leave my
country for my country's good.
Certainly in those days my post bag needed sifting. Nowa-
days I may deliver my soul as I will, and if my country-peo-
ple hear of it they do not resent it. I am farther away in
these days; and the Irishman can tolerate criticism better if it
be not from within. Not that I meant to criticize in those
days, when I was, in tact, an Irish idealist; but my honey
might have been vitriol, my rose leaves brickbats, for the fury
they excited. I used to say in those days that, what with an
enemy in this village and an enemy in that, an enemy at every
cross-roads and in all the green lanes, I should have to revisit
my old home, if I must revisit it, by balloon, dropping into it
and departing the same way.
1907] An Author's post bag 77
It was all very unlike the way with which my English
neighbors regarded my presentation of them in print when they
discovered it. Even if they were written of with a humorous
intention, the main thing was that they were written about at
all, and their feeling was one of pleasurable excitement. How
often have I written and printed something in a newspaper or
magazine with the fearful excitement of one who gives a runa-
way knock ! How often has my post bag contained a delighted
acknowledgment from the benevolent English neighbor who
had recognized himself or herself! It is the point of view;
and the English point of view is so very different from the
Irish.
I am bound to say that during my comparatively early
days of journalism my country- people kept a sharp eye upon
me. Sometimes I was learned, and there is a deal of anti-
quarian lore lying hidden in various Antiquarian Journals in
Ireland. Did I borrow but the smallest fact, even though I
invariably referred to the one who had discovered it before me
I as "the distinguished antiquary, Mr. So and- So," Mr. So- and -
So, or some friend of his, incontinently wrote a Stop Thief let-
ter to the editor, which was sent on to me with a polite re-
quest to answer it. I don't suppose any contributor was more
complained of in those days, and the complaints came invaria-
bly from mine own country.
Every author who is any way voluminous will have found
in his post bag at one time or another the indictment of the
one who has found him out in a plagiarism, either of himself
or some one else. There are times when the public seems to
form itself into a detective corps to watch the unfortunate au-
thor. Then the post bag is apt to be unpleasant.
Once a story of mine, founded on an anecdote well-known
to all convent-school girls, was discovered by a cloud of wit-
Inesses to be a plagiarism from the French. So close, indeed,
were the parallel passages kindly furnished by a number of
readers, that it was overwhelming to myself. I was obliged to
hold my head with both hands, lest it should fly off in my
amazed bewilderment. I thought that somehow, somewhere, I
must have abstracted the contents of that French book. When
I became calmer I wrote to various persons who had had, like
myself, the privilege of being convent-school girls. I asked
tbem : " Do you remember such and such a story, and can you
ou
78 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April,
write it out for me as you remember it?" I found as I had
expected that the story was common to pretty well all convent
schools ; the likeness in the matter of treatment was accidental,
if it was not inevitable. That French convent school girl, who
had adapted the story before me, was as much to blame as I.
Yet I have hardly ever been sure that I cleared myself with
the editor, whose post bag was the more congested because of
my coincidental story. Indeed, I am not quite sure that I
cleared myself to myself, although I did my best.
Another time when I had developed a short story into a
long story, the publication of the short story being delayed
over a period of two years, I wrote to the editor who held it
explaining the circumstances, and suggesting that he should
return me the story, and that I would send him another. He
replied that he preferred to keep the story, and that the serial
publication of the expanded story would not at all affect his
readers. By another extraordinary coincidence, however, the
short story and the opening chapter of the serial, which was al-
most identical, appeared the same week, the serial having been
postponed some six months later than it had been intended to
start it. Then again the post bag contained some unpleasant
reading.
To the conscientious author the post bag brings certain
difficulties in the letters from the would-be authors, who ask
advice and assistance as a matter of course. In nine cases
out of ten what they submit is practically worthless, for good
writing nearly always finds its own market. There are three
courses open to the non-conscientious author : he may ignore,
which seems brutal ; he may quibble — I am not sure that I
have not sometimes quibbled myself; or he may say what he
does not think. To the conscientious one there are only twa
courses : to ignore, or to tell the truth as kindly as may be.
The latter course will bring you, perhaps, letters from the dis-
appointed person, in which he tells you what he thinks of you,
discovering your secret jealousy of his merit, which has prompted
you to write as you have done. Even if you discover, or think
you discover, a tiny spark of promise, and do your best to fan
it, you are as likely as not to get no thanks for it. You may
take trouble to get laudatory reviews of some little book or
other, and find your efforts repaid by dead silence on the part
of the author, who thinks perhaps that you have not done
I907.J
An Author's Post Bag
enough. This experience happened to me twice last year with
regard to a book of verse and a book of prose written by two
countrywomen of my own, who perhaps believe to this day that
the little success of their books was due to what I did not do.
One letter of this kind, dated from a Midland parsonage,
began startlingly :
" Dear Madam : Will you, out of pure kindness, take my
poems to a pub.? "
Sometimes one finds a very pleasant thing in the post bag.
Such was this letter, which 1 received a couple of years ago :
" F. C. S. Estacion Krabbe.
" Madam : I hope you will pardon the liberty we take in
writing to you, but we are out here on a lonely station in the
wilds of Argentine, and a stray copy of the Strand Magazine,
Jan., 1905, came to us, and among the stories your one (vis.,
' The Heart of a Grandfather ') we all like so much that we
wish to thank you for it; hoping this will reach you in safety,
and we hope you will write some more like it.
" Yours respectfully,
"A. Poole, Tele.
"J.J. Macuire, Assistant Station-master.
"F. MiNSON, S. M."
I wrote to these three lonely brothers in blood, promising
them a copy of the book in which the story they liked should
be reprinted, and after a time I heard again from the survivor
of the three.
"Dear Miss: Just a short Note in answer to your kind
letter, which we receive to-day. It was very kind of you to
answer so quick. I wish I could send you a curio from this
place, but there are no shops of any description here. This
station is in the heart of a wheat-growing district, and our
nearest Neighbour is an English estantion or Farm about 50
miles away ; so you see we have no visiting list. Our other
Neighbours are half savages, half black and white, called Ar-
gentines. Some of them are very nice, that is the true Na-
tive, but there are a lot of Spanish and Italians and Indians
intermarried, so you get a very funny mixture of Blood, all
the Badness and none of the goodness of these Natives. Thank-
ing you for your kind offer, but Maguire and Poole are shifted
80 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April,
to other station. And I have been very lucky to get 6 months 9
leave to the Old Country.
" I telegraph the content of your letter to Poole, and he
has replied and told me to tell you he is going to write a book,
taking as a copy your story, so I hope you will not take pro-
ceedings against him for copyright.
" Of course we can telegraph to each other, so I'm not left
entirely alone.
" I must now close. I hope you will excuse this bad spell-
ing and etc. ; as we have to write all our letters in Spanish,
we get out of the way of writing the English language. So
good-bye, with kind wishes, yours sincerely,
" F. Minson, S. M."
" P. S. — Just as I have finished writing this two of Natives
have been having a few words, and as usual the Knife is out
and one of them is seriously hurt, so you can understand the
life we lead. 11
Scarcely less pleasant than these delightful letters was a
scrap of paper contained within a packet of patterns from Belfast :
"We have read a lot of your books and think them
splendid. Yours, etc.,
" J- G., ^|
"M. E. G., I A , .
« m* t^ r Admirers.
M. JJ.,
E. C,
Australians are perhaps the most responsive of my readers,
and I receive many letters and messages from the antipodes,
some from very lonely people living in solitary stations in the
Bush. These letters tell me a deal about the writers. I find
that what I write about children or about dogs brings me the
readiest response.
Occasionally I have letters from the more bare-faced kind
of autograph-hunters, who not only want your autograph, but
free copies of your books as well. I commend to them the
excellent example of a gentleman known in the United States
as " Autograph Jimmy/' who sent round to English authors a
few years ago complete sets of their books, with a request that
they should be autographed. The books were either delivered
at and fetched from the author's abode by a secretary of the
1907.] AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG 8l
gentleman in question, or they were accompanied by prepaid
postal wrappers, so that the author was considered as much as
possible. I don't make any difficulty about giving an auto-
graph when asked for it; but I draw the line at the book
hunters, some of whom have the craftiest methods. Here is a
typical letter; it came from an address somewhere in the heart
of Africa.
" I have undiminished delight in the perusal of your poems,
which have cheered me many times in a lonely pilgrimage into
the Soudan. When are we to expect a new volume from you ?
I should esteem it a treasure beyond price if you were to honor
me with an autograph copy of one of your volumes.
"Just broke off to laugh. I was on the eve of protesting
the disinterestedness of my letter, and then I make a request
which could only be justifiable from your nearest friends. Still,
I feel sure that you will accept this as the honest declaration
of admiration and esteem."
I might have been drawn by this letter, if the rules for
book-packets had not been printed at the head of the note-
paper,, which suggested to me that a good many books were
sent to or expected at that address in the heart of Africa.
Or, if you did not care to pay so much postage, you might
send to an English address whence matter would be forwarded.
Among the most laconic epistles of all time might be placed
one which I received some little time ago from Bulawayo. Two
neat cuttings from a story of mine, pasted side by side; were
enclosed, I had given the hero blue eyes in one page and
brown in another. The epistle accompanying them ran :
"Madam: Be accurate."
I have another delightful letter from my post bag, which is
an apology for an assault by a young bulldog on my Irish ter-
rier, who, new from Ireland, had not yet lost " the wild sham-
roke manners," which John Derricke's soul detested in the Irish.
I make no excuse for quoting this, although it might as welt
have belonged to a post bag other than an author's. The
owner of the bulldog was a working builder.
" In reply to yours just to hand I must say I am very
sorry My Dog should have caused you any trouble, and I
don't realy know how he could have got anywhere near your
vol, lxxxv. — 6
82 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April r
place. I have 3 different jobs going just now, and the Animal,
which is quite Armless unless he is Bitten by other dogs, and
I am almost encline to think this would be the case in this
ens tan ce, even then I have not seen him do any greevous Arm
to another dog; yet you know as well as I, that dogs will
snap one at the other, and Ladies are rather encline to be
nervous, I am sorry to say, and it really makes sometimes
more than is necessry; he is one of the kindest dogs I have
known, and realy never attemps to tthack any person, and if
he happens to miss me on one job he goos on to another, and
so on till he finds eventuly where I am ; and I suppose in one
of these rounds he happened to get into this trouble; and an-
other thing, he being a Bulldog his Looks dose not pitty Him,
but he realy is anything but a verocious Animal, and if yott
knew him you must say so, and the smallest child can do any-
thing He likes and no Arm comes of it. Anyway I will do-
my best to keep him within bounds in future, and I hope your
Dog is not hurt.
"Yours faithfully,
"B. Dodge."
This letter, which no dog- lover could resist, was rewarded
by a full and free pardon of the bulldog, whose name was-
Charlie, and a withdrawal of all threats of setting the law in
motion for the protection of other dogs.
Occasionally a simple reader has taken a book or part of
it as fact rather than fiction. Once I had a letter from Amer-
ica, from an old lady who had just read one of my novels, and
was delighted to find her own family name in it. She said she
was rejoiced to find the were "still going strong," and if
I would be good enough to find out what survivors of the
family there were she would be much obliged. She gave me
quite a genealogical tree of the family, with all its ramifica-
tions, told me where it was to be looked for, and awaited my
report.
It is not perhaps to be wondered at in this dog-loving
country that the dogs of fiction seem to make friends for them-
selves. A very pleasant friendship with an old soldier, whom
Thackeray might have drawn, came about thiough the fact that
I had made the dog- hero of one of my novels, a Clumber
spaniel, liver and white instead of lemon and white. Also 1
1907.] An Author's Post Bag 83
had called him Sancho which is a pointer's name, the pointer
having a Spanish origin. I was very grateful for these blunders,
which brought me to know one of the sweetest, simplest, young-
est old soldiers alive. This same Clumber spaniel, who was
drawn from life — a beautiful, dignified dog of character — brought
me a letter from a French demoiselle, who longed to have
known in real life Sancho — " quel adorable animal."
But perhaps the most amusing thing my post bag has ever
held is the correspondence of an elderly gentleman, whose family
name I had used by accident for my hero. Worse, I had called
him by a Christian name, one of the most common, which
chanced to be his, and also his son's. The letters are very in-
teresting, as showing how little a certain kind of life and
character in Ireland have altered since the eighteenth century.
This extraordinary readiness to take offence is more like the
days of the bucks and the duelists — Buck Whalley and Buck
Jones and the Great Ram of Gorey and their fellows — than of
these peaceful days. The letters were written to the editor of
the magazine in which the story had appeared. This is the
first;
" Dublin.
"Dear Sir: My attention has been drawn to a story in
your magazine, by Katharine Tynan, in which she has dubbed
the principal character with my name, stating that the nephew
of Sir — — was well known under the sobriquet of
' Master Jack.'
" If you will be good enough to look in any modern edi-
tion of Burke's Peerage, you will find that I am the only
member of the family who was so-named since my ancestor
came to Ireland, 260 years ago, and as the family has always
resided at , my friends who have seen the story and I
consider that it was a most unwarrantable liberty for the au-
thoress to take in making use of my name in the way she has
done; or supposing she should excuse herself on the ground of
my age, the name, Master Jack, under which I was well known
in my youth by all the people, could now more aptly apply to
my son, Lieutenant John , who is generally considered as
fine a specimen of humanity as exists in any Irish family,
"This misuse of my name seems to me the more inexcus-
able as Mrs. Hinkson's maiden name abounds in and about the
84 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April,
county where there is no individual better known to the public
at large than your humble servant. . . .
"Faithfully yours,
To this letter the editor returned a pacificatory answer,
pointing out that it was very difficult for a writer to find a
name which did not belong to some one, and that accidental
points ot resemblance would occur.
He received an answer as follows:
" Dear Sir : I am much obliged for yours of the 24th. in
reply to my letter of the 19th. instant, in reference to the use
of my name in the story by Mrs. Hinkson. I never for a mo-
ment supposed that you were in any way responsible for it.
If the authoress had not known a good deal about my family,
she could not possibly have hit upon the statements she has
made simply by chance, and al$o she could not but know that
there is always an article in Burke's Peerage about my family.
" Of course Mrs. Hinkson's story cannot do me any per-
sonal injury, but it has, of course, set people talking, and very
probably some will chaff my son about it, for he represents
the character drawn very fairly both in name and person.
" Faithfully yours,
<< »
At this point the editor asked me to make a statement, so
I wrote him a letter intended to be very conciliatory, saying
that I only knew the [name in a vague way as that of a dis-
tinguished Irish family ; that I had been thirteen years out of
Ireland, and had had time to forget many things if I had ever
known them; that it was the most natural thing in the world
for me to select this special family name for a young gentle-
man who was supposed to belong to a distinguished Irish fam-
ily ; that I had never seen Burke's Peerage ; that a partial re-
semblance in the name of my fictitious hero's family-seat to the
name of the family- seat of the gentleman I had unfortunately
offended might have been a case of sub-conscious memory.
Finally, I said that since I had intended my hero to be a very
pleasant and manly fellow, as the hero of a simple little love-
story has a right to be, I was glad to think the use of his
name for such a one could not greatly hurt or harm the young
gentleman who bore it in real life.
1907.] AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG 85
But my intention unfortunately did not come off. I seemed
to have only added fuel to the fire. There was a third letter
to the editor, with a copy of which the writer was good enough
to favor me.
" Dear Sir : I have to thank you for sending me Mrs.
Hinkson's letter of the 28th. ultimo, referring to the use of my
name in her story. I had left home before it arrived there,
and having been to the West of England and other parts since,
I could not acknowledge its receipt sooner. Mrs. Hinkson's
excuses appear to me to be very flimsy ones. She admits, as
I felt sure she would, that she had a certain amount of knowl-
edge about my family; and as a little knowledge is generally
considered a dangerous thing, she might have taken the very
small trouble of ascertaining the Christian names of the sur-
viving members of my family. Neither of my married sons, I
am sure, consider it any compliment to be taken for the origi-
nal of Mrs. Hinkson's ' hero.'
" I did not take exception to her description of his char-
acter, to which many in Ireland would doubtless apply the epi-
thet of 'a harmless fellow/ of the meaning of which I suppose
that Mrs. Hinkson must have an unconscious knowledge.
" Faithfully yours,
11 — _ — "
With the Parthian shaft contained in the last paragraph,
the correspondence between my editor and the gentleman to
whom many in Ireland would doubtless apply the epithet of
" a great ould consequince " came to an end.
To my horror I discovered later that I had used the gen-
tleman's family name again for the hero of a novel which it
Was too late to recall or alter. So far no evil results have
ensued.
By the way, anybody might have borne the name about
which such a fuss was made, but I confess, with contrition,
that, on no less than three occasions, I have introduced in my
novels the names of living peers — two Irish and one English
— in all innocence. Probably they never knew anything about
it for I had no protest, except in one case from a conscientious
reviewer. And yet I had taken as I thought the names of
places which were most unlikely to have, members of the Peer-
age called after them — in one case a barren cliff face in Done-
86 AN AUTHOR'S POST BAG [April
gal ; in the second a tiny village in Tipperary ; in the third a
small Kentish village near to which we had stayed one summer.
When I choose a name now for a titled hero or heroine I al-
ways look it up first in Who's IVAo, for I do not possess a
Debrett any more than a Burke.
I am really a very conciliatory person, and my post bag
does not often hold such bomb- shells. But they come now and
again. Once a shopkeeper in an Irish village identified himself
with a character in a little sketch — pretending to be fiction— in
a London evening newspaper, the last one would have expected
to reach that Irish village. To be sure no other copy .of the
paper has in all probability ever reached, or ever will reach,
that village; but that did, and the shopkeeper protested.
Worse, for he was not an edifying person, he claimed me in
print as an old friend, alluding to me rather with sorrow than
with anger.
Also, as a reviewer, I have been called "the fool reviewer
of the So-and-So," by a lady who did not think I had done
justice to her work. But this time I was behind the editor,
and very grateful to be so protected.
However, as a rule, the post bag contains far less of the
sour than the sweet things of correspondence, for which I offer
my thanks to a kind and friendly world.
SOME VICTIMS OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BY ABBOT GASQUET. O.S.B.
HE recent beatification of the Carmelite nuns of
Compiegne is of more than ordinary interest.
These good sisters suffered death on the feast
of our Lady of Mount Carmel, July 16, 1794,
during the worst days of the " Reign of Ter-
ror," whilst the destructive forces of the great French Revo-
lution were controlled by Robespierre, and when the popular
passion for blood was hardly satiated by the victims who were
daily sacrificed upon the scaffolds of Paris. It is somewhat
significant that just now when in France the spirit of the revo-
lution is again manifesting itself by persecution and general
hatred of religion, that these simple nuns should have been
raised to the altar by the Sovereign Pontiff, as the first beati-
fied martyrs of the great Revolution.
To English-speaking people the event has a further inter-
est, inasmuch as it has been in great measure, if not mainly,
through the testimony of the successors of some English Bene-
-dictine nuns, who suffered almost a martyrdom in prison with
these holy Carmelites, that it has been possible to produce the
-evidence necessary to prove the cause of martyrdom. The story
of the trials and sufferings of these English women during that
terrible time is so bound up with that of the French religious,
that the one cannoi be told without the other. Before giving
any account of the contemporary documents upon which the
•evidence in the cause of the recent beatification was founded, a
few words must be said about the convent of Benedictine nuns
who were fortunate enough to possess the evidence in their
archives.
In the year 1597 Lady Percy restored the English Bene-
dictine nuns at Brussels. Twenty years later a second founda-
tion was made at Cambrai, mainly through the zeal and piety
of two fathers of the newly restored English Congregation of
ictine monks, Fathers Rudesind Barlow and Bennet Jones.
88 Some victims of the Revolution [April,
The first Superior, and the one who may properly be called
the foundress, since her father provided the money necessary
for the foundation, was Helen More, in religion known as Dame
Gertrude, a granddaughter of the celebrated and Blessed Mar-
tyr, Sir Thomas More. From 1623, when there were nine re-
ligious gathered together at Cambrai, till the period of the
French Revolution the new foundation flourished, under the
guidance of the English Benedictine monks, and as an integral
part of their Congregation, which goes back, in unbroken suc-
cession, to the days of St Augustine, the first Apostle of the
English nation. Driven from France by the Revolution, the
English nuns of the Order came back to their own country,
and now exist as a flourishing community at the Abb£y of
Our Lady of Consolation, Stanbrook, Worcester. It is in
their archives that the papers needed for the late beatification
of the Compi&gne Carmelites were produced, and amongst the
most treasured possessions of the abbey are practically all the
relics of these holy martyrs.
The chief document is a " Narrative " of an eye-witness of
the sufferings both of the Carmelites and the Benedictines whilst
in the prison at Compiegne. The writer is one of the Bene-
dictine nuns, Dame Anne-Teresa Partington, who drew up the
relation immediately after her escape to England. This ''Nar-
rative" has been twice printed: first, in the Orthodox Journal,
Vol. III., for 1834; and second, in the Dublin Review for
October, 1904. Both these are printed from early copies of
the original, corrections of style appearing here and there, and
some slight alterations, evidently made by some of those who
were still surviving.
Besides this " Brief Narrative/' in which Dame Anne-Teresa
Partington relates with true and transparent simplicity, but with
all the vividness of an eye-witness, the sufferings endured by
her community in the prison of Compiegne, the Stanbrook
archives contain a series of original letters, dating from 1 761 to
1S02, of almost equal interest. They are letters which passed
between members of the community and their relations and
friends in England, and they throw considerable light upon the
state of things in France on the eve of the great Revolution.
Leaving aside the earlier letters, let us turn over those
dated 17S9 et infra, amongst which we come across, year by
year, and even month by month, short natural phrases giving
89
the
ng
t a
ster
was
1907.] Some Victims of the Revolution
the impressions produced by the stirring political events of the
day. Startling incidents, occurring at Cambrai, at last bring
before us the peril in which the Community was living, yet a
peril only half realized by the peaceful inmates of a cloister
scarcely open to the noisy rumors of the town in which it wa;
situated.
Some portions of this correspondence serve to illustrate,
further detail, statements but lightly touched upon in the pre-
liminary lines of the " Brief Narrative," whilst gleanings lrom
the letters subsequent to the return of the Community to Eng-
land, could carry on the story beyond the limits marked out
tor herself by the narrator in the pages now before our readers.
Rather than interrupt the " Brief Narrative " with too lengthy
notes, we propose to offer here to our readers, by way of pre-
amble, some extracts of this interesting collection of letters, or
the substance of such as treat on a variety of subjects alien t
our present purpose.
The nuns at this date, perhaps because of the troublesome
times, nearly always sign themselves by their baptismal, instead
o( their religious, name.
,07
. to
ie
id
id
\
Sep, 2 1st, 1789.
Dear Brother: I give you many thanks for your kind
letter and present, you was so kind as to send me. I should
have done it sooner, but hoped to hear from you. I own I
was in hopes we should have seen my Aunt Molly. I had pro-
posed to myself more pleasure than I can tell you but, as
things goes, am very glad she is safe arrived to you. You
must not be surprised in case you should see us, for I don't
know whether they will let us stay here or no, as there is very
poor doings on this side, and we all three say we hope you
will have charity to give us a corner in your house. We will
do what we can to help you. However, we are all pretty well
and quiet as yet. We have got our Abbess, one who was
petitioner with my mother, her name is Hooke. My sister is
grand now, as she has got the title of Rd. Mother Prioress, so
hope you will write soon to her, but I don't allow you to for-
get me. She intends writing in this, so shall leave her Rever-
ence to tell you all the news. Pray give my love to my Str.
uid my little ones and kiss them all from me, and tell Suckey
I think it long since I heard from her. I suppose she is a fine
90 Some Victims of the Revolution [April,
woman by this. My duty to Uncle Dick ; love to Cousins and
compts. to all friends, and believe me, dear Brother,
Your affectionate Str,
Eliz. Knight (Dame Ann-Joseph).
Dear Brother: My Aunt and I wrote you a long letter
and begged you would persuade my Aunt to come this way.
As things are I am glad she did not. We had the good
fortune to have laid in a provision of corn, which lasted
during the extreme hard and dear times. Two convents in
the town suffered pretty considerably by the rioters. They
consisted of women or men dressed in women's clothes. We
had 3 companys one day, but as they knew we had no corn
but what we bought, they contented themselves with all the
bread we had ; since that we have been pretty quiet ; the cru-
elties committed at Paris and other places are beyond idea.
There is great talk of the suppression of monasterys. What
will be the end God only knows. The whole nation seems in
an universal commotion. The King, who used to be so abso-
lute, is at present a meer cipher; yet we hope for better times.
My duty, if you please, to my Aunt, and love to Str. and
little ones. You don't tell us what the last one was. Believe
me, dr. Brother^
Your affectionate Str.,
M. Knight (Dame Clare).
I can't let your Strs' letter go without assuring you, my
niece, your aunt, and all your little Family of sincere affection^
and tell you how glad we should have been to have seen your*
good Aunt. If we are turned out we may meet at your house*
I hope it won't happen, and all will end in talk. I have noth-
ing to recommend myself to you but that I can knit and spin,
and teach your little ones to read and work. Jesting aside, I
hope we shall not come to it. It would be a long journey for
me at my age. Your last little one is to be mine. Pray tell
me what it is. Believe me, my dear nephew,
Your affec. Aunt,
Eliza Ann (Dame Anselma).
Cambray, Dec. 28, 1789.
Dear Nephew: I return thanks for your obliging letter,
my pen cannot express what my heart felt in reading it, nor
o7.] SOAfE Victims of the Revolution 91
the grateful sentiments I shall always retain for you and my
dear niece. Every time I think of your kindness it surpasses
what I could ever expect ; at the same time, it is a great sat-
isfaction to me when I think I have so good a nephew to go
to, tho' I am near 75. I shall give as little trouble as I can-
How things will turn out at last, God only knows. You likely
know more than we do, as we don't see the gazettes. By what
we hear their chief dislike is our Pro.' Some think we shall
be ailow'd to stay with a pension for life, but not to encrease
»our number, we don't find any letters missed as yet, we re-
ceived your first letter and answer'd it by an occasion, I think
it was by Mr. Bennet. You need make no ceremony with your
Str. Mary, but write to her as usual, tho' she is Prioress. Lady
Abbess was an old friend of your mother's, you never told us
what your last child is, boy or girl, its name. Everything here
is excessive dear, wheat half a guinea a bushel. Part of our
income is in France, and we can't get it. Pray all that's most
kind to my niece, and kiss all the dear little ones.
I Believe me, sincerely, dear nephew,
Your affec. Aunt,
Eliza Ann.
:
Accept my best wishes of the season. Indeed, I scarce
ow it is Xmas.
Dear Brother: I give you many thanks for your kind
tier. I assure you it gave more comfort than I can possibly
express, and I often think of it. As times are, it is a great
comfort to have so good a Brother; but when I think of all
the trouble you have had about me, I own it makes me feel
more than I can express. But should anything happen that we
should once more meet in this world, I hope I should doe all
that lyes in my power to help you and my Str. and not give
trouble, which is all I could do in return for all your goodness
to me. But, however, I can't say I think much that that will
come in my life time. We are not to encrease, so you must
think we feel but low. I keep very well, and hope for better
times. I scarce know it is Christmas, but wish you all a happy
one and many returns. The weather is so dark one can hardly
see to doe anything but spin. Revd. Mother Prioress intends
iting in this, so shall leave her to speak for herself, only
• Evidently this stands for " Profession."
92 Some victims of the Revolution [April,
I must say one thing, which is that I think she is just your
Str. Mary as before. I beg, dear Brother, you won't think we
want anything that is necessary, for I assure you we don't as
yet, and we are also pretty quiet at present, and I sincerely
wish we may continue so. If you see my Aunt Molly pray
give my duty, and to Uncle, and love to Cousins and compts.
to all friends, and my kind love to my Str., and tell her I
long to hear from her at her leisure. The greatest pleasure we
can have is a line from one of you. All that is kind to all
the children, and believe, my dear Brother,
Your affectionate Str.,
Eliz. Knight.
June 27, 1791.
Dear Nephew and Niece : It is a long time since I have
wrote to you. I assure you my silence does not proceed from
want of affection, but from the indolence of an old woman. I
have a very sincere regard for you both, and all your little
family. The disagreeableness of the times makes me have lit-
tle courage to do anything. We hope for better; nothing has
been done to us, most places of pr. are shut up. Our little
ch., especially on Sundays and holidays, is stuff'd like a black
pudden. The day before your Str. received your letter, Lady
Abbess received one from your uncle, to inform her of the
death of your Aunt Molly. He says there is no will, therefore
his nieces come in for their share.
Then she enters into details that in case a will should turn
up, or in case he feels that the money should not be divided
on that account, but belongs really to him, they are willing it
should be so.
Though at this present a little money would be most ac-
ceptable, Lady Abbess would be sorry to take it, if it belong'd
to another, therefore she desires to hear from your Uncle again,
before she concludes anything. . . . The sum your Uncle
named was 60 or 70 pounds each. . . .
I beg to know little Arnold's birthday. He is my little
boy. . . .
Believe me, unalterably, dear Nephew and Niece,
Your affec. Aunt and humble servant,
Eliza Ann.
I907-] Some Victims of the Revolution 93
Cambray, Nov. 28, 1791,
. . . You know our situation by the papers. They are
pulling down churches, selling what was in them for next to
nothing. A fine Abbey in our town, their house and church
new built since your Strs. came here, the choir elegantly orna-
mented, cost some 100s of pds., pulled to pieces, and sold for
25 guineas; their organ, a noble one, cost several 100s of pds.
carried to market and sold for under twenty pds. We have
many such things there; those they belonged to reduced to
want. How all will end God only knows. We are left quiet
as yet. We don't get our rents; we hope for better times;
wheat and barley- scarce and dear. The common have money
given them to drink. We have twenty new ale houses set up
in our town. It is said the French have lost some of their
sugar islands. The shop keepers have raised their sugar to a
great price, and tell us it will be half a crown a pd. I don't
believe it, they must want to sell it I have taken my precau-
tion, and as long as I have any your Strs. shall not want I
know you have a great family, a trifle would be very accept-
able to them ; they both join me in all that is most kind to
you. . . . We have such dark weather, it is scarce light at
noon. I am old and my eyes not very good.
Believe me, dear nephew,
Your most affectionate Aunt,
Eliza Ann.
Feb. 2 1 st, 1793.
Dear Brother : . . . It is the coldest weather we have
had this winter. I believe the misery among the poorer sort
of people who keep to their religion is extreme, for that is
enough to deprive them of work for themselves and family.
The abominations commited against the Dead, who refuse to
receive the Sacraments from the Priests who have taken the
oath, are such as would shock the savages in America. One in
particular, upon a woman, they took her out of her coffin,
dragged her about, striped her naked, and carried her to the
burying place followed by the cross head downwards, and then
carried the coffin and windings to her husband. The Magis-
trates of the town (it was at Lille) seemed not to mind, but
those of the Province appear very serious in punishing the
94 Some Victims of the Revolution [April,.
guilty. Many instances concerning the morals of the new clergy
are equally striking. God knows where it will end. . . .
Your affectionate Sister,
M. K. (Mary Knight.)
Same sheet and date.
Dame Anselma Ann tells her nephew that they pay 34 per
cent for paper money, and soon it will be 50. She adds : " Be
in no concern about us." (!)
Same sheet and date.
Dear Brother : I should not have been so long in return-
ing you thanks for your last kind letter, as it was upon business
which I could not determine of myself, my Aunt was so kind
as to do it for me (/. e. f Dame Anselma, Procuratrix). I am
extremely sorry you have had so much trouble and mortifica-
tion about it. Had it been in our powers to have assigned it
to you (*• 1., shares in their Aunt Mary Knight's property), we
should have done it with pleasure, but my dear Brother must
know we are no more our own mistresses after our Profession,
therefore hope you don't take anything ill, as that would mortify
me more than I can express. . . .
My Aunt (Dame Anselma) is indeed very kind, and often
deprives herself for us. She is not very well. • . .
Believe me, your affectionate and loving sister,
E. Knight.
By the kindness of some friends abroad, the Stanbrook nuns
have also become possessed of a collection of copies made from
the original documents of the French Democrats referring to the
arrest of the Cambrai Community and other matters akin to
this subject. These have been found in the more secret official
archives at Cambrai, Lille, Compiegne, and Paris. Some of them
fill in with precision the various facts mentioned by Dame Anne-
Teresa Partington's "Narrative," always proving the truth of
her statements, and sometimes giving a yet more lurid glow of
horror to terrible scenes which she relates, without being her*
self fully conscious, in all probability, of the dark motives and
bloodthirsty character of the men who were the agents in these
scenes thus enacted. We propose to give samples of these
documents as footnotes to the text of the " Narrative/ 9 where
such reference is evident.
Ip07.] SOME VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION 95
We give, however, before concluding these introductory re-
marks, one document furnished by the town archives of Cambrai,
as it bears on the first lines of the "Narrative" itself. It is a
letter, or the draft of a letter, written in French to the Repub-
lican officials who had exacted certain statements regarding the
Cambrai house and inmates. Our readers will prefer a trans-
lation.
The letter is dated June 27, 1793, and it is to be found in
i\ic Archives Cotntnunales of Cambrai :
Citoyens: The English Dames, established at Cambrai since
the year 1623, hope that you will take into consideration the
following observations, which they flatter themselves will make
it appear that they are not comprised amongst Foreigners af-
fected by the Law of the 21st of March last.
est Because they never heard that the foreign establishments
in Paris, and in other parts of France, had been molested in
consequence of this law; although they could not have failed
to be informed, if it had ever taken place. On the contrary,
they know, by letters, that some establishments, even those of
men, have not been troubled on this score, although the law
had been published in such localities and Sections formed these
many weeks ago. Now it would seem that an establishment of
Ladies who never go out of their house, and who cannot com-
municate, so to say, with anybody, since two-thirds of them
hardly know a word of the language of this country, ought not
to give umbrage to the Constituted powers. They do not med-
dle with politics, and the Poor are about the only people who
ever come to their door, and this only to receive alms.
2d. During all these one hundred and seventy years, in which
they have been legally fixed at Cambrai, they have never been
the cause of any complaint against them ; on the contrary, they
flatter themselves that they have been of some utility to the
town which gave them asylum and hospitality, inasmuch as they
have brought or caused to be brought to it many millions from
°ut of their own country, since their establishing themselves at
Cambrai.
3d. They are foreigners, but they beg you to consider, in
the balance of Justice, to what degree they merit to be treated
as such; because they were established in this town long before
ever the French became masters of it. The French found them
96 Some Victims of the Revolution [April,
there already legally established, and their establishment was
confirmed by the Kings; and recently the Constituent As-
sembly decreed, on the 7th of Nov., 1790, that foreign estab-
lishments should continue as heretofore. The English Dames
protest that it in no way belongs to them to intrigue in any-
thing regarding the government of a country which has granted
them asylum, which has promised them free exercise of their
Religion and ownership of their own goods, beyond which, they
seek nothing else. It is true France and England are at war,
but so they often were under the Kings, and these never mo-
lested our establishments on that account. We are persuaded
that it is not your intention that we should have reason to
regret those times. Under the Kings of Spain, who welcomed
us to this country, we were ever gratefully submissive. After-
wards God permitted this country to pass to the Kings of
France, to whom our Religion commanded equal submission ;
the same God has now permitted another change, and we sub-
mit to its decrees, for it behoves us not to meddle with the
way in which a country chooses to be governed, a country
which out of kindness received us into its midst. All we ask
is the integrity of our Religion which was promised us on our
entering this country, and without which we should never have
brought our funds into it.
Nevertheless, in order not to be at fault, in case the section
thinks otherwise than we do on the subject, we declare that,
over and above our habitation and enclosure, we have twelve
houses let out to private persons, perpetual rents on the Hotel
de Ville at Paris, and on divers Abbeys of the Congregation
of S. Maur in France, which altogether bring in a revenue of
about 8,000. livres.
Signed by
D. Mary Lucy Blyde, Abbess.
D. M. Margaret Burgess, Prioress.
D. Augustine Walker, ) Who serve
D. Jacques (Higginson), ) their oratory.
The name Higginson is omitted, perhaps only by the recent
copyist at Cambrai.
A second document, under the same date, and addressed in
like manner by the same Community, is also in the town ar-
chives at Cambrai ; both MSS. are marked for reference GG.
1907.] Children 97
241. It is addressed, as before, Citoyens, president, etc.
It is concisely in about 15 lines, much the same as the letter
just given. It concludes with an entire list of the Community,
ages, and places of birth. It is of interest to Americans to
learn that one of the Community was born in Maryland, at
Bryantown, namely, Dame Louisa Hagen, aged 52.
Of prior date there are some other copies of papers, leading
up to the demand treated of in this place. Amongst the rest
letters from Dom H. Parker, of St. Edmund's, at Paris, all
about the rents and titles demanded or likely to be demanded,
and giving advice how to act for the best. These papers be-
long to the years 1791 and 1792.
(to be continued.)
CHILDREN.
BY JOHN JEROME ROONEY.
*
I saw a little child upon the shore,
Watched by his mother, running to and fro;
With wonder-eyes he saw the ebb and flow
Of the green waves, and heard the breakers' roar.
There, at his feet, joyous, he found a store
Of pretty shells, nor farther cared to go,
Straining to hear their little trumpets blow,
Content to count his treasure o'er and o'er.
Beside his merchandise and golden gain,
Broken in years and overwrought by toil,
I saw an aged man with eager face ;
Tireless, he scann'd the earth and distant main,
Nor dream'd he was, despite his shining spoil,
An infant playing on the shores of space.
rou LXXXV.—7
AS THE SUN WENT DOWN
BY N. F. DEGIDON.
■HE sun lingered lovingly in the western sky, chang-
ing from glowing silver into a ball of red gold
as it dipped lower and lower to the sea. It shed
wonderfully soft tints upon the blue waters, the
gray cliffs, and the heather-clad hills around ; and,
as the waves beat against the natural breakwater at the entrance
of the bay, the white spray shot several feet into the air, chang-
ing to dazzling prismatic colors in the glow of the sunset, so-
that Maurya, standing on the beach shading her eyes from the
bright rays, in order to catch sight of her lover's boat as he
rowed back from the day's fishing, thought this must surely be
Hy-Brasil, the Isle of the Blest, visible at last, after its long
immersion under the ever-restless waves.
There is a superstition, firmly believed in by the people liv-
ing near the western seaboard of Ireland, that a fairy island
named Hy-Brasil lies some leagues out on the ocean, fair and
smiling; and that any person seeing it — or being able to land
on it, for it appears only at uncertain times — would henceforth
enjoy perfect peace and happiness. Maurya Dodd was no scep-
tic as to the existence of this island, rather did she believe
over-much, thinking of it by day and dreaming of it by night,
until she was often not a little confused as to whether her
dreams were reality, or the hardness of her dull, monotonous
life a dream.
Maurya was fair to look upon, with clear-skinned oval face,
dreamy Irish-blue eyes, soft coil of jet-black hair, and medium-
sized, pliant figure, rounded with that tender grace which only a
pure life in the open air, far from the haunts of city life, can
give. It was well for her that she was no society dame and
that she lived in a poor fishing village named K , on the
coast of Clare, where most of the men she met were* of her
own station, and, if they admired her, were manly enough to
confine their troubles to their own bosoms, for Maurya loved
1907.] As the Sun went down 99
and was beloved by Donal O'Daly, the most admired and
bravest boy in K , and the leader of the fishing fleet; so
that when she passed up or down the village street, or stood
with the other women on the strand to welcome fathers, broth-
ers, or lovers back from the ocean waves, with her brown feet
and arms bare, and the wind tenderly kissing the curls around
her brow, or boisterously playing hide and seek to loosen the
careless knot at the back, cheeks might flush at the sight of
her, but there it ended, for Maurya had pledged herself to Donal,
and that spoke volumes to those simple, untutored fisher-folk,
who would only wear in their hearts that which was theirs by
honest right and not the theft from a hard-worked brother.
But Maurya had her own troubles which she shared with no
one, for Donal had a stepmother with several fatherless children to
feed, who might fare ill or not at all without Donal's strong arms
to work for them, so that, when he lost patience and talked of
building a cottage for himself and Maurya, the stepmother used
not to waste words on him, for she was an artful woman, and knew
that a brave man whose heart was overcharged with true love
for a good, pure maiden was not to be put off with weak en-
treaties from gathering the prize into his strong arms. Instead
she sought Maurya, playing on her tender, pitiful nature, and,
on bended knees, beseeching her, in the honor of the Holy
Name, to leave Donal with her yet a while until the children
were somewhat stronger. In this wise had their wedding been
put off many times during two years, for Maurya's whole being
was intensely religious, and, apart from the fact that a request
made in the Holy Name may not be refused save under pen-
alty of ill-luck, she pitied the frail little woman and ten chil-
dren who would cry for the bread that Donal's willing hands
won for them from the wild sea.
"Wait a little longer, Donal," she besought in her sweet,
plaintive voice, never uttering a word anent her promise to the
Stepmother; and, being only a woman, not able to gauge the
strength of a man's desire, nor the thoughts her tardiness in
coming to him might beget in his mind. When she had re-
quested him to wait thus for the tenth time or more, clouds
gathered on Donal's brow, and doubts of her love in his heart,
as he said ;
" Wait, Maurya ! We might wait ten years. Shiela is only
thirteen, and Paddy, the eldest boy, is only seven. Seven
IOO AS THE SUN WENT DOWN [April,
years! Why, he must be as many more ere he will be able
to handle a sail or trim an oar. We might wait forever."
" Just a wee while longer," she pleaded with downcast eyes.
She could not look at him. To do so might betray the tired
litthe woman in whose interest the storm was rising.
Donal's face was grave and set. What ailed his Maurya?
The doubts formed into dark shapes and lay like lead on his
heart, crushing out the bright smile from his lips and stilling
the once gay laughter.
Soon a twin weight lay on Maurya's heart In turn she
questioned herself regarding her lover's changed demeanor.
What ailed him ? Why had he turned so cold ? Was he ill or
tired of her? Maurya shuddered as she asked herself these
questions — questions asked and unanswered for many days.
Her eyes were strained eagerly for a sight of his boat, but no
sign or sight gladdened them ; and the sun sank still lower,
now like burnished gold, and the spray against the bar at the
entrance to the little horseshoe- shaped bay danced high into
the air in weird, fantastic patterns, heightened by its glowing
tints as the rays of the setting sun passed through it.
" Tis wonderful ! " ejaculated Maurya to the evening still*
ness. " Strange that I never saw it before " ; and her cheeks
glowed and her eyes brightened like a gladsome child.
Some tiny wavelets rolled in on the beach, and on to her
bare feet, breaking up into a thousand bubbles of white foam
and murmuring, so Maurya thought: "Hy-Brasil, Hy-Brasil!"
She caught her breath in a gasp. Perhaps it was the fairy
isle. Ah ! there it was again. The dream islet beckoned to
her, and the shy baby wavelets came up again, caressing her
brown, bare feet, lingering lovingly around them as if loth to
turn back to the cold boisterous ocean, and murmuring, now
clear, again low and soft like a child nodding to sleep : " Hy-
Brasil, Hy-Brasil !"
Maurya's heart was beating loudly — clamoring for its own
in quick, even beats, the refrain of which was Donal. She was
tired and weary and lonely, and of everything on earth she
asked nothing save him — nothing but his strong arms to shel-
ter her from life's storms, his great loving heart to rest upon,
and his protecting care to drive away the despair and loneli-
ness from her life. Why did the little stepmother always beg
and entreat ? She was weary of it, for was not she, also, poor
DOWN
and helpless? She had neither parent, brother, nor sister, and
eked out a pitiful existence sewing or knitting, or working in
the fields when she could get any to do. She had been rich
in Donal's love, but now she was doubly poor, for she doubted
that he still cared for her. Why was he so cold ? What had
she done ? Maurya was as simple as a child, and it never
once crossed her mind that the little mothereen had been silent
with Donal, had asked no promise of him. In her nobility of
heart she had never opened the subject before him, thinking
surely he would speak himself had he anything to say. He
had wanted her once, surely — had loved her truly. Life with-
out him was not a thing to be calmly contemplated. Maurya
was growing desperate in her great bewilderment. She must
get at the root of the matter — agree to a speedy marriage, if
that was the magic word that would bring back the smile to
Donal's lips. The little stepmother would get help — the neigh-
bors were kind, the poor rates were paid to help the poor.
Let the mothereen ask for that help to fill her ten young
mouths. She had a right to it; but she had no right to ask
sacrifices of Maurya, continual sacrifices — so continual as to
threaten a life-long sacrifice. She, Maurya, had kept her prom-
ise. She had waited long and life was changing — growing cold.
There was a chill about her heart. She only asked for a little,
and Donal might still work for the mothereen. Nay, she would
help him to keep the children from want, for with him work
would be but play. Without him — dreading his cold, set face
— she could not work or eat; indeed, soon she would have
nothing to eat, for she spent her days loitering about the beach
hoping, yet dreading, her lover's return.
But the sun glowed more brilliantly red and the spray
danced at the bar in fairy ephemeral tints, and silver and golden
rays spread out and glorified sea and land, gray, frowning cliffs,
and brown, distant hills, the ill-built shabby village, and the
ragged children playing hide and seek amongst the rocks; the
whole scene was a veritable fairyland — a panorama stretching
far and wide for all who had eyes to see, for the sunset on a
fine evening off the west coast of Ireland is a sight not to be
forgotten soon.
Maurya looked westward long and steadily. There was her
heart, there her treasure, riding the billows in a frail coracle.
A boat lay at her feet on the wet sand. A moment sufficed
102 As the Sun Went Down [April.
to launch it, and she was bounding towards the sunset and
Hy-Brasil as fast as a canoe made of laths and tarred canvas
can be propelled by strong young arms, with love for motive
power.
It was the fairy isle surely, and she and Donal might be
happy forevermore. Perhaps — who knows — if she let that one
chance slip past her, she might never be rewarded with the
same sight again. The little stepmother had only asked her to
wait for a short time, and she had waited long, a dreary length
of time. Surely Donal still wanted her. It was only a passing
cloud — an April day in life. In fancy she could see the glad
light leap into his eyes and flash over his face when he saw
her coming. There would be no more clouds, nor darkness,
nor despair. She and Donal would live and love and die in
Hy- Brasil. Maurya laughed softly to herself as she remembered
the tales she had heard of men who had' sailed for years in
search of the fairy isle, only to end their days unsuccessfully
in a watery grave. Years! And it had revealed itself to her
without any seeking. Come to her feet as it were; stood out
on the ocean and beckoned to her. The spray subsided for a
moment, the next wave broke, the white, filmy, evanescent
thing spread like a fairy screen before her eyes, and parted a
little here and there to reveal her lover's boat — her lover's face.
He was smiling. His look was gladsome. Maurya stood up
and stretched out her arms, crying:
" I am coming, Donal, Donal ! "
In that instant the sun descended to his bed behind the
ocean, making way for the shadows of twilight to creep up
over sea and land, and a man jumped out of his light coracle
into the ocean, crying:
" Maurya! Maurya! "as he shot out with powerful strokes.
But there was only an upturned boat floating on the waters,
a young heart strangely still under the waves, and a leaden
weight of despair on Donal's heart as he rowed back to shore
to sit and wait until the sea gave up its dead.
Bew Boohs.
IN THE DEVIL'S ALLEY.
By Hay Quinlan.
These sketches of London slum
life" have appeared in The
Catholic World, whose readers
need not be told of their merits.
Humorous, but, above all, pathetic, they move to smiles and
tears. Miss Quinlan has the gift of observation and charming
narration. Imagination she possesses, too; but she had to call
upon it only to provide her with fitting expression for the
heart-breaking truths, with which many years of work among
the London poor made her familiar. We smile, and smiling
mourn. If the gifted author were to acknowledge the praise
which her excellent work receives she would, perhaps, divide
the credit for the pathos with her Mary Annes and Pollys and
Billies and Dickies on the same scale as Wordsworth adopted
with little Barbara Lewthwaite :
" And it seemed, as I repeated the ballad line by line,
That one-half of it was hers, and but half of it was mine."
JOSEPHINE'S TROUBLES.
By Percy Fitzgerald.
As the preface informs us, Mr.
Fitzgerald was an eye-witness in
some of the events of the great
Franco -Prussian war. He escaped
from Paris only a week or two before the investment, when the
Crown Prince was marching from Chalons; and he was set
upon in the streets, having been mistaken for a German. Those
were intensely dramatic days, when the strain and fever of life
were great. Mr. Fitzgerald has reflected his impressions in a
charming story, f the stage of which he fixes in Versailles, dur-
ing its occupation by the Germans, incidental to the siege of
Paris. A wonderfully vivid picture he gives of " the ranks of
burly, broad-chested, full-bearded men, filling the street with
their dark and dusty uniforms, and pushing on in a torrent t
What with spiked helmets and rough glances and bearing, there
was suggested the air as of some northern horde rather than of
a modern European army." And the bewilderment, the futile
indignation, the honest exasperation of the French inhabitants
• /» Iht DeoiVs Alley. By May Quinlan. Illustrated by the Aulhor. With a Foreword
by the Dowager Duchess of Newcastle. London : Westminster Art and Book Company.
tJetepiixe't Troubles. A Story o( the Great Franco-German War. 1870-1871. By Percy
104 New Books [April,
for the profanation of the country and their domestic life ! m We
live through it all, and see it with our very eyes, as, with the
author, we are the privileged lodger in the refined home of
Monsieur Lezack, over which his daughter Josephine presides
with all the grace and good sense of a Frenchwoman. And
Josephine's grace and tact and tenderness are called into full
play by the presence of the cold, aristocratic, honorable Ger-
man staff officer, who becomes their unwelcome guest. If you
wish to realize what it means for a proud-spirited race to have
an army of conquerors encamped on its soil — and how the
minor vexations of war, billetings and requisitions and martial
law enter as iron into the soul of the conquered — read this
book. Then, too, you will learn — what the reviewer is for-
bidden to reveal — whether Josephine became the Countess von
Mtiller, or was left like poor Maud to muse:
11 Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these : It might have been ! "
A clever, but scarcely edifying,
THE ILLUSTRIOUS O'HAGAN. story, • cast in the mold which
By Justin Huntly McCarthy, was brought into fashion by the
creator of Rupert of Hentzau and
the principality of Ruritania. We have an imaginary German
court, pervaded by diplomacy, gallantry, intrigue, and fighting.
The plot embraces a comedy of errors, in which the two
Dromios are replaced by a chivalrous free-lance and his twin
brother from the land of the shamrock. The author belongs to
the school, or schools, which take for their guiding principle,
art for art's sake, and do not consider that they have any obli-
gation towards ethical prepossessions.
This story f is laid in the struggle
IN TREATY WITH HONOR, of the French Canadians for inde-
By Mary Catherine Crowley. pen dence in the years 1847- 1848;
and the principal scene of the
events, historical and imaginary, is Quebec and its vicinity.
Miss Crowley knows her Canadian types and the Canadian life
well, as her former stories have proven. The present one is
* The Illustrious O'Hagan. By Justin Huntly McCarthy. New York: Harper &
Brothers.
t In Treaty With Honor. By Mary Catherine Crowley. A Romance of Old Quebec
Boston : Little, Brown & Co.
1907.] New Books 105
of the same kind, though it has sufficient individuality to as-
sure it the approbation of those who have enjoyed A Daughter
of New France and The Heroine of the Strait.
An interesting and a thoroughly
BRIDGET ; OR, WHAT'S IN A Catholic story, • or rather, we may
NAME? S ay, combination of stories. There
By Will W. Whalen. seems to be no need of fastening
so many others to the principal
one. To have to get acquainted with so many people, and to
follow the fortunes of all, distracts one's attention from those
who are intended to be the principal characters. It is, we be-
lieve, the first attempt of the author, and shows plainly enough
^hat he can write in an attractive way ; but next time we would
suggest that he use his abundant material more economically,
1>oth for his own sake and for that of his readers.
The continued demand for this
INTRODUCTION TO THE- valuable work,f of which the ap-
OLOGY. pearance of a fifth edition is a
By Zigliara. witness, indicates, at once, its in-
trinsic merit and the persistence
of the impetus given by Leo XIII. to Thomistic philosophy.
On the appearance of a new edition, one naturally turns to
those sections in which the students' needs demand the treat-
ment of new objections, or new forms of old objections, to
traditional positions and arguments, that is, chiefly to the parts
involving the history of religions and biblical exegesis. The
editor, however, has done nothing towards lessening the burden
of the professor who must, with this work as a text-book, ac-
quaint his students with the force and precise direction of the
attack directed against many traditional arguments by the ration-
alist criticism of to-day.
This little book J offers a goodly
THE OUGHT TO BE'S. quantity of solid, practical instruc-
By Rev, J, T. Roche. tion, of the kind needed just now
to set Catholics on their guard
against many of the insidious ideas, customs, and standards
• Bridget; or, What's in a Nawut By Will W. Whalen. Boston: Mayhew Publishing
Company.
*t Profadrutica ad Sacram Theologian in Usu Scholarum. Auctore Thoma Maria Zigliara.
£<UUo Quinta. Romae : Desclee, Lefebre & Socii.
-\ The Ought to Bes. By Rev. J. T. Roche. St. Louis : B. Herder.
106 NEW BOOKS [April,
which are a snare to the unwary. We should unreservedly
recommend the book for circulation, but for one surprising
blemish. It is not, we respectfully submit, either profitable or
proper, that a priest should sit in judgment upon, and hold up
to the obloquy of the laity, one of the most illustrious living
members of the Catholic hierarchy ; nor is such an offence les-
sened, when the attempt is made to justify it by presuming to
interpret an official appointment made by the Holy See as an
implied stigma on the orthodoxy of one of our bishops. The
author has some sharp criticisms for the members of the laity
who venture to find fault with the clergy : Physician, heal thy-
self, is a golden advice that has most value for us all just
when we least suspect our need of it.
The subject of this memoir,* as,
THE LIFE AND LETTERS probably, everybody knows, was
OF FATHER BERTRAND the grandson of William Wilber-
WILBERFORCE. force, the famous philanthropist,
who immortalized his name by his
efforts for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Father
Wilberforce's father was the friend of Newman, and brother of
Archbishop Wilberforce, "Soapy Sam," of whom Matthew
Arnold said that he knew how to make the best of both worlds
more skillfully than any other man of his time. From his
celebrated grandfather — we quote from the Life — " Arthur in-
herited the statesman's eloquence of tongue, together with that
wonderful bell-like voice, whose vibrations, once heard, could
not easily be forgotten — gifts which were to prove of immense
value to the future friar- preacher."
Eleven years of age at the time of his father's conversion,
he was soon aiterwards conditionally baptized. He entered the
Dominican novitiate as a priest in 1864. In 1868 he took his
solemn vows, and was sent to take charge of a mission church
near Stroud. There was, says Father McNabb, a certain family
idealism about him which unfitted him quite as much for prac-
tical affairs as it fitted him to be a preacher: "As it is an
historic fact that St. Thomas Aquinas never became prior —
thanks to the good sense of his fellow-religious — it is no slight
• The Life and Letters of Father Bertrand Wilberforce, 9f the Order of Preachers, Com-
piled by H. M. Capes. Edited, with an Introduction, by Vincent McNabb, O.P. St. Louis:
B. Herder.
I9°7-] NEW BOOKS 107
on Father Bertrand to say that his one term of priorship did
not altogether justify the confidence of those who elected him.
He had not those lesser virtues of the eye and hand rather
than of the heart that tend to make a superior the house-band
of the community. But he was one of those who could, and
did, say with truth and a full heart: 'I was not made for office.
It is easier for me to obey than to command.'" Of a forcible
and winning personality, eloquent and pious, he found his work
in the mission field, where, besides fame as a preacher — which he
valued little — he reaped a plentiful harvest of souls till his death
in 1904. The greater portion of this large volume consists of
correspondence addressed to friends, and to persons who sought
direction or consolation from him ; to which the biographer adds
just a sufficient string of narrative to give it unity.
This translation ' is made from a
THE INTERIOR CASTLE, photo-lithographic edition of St.
Teresa's original manuscript, and
published under the direction of Cardinal Lluch, Archbishop of
Seville, on the occasion of the saint's ter-centenary, in 1882.
The present is the third English translation. In this case the
translators have taken great pains to adhere to the very word-
ing of the original, and to retain, if possible — a difficult task
for any translator — every shade of expression proper to the
original. The work of the translators has been revised by
Father Bertrand Zimmerman, O.C.D., who has contributed the
introduction, together with many useful explanatory notes and
references. The volume bears the stamp of scholarship, which,
happily, is becoming less rare than it used to be in English
hagiological and devotional literature.
The work itself is, like all St. Teresa's writings, no system-
atic treatise, but an expression of her own personal experiences
in the mystical life. Yet it covers a profound analysis of al-
most every stage of the journey which the soul must take till
it reaches the goal of love. Throughout it we observe that
striking trait of St. Teresa, the cold, objective, judicial scrutiny
to which she can submit the highest flights of her own soul,
in order to test, by the commonplace standards of orthodoxy
and good sense, whether they are of God or not. Let us bor-
Mansions and Exclamation, #/ the Saul to God, Translate!!
108 New Books [April,
row from the introduction an appreciation of the work by an
eminent professor of theology : " As often as I read the books
of the holy mother, I admire the wonderful manner in which
God instructed her in mystical theology, for the sake of souls
giving themselves truly to familiar intercourse with his Divine
Majesty. But where I most regret my inability of expressing
in fitting terms my sentiments towards this excellent teacher
is when I look at, and refresh myself in, the Castle with its
seven rooms ; for there is seen the effect of infused knowledge
such as St. Denis received from St. Hierotheus, and both from
St. Paul, and which has been committed to writing in the fa-
mous book of Mystical Theology. Thence comes as from a
fountain-head, notwithstanding the obscurity (to our manner of
thinking) of its language, the doctrine of great masters of the
spiritual life, such as Hugh of St. Victor, Bernard, Ruysbroeck,
Tauler, Gerson, and many others whom I pass by." The sub*
stantial justice of this appreciation is nowise imperilled by the
fact that we may no longer make an act of faith in " the
areopagicity of the Areopagite."
The Savonarola-like attack make
THE SINS OF SOCIETY. by the Jesuit, Father Bernard
Vaughan, upon the morals of the
" smart set " was the great sensation of London society last
year. In a series of five sermons • he denounced the fashion-
able world, or at least a certain section of it, for its callous
and flippant contempt or indifference towards the Christian
standard of family life. Gambling, matrimonial infidelity, ex-
travagant luxury, riotous living of all sorts, he declared to be
cynically and openly rampant to the ruin of men and women,
especially of girls and young men just entering the whirl of
life. The picture which he draws, though done in a different
style, resembles, in many features, that drawn by Miss Edith
Wharton in The House of Mirth, of life among the very rich
in New York society. Father Vaughan's effect was produced
not by any surpassing brilliancy of style, though his language
is elegant and forcible, but by the directness of his charges, and
the realism of his specifications. In an epilogue annexed to
* The Sins of Society. Words spoken by Father Bernard Vaughan, of the Society of
Jesus, in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, May fair, during the season 1906. St.
Louis : B. Herder.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 109
the sermons the preacher tells us of the formidable mass of
criticism, favorable and unfavorable, that his mail brought to
him as a consequence of his course. There was a liberal con-
tribution of counsel, too, for his future guidance : " The amount
of advice that these discourses have brought to me quite beg-
gars description. When I think of it, I am almost surprised
it has not left me a paralytic for the rest of my life. Fortu-
nately, there is a humorous side to most things, and my many
correspondents, who have thought it very wrong of me not to
have devoted my course of sermons to vivisection, woman's
rights, vaccination, rabbit-shooting, or horse-racing, instead of
confining them to the subjects which I actually chose, have
proved to me that even those who themselves have no sense
of humor may, for all that, provide excellent material for those
who have." As a closing chapter we have a large selection of
the criticisms passed on the course, chiefly from the secular
and non-Catholic religious press. Some of them accuse the
preacher of indulging in cheap sensationalism; but the greater
number of them are laudatory ; and of these the most pro-
nounced are from organs that cannot conceal their surprise at
finding themselves compelled, by a sense of honesty, to praise
a Jesuit for his stern denunciation of fashionable vice.
The success which crowned M.
A FRENCHMAN ON FRANCE. Klein's attempt to interpret Amer-
ican life to his countrymen has
warranted him making another essay as an international guide."
This time he becomes cicerone to the American who would
understand some of the phases of French iife, chiefly from the
social and religious point of view, which are rather puzzling
to Americans. A young college man from Chicago, on a visit
to France, with introductions to some families of good social
standing, makes a tour which embraces Paris, Rouen, Versailles,
Auvergne, and some other districts. In the course of his trip
he encounters many charming, well-informed persons who, be-
sides introducing him to some of the most attractive scenery
of the country, enable him to inspect some of its most cele-
brated art collections, typical residences of notable families, and
to get from different angles, luminous views on the biblical con-
dt Chicago. Par Abbe Felix Klein.
no New Books [April,
troversy, the separation crisis, the causes which have estranged
the people from the clergy and from the upper classes of so-
ciety. Needless to say, the abb£ is an optimist and a propa-
gandist. The literary form which he has adopted permits him,
through the medium of some of his creations, to express frankly
and precisely views which, had he to deliver them as his own,
would, at the dictate of prudence, clothe themselves in a grace-
ful drapery of obscurity and indirectness, more effectually than
could be attained through the help of a dozen formal disserta-
tions. One may, by sharing the information acquired by our
Chicago traveler from his courteous and well-informed friends
and his own observation, reach an answer to that question
which Americans have been vainly putting to themselves for
the past few months : If the French people are overwhelmingly
Catholic, why do they permit the present state of affairs?
The charm of the book is its accomplished literary art, which
encloses a good-sized dose of solid instruction in a very agree-
able wrapping of entertainment. If, to avoid the suspicion of
partiality, one must attach some reservation to the liberal com-
mendation which this pleasant little volume exacts, it would be
that our Chicago student evinces such a tendency to emotional
expansiveness, and to taking us into his confidence, that one
cannot but conclude to a strongly French strain in his ancestry.
In comparison with the magnificent
REPRESENTATIVE GOV- work on Natural Law, which con-
ERNMENTS. ferred lasting fame on its author,
By Taparelli. this other work* of Taparelli is little
known — nor is there any probabil-
ity that, though it represents as much work and science, it will
ever prove a rival to it in the appreciation of scholars or stu-
dents. As its title indicates, it undertakes an analysis of the
nature of modern representative governments. The thesis which
it starts out to prove — we deliberately choose this phrase in-
stead of saying the conclusions it arrives at — is that modern
constitutional governments, one and all, stand upon, and are
vitiated by, the Protestant principle of independent judgment
Consequently they are, one and all, essentially and structurally,
in conflict, direct and irreducible, with the basic principles of
* Examen Critique des Gouvernements Represintatifs dans la Sociiti Mod erne. IV. Vols.
Traduit d* l'ltalien. Par le P. Pichot, S.J. Paris: Lethiclleiuc.
1907.] NEW BOOKS III
Catholicism. Through four large volumes the grand indictment
is unfolded with perfect method and acute reasoning, which
reaches for the metaphysical ideas underlying the social and
the moral. Modern governments rest on false ideas and per-
verted principles regarding the origin of power, universal suf-
frage, the emancipation of adult people's liberty, liberty of the
press, liberty of teaching, social welfare, the division of powers.
The modern nation is the abolition of the natural organization
of society; its legislative system is false; its separation of the
executive power into departments, injurious to the interests of
the people; its economic system is the spoliation of some for
the benefit of others. As everything else is wrong, so too is
the judicial organization, the manner of appointing judges, the
publicity of discussion in the tribunals, and the jury system.
Wrong, too, are the standing army and conscription — and the
original, never-failing fount of the all-pervading disease is, the
principles of Protestantism. The sole remedy lies in the sub-
mission of the world to Catholicism, and the universal accept-
ance by all nations of the supremacy of the Holy See.
It is not a cheerful reflection that the Catholic Church is
necessarily involved in an irreconcilable war with the most
cherished ideas and institutions of the age in which we live, or
that she cannot come into her own until she has effected a
revolution which would, practically, mean the overthrow of
civilization as we know it. Father Taparelli was one of the
founders of the Civilta Cattolica. The views embodied in this
work were first expressed by him in that organ, about half a
century ago, when they received more official approbation than,
probably, would be accorded to them now. His strongly a pri-
ori bent of mind led the learned philosopher to rely too im-
plicitly on abstract reasoning, without controlling it by a dis-
passionate observation of facts.
The Gate of Death is a very un-
THE GATE OF DEATH: usual and extremely interesting
A DIARY. book.* It professes to record the
feelings and impressions of a liter-*
ary man during an illness which brought him twice or thrice
to the very verge of dissolution. The author tells us that as
soon as he was physically able to do so, he began keeping
• Tin Gall nfDialh : A Diary. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
112 NEW BOOKS [April,
watch upon his inner experiences, with a view to letting the
world know what it means to have the spirit struggling to be
free, and to have the consciousness engaged at close quarters
with the " Shadow feared of man." On the whole, the impres-
sions recorded here are not such* as need terrify us; though
they do certainly impress upon one that it is awful to bear
our life's deeds to the judgment of God. The author says that
in his great collapse what he cared about " was that I had
made a few happier, that I had dene a few kindnesses, that I
had won some love. I was glad that there had been occasions
when I had conquered natural irritability and selfish anxiety,
had said a kind and affectionate thing." As to the religious
side of this uniquely- described experience, we are informed that
simple trust in God predominated over every other. The au-
thor is one of those men who hold dogma in comparatively
low esteem, but of his Christian spirit and earnest religiousness
there can be no doubt. Naturally a great deal in the book
will not be agreed with by Catholics; but, making allowances
for this, we must say we have here a book of more than ordi-
nary interest and power.
This volume * is the first of a course
FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS, intended for advanced schools, and
By Bodkin. the educated laity generally, in
order to impart a thorough knowl-
edge of the great truths of our religion. After a short intro-
ductory chapter, the author goes straight to the Church, as the
necessary and infallible guide to religious truth. Having laid
down the rule of faith, he establishes the divinity of Christ, and,
in the usual manner, treats the notes of the Church. He then
takes up the consideration of difficulties and doubts regarding
faith. With the help of Newman, he shows that the existence
of difficulties need not create doubt, and that if difficulties are
sufficient to justify the withholding of assent, then we must cease
to believe in some of the most fundamental tenets of science.
Considerable space is devoted to the refutation, chiefly by the
•tnethod of citations from scientists, of the materialism of the
age of Tyndall and Huxley. That portion of the book which
treats of the Church is excellent; indeed, the entire book is ex*
• The Great Fundamental Truths. Book I. The Church an Infallible Guide. Rev. R. C.
Bodkin, CM. New York: Benziger Brothers.
1907.] New Books 113
cell en t as far as it goes. If it had appeared thirty or forty
years ago, no reservation whatever might have been appended
to the approbation it deserves. But the author has scarcely
paid sufficient attention to the change of position which the
enemy has affected. The camp of materialism against which he
directs his fire is abandoned. The octogenarian Casabianca,
Professor Haeckel, to be sure, still remains whence all but him
have fled. There are few agnostics or unbelievers, to-day, who
do not admit the existence of God, as the First Cause, or the
Absolute Being, or the ground of reality. It is the agnosticism
which refuses to admit a Personal God, and a vague, shadowy,
idealistic pantheism, or monism, against which the minds of the
Catholics who come in contact with sceptical thought must be
equipped. In like manner, it seems* to be a tactical error any
longer to devote much of one's energies to the demolition of
the Protestant doctrine of an infallible Bible, and, on the other
hand, to neglect the rationalistic attacks which have completely
captured the Protestant position. The defence of the Church
now depends not upon making good against Protestants the
Catholic interpretation of a number of texts and passages, but
to maintain the historic value of the Scriptures, the fact of super-
natural revelation, and inspiration. It is not physical science
that can afford even specious arguments against Christian faith.
That armory of the enemy was rendered useless when our ex-
egetes, at length, ceased to maintain that the Pentateuch con-
tained a scientific account of creation. Perhaps, however, any
criticism, in this sense, of Father Bodkin's volume is premature,
as his plan may include a defence of revelation and inspiration
in some subsequent number of his course.
Many circumstances have contri-
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. buted to draw attention, recently,
By Mgr. Bonomelli. to the Bishop of Cremona. The
celebrity that he has acquired
would, however, scarcely be a ground for the translation of one
of his Pastoral letters into English. A much better reason, and
one that is amply sufficient, for the presentation to the English-
speaking world of this Pastoral,* consists in the timely character
of the solid instruction it conveys concerning a most important
• On Rtliiimu Wortkip and sown Defects in Popular Devotions. By Mgr. Bonomelli,
Dlihop «f Crtmon*. London ; Burnt & Oatet.
TOkUOy w - fi
ii4 New Books [April,
subject. In a very few pages, comparatively speaking, the bishop
explains the nature of religious worship, its interior soul, and
its necessary external manifestation. His exposition is made in
simple words, with the convincing accents of earnest piety and
apostolic zeal. The section of his instruction which has claimed
most attention, and, we should willingly say, is the most timely,
even outside of Italy, is that in which he issues a warning
against the abuse of external devotions. The Church, he pre-
mises, with the most scrupulous care, establishes the minutest
forms and differences in the various degrees of the worship
which ought to be practised ; but only too often weakness, igno-
rance, lack of reflection, and many other causes, render all her
injunctions ineffectual, and acts and ceremonies which ought to
be kept distinct among themselves are all jumbled together in
confusion. He points out many instances of such mistakes:
" Images of the Mother of God are carried through the streets,
6r the relics or image of some special saint — and the entire
populace uncover and kneel ; but Christ in the Sacrament is
borne along — and it is a great thing if anybody as much as
lifts his hat, or makes any sign of homage ! The altars of the
Holy Virgin and of the saints will be blazing in gold and silver,
before their images quantities of lamps and lighted candles
burn ; and Christ's altar, on which he dwells, behold it almost
neglected." " What would St. Paul think of the little Christ-
Child of Prague, with its tiny garments- of gold and its insignia
of a future kingdom ? With what energy would he cry aloud
that only one thing was needful for us to study — Jesus Christ,
and Jesus Christ Crucified."
Again he touches upon the exaggeration of the tendency to
pay special attention to some particular image. After explain-
ing the true value of the image, in the sense of the Church,
according to which "the having of one image or another, this
statue or that, is immaterial," he observes: "Every now and
then, it is not so with the faithful. They want a particular
image or statue, and honor or venerate it more than another,
although very often it may be artistically inferior to the other,
and not even artistic or decorous; yet, if it is suggested to alter
or remove it somewhere else, or exchange it for a better, they
all protest and cry out and oppose its removal. Is not this a
sign of superstition ? . . . I am afraid that the true reason
is that in their ignorance they see in it an indefinable some-
1907.] New Books 115
thing divine, a certain mysterious virtue, and this is a remnant
of paganism and idolatry prohibited by the Council of Trent."
He addresses some words directly to the clergy on a similar
topic: " Can you image, my fellow priests, a St. Paul — any one
of the Apostles, who traversed the world, proclaiming the
Gospel and shedding forth their blood, a St. Ambrose, a St.
Gregory Nazianzen, a St. Cyprian, a St. Francis Xavier — can
you imagine any of them laden with medals, images, Agnus
Deis, sacred figures, religious emblems of all kinds?" Again,
he protests against the inference that, in condemning the abuse,
he censures the proper use of religious objects; and he con-
tinues: "(It is still worse when) these devotions drag the poor
people into puerile, absurd, superstitious practices, unworthy of
Christian and civilized countries. In one parish (not in Italy)
I found not long ago, among some other devotions, one to the
Madonna of Good Counsel. A very good thing in itself — but
how was it brought forward and put into practice? A sheet
of paper was given to each of the devout, on which were
printed a hundred Madonnas, and every one of these was to be
torn off and swallowed ! And this was to be done for a hun-
dred days in succession. Could anything more ridiculous, con-
temptible, mad, be invented ? Does not the superstition which
was condemned by the Council of Trent clearly show itself
here, of those who recognize in images some -hidden virtue and
power, precisely as the savages believe in their fetishes, the
Indians in their amulets?" Several other customs, among them
that of writing letters to St. Anthony and other saints, also
the prevalence of applications for merely temporal favors, fall
under the bishop's disapprobation, An aggravation of these
abuses he considers to be, that very often there is a suspicion
of "petty lucre" in their propagation: "Is it never the case
that this base passion insinuates itself dexterously into certain
religious practices and devotions ? The world has its suspicions,
and whispers that it is so ; and appearances are not wanting
to make it appear credible! I observe that all these devotions,
and pious societies for devotions, of all sorts and everywhere,
always ask for money, some little offering, either in a direct or
an indirect manner. I know that certain honest and necessary
expenses must be provided for, and are so far good. But do
all the offerings go towards the expenses? And these ex-
penses themselves, do they not conveniently transform \.Yi«(v-
1
il6 NEW BOOKS [April,
selves into profitable industries alongside the devotions ? " In
conclusion, the bishop declares that the prevalence of abuses of
the above and other kinds tends to bring religion into con-
tempt, to foster prejudice, and injure the Church ; and he
makes a strong appeal to her priests to "Listen to the voice
of Jesus Christ when he cries out against the Pharisees, who,
mindful of the minutest ceremonial, yet neglected to practice
the divine laws: 'Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo-
crites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and
have left the weightier things of the law, judgment, and mercy,
and faith."'
Two volumes have just reached us
NEWMAN. which, in diverse ways, witness to
the continuous expansion of New-
man's influence and fame. One is a neat little hand book,*
forming a special number of Maynard's English Classic Series,
which consists of selections from the Cardinal's prose writings,
for the use of schools. The editor has chosen judiciously from
the riches at his disposal. Several character sketches, the chief
being Basil and Gregory and Augustine; three or four chap-
ters from the Essays on the Turks ; about as many more from
the Idea of a University ; a number of miscellanea, including
"The Second Spring," form the body of the book. It contains
also a short biographical introduction, two or three pages of
appreciations, and a quantity of introductory and explanatory-
notes. The selections are all of considerable length — a fact
which will enhance the educational value of the work, as it will
enable the pupil to get a real acquaintance with Newman, which
cannot be done by any collection, however large, of discon-
nected paragraphs and passages.
The other volume f is of a weightier character, being in-
tended as a help to the student who undertakes a serious study
of that most difficult book, The Grammar of Assent. The au-
thor offers a synopsis of the entire work, arranged in the form
of an alphabetical index. Generally speaking, Father Toohey
retains the words of the text, except when abridgment is nec-
essary in order to keep the work within reasonable bounds.
* Selections from Newman. New York : Maynard, Merrill & Co.
t An Indexed Synopsis of the " Grammar of Assent" By John J. Toohey, S. J. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co.
1907.] NEW BOOKS i 1 7
As it is, it contains almost as much printed matter as the
Grammar itself. Students will find the book a great help to-
wards obtaining a good grip on the contents of the Grammar,
after they have studied the text itself. Nor has Father Toohey
narrowed the value of his work by the introduction of either
criticism or interpretation. We trust that it will meet with
such practical appreciation that Father Toohey may be encour-
aged to undertake the work of indexing all Newman's writings;
and thereby render a valuable service to religion and literature.
We trust that all our readers who
DICTIONARY OF CHRIST take any interest in Scriptural
AND THE GOSPELS. study are familiar with Hastings'
By Hastings. Dictionary of the Bible, the final
volume of which appeared two
years ago. Under the same competent editorship there is now
coming from the press a work in two volumes entitled A Dic-
tionary of Christ and the Gospels* of which the first instalment
lies before us. The Dictionary of the Bible, with its five ample
volumes, had already treated very generously the main topics
t:fcat fall within the scope of this present work. Still, there was
Abundant room for a New Testament encyclopaedia, particularly
for the treatment of subjects which are more conspicuously
dogmatic than critical. To do justice to such articles as Atone-
ent, Accommodation, Character of Christ, Covenant, Leading
leas of the New Testament, Divinity of Christ, Incarnation,
td many others of similar import, is hardly possible in a Bible
dictionary, which is especially concerned with matters of criti-
cal scholarship. A supplementary work is called for to handle
these points of New Testament theology, and here we have it
at hand. Not by any means that this new dictionary does not
discuss critical problems. It does discuss them, and often at
£ r eat length and with admirable scientific completeness. But it
18 the peculiar mark, and perhaps merit, of Dr. Hastings' new
^nture, that it gives a large place to the consideration of the
doctrinal content of the New Testament.
The general characteristic of the articles in this volume is
c °nservatism. The apologetic purpose is very evident, indeed,
so evident that it might be well, to the end of a more accurate
*A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Volume I.
A *m to Knowledge. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
n8 NEW BOOKS [April,
designation, to include the word "apologetic" in the title of
the work. Many of the articles strikingly combine this con-
servative tendency with the best type of critical method. A
few examples of such are: Dr.. Allen's brief but thorough pa-
per on Divorce ; Dr. Oesterley's article on Demons, which is
almost a perfect piece of work ; and Dr. Knowling's historical
sketch of criticism as applied to the New Testament. Another
pair of articles which must impress the reader as particularly
fine, are Dr. Bacon's on Aristion, and Dr. Findlay's on the
Apocryphal Gospels.
Two articles — " Church " and " Caesarea Philippi " — which
touch upon Simon Peter's great Messianic confession, contain the
following words, which sound very Catholic indeed: "The rock
intended by Jesus to be the future foundation of his Church is
Peter. . . . The address of Jesus is distinctly to Peter."
"A still more emphatic commission was given by Christ to
Peter and to the disciples. Whatever may be the exact mean-
ing of these words, it is difficult to give them any interpreta-
tion which does not include the idea of jurisdiction." Many
other articles, notably those concerned with the birth of our
Lord, give expression to views equally acceptable to Catholics.
That some of the contributions to this volume do not meet
our entire approval, is not in the least wonderful. To satisfy
all ranks, classes, and degrees of biblical students were a task
from which an angel from heaven would shrink. We do not
mean, therefore, to censure any critical opinions which we found
in this book, merely because they diverge from those which, at
the present time, we happen to entertain. But, apart from the
controversies of schools and systems, critical methods and criti-
cal scholarship in themselves have rights, which here and there
in running through this volume we found in divers ways, but
chiefly because of an overdone conservatism, to be set at naught
and violated. For example, the writer on the Fall, wishing to
maintain that the fall of man underlies our Lord's teaching,
adduces as proof thereof that our Lord insists on the inward-
ness of sin ; and tells us that the fall is taught in the parables
of the Prodigal Son, and the lost piece of money.
In similar style the writer on angels gives, as proof that
there are angels in heaven, the opening words of the Lord's
Prayer. A Father in Heaven implies sons in heaven he says.
Ingenuity in violating the word and thought of Christ can
1907.] New Books 119
hardly surpass these specimens of exegesis. Again, reluctant
as we are to take issue with so reverent and accomplished a
scholar as Dr. Muirhead, we feel constrained to say that his
article on Eschatology does not meet the chief difficulty of that
question. What we' mean is, there appears in his treatment
something that looks like an evasion of the very point for in-
formation on which most readers would consult the article.
Dr. Muirhead pays no attention to the Abb£ Loisy's eschato-
logical views, and his contribution has suffered irreparably
thereby. The eschatological interpretation of the Kingdom is
the backbone of Loisy's conception of Christ's teaching, and it
passes our understanding how Dr. Muirhead could have failed
to take it into serious account. Equally hard is it for us to
understand why the author of the paper on John the Baptist
makes no reference to the doctrinal development regarding
John which particularly the fourth Gospel manifests, in its ap-
parent purpose to throw John's inferiority to Christ into vivid
relief. And, to make an end of adverse criticism, here are
words from the article on the Divinity of Christ which we con-
fess astonished us more than anything else has ever done in a
critical work: "The Apostles were not so much concerned to
prove his (Christ's) Divinity, as to persuade men to accept
Christ as their Savior. The question whether he was God or
not, was in this view a subordinate question." We trust that
our readers will appreciate the provocation to put those words
in italics.
To sum up our judgment on this work, we would say that,
from the standpoint of a rather strict conservative scholarship,
it is a highly creditable accomplishment; and that it. will be
of great service to students and preachers whose opinions are
free from a tendency to radicalism.
fovcign periodicals.
The TabUt (16 Feb.): " Literary Notes/' discussing the liberi
of the Catholic Press, says that we are beset by tv
very different dangers. On the one hand, there is tl
danger of rationalism and rebellion against the voice
authority. And on the other, there is the danger of e:
cess in the opposite direction. Some zealots may 1
eager to safeguard the integrity of the faith at whatev
cost, and make little account of any loss of liberty. Th
is really a short- sighted policy. For, in the end, it is tl
faith itself that suffers most from these hasty measure
After all, the best safeguard against rebellion is foui
in just and legitimate freedom.
(23 Feb.): A series of articles on the "New Theology
It is to be considered in reference to the five main coi
cepts: "God"; "Immanence"; "Revelation"; "D<
velopment " ; and " Faith." The concept of God <
taught by this new school is nothing else than the Fai
theism of a Universal Personality. The Catholic teacl
ing to be found in the Vatican decrees is this: God
and ever must be essentially distinct from all creatio
and our personality is essentially distinct from God
personality. This doctrine the writer applies as a co
recti ve to the false conclusions of the " New Theology
In a notice of Father Wasmann, S.J., and his r«
cent lectures on the subject of evolution, a writer sa;
these lectures are welcome as the sort of work that
wanted, not only here but in other fields of sacred scien<
and apologetics. We know by experience the able
efforts of some zealous apologists are apt to miss the
mark in dealing with modern difficulties and objection
One is often left with the painful impression that tl
writer has never felt the real force of the arguments 1
be adduced on the other side, and though he may tre
his opponents with ineffable contempt, it is hardly tl
contempt that comes of much familiarity.
Le Correspondant (10 Feb.): It not infrequently happens in tl
field of Catholic apologetics that the views of a man *
undisputed ability, who lives in advance of his times, ar
1907.] Foreign periodicals 121
who thinks, as a consequence, along independent lines,
is regarded with suspicion by his fellowmen. This is
true, Gabriel Aubray tells us, of George Fonsegrive, the
philosopher, moralist, novelist, and journalist, who is
looked upon by many as a " liberal " Catholic and a
bad Christian. A Catholic of the loftiest type, a devoted
son of the Church, Fonsegrive is intensely spiritual, and
leads the life of a mystic. Of an energetic temperament,
he is never idle. Fonsegrive's philosophical works con-
sist of an essay on " Bacon," one on " Efficient Cause,"
and an "Essay on Free Will." This last mentioned
work won for him the recognition of the Academy of
Moral Sciences. In the political and social field "Cath-
olicism and Democracy," "The Social Crisis," "Catho-
licism and the Spiritual Life," " Marriage and Free Love,"
form his contribution to its literature. Fonsegrive's novels
are religious and reveal his truly spiritual character; they
are: The Letters of a Country Vicar; The Letters of a Can-
ton Pastor ; The Journal of a Bishop ; and The .Son of the
Spirit. The subject of the sketch is the editor of La
Quinzaine.
(25 Feb.): In reviewing the work of Waldeck-Rousseau,
Jules Delafosse writes that the present sad state of the
Church in France is no mere accident, but is the result
of a conspiracy of thirty years ago, when French Free-
masonry joined hands with the Republican party and
secured the reins of government. From the days of Jules
Ferry to those of M. Combes the policy of the ministers
has been anti-clerical. Waldeck-Rousseau, however, car-
ries a larger share of responsibility than any of the
others. He was the incarnation of the epoch; he sym-
bolized the reign of anti-clericalism. To him, above all
others, are due the rapid changes in the condition of
France, whether in the Government, in politics, or in the
soul of the nation.
La Demoeratie Chrctitnne (Feb.): We have over the signature
of " L, D,," a stout apology for the democratic Catholic
movement of France. The sense in which " democratic"
is used, he carefully defines. It is not merely in politi-
cal structure, but essentially in the spirit of the people,
that a nation is democratic. Above and beyond the civic
i22 Foreign Periodicals [April,
equality which democracy implies in its form, it is a social
organization, aiming to bring out to the utmost a con-
sciousness of political duty and responsibility in its citi-
zens. The writer becomes almost bitter in his complaint
of that portion of the clergy which sustains the belief
that the Church is opposing the Republic in its efforts
to realize its ideal. The Si I Ion has come to the fore in
the struggle to make French Catholicism what the peo-
ple want it to be, democratic. The movement has, too,
the endorsement of the late Pope Leo XIII.— — Jos^-
Maria, Bishop of Madrid, writes of the recent introduc-
tion of the social sciences into his seminary, and into
those of other Spanish bishops. His Lordship thinks a
knowledge of sociology essential to the successful priest
of to-day. In speaking of the union of Christian
workingmen's associations in Germany, l'Abbl G
calls attention to the fact that, though successfully or-
ganized for ten years, the Germans often find occasion
to regret that they did not take steps towards co-opera-
tion earlier. Another element in the Germans 9 success,
which he thinks may also be suggestive to his country-
men, is the fact that the clergy and people there have
better mutual understanding than in France, for the Ger-
man clergy seem to appreciate, and to strive to cope
with, the conditions which tend to make them distrusted
by the masses.
La Quinzaine (i Feb.): To an inquiring free-thinker Bernard
Alio answers that Catholicism, strictly speaking, is neither,
in one sense, exoteric nor esoteric. But he says that the
latter term may be employed, inasmuch as Catholics believe
in and love a personal Being whom others have not been
able to discover. This conclusion is reached after a long
discussion of what a true Catholic should and should not
be. The series of letters of the Count de Montalembert
to the Archbishop of Paris, concerning matters of interest
to Church and State, is continued in this number.—
E. Dimnet contributes a critical appreciation of a late
book, the Renaissance Catholique en Algleterre % and praises
its author, M. Thureau-Dangin, for his historical and
discerning sense.
(16 Feb.); The "System of Equilibrium' 1 is the title of
Foreign periodicals 123
an article by Charles Dupuis. The author gives in de
tail the rise in evolution of the principles of the system,
the important part they have taken in the governments
of Europe from Charlemagne's reign till the latter part
of the nineteenth century. Six hitherto unpublished
letters of de Lamennais are contributed and commented
upon by F. Duine. L'Abbe Morien undertakes " with
the serenity of a philosopher, without exaggeration, and
also without fear," to examine the causes which led to
the Catholic defeat in France. In his opinion the Cath-
olics have been defeated, and he attributes the down-
fall to the faulty intellectual formation of clerics in sci-
entific and moral matters, to the social position of priests,
to the lack of Catholic critics and politicians, and to the
defective system of education.
£tudes (5 Feb.): The psychology of self* restraint is ably treated
in this number by M. Eymieu. He treats of the weak-
nesses of the will, as manifested in morbid sadness and
outbursts of anger. He then traces out the causes of
such manifestations and indicates remedies. The con-
cluding part of the article deals with the phenomenon of
bad conscience. The writer claims it has a strong tend-
ency to become chronic. A man's poor health often
deranges conscience, so the writer suggests good, normal
health as a primary corrective measure for a bad con-
science.
{20 Feb.): Under the title " Galileo and the Jesuits," M.
de Vregille begins a series of articles with this number.
A brief account of Galileo's early life and work is first
given. The writer gives the names of many Jesuits —
notably that of Bellarmine — who were friendly to Galileo,
and quotes Galileo as writing from Rome in 161 1 :
"Every one is well disposed towards me here, in parti-
cular the Jesuit Fathers." R. P. Grassi, S.J., who op-
posed Galileo, is said to have been a " good mathema-
tician, but a mediocre astronomer." It was not the Jesuits
but another prominent Order that denounced Galileo to
the Inquisition. The attitude of the Jesuits after 1632 is
shown to have been conservative, but not hostile to
Galileo. They seemed to have realized the truth ot his
contention, but regarded it as inopportune.
1
124 Foreign periodicals [April.
Revue Pratique d Apologetique (15 Jan.): M. Clodius Piat points
out in a capable manner the weakness, from a logical
standpoint, of those who would solve the ultimate prob-
lems of life from purely scientific deductions. He thinks
the principle of the conservation of energy and other
principles of physical phenomena, haye been carried by
atheists out of their proper domain. Science, by its very
definition and self-imposed limitations, has no concern
with the question of God. Though the necessity for
metaphysics has been repeatedly made manifest by the
inadequacy of positivism, the disciples of the latter show
little tendency to relinquish their position. However,
the author finds encouraging the writings of such men
as Professor James, but so thoroughly saturated are pres-
ent-day thought and institutions with atheistic principles,
that hope of complete victory is, he fears, still remote.
The progress made in laboratory efforts to create
life is briefly reviewed by M. L. Wintrebert.- The
most interesting part of the number, perhaps, is that
devoted to the Newman movement in theology. Much
space is given to the recent French works on the great
tractarian. Some idea of the important place which
Newman's thought is fast taking in the religious life of
France can be gained by the perusal of these pages.
(15 Feb.): M. Zeiller discusses the case of Pope Liberius.
The writer examines the testimony of Liberius' contem-
poraries, and finds that the weakness of Liberius is un-
deniable, the exact nature of it, however, being unknown.
Amongst the authors living immediately after Liberius,
Philostorgius, an Arian historian, indicates that Liberius
adhered to an Arian formula, whilst Sozomen removes all
dogmatic significance from Liberius' concession. The only
documents which place this pope in a false position are
of questionable authorship. H . Lesetre explains the
Church's opposition to cremation. Burial has been the
practice of Christians from the earliest times, and is more
economic and convenient than cremation. The grave
speaks of death more eloquently than does the funeral
urn. The writer admits that different circumstances might
lead the Church to tolerate cremation.
THE DUTY OF THE PRESENT HOUR.*
t
. . . And this is the occasion to take into account a soph-
ism, an anti-clerical prejudice, wherever intolerance and intransi-
geance are attributed to the Church by her enemies. But, as we
have spoken to you of this matter on many occasions, we wish to-
day to make use of the authorized Roman periodical, La Civilth Cat-
tolka, July zi, 1906. After explaining and justifying the theoreti-
cal-dogmatic intolerance of the Church, it examines the practical
side of the question and gives what may serve as a directive rule.
"When from the order of principles and of doctrines/ 1 it says,
" we pass to that of facts and of practice, then the ideal gives place
to reality, the thesis to the hypothesis, theoretical intolerance to
practical, civil, or political tolerance. In this field the Church,
according to the different conditions of the historic periods, and
without ever destroying the integrity of revealed religion, has always
adapted herself to her surroundings.
We have the proof in the •• Syllabus," and no other example
would be more appropriate, especially in the condemnation of Pro-
position 80, so famous : " The Roman Pontiff can and should recon-
cile himself with modern progress, liberalism, and civilization."
The adversaries of the Church find in this condemnation the most
powerful reason for their hatred, notwithstanding the fact that Pius
I3£., in condemning this proposition, had the intention of condemn-
1XX K the war made on the Church and the violence exercised against
kw in Italy (i860) under the specious words of progress, liberalism,
*ud civilization, and not what these ideas have of truth and of good.
This condemned proposition was taken from the allocution "Jam-
dudum," where these exact words have the sense indicated. It
does no more than affirm the opposition between Christianity and
a *keism and anti-Christianity.
To pretend, therefore, that in this passage there is manifested,
Biore-than in any other similar pontifical declaration, an antagonism
between the Church and modern thought, with respect to the practi-
*The above extracts are taken from a recent pastoral of the Most Reverend Don Mariano
^°Ict, Archbishop of Montevideo. The pastoral is an appeal on the part of the Archbishop to
™s countrymen, not to imitate the anti-clericalism of the French Government, which " belittles
tod shames liberty." We regret that our space does not permit the publication of the entire
Ptstond.— Editor C. W.
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tm*, d«* not a3 this f£aow how false » the peejudice which con-
M*to in a&rmin% that there exists as L.m«wfiah S e opposition be-
tween the Church and progress., liberty, and cml ixat ao o ; or, let as
##y, mtAern thought in whatever it jhiiii « i of goodness and of
truth f
In declaring to you that there does not exist opposition between
Church and modern thought, we appeal to the example oi the gnat-
eft and freest nation which exists, the United States of America.
And this is the reason why I wish to explain to yon the visit of
courtesy which we made on Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State in
the Government of that great nation.
We wished to welcome the illustrious guest, because we saw in
him the representative of the Republic which is a model of that
Kenertftx* liberty, which neither offends nor fears any one, neither
individuals nor nations.
We went to present our homage to the eminent statesman, be-
cau*e of our admiration for the Catholics of that Republic, who can
create, organize, and carry out such great things, directed by a
Gibbon* and a model episcopate ; and admiration for those tree
Americans, of every belief, who, not content with allowing to Cath-
olicism the enjoyment of all liberties, and never interfering with
the exercise of its worship and the working of its institutions, wel-
come it with respect and deference, as a great auxiliary in all the
work* and enterprises of progress and of social order.
'• 1 feel myselt honored, as well as pleased, by your visit," Mr.
Root told us, M because, though a Protestant, I have the greatest
consideration and the highest admiration for the Roman Catholic
Church." And he added later that "he was very grateful to the
Church, as it had done great good for his country; and that he
hoped that this good would become every day greater, owing to its
splendid development."
In that Republic apostolic zeal on the one hand, intelligent liber-
1907.] The Duty of the Present Hour 127
ality on the other, have been able to move mountains. This reli-
gious fecundity has, without doubt, many causes : generous disin-
terestedness, spirit of initiative, general prosperity, rapid formation
of colossal fortunes ; but it proceeds especially from the exceptional
security of the creative movement ; from the profound feeling that
the work will not be in vain, and that good may give itself to action
without the fear that legislative or administrative obstacles will be
put in its way. Every one feels himself free, because he knows that
every one honors in everybody else the honor of being free ; and he
feels pleasure and power of progress, because every^progressive move-
ment is applauded. Life is intense because liberty is intense.
Think a moment — lift up your American hearts. Why should
you begin to imitate a crumbling, atheistic,* Jacobinical movement
which, instead of guaranteeing liberty for all, has converted itself
into an oligarchy, which denies liberty to a large majority of its
citizens on account of the crime of having other belieis ?
The visit of the Minister, Mr. Root, should cause us to remember
that for us Americans, when free institutions are under considera-
tion, our example and model is the Republic of the North, as it is
even for Prance herself.
What more? If, some day, they (the anti-clericals) should come
to the point of attempting, as they now threaten, the separation of
the Church and the State, we would wish that some Catholic or
liberal deputy would propose the following bill, containing this single
article: " The relations between the Church and State, in the Re-
public of Uruguay shall be regulated according to the same system
0-8 now prevails in the United States of America."
Catholicism is not an individualistic religion, contemplating only
tfie personal salvation of its adherents. It is, essentially, a social
religion, capable of uniting men into a union, which is a fountain of
strength for peoples as well as for individuals.
It was said of the first Christians : anima una, et cor unum; they
were one single soul and one single heart ; and thus they conquered.
Those who imagine, therefore, that Catholicism claims from us
nothing more than the acceptance of its dogmas and precepts, do not
understand true Catholicism. The \ Church, in fact, is a perfect
society ; she has her traditions, her hierarchy, her discipline ; she is
absolutely one and homogeneous, so strong that, in holy liberty —
which is manifested everywhere in her many enterprises and associa-
tions — she is never in danger of breaking the bonds of a unity so
much the more solid, because accepted voluntarily and for love.
* A reference to the anti-clerical agitation in Uruguay.
128 The Duty of the Present Hour [April.
How, then, could it be supposed that, when the Church sees
herself menaced, when her liberty is attacked, all Catholics should
not feel themselves necessarily united under the direction of re-
ligious authority, which should be obeyed by all, as the present
Pontiff has just recommended?
The] Catholic union resides, therefore, in the union of heart,
sanctuaries of one self-same God, which one self-same spirit actu-
ates, which one self-same love embraces. It is not the artificial and
arbitrary union of a human party. Let us, then, be penetrated
with the divine greatness of that union and unity which Christ
brought to the world: "I desire," Christ said, "that you be one,
as I am one with the Father.' 1
And would it not be proper to ask ourselves if we have not
sinned against this duty of unity in fixing our attention on political
parties? Let us, then, know how to open our souls to the love of
Christ, to the love of all our brothers in Christ ; this is the secret
of true union. And this union, the Pope tells us, gives us strength,
victory. We have a divine Church, a unity of which God himself
closes the beneficent bonds, to the end that we need not, to be
united, the poor and miserable unity of a party ; for Catholic union
does not require a Catholic party.
Current Events.
The future of the people of Russia
Russia. is still unsettled, whether it will
be their lot to receive and to re-
secure possession of a reasonable measure of self-govem-
xient, or whether, after all, they are to remain crushed beneath
he yoke of soul-destroying tyranny. The prospects, however,
are good, although the enemies to be encountered are numerous.
With few exceptions, the highest nobility and government officials
of all degrees, supported, we regret to say, by almost the entire
body of the orthodox clergy, and by the lower nobility, along
with the upper middle classes, are opponents of the limitation
proposed to be set by a constitution upon the will of the auto-
crat. On the same side, too, are the money-lenders who de-
rive unjust profits from the effects of an absolutist regime.
Allied to them are the riff-raff of the cities who represent the
I lowest element, manifesting quite plainly the self-will and self-
seeking which are the characteristics of absolutism. The reliance
of all is upon the brute force which is found in the support of
the army.
On the other side (always remembering that from all ranks
individual supporters of the movement for the reign of law and
order may be found) are the learned classes, university men, pro-
fessors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, the rising middle classes,
together with the pupils of the high schools. Behind those,
forming the rank and file, are the working classes of the cities
and the vast masses of the peasants throughout the country.
The question of supreme importance is whether or no any
real power is to be given to the Duma, whether it is to have
a voice in law-making, or whether its sole end is to give utter-
ance to opinions which may or may not "he listened to. Even
if at first its sphere were limited to the latter alternative, it
would not be without influence and power, for it would be
able to mold public opinion, and, after all, public opinion is
the most potent of powers in our days, to which kings and
parliaments — and even presidents — have to yield. But the
clanger is lest, in the face of such an attempt at limitation, the
representatives of working men and peasants, eager to have
teir wrongs set right, may be too impatient, and so insist
VOL. LXXXV. — p
130 Current Events [April,
upon securing everything at once, and thus bring on again a
dissolution. This, however, is a matter of conjecture. As a
matter of actual fact, the government professes a desire to have
a Duma made up of moderate men, likely to adopt sensible
plans. They have, by various ordinances, tried to secure this
end in the old-established way of limiting the franchise. Those
ordinances were not arbitrary acts, at least in appearance.
They were authoritative interpretations made by the Senate of
the electoral law of the eleventh of December, 1905. The re-
sult, however, has been that tens of thousands who voted for
the last Duma have been unable to vote for the new Duma.
In another way the government have acted with what looks
like oppressive injustice. On account of the Viborg manifests
the most numerous and the most influential party in the last
Duma— the Constitutional Democrats — have been treated as re-
volutionaries, and, consequently, no facilities for electoral pur-
poses have been allowed to them. By these and other means
. it has been sought to obtain an assembly more amenable to
control than was the last.
The result of repressive action on the part of the govern-
ment seems to be to accentuate the tendency which exists on
the Continent to split up into numerous parties. This is seen
in every country in Europe, and Russia forms no exception.
There are no less than nine groups. The most numerous of
these, notwithstanding the action of the government, is the
Constitutional Democratic Party. It has 108 members, where-
as in the first Duma it had 185. The restrictions placed upon
it during the electoral period had the effect, therefore, of dimin-
ishing its numbers, but also, it is said, of making more power-
ful the more extreme opponents of the established order — the
Socialists — who, in the present Duma, number 77, while in the
former there were only 17. The rest of what is called the Left
consists of the Toil and Left groups, numbering together 98, as
compared with 94 before, and the Progressives 35 in number,
compared with 25. In the former • Duma there was no Right
simply so called, but the present assembly has a group so called,
72 in number, while the Octobrists and Moderates number to-
gether 31, against 13 formerly. This variety of groups ought,
it might have been thought, to have furnished a home for every
species of practical politicians. There were, however, in the
former Duma no less than 112 Independents; in the present.
1907.] Current Events 131
however, there are only 21. The members representing Poland
and Siberia are not included in the classification just given. Be-
tween the two Dumas there cannot be said to be any continuity,
for there are only 26 members of the former in the present
Duma.
The effect of fine clothes upon the last Duma not having
been very great, the present was opened without any dazzling
ceremonies. M. Golovin, a Constitutional Democrat, was elect-
ed President by a vote of 356 in his favor, against 102. He
19 a well-known public man, and much respected as president
of the Moscow Zemstvo, and in various other capacities.
Exuberant rhetoric and impossible idealism were marked
features of the former assembly. In the present Duma the
speaking is said to be poor, and the fear of dissolution has
made its members more practical, and therefore more concili-
atory. This promises well ; and M. Stolypin, on his part, has
made equally good promises : no less than a transformation of
Russia into a constitutional State. The rights of the State are
to be limited and defined. The rights of private individuals
*re to be secured. The contradictions which he admits exist
between the laws and the arbitrary interpretations which, as a
consequence, are possible, are to be abolished. More land is
to be given to the peasants. One of the most tyrannical fea-
tures of what has passed for government hitherto, administrative
exile, which rendered every one's liberty dependent upon the
STOod pleasure of a provincial governor, is to be abrogated.
While the union of Church and State is to be maintained, as
well as the privileges of the Church, toleration is to be granted
*° all who dissent. Various measures in favor of the working-
tB&n are to be introduced, thereby formally recognizing the
duty of the State to do all in its power to improve his lot.
On the other hand, M. Stolypin made a call for fresh taxation,
a ^d intimated that an income tax would be imposed. In con-
tusion, he declared that the pacification and regeneration of
Russia were possible only through the realization of new prin-
ciples of government. He placed at the disposal of the Duma
Ws experience and his good will; and solemnly promised that
the government would work along with it for the establishment
- °f a firm, real Russian government, with the Emperor at its
■ tad. M. Stolypin has proved himself a strong and an honest
*tQi able to resist the anarchy which has its source both above
132 Current Events [April,
and below. It will soon be seen whether the Duma will fol-
low him and, by so doing, take the first steps on the right
road, adjourning (or a future day the attainment of the fall
measure of parliamentary power. The reception given to his
speech was good, and has increased his power and influence.
The rapprochement with England, which has been so long
a matter of negotiation, seems to be near accomplishment.
Praise of England is now in the mouth of every Russian, on
account of the contributions which have been made to the suf-
ferers from famine. If the long standing animosity which has
existed between the two countries should be removed on this
account, it would be a double triumph.
No record of events in Russia would approach completeness
which did not refer to assassinations, robberies, and various
other outrages. Although these still abound, their number and
importance have diminished. What might have proved a more
than usually sensational blow was prevented by the discovery
of an attempt to wreck a train for the sake of killing one of
the Grand Dukes. The fact that the Tsar has invited to dinner
for the first time for some three years the diplomatists residing
at St. Petersburg is taken as an indication that the ordinary
routine of civilized life has been resumed. The hopes enter-
tained of the successful issue of the deliberations of the Duma
have caused an increase in the value of Russian stocks in the
bourses of Europe.
The new Reichstag has met, and
Germany. during the debate on the estimates
has been occupied in fighting the
electoral battle over again. One or two noteworthy events
have thus been brought out. Although on the first ballots
Catholics and Socialists were opponents, on the second ballots
in the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia, and in several con-
stituencies in Bavaria, many Catholics either voted for Socialist
candidates or helped them by abstaining from voting. Another
point is that the Social Democrats, although they have lost a
large number of seats, have yet increased their vote more than
any other party, and are still the representatives of a greater
number of the people of Germany. The fact is that every third
voter was a Social Democrat, every fifth a Catholic, $very sev-
enth a National Liberal, and every tenth a Conservative... ^
1 907. ] Current e vents 133
The most striking revelation that has been made with refer-
ence to the election is with regard to the action taken by the
Navy League and the co-operation of the Government in that
action. The Chancelleries of Europe are full, it is well known,
of secrets of so compromising a character that they would, if
brought to light, make the officials at their head seek the most
remote seclusion in order to hide themselves. It would seem
that the headquarters of political parties or associations are not
more able to bear the turning on of the light A Bavarian
journal, by an act of theft which cannot be justified, obtained
possession of certain secret correspondence of the Navy League's
manager, General Keim, with officials of the Colonial Office, and
with the Chancellor himself, Prince Billow. This correspondence
showed that, in aid of the attack which the Navy League had
made during the election upon the Catholic Centre, the Prince
had contributed a* fairly large sum of money. One of the
worst features of the Navy League's proceedings was the ear-
nest effort which it made to stir up the fury of Protestants
against Catholics by inflammatory tracts, in which they were
held up to obloquy as unpatriotic, anti- national, the subjects of
a foreign power. These attacks were bad enough in themselves,
but that the government should actively support them is still
worse. For not to take into consideration the fact that Prince
Billow has been dependent upon the support of the Centre for
the success of most of the measures which he has carried since
he has been Chancellor, the recognized principles of govern-
ment in Germany should have precluded its co-operation with
tny one of the numerous parties. As the existence of the gov-
ernment is not dependent upon a parliamentary majority, every
government hitherto has felt it the only course consonant with
its dignity that it should hold itself aloof from all and above
*H» Prince Bismarck looked upon this as the prudent mode
°f action. Not so Prince Bulow. Acting according to the con-
vtction to which he has given utterance, that every man in this
rude world must be either the hammer or the anvil, he has
m *de quite clear his determination not to be the anvil, and has
been led thereby to bring down the political methods of the
holders of power in the German Empire to a level lower than
ha* e ver been adopted before. And this without any com-
Pouting benefit; for the Centre remains the most powerful
Y**ty, and has naturally taken up an attitude of hostility, in-
134 Current Events [April,
stead of one of friendship. The Navy League, too, is meeting
with part of the punishment which it has deserved, for of it
many Catholics were members, and these are now leaving it in
large numbers.
The Emperor himself, we regret to say, has gone out of his
way to make himself responsible for the proceedings of the
Navy League; for in public he expressed to Prince Salm, its
President, his delight that the Navy League had done its work
so well. If this represents the real opinion of the Emperor, he
cannot look to the Centre for the support which, according to
some, it would be only too. willing to give on account of their
mutual reverence for authoritative government. But that the
Centre is devoted to absolutism is disproved by the history of its
action since its existence. From the beginning of German parlia-
mentary life the basis of the Centre has been constitutionalism
and the maintenance of existing State and Church rights. While
Prince Bismarck was able to bind hand and foot to his chariot
the National Liberals, and was steadily supported by the Con-
servatives, he was constantly thwarted by the Centre. It has
always been thoroughly patriotic in its foreign policy and has
always been willing to provide adequate funds for the army
and the navy, but at the same time it has resisted all at-
tempts to eliminate the Reichstag as a constitutional factor in
the government, to narrow the basis of the electorate, or to im-
pair its control of the Budget Its vote in December last was
given on the lines of the same policy. Many students of the
political situation think that a crisis is approaching, and that a
fundamental reformation is required. The Centre's part in this,
judging from its past, will be to strengthen the Empire not
to weaken it; the party will strive to establish the reign of
law and order, by broadening the basis on which the Empire
rests, it will not seek security in the extension of the powers
of any individual. In what is looked upon as a luminous little
book written by the Strassburg Professor, Dr. Martin Spahn,
son of the leader of the Centre, there will be found a very
interesting and instructive history of this party and an exposi-
tion of its principles.
As the Centre remains the strongest party in the Reichstag,
in spite of all the efforts of the Government, the problem pre-
sented to the Prince of governing without its help, or even i
opposition to it, is one of sufficient difficulty. Success will de
L
1907.] Current Events 135
pend on the ability to form what has been called a Hottentot
bloc. This is to be accomplished by finding a policy in the
support of which the Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals, not-
withstanding their fundamental divisions, can unite. The only
hope of doing this is by mutual agreement on national ques-
tions, such as the navy and foreign policy, and in representing
the Centre as unpatriotic. The first step taken by the forces
allied against the Centre at the meeting of the Reichstag was
to deprive it of the honor heretofore accorded to it of choosing
the President from among its members. A Conservative was
elected with a National Liberal and a Radical as Vice-Presidents.
In the speech from the Throne, at the opening of the
Reichstag, the Emperor declared that it was his intention con-
entiously to respect all constitutional rights and privileges,
d Prince Biilow declared in the debate on the Estimates that
thae idea of a personal rigim* being even desired by the Emperor
w«ts a kind of bogey with which to frighten children. He re-
pudiated with warmth the allegation that his government had
acay unconstitutional intentions or views. The most important
peart of the Emperor's speech is/that in which he refers to the
determination of the Federated Governments " to continue their
social work in the lofty spirit of the Emperor, William the
Great." This is thought to imply that the government will
Promote social legislation on a large scale lor the good of the
w *>rking classes. It is the contention of Prince 1 Biilow that the
Proposals of the Social Democrats have been such as it was
I °^ possible practically to realize; that everything really good
1X1 these proposals has been embodied in the measures passed
ky the government; that, in fact, Germany is already in ad-
v *nce of all other countries. It is, however, its intention to
So s ti]l further and to promote measures which will remove
Qv fery obstacle to a complete reconciliation between the classes
**°W opposed one to the other.
The relations of Germany to its neighbors remain unchanged.
*t*fere are, however, rumors from Paris which, if they should
Prove well-founded, will bring about another complication.
*~*st month an arrangement was made with Denmark which
Amoved certain disabilities under which some of the inhabi-
tants of Schleswig labored. This was but an indication of the
**t*nt$ which has now been formed, it is said, between Den-
utark and Germany, one of the consequences of which will be
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i
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in.
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136 Current Events [Ap
a step towards the closing of the Baltic Sea to foreign shi
Germany is fighting to secure this grave modification of
status quo, the report says, by entering into the most frien
relations with the kings and peoples not only of Denmark, 1
also of Sweden and Norway. By the neutralization of
Danish straits the Kaiser would make the Baltic a mare clausx
and secure effective protection for the German coast and,
particular, for the port of Kiel. As the powers shut out
this arrangement are not likely to acquiesce readily, a strug
would ensue. In fact the opposition would clearly be so gr
that it seems very doubtful that such a scheme is really o
templated.
There are even yet Strange survivals of old political syste
The Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg- Schwerin and Mecklenbu
Strelitz form two of these survivals, for they have been hith
to two absolute monarchies in the midst of the constitutic
federation of the German Empire. The two Grand Duct
have a common assembly, indeed, but it is so constituted t
it does not act as a check upon the Grand Ducal power,
rather as a support. The more democratic part of the assem
has striven, by absenting themselves from its meetings, to
cure a reform. At last the Grand Dukes have jointly \
nounced their intention to introduce a form of constitutic
government. The details have not yet been revealed ; but 1
constitution will mark a step in advance.
There is very little to record *
Austria-Hungary. reference to the Dual Monarc
Austria is on the eve of electi<
for the Parliament, which is to be chosen for the first time
universal suffrage, and which will doubtless lead to radi
changes. Efforts are being made to make with Hungary
economical agreement satisfactory to both countries. Such
agreement is made every ten years. The last lapsed twe
years ago, and since its lapse every effort to renew it
failed. There is a slight prospect that this effort will succc
There is nothing better than the love of liberty. But
often this love is one-sided; it means only the desire to b
one's own way and not to allow others the same privil*
An .illustration of this is found in a recent conflict between
Poles and the Ruthenes in Galicia. The woes and wrong's
1 907. ] Current E vents i 3 7
the Poles have long excited the sympathy of all who themselves
enjoy free institutions, but when they themselves, as soon as
an opportunity presents itself, become, 'to the extent of their
power, oppressors, a check is given to this sympathy. A month
or two ago the Ruthene students at the Polish University of
Lemberg wished to take the required oath in their mother
tongue and not in Polish. The authorities would not listen to
this. Tumults followed, and some 80 students were arrested
and confined in insanitary rooms in the common prison, and
kept there for a long time. Nor were they able to secure their
release until they began what is called a hunger strike, that is,
they refused to take any food. This had the desired effect,
for the students were then released ; but not before they had
been the occasion of showing to the world how bad a use of
the liberty which they possess is made by some at least of a
people who have so long been seeking, and rightly seeking,
their own freedom.
The negotiations between the
France. French bishops and the govern-
ment for leases of the churches
have come to an end, or at least have been suspended indefi-
nitely. A full discussion of the reasons for the breakdown would
exceed our limits ; but it looks very much as if the government
did not really wish to grant the leases, and deliberately placed
conditions which they knew could not be accepted. The use
°f the churches is, at present, we will not say secured, but con-
ceded for public worship, and this without any notification in
ac cordance with the provisions of the new Law. How long
things will remain in this state no one can say. A more ex-
treme government may come into power and close the churches
^together. On the other hand, those who still hold the faith
*n Prance may become more zealous and courageous, and greater
a Umbers may embrace it. In this event such a government as
the present could not remain in power. The French people, if
***ey really wish for a better state of things, have it in their
Power to secure it.
Social questions of various kinds are now coming on for dis-
cission. The Sunday Rest Law, recently passed, requires
Modification. The Socialists and Collectivists in the Chamber
** a ve, however, very little likelihood of carrying out their plans.
138 Current Events . [April.
The present electors are resolutely opposed to all proposals
which involve anything like spoliation, and are far more ready-
to defend their own property than they are that of the churchy
The advent of the Conservative
Spain. ministry to power in Spain h^$
been followed by a decree, in the
King's name, which abrogates the decree of August 27 , 1906,
which authorized civil marriage without a declaration relative
to the religion of the contracting parties. This decree of the
King is the effect of the clear manifestation of the unpopular*
ity of the previous decree.
The Conference soon to be held
The Hague Conference. at the Hague will be of great im-
portance. A great many more
nations are to send their representatives to this Conference than
were sent to the last Conference. It seems likely that there
will even be a discussion on the limitation of armaments. The
article of the British Prime Minister, and his support of the
proposal, seem to have settled this question. Limitation of
armaments will not be decided at. the present meeting; bufc
the friendly discussion may lead the way to a decision in tb^
not remote future.
r
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.
PL. CONNELLAN, the Roman Correspondent of the Dublin Freetnan*s
m Journal, writes as follows :
The announcement of the death of Jeremiah Curtin recalls to my mind
my acquaintance with him, and the prolonged conversations I had with him
during his visit to Rome in the March of 1894. It wa§ at the Irish College I
first fell in with him, and he was deeply impressed with the importance of
that institution in such a centre of study as Rome is. He was then keen on
the revival of the ancient Irish language, and he related to me how his at-
tention was drawn to it.
When he was a student in Harvard College, near Boston, his first idea
f was, he said, to learn the Aryan languages — all the languages that are
spoken now or were spoken at any time by the Aryan stock, from the Bay
of Bengal to the Bay of Galway.
"A great friend of mine," he said, "Professor John Fiske, and myself
talked these matters over. At that time, in our student plans, we divided
the work between us. He was to become the great man on mythology.
... I got at the mythologies, and he went to history.' 1
In the language and literature of Ireland Mr. Curtin became an expert.
The Gaelic languages were to him the most interesting of all those spoken
by white men, by reason of the very striking peculiarities that he found in
them, and which became the more striking the more he studied them. In
his student days he used to keep up his practice of Gaelic by reading the
New Testament in the Irish language. Then he was forced into the study of
the Slav languages ; but all the time he was engaged at these he studied
Gaelic, more or less, by fits and starts.
In 1887, as he related to me, it entered his mind that he had reached
such a stage in his studies concerning the early history of mankind that it
became necessary for him to go to Ireland. And when he reached that land
he began his researches under the advice of the Rev. Patrick A. Walshe, of
the Vincentian Fathers, Cork, who gave him letters and recommendations of
great value to him. Father O'Growney, of Maynooth, was especially help-
ful to him.
It was the folk lore of Ireland and its myths that Mr. Curtin was desirous
of learning, and in the pursuit of this his greatest difficulty was to find the
people who knew the stories in which these were embodied. After a certain
search, he said, he found some people who knew the stories, and in all cases
these people were peasants ; and of those he met with only two who told him
the stories in English, and no one who did not know Irish could tell him a
story. This constituted the substance of his book, The Myths and Folk Lore
0/ Ireland.
A second visit to Ireland, in 1892, resulted in the publication of fifty
140 The Columbian Reading Union. [April,
stories published weekly in the New York Sun without interruption, and paid
for generously by the great editor of that journal, the late Charles A. Dana.
4 ' There are two or three groups of these Irish stories, "said Mr. Cur tin tome,
" that are among the earliest and the best preserved of the whole Aryan '
mythology." One of them is the story connected with Lear and his wife;
another is connected with the cow"glas gawnach" ; and a third is that of
Balor of the Evil Eye, or the striking Balor.
He considered these stories unrivalled. They are as fine, he thought, in
language as the Dying Gladiator is in sculpture. And this arises from the
fact that they described their theme without extreme political exaggeration,
and intense energy. This, he said, was accomplished by many devices which.
are not yet known through translations, but are most remarkable things in
European literature.
It was at this time also that the great Polish novelist, Sienkiewicz, was in
Rome, studying or verifying the local color and elaborate antiquarian lore
which he afterwards displayed in his remarkable work, Quo Vadis. Witk*
Mr. Curtin, I saw this notable author in the Piazza di Spagna, and there
noted the tall, elegant figure, with the handsome features and the calm darsuc
eyes of this widely-read romance writer.
At a reception in the house of an artist, where many tongues were spoken ,
I saw Mr. Curcin, this translator of so many works of the Polish novelist, in
conversation with persons of very different languages, and speaking with eacB^
•one in his own tongue.
Mr. Curtin was born in Milwaukee, in 1840, of Irish parents, and lai.^
the foundation of his great philological learning in a little pioneer home on 9
Greenfield farm. He early acquired a rudimentary knowledge of German,
Norwegian, and Polish by talking to the emigrant settlers of the neighbo*^.
hood. Later, when he went to Harvard, his tendency for the languages
further asserted itself, and took definite shape. After his graduation fro -mt
Hir/ard, in 1863, President Lincoln appointed him Secretary of theLegati^^i
at St. Petersburg, a position that he was well adapted to fill, and one ttn^t
gave him further opportunity of developing his linguistic talents. Wh.ml<
he was at the court of St. Petersburg he met Sienkiewicz and they becavxic
fast friends. It was the great Polish author himself who suggested that N*Ir.
Curtin undertake the translation of his works. Later Mr. Curtin became Con-
sul-General at St. Petersburg.
He traveled extensively, and wrote entertaingly of his journeys. P*or
many years he lived among the Indians in remote parts of California. IHs
wife accompanied him on all his trips, and also helped him in some of bis
literary work. Besides his translations, Mr. Curtin is the author of a nunVber
of books relating to folk literature. Among them are Myths and Folk Hales
of Ireland, Western Slavs and Mongols, Creation Myths of Primitive America
and Their Religious and Mental Relations to the History of Mankind, The
Mongols, and others. He was engaged for many years in work for the Bureau
of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution.
• • •
To " compile a record of the world's progress, from the dim dawn in the
Tigris-Euphrates and Nile valleys to the full noonday of twentieth-century de-
I907-] the Columbian reading Union 141
,t!optncnt," seems a prodigious task. Yet a Catholic writer, Francis T.
furey, nas accomplished it with a remarkable degree of success. He is pro-
fessor of History in the Cahill High School, Philadelphia, and author of An
gjpUnation of the Constitution of the United Stales, and other historical
w0 ,|ts. His History of the World (Philadelphia : John C. Winston Company)
isismall quarto of 725 pages, profusely illustrated. In tone it is moderate,
; n narrative facile and entertaining. The author is no theorist, and he writes
„iihcut bias. On geological and ethnological points he is in touch with the
current of modern thought and learning. He does not strive to conciliate
religious folks, but he says nothing to offend them. He believes the facts of
history a °d science are not necessarily opposed 10 the sta'.fmcnts of the
Mosaic books. He accepts long'established traditions. He believes the
details of warfare less important than the historical results of great conflicts.
An index will greatly facilitate reference, but as it stands it is a book helpful
10 the young student, and good reading for everybody.
According to a writer in the London Tablet the death of Miss Agnes May
Clerke removes one of the most accomplished women and eminent Blitish
astronomers of the day. Born in Ireland, in 1842, she lived for a num-
ber of years in Italy before settling in London in 1877. She and her sister
Mis; Ellen Mary Clerke, who preceded her to the tomb by a few months, both
became Edinburgh Reviewers under the auspices of .the late Henry Reeve,
the great appreciator of their talents. Miss Clerke made observations on be-
half of the British Government at the Cape Observatory in 1SS8, and she
was awarded the Actonian Prize of a hundred guineas five years later. Her
greater triumph came in 1903, when she was elected Hon. Fellow of the
Royal Astionomical Society. She has left behind such widely-known scien-
tific works as Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century, Problems in Astro-
physics, and Modern Cosmogonies.
An astronomical correspondent writes to the London Times with refer-
ence to Miss Clerke: " During the last century two ladies only were elected
honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society — Caroline Herschel
and Mrs. Somerville. The new century soon saw fresh honorary members
elected, and among them Miss Agnes Clerke, whose last important woik,
Problems in Astrophysics, was of such great scientific value that the Astro-
nomical Society could no longer ignore her claims to public recognition by
I them. And when we say * last important work' we must acknowledge also
die outstanding merit of the two earlier books. The System of the Stars and
History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century, besides less important vol-
umes, The Herscheis and Modern Astronomy, Modern Cosmogonies, and
many scientific magazine articles, principally of the nature of reviews or in-
terpretations of results, in which her keen insight into the true significance of
observed physical facts was as wonderful as her fluency and command of lan-
guage, so that both from the literary and scientific standpoints she must be
ranked as a great scientific writer. No one writing a history of modern as-
ironomy can fail to acknowledge the great debt owed to her masterly array of
facts.
Miss Clerke performed, as it seemed no other writer had done, the work
I
142 The Columbian Reading Union [Apri:
of collation and interpretation of this enormous mass of new material, ev<
pointing the way to new fields of investigation, often by one pregnant sugge
tion sweeping aside a whole sheaf of tentative conjectures, and indicating,
not the true line — for in many cases the truth is yet to seek — at least, a plai
sible and scientific line well worth pursuing. Nor did she disdain the hun
bier ambition of leading the young children of convent schools to enlarf
their vision of the heavens, as may be seen by the preface she wrote for tt
little play which, teaching astronomy as a diversion, is called " Stars witl
out Stripes."
• • •
Workers for the Apostolate of the Press should be encouraged by tt
following letter from a Catholic teacher in Newtown Grove, North Carolin.
written to Brother Edward, of De La Salle Institute, New York City. Tl
teacher says he is now living at a mission where all the people are conver
or children of converts. There are three hnndred Catholics in the place.
How did they become converts? Some twenty-five years ago, a m;
named Dr. Monk received a package, around which was wrapped a copy of
New York daily paper. In this paper was an article by Archbishop McClc
key on "The Authority and Infallibility of the Church."
Dr. Monk read the article, and became so impressed by it that he want
to read more. He began trying to discover where he could find the near*
Catholic priest who might tell him more about the Church. He found tfc
the nearest priest was Father Gross, of Wilmington, Delaware. He and
his family went to Delaware to see the priest, and in due time they were \
ceived into the Church.
Dr. Monk returned to his home, but not to be an idler in the work of t
Lord. He went among his neighbors and told them about the Church, a.
many of them listened and studied and prayed, and in time were baptized
children of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven.
One of Dr. Monk's granddaughters is now a Sister of Mercy, and
grandson joined the Benedictine Order at Belmont, North Carolina.
All these wonderful conversions have come about through the grace
God and an old newspaper which contained a good article on the Churc]
Until Dr. Monk and his family became converts, there were no Cath«
lies in Newtown Grove.
There are many places like Newtown Grove as it was twenty-five yeai
ago. A visit from a priest, or the circulation of the missionary literature
published at reduced rates by the Columbus Press, might change. the plac
as Dr. Monk changed Newtown Grove.
• • •
In the great centres of civilization the importance of the pedagogu
and of pedagogy is fully realized. Great professors enjoy incomes larg<
than those of Governors of the various States. In the public schools th
principals and head teachers are paid better than were college presidents!
former days. Education has been made into a science as well as an art, an
now covers so large a field that an extensive literature has already come ini
being upon the subject. So many are the works already in existence and tl
periodical publications that it is no longer possible for the general reader l
1907]
The Columbian Reading Union
143
keep informed upon the subject. Only the specialist and the bibliographer
can keep thoroughly in touch with the movement as a whole. For their
benefit primarily, for all educators secondarily, and lastly for the general
public, Prof. Will S. Moqroe, of the Massachusetts State Normal School, has
prepared a bibliography of education, which appears in list of publica-
tions known as the International Educational Series. (New York: Apple-
ton &Co.) In the preface the author gives several interesting facts upon
the growth of education's literature.
"In the Central Pedagogical Library at Leipzig, founded twenty-five
years ago, there are 66,604 books and pamphlets on the subject of education.
The Mus6e Pedagogique at Paris, founded in 1879 by the French Govern-
ment, contains 50,000 pedagogical books. The National Pedagogical li-
braries of Belgium, Switzerland and Russia each contain over 15,000 vol-
umes. In the city of Berlin there are two such special libraries, the one con-
taining 16,000 and the other 14,500 volumes. In the South Kensington
Museum, London, there are 10,500 books upon the subject of education, and
the Teachers' Guild, of Great Britain and Ireland, has a pedagogical library
of more than 6,000 volumes.
"In America no less than in Europe there has been marked develop-
ment in the collection of books on education. The library connected with
the Bureau of Education at Washington has over fifty thousand books and
I 5°»ooo pamphlets on education and subjects more or less directly allied to
education."
The author has not undertaken the herculean task of cataloguing this
▼*st amount of literature. He has confided himself to 3,200 entries, so as to
include the more desirable or available books and pamphlets on the subject
w hich have appeared in the English language. The arrangement of his work
18 simple and ingenious.
He first gives the names and addresses of the leading publishers in both
Great Britain and America. He then classifies his work into a number of
Ceneral divisions, such as works of reference, under which head he brings in
bibliographies and encyclopaedias; history of education, theory of education,
methods of instruction, school administration, professional education, moral
education, physical education, school systems, and educational conferences.
M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Longmans, Greek & Co.. New York :
Hypnotism and Spiritism. A Critical and Medical Study. By Dr. Joseph Lappoa^-
Translated from the ad revised edition by Mrs. Philip Gibbs. Pp. xL-are. The L^emn
of the Spiritual Life. By B. W. Maturin. Formerly of Cowley St. John. Ozfo cd*
Price $1.50. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. By Frederic W. ~H*
Myers. Edited and abridged by his son. Leopold Hamilton Myers. Price $3. ~&1
mail, $3.20. Literary Forgeries. By J. A. Farrar. Price $3.25.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York:
Thomas a Kempis: His Age and His Book. By J. E. G. de Montmorency. B.A.. LL D
Illustrated. Pp. xxiv.-3ia.
Bbnziger Brothers. New York:
The Mother of Jesus. In the First Age and After. By J. Herbert Williams. Pp
264. History of Ireland from the F.arliest Times to the Present Day. By Rev. E. A.
ton. M.R.I.A. In three vols. Vols. I., II. From the earliest times to the year 1
2d Edition. Price $3 net, each volume. Indulgences : Their Origin, Nature,
velopment. By Rev. F. Alexius M. Llpicier, O.S.M. New Edition. Enlarged.
$175. The. Or eat Fundamental Truths. A Simple and Popular Course of Higher
ligious Instruction : Book I. The Church. By Rev. R. C. Bodkin. CM. Sen
By the Most Rev. Dr. Moriarty, Late Bishop of Kerry. Price $2. The Witch of
ingdale and Ridingdale Flower Show. By David J. Beanie, S.J. Price 85 cents ~~
Christian Press Association, New York :
Meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. By Father C. Borgo, S.J. Pp.
Price 50 cents net. Postage 5 cents extra.
Isaac Pitman & Sons. New York :
Phonic Word List. By S. F. Buchelew and M. W. Lewis. Pp. 5-109. Price 30
Funk & Wacnalls, New York :
The Psychic Riddle. By Isaac K. Funk. D.D.. LL.D. Pp. viii.-*43. Price $x net.
B. Herder. St. Louis :
The Maid of Desenxano. A Drama in Three Acts. By Rev. P. Kaenders, Price u$
The Rule of St. Benedict. Edited with an English Translation and Explanatory N
By D. Oswald Hunter Blair, M.A. 2d Edition. Price $1. On Religious War.
Some Defects in Popular Worship. By Mgr. Bonomelli. Bishop of Crenlona
Letter to the English Translator, R. E. Price 80 cents.
Reic Publishing Company. Milwaukee, Wis.:
Rules of Order for Societies. Conventions, Publtc Meetings, and Legislative
Charles M. Scan Ian, LL.B. Pp. no. Second Edition.
Librairie Victor Lecoffrb, Paris :
La Carte Religieux de Paris. Statistique des Enterrements Religieux et Civfls a Pub
1883 a 1903. Par TAbbe* L. Raffin. Le Vinerable Pere Eudes. Par Henri Joli. ~
ifr. Questions d' Enseignment Superieur Ecclesiastique. Par Mgr. P. BatiffoL
3 A- 50.
Gabriel Beauchesne et Cie, Paris:
Valeur des Decisions Doctrinales et Disciplinaries du Saint-Siege. Pp. 388. Prix 4
Vie de la Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie d' Apres Its Manuscrits et tea Duct
Originaux. Par Auguste Hamon. Pp. xxxix.-537. Prix 7 fr. Figures da J/<
Par Eugene Griselle. Pp. xii.-3io. Prix 4 fr.
Emile Nourry. Paris:
Le Miracle et la Critique Historique. Par P. Saint Yves. Pp. 151. Prix \fr. 9$.
Dogme de la Trinite dans Us Trois Premiers Slides. Par Antoine Dnptn. Pp.
Prix ifr. 25.
Australian Catholic Truth Society, Melbourne:
l Lii St. Francis of Assist and Mediaval Catholicism. Old Times in the Barony. ReOgiam
Society. Religion and Amusements. Pamphleis. Price 1 penny.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. LXXXV. MAY, 1907. No. 506.
HUMAN NATURE AND PROPERTY.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, Ph.D.
■HE forms and (unctions of property have under-
gone many changes in the course of history.
During the epoch out of which we appear to be
departing, it was looked upon largely as a sort
of extension of the individual's personality — an
appendage to him — and his control over it was ethically sanc-
tioned by reference to his personal needs, or to his expression
of personality through productive labor. Leo XIII. adopts this
method of argument in his well-known encyclical. It would
seem, however, that in the epoch into which we appear to be
entering, property will take on a highly socialized form, per-
forming new functions and demanding new principles of judg-
ment and control. Every day managers of great properties tell
us that these and not they are supreme; that policy, method,
*n«l government of railroad or trust or corporation of any kind
must be directed as their specific interests demand. Not prop-
e *"ty in individual hands, but the properties of hundreds asso-
ciated into one mass under one management, become the eco-
Q ckcnic unit. Through this change, property has become a reser*
Vc *i r of great social power. Instead of being an individual fact
****• the sake of society, it becomes a social fact for the sake of
***^ individual.
In its present forms and functions it can no longer be argu>
****■ and defended by recurring to the obvious tacts th
Copyright, 1907, Thi Missionaut Sociitt or St, .Paul tm ,
in th* Stats or Niw. voik.
VOL. LXXXV.— 10
146 Human Nature and Property [May,
must eat and drink and be clothed. The question that Socialism
has forced to the front concerns the process by which useful
things — wealth, literally speaking — shall be produced and brought
to the individual. The essential motive of property is con-
sumption. The moral law governing property, in last analysis*
is based on consumption. The drift of things is bringing out
very clearly the differences between production and consump-
tion, and the vital struggle to-day turns on the former.
Many relations are involved in any discussion of property.
Natural forms of property are unlike artificial symbols ; a bushel
of wheat and a silver dollar and an elevator receipt are quite
distinct things. Again, the facts in the distribution of property
must be well distinguished from the social efficiency of prop-
erty, and this has both an objective and a subjective side.
Again, property is wealth and property is capital; in other^
words, consumption and production are distinct and may nob.,
be confused in any argument. In these pages attention is dU
rected mainly to property and its symbols; to its efficiency
and social valuation ; to the passion for accumulation and re-
straints placed in its way. Later an exposition of Socialism
will be made in the terms of this analysis.
I.
It was suggested in a preceding article that self-estimate is.
fundamental in the normal individual, and that life is practically
a process of self-realization. We noted resistance against di-
minution or extinction, passion for recognition, desire for power,,
freedom, and action; the hope and aim of self- perpetuation in
the family as important features in the process. It was sug-
gested that men usually tend to realize themselves in the terms
of social valuations to which they are sympathetically exposed.
Though religion gives us absolute valuations, and education and
culture reinforce many of them, nevertheless human nature
goes on in its own obstinate way, self- realizing as it will, in
spite of ideals and laws and noble truths. Self is an elastic
concept. It includes all of our points of contact with world
and society. To quote Professor James : " A man's sell is the
sum total of all that he can call his, not onjy his body and his
psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and
children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works,
is lands and horses and yacht and bank account." This is
1907.] Human Nature and Property 147
because of the social valuation attached to these objects, and of
their service to us in our process of self-realization. Property is
characterized to-day by extraordinarily high social valuation. It
has greatest social efficiency, serving nearly all of the purposes
in self-realization. It is, therefore, intensely desired, passion-
ately sought, and held to vigorously. All economic, social,
moral life is affected immeasurably by this valuation. It is the
heart of the social and moral questions that harass society to-
*3ay. Little progress may be expected, unless a charge in so-
cial valuations precede all other forms of effort at improvement,
II.
If one would approach the study of Socialism from the side
of social valuations, one ought to analyze, even briefly, the
nature and forms of property as far as these are factors in the
problem. Keeping in mind climate and country such as ours,
it is clear that man has need of food, clothing, and shelter in
order to live at all. To live well and develop mind and heart,
he needs leisure, instruction, social contact. The primary, natu-
ral way to get the things needed for physical existence is to
make or produce them by actual labor. It may be assumed
that a father should provide for his family, and that he should
accumulate in advance of actual needs, in order to provide
against emergency, failure of food crop, sickness, or his own
death. In a word, we suppose strong incentive to save neces-
saries in advance of needs. Now, assuming that men must ac ■
tually store the things in question, there being no barter and no
money, as the condition is taken, the incentive to accumulate will
be checked forcibly. The bulk of things would make saving
awkward ; they may spoil ; they must be watched or evil men
might steal what they wanted. In such circumstances, no great
passion for accumulation will develop, and the natural judgment
of the function of property will not be much disturbed, nor will
property take on a social valuation much beyond its actual re-
lation to physical life. The discovery of ways to preserve or
<lry food products might remove danger of spoiling, but the
practical obstacles to hoarding would remain. In our imagi-
nary condition, there is one motive to possess property — actual
need; one way to acquire it — by production; and there are
many obstacles to accumulation. This is the primary natural
view, near to Ruskin's, who says that the A B C of property
148 Human Nature and Property [May,
is in (A) the good things; (B) which, a man has honestly got;
and (C) can skillfully use.
We may imagine, next, an improvement through social di-
vision of labor and barter or exchange. Individuals produce
many kinds of wealth in excess of needs, and exchange the sur-
plus among themselves. If the symbol money now be devised
as the measured equivalent of all things, a revolution results.
With it one can, at any time, get practically anything that one
wishes. Methods improve ; great quantities of things are stored
in society ; communication is established ; exchange becomes
active and regular. With money as a valid symbol, giving
claim to anything, instead of storing things, one may store
money. It seems to have no bulk compared to grain and meat
and clothes. It does not spoil, and it is always valid. Men
may now acquire much, consume little, and thus be in a posi-
tion to hoard money, which will secure comfort in old age, or
allow them to loaf or do as they please. We see, then, that
some of the practical obstacles to the passion for accumulation
are removed by the invention of the money symbol. Money is,
in many ways, more desirable than things. As David Harum
remarked : " It's hard work now sometimes to git the idee out
of my head, but what the money's wuth more'n the things." It
takes on greater attraction, and becomes a factor in the process
of self-realization, taking on new functions not known to prop*
erty in things.
The history of money shows many variations in the material
of it. Gold and silver were not always used as now. Tobacco
was at one time the money standard in Virginia ; New England
used corn ; Indians used wampum. It is said that, even in re-
cent days, gopher tails were used in Dakota. Iron, lead, tin,
all kinds of grain and meat have been employed to the same
end. In all of these curious variations, brought on by expand-
ing trade and desire for simplicity in exchange, money developed
toward such forms as tended to remove the practical obstacles
to accumulation.
Still, money symbols have drawbacks. They are, in fact,
bulky. They are impersonal, good in any one's possession,
hence they must be guarded. The worry and embarrassment
involved are amply illustrated in the actions of those who do
not " trust the banks," but carry their money about with them-
selves. We may understand, then, that limitations still appear
n the way of the passion to accumulate. Now society ad-
vances and devises a new kind of symbol of the money symbol,
ind does away with the last obstacles. This is the credit sign
>r symbol. Credit symbols are personal and registered, unless
business reasons require otherwise. They have no bulk; they
'equire no watching or care. The last practical hindrance is
■emoved, and the passion lor accumulation is left free. It is
:rue that other processes andj practical necessities led to the
development of currency systems and credit forms. But that
does not concern the question before us. The point is that the
passion for property has as its immediate object the accumula-
tion of credit symbols, not of money symbols, and not of ac-
tual consumption ol goods. The business of the world is over-
whelmingly done in credit symbols; the first impulse of one
who has superfluous things is to sell them for money, and con-
vert the money into credits which have an independent earn-
ing capacity of their own. Interest, rent, dividends, profits, are
the much desired earnings of credit symbols which nearly all
men seek. The possession of credit symbols insures an income
without diminution of capital, and this income enables one to
enjoy the good things of life. The mechanism of credit, its
perfect organization, gathers the superfluous money of hun-
dreds ol thousands, insignificant individually, yet, in the aggre-
gate, colossal sums, at financial centres, and places them at the
disposal of the industrial genius of the nation. This is well
Must rated in the recent scare of the railroads, whose managers
lairn that prospect of drastic legislation disturbs popular con-
idence in the earning power of the roads, and that, as a con-
equence, money cannot be borrowed to carry out improve-
nents. Now, world maikets may be fought for, daring ven-
ures may be undertaken, since capital and genius are united.
The actual owners of a business are the thousand or ten thou-
sand stockholders, not the corporation president. It is this
revolution which has so changed the forms and functions of
property, that it has become an enormous social force. And
this perfection in currency and credit system has emancipated
the race from enslavement to things, as property in its primary
form, and has opened the way to the supremely high social
valuation of wealth and to the passion for accumulation which
Si disturbs moral values and befouls ambitions throughout the
arid.
150 Human Nature and Property [May,
III.
As a sociological fact, then, an element in social conscious-
ness and factor in many social processes, property or wealth
becomes highly interesting. It has greatest social efficiency. It
is close to every large purpose of average life, either as a con*
dition or as an associated purpose. " All the cravings of hu-
man nature put in a requisition, for wealth, and the confluence
of these tributaries with the main stream of desire, rolls down
a veritable Nile stream of greed, which beslimes yet stimulates
nearly every profession and function in society " (Ross). We
who are born into the world to-day, open our eyes on this
commanding spectacle, and we are affected by it before we
understand its nature or its power. We are bewildered by the
power and necessity of wealth on every side. Our religion,
maybe our schools or our culture, tell us of nobler things and
purer ambitions; tell us of the vulgarity of the motive of gain
and the danger of moral disturbance in owning wealth. Yet,
there is life; there is the world. The very teacher who tells
us these noble things is here and not elsewhere, it may be be- -
cause of the higher salary offered him. The artist will paint
for money, in a way that leads Ruskin to say of Turner to his
credit, that he "considered his work in relation to himself, not
in its relation to the purchaser. He took a poor price that he
might live, but he made noble drawings that he might learn."
*
The musician writes and plays for money. "J shall, for the
sake of the money, write little pieces and songs," writes
Tschaikowsky to his brother. Schools and churches need money,
seek it, often indeed in ways that have none too much of the
ideal about them, since men give little unsolicited. Lawyers
are rated by the fees they command; the explorer lives over
his hardships in lecture or magazine article for money. Pub-
lishers publish books, not because they are noble and true, but
because they pay. The laborer gets little joy out of his work,
much out of his wages. Thoreau, who was odd because he
was natural, says : " It is remarkable that there are few men so
well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little moneys
or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pur-
suit"; and again, he gives us a rule that sounds strange i
this day : " An efficient' and valuable man does what he can
whether the community pays him for it or not."
1907J Human Nature and Property 151
Discrimination is, of course, necessary in speaking of the rela-
tions of money to life, of the money motive to nobler, if less
evidently pressing, needs. Allowing money to be a necessity,
agreeable or disagreeable as one will, a transformation takes
place just in proportion as the money motive grows strong.
To take money in order to live is one thing ; to take it in
order to live with show and luxury is another; to condition
one's work and give it here or there in entire subjection to the
salary or income expected is another; to cease to love one's
■wvork, to be content with appearances, to act and think mainly
-with an eye on the amount that one can amass is another.
"The need of money is almost universally so pressing, and the
lack of finality in the passion to have it is so marked, that
Sifc is very largely commercialized in spite of us. •
A moment's reflection shows that this elevation of money
--Co supremacy among the aims in life is natural enough. Most
4>f us learn in life, not in schools, and we imitate much more
easily than we obey. In nearly every home, at least in the
tomes of the millions, money is the chief topic that children
hear discussed. They learn that money is the basis of social
classes; that with money comes comfort, without it there is
none. Family quarrels turn on it, and hopes and ambitions
centre around it. Its magic is impressive, its power evident,
its attraction supreme, long before confused childhood or blunder-
ing youth has learned or understood the meaning of virtue and
high ideals and unselfish aims. Money is identified so closely
vi tti the main purposes of life and the whole process of self-
realization, that it would be wonderful if its social valuation
were less than it is. It is the guarantee of a standard of life
and the sole protection that one can have against reduction.
This possession of it in large quantities is a badge of enviable
distinction, or a guarantee that distinction can be conquered.
It is a reservoir of social power. It enters into the very
constitution of the modern family in a way which makes the
organisation of each depend largely on the other. Useful in
every way in the whole process of self-realization, it is scarcely
to tie wondered at that men intensely desire to possess it and
tend to express their self-estimate in its terms. In addition,
however, to this objective efficiency of property, there is an-
other side which merits attention. In it we have a whole series
of circumstances which intensify attachment to money and de-
sire for it — a series to which Socialism gives significant attention.
152 Human nature and Property [Ma>
IV.
Having in mind the fact that the first natural way to pro
duce property is to do so by labor, and that the first natun
form of property is in possession of the actual things which w<
consume, it is to be noted that nowadays, in our highly arti
ficial life, a stigma is attached to actual labor. Every manne
in which living may be earned or money may be accumulate*
is rated socially and desired according to that rating. In prac
tically all cases it is preferable not to labor in ways to whicl
social stigma is attached. Few families would permit willingl;
that any member descend to an occupation below the family
level. The possession of capital or property that is earning, free
one from socially undesirable occupations and permits one to
ascend in society. While the vast majority are doomed to actus
labor, and they gradually adjust themselves, create their owi
circles and morals, yet in mind and heart the longing remain
and acts selectively on the stronger characters, stimulating then
to rise. Most enterprising children undoubtedly live in the hop
of not remaining down in the social scale, because the socia
depreciation of labor is early felt by them. Money, property
or income earning credits, then, free one from unloved labor an<
offer chance to rise.
Secondly, property is the more desirable, becauses it increase
of itself. One invests in hope of increase in value ; one take
credit signs because of income which they give one. A hun<
dred dollars is desirable for its own efficiency in obtaining gooc
things. It is desirable, too, because it produces five, dollars I
year with no effort on the owner's part. If no money, wher
converted into credit symbols, earned any income, the socia
valuation of it would fall in a way which would revolutionize
society. It is evident, then, that property's power to increase
itself is one of its supreme attractions, the role of which, is
the development of the passion for accumulation, no man can
adequately describe.
Another feature which intensifies desire for accumulation—
we may say of money, or property, or wealth, or capital, as wc
will, since from the present standpoint they are identical — is the
very difficulty of acquisition. Men love " hard-earned money."
The competitive struggle makes accumulation practically the
symbol of one's victory over many competitors. The concen-
1 9<>7-] Human Nature and Property 153
tration, watchfulness, that one must show in order to compete
successfully, leaves permanent impression on one's mind and
bent. " Easy got, easy gone," is the reverse side of the truth
that our attachment to an object is in direct ratio with our diffi-
culty in securing it. " If you desire long, ardently, and solici-
tously the riches which you have not," says the wise St Francis
to Philothea, " it is useless to say that you would not have them
unjustly," Involved in this attachment to money, because of the
concentration and attention required to accumulate it, is the
further consideration that it is itself the best weapon by which
to defeat a competitor; a use of money or property quite ex-
trinsic to its natural function of supporting life and fostering
development.
A fourth element which adds to the desirability of accumu-
lator), and increases the quantity of wealth which is desired,
<s found in the fact that possession is industrially insecure.
^-***^ may lose one's fortune in a venture. If one's property is
*° earn, it must be loaned or invested. In either case, the
°t*cUnary risks of business must be incurred. Hence the cus-
*om among cautious men of investing in different lines, of not
putting all their eggs in one basket," in the hope that if in
°ne line disaster is met, one may be safe in other lines at
least.
This duplication requires more capital than would otherwise
t>^ needed, and this, increasing the desire for accumulation, adds
*° the social valuation of property.
Furthermore, the earning power of money seems, on the
^hole, to fall slowly, while the standard of life tends to ad-
v *nce. In the indefinite future it will require more money to
produce a given income than it does now. Hence, frequently
lI * the making of endowments, provision is made to add an-
nually to the capital from the income to offset this decreased
**rning power. A father, thinking of the future of his family,
ls conscious of all this, and he seeks the more earnestly to ac-
cumulate on account of it.
Finally, it may be noted that lack of finality in the motive
°f accumulation occasions loss of all sense of proportions in
life. One simply aims to amass means, without analyzing one's
Motives or understanding them. Emerson calls a poor man
M one who would be rich " ; admitting the thought, thc"~
more poverty th*n is shown by statistics, in
i54 Human Nature and Property [Maj
Thoreau again comes to the rescue with his ideal sentiment
" A man is rich in proportion to the number of things whic
he can afford to let alone." Few American bootblacks are a
balanced in ambitions and self- poised as the English lad wh
refused to shine a patron's shoes, saying, as he counted th
change in his pocket, that he had made enough for that day.
Attention has been directed to the high social efficiency c
wealth, to its high social valuation, and to some of the circum
stances which intensify desire for it. These observations ai<
one in understanding the tremendous power over life and moral*
over ambitions and aims, which wealth possesses, and enable u
to understand why the Socialists claim, as they do loudly claim
that the economic motive is at the bottom of all life.
V.
It is to be expected that great latitude would be allowed
in the methods of accumulation, since the passion for it is sc
strong. If we recur to the three-fold plane of property ii
things, in money* symbols, and in credit symbols, we may b<
able to group methods with some facility.
As industry is now organized, there are countless producet
of things, of farm and industrial products. As consumer an
producer are widely separated, there are many intermediarie
through whose agency things are brought to the consume
Many men handle imported coffee before it reaches our breakfa
tables. Mining, planting, transportation, jobbing, retailing, tbt
become mighty interests. Individuals may buy great quantittf
of produce in anticipation of changes in demand and price; the
may secure control and dictate price or drive out competitor*
This activity gives rise to our dealing in futures and simiU
speculation. Numberless ways of " making money " are foum
in this vast process.
Money itself, as a symbol, is very* important It alone i
legal tender. Great quantities of it are needed here and there
now and then. Thus arises an intricate series of occupations ii
finance by which men may make fortunes. Finally, credi
symbols, interest bearing securities, shares, stooks, bonds, at
dealt in, bought and sold, handled in incredible quantities, an
this gives rise to colossal fortunes.
Thus the widest latitude is allowed in commercial activitie
Among the non-productive activities of life, professions, art
Human Nature and Property 155
ire, and the like, great opportunity occurs for accumula-
For many of these lines of activity have great commer-
ilue, and are paid for richly. Thus to every office, duty,
y in life, an income is attached, and it becomes an im-
t if not always a decisive condition attracting or repelling
luals.
e need of making a living is the first factor which intro-
the money motive into life. Here it has its beginningi
has no end. After the living is amply secured, a higher
rd of living becomes desirable. Then more money is de-
When this is possessed, one sees opportunities, "open-
to make more, and they are seized. When within sight
ain power or place, it seems that still more money would
advantage, and more is sought. Nowhere is there final-
owhere an intelligent discipline on the desire for accumu-
e head of a company employing 6,000 men said not long
"When any one obtains sufficient capital by which he
re comfortably on the interest of the same, and he con-
to work, he does not work for himself — for the more he
fter that, the more work it requires on his part, and all
work is done for the benefit of other people. It is not
:ial for a man to leave much money to his children. After
gets a competence, he only acts as a servant of the com-
'. He cannot wear any better clothes, eat any better food,
tierefore, all of his efforts must be for the benefit of his
fees and other people." If this is generally true, it is re-
ale that no perceptible effect is produced when the change
slfishness to unselfishness occurs. The same motives seem
ure and, sociologically, the same results appear in the ef-
y and valuation of money.
thout, for the moment, attempting to determine statistic-
>w many actually feel all that has been said, it is suffi-
make the points, first that money has very great social
icy, extremely high social valuation, and consequently that
osely related to the whole process of self-realization; sec-
it is to be noted that many circumstances, already men-
1 lead men to seek it intensely and to desire more than
:ual nature of property or real personal needs make nec-
; and finally, that greatest latitude is allowed as to the
rs or ways in which money may be accumulated, em-
\y<\ HlWtAX XATCRE AXD PROPERTY [May,
tiliitftd *\w\ disposed of. All of these are sociological facts and
* n> tuu«Uncc« which Are directly involved in the passion for ac»
% <ui\tiUtitM\ Aiui Are essential in the whole problem that con-
t\«M\t« wictv. Vhe restraints which hinder this passion from
*ntiw m^mvinaov :n '-::> may sow be mentioned.
VI.
v. >\**nm*. ■.* wr.rrj rr r^.riisx. ne^s her that she may
^»,>«\**vt iv *«;£■:** *: h^r £ii«ax'^ " sr :: be done not only
-.x. ^ >* ; *s*o itsw.-j. *- iivi zzirzkZxTf ' Tbe adjustment of
*v v a *,v* «*« *:or zr-r -i* -^ir^oi :c lie is sorely one of
;*>v tvi vvru** «■>/ s :rc::i« zz -x-;*:»r zi rbe passion for
nvMy « .x ,>>»»■ v**-^\ t^c :* hi, t* *rrti rrnrr^TiTagaTvjc and en*
.*t\»«i* x vtaofctt^ -■* ".?sia? Csrsc Eri Tist nsBZ n: tie race, sa-
.«y..iv " v*-v*>v s.^?*c^r t-— ^* i^m'jarr^- if. Sue and tie
•» **.xx:i -Sii <*jvs ♦. :r.^? — "T^r*. -^ei-j^ts. nsgra&sc nancy
«-- ">V .^s --JUT?. '" ITS r^3L^ ~Z ~ ~ — - TSJLCBCliniE. Cfalfll
w<x-,»i.k ^>. •v^r*- ^* « T^?r&7 ■ - 2SbZ "? "He sun* anc Ae
*^-* "x "f^ v". - - . ^^p. -T.. ~. JL=c 35£: ^STT: z&BL m. TXSW SCB*
^i. -.^». .at-.-.- ^ *e* ^ rrr-. ^r~ii- t ~ Ty asaizmos nt
* • «»■••"*"» ^^ • ■ • • . ■ -s* • *» -4hx* ^^^ ^R *M£ft«M»««^L
•aj. iii
ft. ,
£ IB:
1907.] Human Nature and Property 157
sion for accumulation, and to set up ideals, other than selfish,
which may appeal to ambition and offer opportunity of self-
realization in noble ways.
The moral law acts as a powerful restraint on the passion
for accumulation by securing control of conscience, and thus
disciplining even deepest motives. It is derived substantially
from or through Christianity, though it seeks now to establish
independence and to furnish its own sanctions. In any case,
justice and charity, as ideal laws governing heart as well as
conduct, have recognized power over man, and they moderate
to some extent the passion for gain.
Finally, the civil law acts as a restraint by forbidding methods
of one kind, limiting those of another kind by sanctions of a
most effective sort. The history of legislation concerning prop-
erty, its forms, functions, limitations, shows widest variations, it
is true, but these, as a rule, reflect local conditions and prob-
lems. On the whole, even allowing for variations, the civil law
acts always as a form of restraint on the passion for wealth.
That passion, in all its undiminished force, rests on the very
deepest instincts of human nature, and nothing promises that it
will ever be totally eradicated. The restraints mentioned re-
present reason and religion engaged in ceaseless struggle with
it, and the record of the struggle is none too cheering. Cir-
cumstances which, in fact, serve as restraints will be mentioned
later.
VII.
In a study to follow, an effort will be made to show the ef-
fect of this high social valuation of wealth on the interests and
pursuits of the population. If the genius of the race is captured
by industry and the highest interests of nations, are those of com-
merce and not of noble life, the problem takes on very annoy-
ing features. Meantime, to anticipate the exposition of Social-
ism for which this analysis is a preparation, it may be stated
now that Socialism maintains that the economic motive is su-
preme in life ; that religion and culture and moral law and civil
taw are not only not restraints on it, but that they are actually
shaped to foster the interests of property. Socialism would
totally eradicate the credit features of property, forcing it back
to things and their symbols. By taking over to society the
process of production, it would leave only consumption '
158 Human Nature and Property [May.
individual. It would thus rob property of its high social val-
uation, limit the ways of accumulation to one maioly, actual
productive labor; and hinder accumulation by destroying the
motive of it. While one can scarcely grasp, even in outline,
the meaning of such a revolution, still neither lack of compre-
hension of the plan, nor antecedent dislike of it, nor determina-
tion to oppose it, should hinder us from seeing the fascination
that it must possess for the working man. Nor should we mini-
mize or evade or apologize for the evident facts of life which
show us terrible failures and disheartening problems growing
out of the cherished principles of our civilization. A speaker
of great reputation recently referred to Socialism as the philoso-
phy of failure, saying in substance that only failures in the in-
dustrial process resorted to it. The fact may be true, but the
interpretation errs. A civilization that produces as many fail*
ures as ours produces, is far from perfect; a civilization whose
highest achievements are economic, and whose economic suc-
cesses usually involve moral and spiritual failure, can with much,
better grace pray with the publican than with the Pharisee*,
There are not a few in the country, men and women, who do
not for a moment believe in Socialism, who nevertheless feel
that actual social authorities are not doing enough in the way
of reform. And these believe that the only prospect there is
lies in such an increase in the socialist vote, and such menaoe
in its power and success in its propaganda, as may frighten the
powers that be into earnest and efficient labor for social peace.
LAODAMIA.
BY MBS. WILFRID WARD.
I.
N a certain day in the autumn of the year 147 1
Duke Ercole, of the sovereign house of Este, was
holding a feast in the banqueting hall of the
gloomy castle of Ferrara, then a town of great
importance, with a population of 100,000 inhabi-
tants. The court of Ferrara was famous for its magnificence,
and to feast gorgeously, delicately, to the sound of exquisite
music, or with the accompaniment of improvised sonnet or cul-
tured wit, was almost the daily habit of Duke Ercole as of
Dulte Niccolo and of Duke Borso before him. They were ter-
rible gorgeous potentates, those dukes of Ferrara, mingling in
their characters the vices of two stages of civilization. Cardi-
nal Newman has described that time of transition in one mag-
nificent sentence :
"It was an age when the passionate wilfulness of the feu-
dal baron was vigorous still; when civilization, powerless as
jet to redress the grievances of society at large, gave to
princes and to nobles as much to* possess as before, and less
to suffer; increased their pomp, and diminished their duties
wri their risks; became the cloak of vices which it did not
extirpate, made revenge certain by teaching it to be treacher-
ous, and unbelief venerable by proving it to be ancient."
There was nothing unusual in the pomp and luxury of the
court on that autumnal day when Duke Ercole welcomed to
his board an important exile from Florence, Roberto Strozzi
sod his young and beautiful daughter Laodamia. But it ap-
peared impressive enough to Laodamia herself, and filled her
*ith a delighted astonishment. Roberto Strozzi had only just
taken her from the convent, in which she had been educated,
to share with him his exile from Florence. It was a matter
°f course that any great noble of that city should spend part
of his life in exile, and probably, if he were a* r
""•patriotic, and as intriguing as hit fell'
160 LA OD AMI A [Mai
ly deserved it. It is not improbable that if he had not le
Florence Laodamia would have stayed much longer in her co:
vent, for she was not acknowledged as a daughter of the hoi*
of Strozzi. But knowing that no very strict rules prevailed \
the gay court of Ferrara he brought her to live in the hom
he had secured in that town.
Before he presented himself to the Duke, Roberto made ,
memorable acquaintance with his nearest neighbor in Ferrara-
the distinguished old scientist and doctor, Michele Savonarola
who had left Padua at the invitation of Duke Niccolo som
thirty years earlier. Michele's son, Niccolo— called after thei
patron— was an accomplished courtier if he was nothing mor<
and he was of use in many ways to the great Strozzi on hi
first arrival. Perhaps that nobleman condescended to notic
Niccolo's son, Ognibene, the soldier, but he would hardly ha\
condescended so far as to speak to another of the sons, a
awkward, silent student, the especial favorite of the old granc
father, Michele, a boy named Girolamo. And yet one da
this very Girolamo .was to transform the Florence of such me
as Strozzi, and to upset for a brief moment the rule of tyrai
ny and sin in the fair city, and to leave a permanent impra
sion in the heart and mind of all Europe.
After the preliminary presentations and social skirmish*
of that date were well over, the Duke invited Roberto and h
«
daughter to dinner, and Laodamia made her first entry into tfc
gay world. In that first feast Roberto was fully occupied i
talk with his mighty host himself, showing himself able to et
gage in the high diplomacy of the days just preceding Mac
chiavelli, when artistic lying was the keenest enjoyment of tl
cultured. It was a far more highly cultivated society than an
society of the big world of our own century. It needed
classical education to understand their coarsest as their moi
refined jokes. For the latter indeed Laodamia was fully pre
pared by the nuns among whom she had grown up, who, it
nocent and hig-hminded women as they were, one and all, ha
been caught by the wave of the Renaissance literature. To thei
their office was a duty, but the pagan poets appealed to the
intellectual faculties.
The first triumph is the sweetest, and Laodamia's first tr
umph at her first appearance in the great world was sweet ar
gay and wholesome, for what there was of morbid or tortuoi
LAODAMIA I6l
|„ chose about her could not be discerned by her too clear
A young poet of golden hair, olive complexion, dark, dreamy
ev ^s, and heavy, sensual mouth caught a gleam of inspiration
fro* 11 ncr freshness, such a gleam as one may catch from a
suciden glimpse of mountain and wood and water in the early
su t* light. He made for her on the spot the best of his son-
nets, and the dark, sinister Duke Ercole smiled, with the re-
stY -^med enjoyment of an infallible judge of such minor things,
or* tne 8' r l an ^ on the poet whom she had inspired. Some-
filing there was, perhaps, in the manner of this admiration
irtiich made Strozzi frown and bite his lip; and a court beauty
ne ar him also frowned, from a very different motive. Roberto
1-a.nt back carelessly behind a dark, sullen youth, reported to
be connected with the Duke, and whispered to Laodamia, bid-
ding her slip away. No ladies of the reigning house being
present, he told her there would be no want of etiquette in
leaving, and her duenna, the old cugina, Anna, was in waiting
somewhere in the castle. Laodamia rose as unwillingly as a
child dismissed to the nursery, and gave a glance at the poet,
half-hoping he might intercede for her, but he was far too
busy discussing the position of a comma in the verses he had
written in her honor to notice her movements. " Subito,"
sternly and impatiently reached her ear, and she moved quickly
and unnoticed among the serving men and attendants. At the
top of two steps leading out of the banqueting hall she paused
and looked back. A girl of her race, of her time, brought up
in the culture of her beloved Tuscany, how delicately she
must have appreciated the perfect taste and beauty of the
scene. Frescoed walls, dark tapestry hangings, cool, unobtru-
sive marbles, and in the distance an exquisite antique — a white
marble fawn — standing out in the tinted light of a stained glass
window. In the foreground sat the Duke, clothed in such sober
coloring as almost to conceal the extraordinary extravagance
expended on his person, leaning against a chair that was carved
and painted by a master, drinking out of a goblet that fore-
shadowed the art of Cellini. It was the moment before the
full burst of the Renaissance in art, when the pure taste of the
Middle Ages, enslaved to the service of luxury, had not yet
suffered any exterior debasement, and Pinturicchio was soon to
decorate the apartments of the Borgias.
VOL. LXXXV.— II
1 62 LAODAMIA [May^
Before Laodamia turned away a fair boy was kneeling grace ^
fully and haughtily before the Duke, who had turned his chai_^g r
away from the table towards the window, and the young, clea^- r
cultured tones brought to the listening Laodamia the satisfac^^
tion of understanding the classical allusions in his verses. Bu^^t
then suddenly there was a horrible sound that seemed to corn^j.
from beneath the marble floor on which she stood. It was a
shriek, but such a shriek of agony, so human in its despair, ^^q.
animal in its overpowering sense of paiij, that it filled her wi ^
a nauseating horror and terror. It surely must have been hea — ^
at the table, but it seemed to be hardly noticed ; yet she caug-^
an ugly expression of amusement on one coarse, handsome fa^<^
in the distance. But the Duke gently raising a finger summoned
an attendant and spoke to him in low voice. Again the hideous,
shriek came, striking Laodamia almost as a blow. The Duke
spoke more sternly, and then with the faint reflection of
smile turned an attentive ear to the youth still kneeling befort
him.
Laodamia turned out of the hall but waited, and, impulsively- —
catching the man, to whom the Duke had spoken, by the arm +
as he passed, lifting her white young face, asked him what the- -^
awful sound meant. The man smiled jeeringly:
" It means, lady, that a prisoner under torture is speaking ~~
too loud; he has forgotten that he disturbs the banquet; he ~
must be taught manners. A gag will be enough."
Frightened by the familiarity of his manner, and utterly sick
at heart, Laodamia, hardly knowing where she went, fled down
a steep staircase immediately behind her, and passing through-
a narrow passage and a small open door to which it led, found -
herself in the outer air, beneath the windows of the banquet-
ing hall, whence an exquisite melody from a violin floated
downwards. She was standing on the greensward looking on -
a great view of the town of Ferrara below, while on either
side rose one of the four gloomy towers at the corners of the —
palace. But again she heard a groan, not less horrible because
it was muffled, that rose through an open grating in the ground. -
close to the castle wall at a little distance from where sh^-
stood, and beside the open grating a young man was kneeling^
in a plain student's gown.
She did not at once recognize that this youth kneeling by
the grating, trying to pass some object through the seven sets
1907.] LAODAMIA 163
*Di bars that guarded the dungeon, was the same whom she had
^een more than once in the garden of their neighbor's house
^ince their arrival at Ferrara. It was that same pale, abstracted
student, Girolamo Savonarola. He was intent on his difficult
4:aslc of passing a phial of medicine and a little case of heal-
ing ointment through the intricate bars into a thin, ghostlike
band barely discernible below. Both drugs and ointments had
been obtained, as he often obtained them, from his grand-
father's laboratory for the relief of the prisoners who con-
stantly filled the dungeons of the gorgeous Ducal host of Fer-
i
At last he drew back the string, with a hook on it, from
between the bars, and clasping his hands looked upwards to-
wards the summer sky, and spoke in a voice harsh, strange,
and strong; a voice still immature, but a voice that held her
spellbound. It gave her a thrill very new and very strange.
"How long, oh Lord! holy and true, how long?"
"The deep voice, the spare figure, the stern features, gave
intense expression to one great ethical note, to a stern rebuke,
an awful warning. Yet as every warning implies hope, and
every rebuke the possibility of its own reversal, so in her over-
strained young excitement it came as a relief and an inspiration.
A.t any other moment the words might have passed unnoticed,
but her perceptions to-day were painfully acute, her sense of
moral contrasts vividly awakened. And so, standing there in
her beauty and pride and innocence, she had a foretaste of
w hat many men and many women were to experience from
"*at voice, in the stir of a new spiritual life.
" How long, O Lord ! (holy and true), dost thou not judge
***<! revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? "
Before the wasted figure had risen, the harsh features were
^rQed towards her, Laodamia had covered her face with her
u*uds. The world seemed to be sinking away from her, and
"*e Lord coming in judgment to put down the mighty from
the seat of iniquity, and to raise up the oppressed. Under the
surface crust of a pagan culture, Laodamia's faith was alive,
ai *d Girolamo Savonarola was to be the instrument fitted to
C *U it out and bid it live. So in a true sense was Laodamia
^trozzi the first of the Piagnoni. And when Girolamo saw her
there, her slight figure shining in robes of white, heavy with
K°ld, her dusky golden hair as an &w
1 64 LA OD A MIA [May,
his mighty imagination, boy as be was, realized in a moment
her youth, her innocence, and her peril. To him it seemed
that she stood there, between the hideous luxury and devilish
cruelty in the hall above and the fierce, brutal misery below,
as a little flower inevitably destined to destruction from the
storm or the earthquake. Looking at her he yearned to save
her, and yearning to do it, he believed it to be his mission
from on high. Even so, years afterwards, he would yearn t
save the fair capital of Tuscany, and, yearning to do it, h
would believe that he had a mission from on high. So, i
some sense, Laodatqia Strozzi was his first Florence.
II.
Surely there was never a youth more in keeping with a.
great man's manhood than was that of Girolamo Savonarola.
His passionate hatred of tyranny, iniquity, and cruelty; his
passionate love of justice, of holiness; his devotion to the
Church; his love of Scriptures and the psalms; even his acute,
eager, half-contemptuous acquisition of classic and philosophical
knowledge ; all seem to have been in him quite young, dis-
cernible in their seeds if not in their full development. One
can picture easily enough what must have been the rough, un-
gainly exterior of the future prophet — the prominent nose, low
forehead, and heavy lips; features not so marked as in later
days, but always curiously individual. It was a smoldering
volcano of genius and wrath, and unconscious pride that was
within, and was sure before long to mold more definitely the
somewhat awkward exterior; an exterior not likely to attract
the young men of his own age, nor to win the favor of women.
His mother, we know, understood him ; the friend of his whole
life, she must have understood him from the beginning. What
did she say to him, we wonder with intense curiosity, when he
would fling himself at her feet in the blackest of moods, after
witnessing some ugly deed of cruelty or some pagan orgy, an
orgy in which great clerics as well as great laymen seemed to
have lost all trace of Christian living and Christian faith. Had
not a crowd of pagan deities been put up over the banks of
the river when a reception was prepared by the late Duke
Borso for the Supreme Pontiff — Pius II. himself ? And amidst
such scenes, with folded arms and head bent on his breast,
would stand unheeded the grandson of the old physician. No
1907.] LAODAMIA 165
whisper told even his mother that the sorrow pent up in that
one boy's heart was to destroy and break up the power of
the pagan Renaissance, and make way for the penetrating
holiness of the great saints of the sixteenth century. Alter
such a day Girolamo would spend the night in prayer in some
lonely church, and his mother's heart would ache at the deadly
paleness of his face on the morrow.
It cannot be supposed to have been the happiest of homes,
in spite of such a mother. The old grandfather, indeed, de-
lighted in developing the young mind of Girolamo, and we
may imagine that his grandson owed to him many of his
noblest ideas, as well as his love of the poor. But, even while
he lived, there must have been trouble from Niccolo — Girol-
iido's father — who wasted the old man's fortune at the gayest
of courts. It seems unlikely that the future monk mixed at
all in the society of the house. Perhaps he never mentioned
at home that he had brought back the beautiful daughter of
the Strozzi to her home, past the three drawbridges that de-
fended the palace of feasting and of pain.
Neither did Laodamia mention her escort, nor did the
duenna cousin think it needful to mention the youth, who was
so far from gay or handsome, who had gone back to fetch the
duenna after the young lady had been left at home. It would
have been so obvious to Roberto Strozzi, if he had given it a
thought, it was so self-evident to Laodamia, and to Girolamo
himself, that he was not as other men, that his mission towards
her, as he came to call it in his own mind, was' allowed the
fullest scope, and Laodamia soon became his pupil. The
master, climbing easily over the crumbling wall at the bottom
of the garden, came to give lessons unique of their kind. He
came to teach her the glory of the psalms; he came to re-
place mythology with the knowledge of the friends of God; he
to build up in her young imagination the vision of the
ystic chariot of the Lord, the Church visible and invisible,
ie prophets and patriarchs and seers of all ages. He made
ie mighty structure for her faith to rest on that was to be his
own forever. To the very end, when heartbroken by ingrati-
tude, and his intelligence dimmed by the cruelties he had al-
ready undergone, Girolamo stood before the faggots that were
consume him, he still kept unclouded that vision of the
Church triumphant.
I
1 66 LAODAMIA [Ma*
Then he would present to the eager Laodamia the grc
notion of the unity of mankind as the work of him who is t
Way in which all things move in their eternal order, the Tru
in which all things abide, and the Life without which t
stable abiding and the order of their movement would not le
them to himself. So, too, he taught her the great scheme
Christian virtues in the stern and stately order in which the;
were depicted on the wall of every village church in the Midd 1
Ages. Surely Laodamia received a glorious religious instruct
tion. She was the more free to benefit by it, because tfc*
restless Roberto had very soon taken himself and" his high d
plomacy, which probably meant some very mean tricks again
his native Florence, to Pisa, leaving his daughter to the ca
of Anna, the cugina, and perhaps also to the neighborly ca.
of the Savonarola family. And, no doubt, they repaid tl
condescension of the great Strozzi by using for his daughte
sake their knowledge of Ferrara and their influence at the cou
Some six months he was away, and for some six mont
the education of Laodamia proceeded without a hitch. To t
cugina Girolamo appeared in the light of a tutor, to be r
warded at the return of Roberto, and, happily, a most ste
and unattractive tutor. But to his mother? Did Elena S
vonarola, perhaps, cast an eye sometimes into the garden whe
on a marble bench under the ilex trees, a young girl of wo
derful grace, and now fast increasing dignity, listened in ra
attention to the strange eloquence of her son ? What did t
mother think or wish when she saw this ? Still absolute u
consciousness lulled the other onlookers to rest. A letter fro
Roberto was to turn the stillness into storm.
Often for weeks past Girolamo, sometimes on the roof
night, where he loved to stand and pray, invoking in a stran
vehement Hebrew fashion the wrath of the Lord upon t
wicked who were destroying the souls of men, sometimes £
his solitary vigils in the churches, wondered and prayed ov
Laodamia's future. This ewe lamb he had rescued for t
Lord, this child fate had placed in his hands — what wouL
happen to her when her father came back? Would she
plunged into the court where her beauty was already famou
would vanity and sensuous delights, and the presence of vi
destroy the bloom of the little flower, sully the exquisi
whiteness of the soul ? What might not be the peril of
1907-] Laodamia 167
illegitimate daughter of a Roberto Strozzi ? Such a man might
guard her sufficiently to put a higher price on her value, but
would he really care how vicious a husband she married, or,
indeed, whether she sank to something lower yet? The young
prophet's heart was big with' fear and tenderness and the long-
ing to shield her in any way at any cost. It was character-
i stic that he never thought of any plan for her which was not
to depend on himself, as in later years he could never believe
■that he was not personally necessary for the work of the Lord.
Savonarola's conviction of a mission from on high always had
tfiis attendant shadow, whether it were a mission to save Lao-
damia Strozzi, or a mission to save the fair city of Florence.
The crisis was very near. Roberto, in a cultured, cheerful,
easily written letter told Laodamia that he was coming back in
two days, and bade her make ready for a great festivity at the
palace. In brief, he told her to look her best, and told her
also that she was to meet a great noble, now a widower. The
letter was not delicate in tone, and the meaning was obvious.
The attendant who brought it to Laodamia found her sitting
witln her teacher as usual on the marble bench, far from any
of the statues of gods and goddesses that ornamented the rest
°f the shady, gloomy old garden. Laodamia handed it to
^•folamo, and in a moment his face was thundrous with wrath
— ttie nobleman mentioned so cheerfully in the letter was noted
'°*" his vices, even among a society hopelessly corrupt. The
lamb was sighted and marked for destruction.
"Let me go away for a time; I will come back."
His voice sounded hollow, but he looked at her with the
'°'ty, unutterable tenderness of an angel guardian, and her eyes
"'led with tears. Something still and sweet came to her from
that look, some very spiritual light and strength. Girolamo
" a d turned into a long, narrow walk between immense hedges,
*nd there, with the great head bent and the fierce eyes on the
ground, the storm raged within hira. It was of a piece with
*'' his storms in their mingled wrath and tenderness; the spir-
■taal intensity of the man who had ever crushed his lower na-
™re mingled with the very human genius and vitality that
*ere to leave their impression on Italy and on the whole Chris-
tian world. But suddenly there was revealed another element
ln the struggle. Girolamo was essentially a man, and he was
to know all that man knows, that he might be a teacher of
168 LA OD A MIA [May,
men. So gently, sweetly, in an irresistible torrent love ap-
peared, no longer disguised, and showed him that she was by
now established and firmly lodged in his heart. Love had
been far too wise to knock at the door and risk a dismissal,
and he had had no tokens by which he might know her pres-
ence ; so she had entered unopposed. And Laodamia ? Whet
he came back to her he showed her what was in his mind,
She was at first almost dazed, but gradually a glow of pride
filled her heart, but she was afraid at this wooing. How over-
powering, even from its magnificence, was this strong, storm)
torrent of eloquence ! The figure of Girolamo was drawn tc
its full height, his gaze fixed before him ; he was probably a*
that moment more like the Fra Girolamo of St. Mark's that
he had ever been in his life before. There was little of en*
treaty, much that was unconsciously imperious, although infi-
nitely tender in that eloquence. Poor Laodamia ! The first
sense of troubled joy passed away ere he finished speaking,
and her heart ached; she was striving against some new per-
ception, a perception she would fain have stifled, but could
not. It was the perception that came as a strange spiritual
intimation in her secret heart. This thing that he asked for,
he was not wrong in asking for. Heaven was not displeased
with him, but it was God's will that she should refuse it, should
thwart him in this human love and tenderness, and thus* throw
him back more entirely on that which was divine. Strange
struggle, for she knew that she could love him ; strange fate,
to be the instrument that was to cut him away from the world,
while she longed to bind him to herself. It was a strange,
dim, but very real sacrifice that gave a new vibration to her
gentle voice :
" Maestro mio, it must not be ; it is a great error."
It seemed at first as if he scarcely heard her; and then at
last it brought another current uppermost. He reproached her
for her indifference to her own soul, to her safety. He called
upon her to come to shelter with him, her appointed shelter;
to come out from the wicked world, to abhor all that it would
lay at her feet to trip her up, to destroy ; to come now and
at once to his mother, to lead a Christian life in a Christian
home.
She was standing now confronting him, her hands tightly
clasped as if they could united give her more strength, bend-
1907.] Laodamia 169
jog a little before him in order to resist him the better. At
last she faltered:
"My father would never, never — "
Then it seemed to him that he understood her, and his
pride rose up in its strength and possessed him ; his love had
been utterly pure and noble, his pride was his unconquered,
secret enemy, unknown to himself. As its dark curse rested
oa his powerful young face, Laodamia, looking up, felt stronger.
But her heart ached, too, in a new way ; for she could not
cjxciure to humble anything in him, whether it were lower or
higher, a virtue or a defect. Surely he could hardly believe
th»t she could sympathize in the horrible absurdity that Roberto
St*"** 22 * would undoubtedly think the old scientist's grandson
n o match for his illegitimate daughter. She could have thrown
h^f~self at Girolamo's feet and kissed his long, fleshless hands,
aA> c3 implored him, her soul's love, not to misunderstand her.
£t*t if she did that she would yield all — no; the only way to
victory lay through this hideous misunderstanding. While she
lottged to tell him that he was far, far too great for her, she must
let him think that she despised him as too lowly. It was such
i course as only a woman could understand, could suffer from
it* every shade of its meaning, and could pursue utterly alone*
Once more he turned to the earlier theme of the refuge he
offered her from the dangers and perils of the world, and with
terrible distinctness, and awful dramatic power, he pointed her
the way down the broad path to destruction. Then, no longer
drooping, with her hands raised towards him, looking full in
his face, she cried :
" God can save me even without you, Girolamo."
Laodamia turned from him in passionate weeping, and knelt
by the marble bench shaken by her sobs. She heard dimly
some muffled words that had to her the sound of blessing, and
a moment later she was alone.
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
BY GEORGE M. SEARLE. C.S.P.
IV.— GHOSTS; OR. PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD,
APPARITIONS reported as occurring shortly afte
the death of the person whom they represent, o
which a very few specimens out of many well
attested ones have been given in our last articles
may, of course, be considered as really coming
under the title of the present one, unless we adopt the thcorj*
which has been mentioned in the last; namely, that more time
is, at any rate, required than is generally supposed for the
complete separation of soul and body. On this theory, of
course, they may be supposed to be really phantasms of the
living; for a person may be considered as living till this com-
plete separation is effected. And it may also be believed that,
while this separation is going on, there may be some special
conditions belonging to the peculiar state then existing, by
means of which an apparition is more likely to occur than when
the two are in their normal state; just as phenomena, like clair-
voyance for instance, may occur in a trance which are not usual-
ly producible in the normal state of the subject.
Some such idea appears to exist, vaguely if not distinctly,
in the minds of many. Wraiths, whether visual or auditory
seem to be more easily believed in than apparitions occurring
a long time after death, which may be considered as ghosts
properly so-called.
People, at any rate, will often ask: "Do you believe 11
ghosts?" And they may say that they themselves do not
They seem to think that one must be very superstitious to hav
such a belief. This attitude of mind is, to a great extent, da
to the contagion of the materialism which was rampant nc
long ago, and which really forbade us to believe in the exis~*
ence of spirit at all, as distinct from matter. And yet this w
credulity is not so genuine as it might seem. There are fes
who care even to read a really hair-raising ghost story wh«r
a/on« at night; fewer still who have any sincere desire to
spend a night alone in a house reported to be haunted. If peo-
ple really felt sure that ghosts and haunted houses were all
nonsense, they would read stories about them just as calmly as
they would any ordinary piece of fiction. It is the idea that
they ma y not be fiction, and that we ourselves may see a real
pj,£>st some time, which gives a fearful fascination to the ac-
co u n ts of them.
Still, there may be persons who have settled themselves down
t0 £k real incredulity; to a positive certainty, indeed, that such
things are impossible. Those who have not examined the evi-
dence, or who have only read the kind of story usually to be
found in the daily papers, may be genuine sceptics on the mat-
ter- But it is hard to see how Catholics, who are familiar with
jbieir religion, can be so. To be in such a state of mind they
must, at any rate, entirely discredit all the accounts of the ap-
paritions of the saints, or never have read them. For what, af-
ter all, is the apparition of a saint but a ghost ? Those of our
Lord and his Blessed Mother may, it is true, be excepted, as
they have already their risen bodies; but it is not at all cer-
tain that these bodies have been seen on earth since the Ascen-
sion and Assumption. It is not requisite for the genuineness
of an apparition, like that at Lourdes, for instance, that such
should be the case.
Setting religion, however, aside as concerned with the mat-
ter, this incredulity, which some seem to consider a sign of
superior intelligence, is really unintelligent and unreasonable.
The matter, like every other one of fact, is simply a question
of evidence. That a ghost should appear is not in itself any
more intrinsically impossible than that one should hear a friend's
voice by telephone, get a message from him by wireless, or his
portrait by wire. It is just a question of fact. We have mere-
ly to see what is the evidence for it.
We are met here by the same difficulty which has met us
all along. A few stories, however well attested, do not pro-
duce the effect that a thorough perusal of the literature of the
subject would. Moreover, we have perhaps read many, in which
fraud or imagination is so obvious, or at any rate possible, that
in any other one, however different it may seem, we are in-
clined to think that there must be something of the same kind,
which a good cross-examination would bring out. We think
172 Recent Results of psychical research [May,
that, if we had belonged to the Society for Psychical Research,
we would not have been so gullible. The only way to get an
idea of the actual pains taken by the Society to eliminate all
causes of error, is to read up the wholtf matter. Still, we mast
do what we can, in our limits, to get an idea of the kind of
story which exists in quite sufficient abundance.
It is quite different, as a rule, from the one commonly ima^
ined. The genuine ghost, we may say, is not a white, sheet^^
and vague figure, which appears at midnight or thereabout, a*x«
by his appearance and general behavior at once suggests l* j
ghostly character or pretensions. He or she seems to wear o^
dinary clothes and behaves like any one else you might hap
pen to meet. You would not suppose him to be a ghost, un!e%
he precisely resembles some one whom you know to be dea^
He has not, necessarily, any unpleasant or uncanny appearance
He does not seem, as a rule, to be transparent, or, if so, y> ~i
do not notice it at once. Nor is his outline at all indefinites
And he is about as likely to be seen in the daytime as
night.
Usually, it would seem that he takes no particular notice a
you. He is attending to his own business, not to yours; h
has no message for you. •
One circumstance seems specially noticeable. His interests
seems to be in places rather than persons. Not necessarily in a~
house, but in some place. Still, it will usually be some particu-
lar house to which he is attached. The tradition of " haunted
houses " seems really to have a "foundation in solid fact. Most
ghosts, though by no means all, are connected with them.
The number of well -attested and minutely detailed cases is
very considerable. One of the most remarkable is that given
by Miss R. C. (Morton). The name " Morton " is fictitious, as
the parties wished to avoid publicity, but the real name was
known by Mr. Myers and other members of the Society.
The " Morton " family moved into the house in April, 1882,
none of them having heard of anything unusual about it, though
there had been reports of haunting, which naturally had been
kept as secret as possible by the owners.
Miss Morton, who gives the principal account, seems to be
altogether exceptional as a witness. She was only nineteen
when they moved into the house, but seems to have had re-
markable mental qualities for that age. She probably had* at
FI907-] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 173
that time, a scientific turn of mind; ten years later, when her
account was written, she was preparing for the medical profes-
sion. Her account, even in the abbreviated form given by Mr.
jVfyers, is far too long to be inserted here ; but some idea may
be given of its character.
The figure haunting the house is described by her as fol-
lows :
The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black, of a
soft, woolen material, judged from the slight sound in mov-
Iiug. The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the
right hand. This is all I noticed then (that is, the first
time she saw it) ; but on other occasions, when I was able
to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left
side of the forehead, and a little of the hair above. Her
left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a told of her
dress. As she held it down a portion of a widow's cuff was
visible on both wrists, so that the whole impression was that
of a lady in widow's weeds.
The description given by the others who saw it at other
times, namely, the sister of Miss Morton, her brother, and an-
other little boy, and the housemaid, was similar. The first,
who saw it at about 6 ; 30 P. M., in the summer of 1882, when
it -was, of course, quite strong daylight, asked at dinner after-
wards: "Who was that Sister of Mercy whom I have just seen
going into the drawing-room ? "
Note the words in the account above : " the slight sound
in moving." In this respect, as in others, the imitation of a
living person is quite complete. The footsteps were also heard ;
this has been noticed in other cases. "The footsteps," Miss
Morton says in another place, "are very characteristic, and not
^at all like those of any of the people in the house; they are
soft and rather slow, though decided and even. They were
heard," she says further on, " by several visitors, and new ser-
vants, who had taken the place of those who had left, as well
as by myself, four sisters, and brother; in all by about 20 peo-
ple, many of them not having previously heard of the appari-
tion or sounds."
Miss Morton also occasionally heard slight pushes against
her bedroom door, accompanied by footsteps; she says: "If I
looked out on hearing these sounds, I invariably saw the fig-
ure." And again, in a letter of January 31, 1884: "Her foot-
174 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [May, ^
step is very light, you can hardly hear it, except on the lino- —
leum, and then only like a person walking softly with thin boots^
on.
But, it may be asked, may it not have been some persoi
playing a trick, after all ? No ; that theory can hardly
made to work, thanks to the coolness, and courage we may^ss
certainly say, of Miss Morton. The figure was several times
followed up by the young lady, and disappeared if hard pressed^
And it did not disappear by running out of doors, but simpl;
vanished on the spot where it was. Miss Morton says:
I also attempted to touch her, but she always eluded me- .
It was not that there was nothing there to touch, but that si*. <
always seemed to be beyond me, and if followed into a corner-,
simply disappeared.
Notice the words "into a corner." No trick has yet bee»
discovered by which an .ordinary human being can disappear
in the corner of an ordinary room.
But Miss Morton was determined to procure even moie ab-
solute proofs of immateriality, as follows. She says:
I have several times fastened fine strings across the stains
at various heights before going to bed, but after all othe*'*
have gone up to their rooms. These were fastened intla^
following way : I made small pellets of marine glue, into
which I inserted the ends of the cord, then stuck one pell^*
lightly against the wall, and the other to the banister, tb^
string being thus stretched across the stairs. They wer^
knocked down by a very slight touch, and yet could not
felt by any one passing up or down the stairs, and by candl
light could not be seen from below. They were put at vari —
ous heights from the ground, from six inches to the height <*^
the banisters, about three feet. / have twice at least seen ih^
figure pass through the cords ', leaving them intact.
This last sentence we italicise, as specially important. Sb<
also says that the figure " has appeared in a room with tbf
doors shut."
Beside the bumps or pushes on the doors of the bedrooms *>
the handles were sometimes turned. It does not seem certain^
however, that this last was seen to occur.
.] Recent Results of Psychical Research 17s
nother remarkable fact should be mentioned. Miss Morton
tells, us that, up to 1886, the figure "was so solid and life-like
that it was often mistaken for a real person. It gradually be-
caxxae less distinct. At all times it intercepted the light; we
have not been able to ascertain if it cast a shadow."
No effort seems to have been made to see if the objects be-
hind it could to any extent be discerned through it; this seems,
as has been said, to be a point of considerable importance, es-
pec:ially in its bearing on the telepathic explanation. There is,
however, no doubt that the figure, even when seen distinctly
by some, was invisible to others. But that, as has also been
remarked, does not drive us necessarily to telepathy to explain it.
Attempts were made to photograph the figure, a camera
being constantly kept ready for the purpose. Dry plates were
tixen (1884) in use, but the word " kodak " had not as yet been
forced on the public. The circumstances, however, were not
favorable, as the ghost did not, it would seem, after the cam-
era, was procured, appear by daylight. A camera with a flash-
light attachment, making the flash simultaneous with the move-
ment of a rather slow shutter, would appear to be useful in
such cases. At night, of course, simple uncapping of the lens
would suffice, with a subsequent flash. For a ghost habitually
occupying, as this one did, some particular, place, and standing
there for quite a while, this process would have been very con-
venient, as the camera could be set up and focussed at leisure,
>ad concealed if necessary.
It may be remarked that the figure was found to correspond
i& general appearance with a lady who had previously occupied
the house, and had been a widow for two years, from 1876 to
!&?8, in which last year she died.
Other points in the account are interesting, but would con-
sume too much space.
In a case like this, it seems absurd to talk about trickery
or imagination. Of course we can always say that the whole
account is a lie, and that several were parties to it; but, if we
are going to take such a ground, scientific investigation of the
subject may as well be abandoned. On this principle, no one
*iU believe anything except what he himself sees or hears.
^ience always has to proceed by means of testimony, and is
L willing to accept it, if coming from competent witnesses. 1"
I the principal percipient in this case.
176 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [May
There is some difficulty in giving specimens of the accounts
of apparitions of this kind, coming from the fact that those
given are usually too long and circumstantial for our space
Many of them are, however, of high evidential value. One ii
particular, given . by Rev. Charles C. Starbuck, of Andover
Mass., as reported to him by the late Hon. Richard Hill, o
the Island of Jamaica, W. I., is convincing enough, it woulc
seem, to overcome any incredulity, except that which absolutel]
declines to receive any testimony on this subject. It concern
an apparition which was attached to a particular house there
and seen by innumerable persons for the space of about fort]
years, from 1806 to 1846, and of which Mr. Hill himself ha<
several times been a witness. It was reported as frequentinj
the house before the first of the above dates, but good evideno
could not be obtained of this earlier period. The dress wa
that of the time of George I. To show how the fact was takei
for granted, it may be said that at the time of a sale of th<
property by a Mrs. Deane, in 1806, the apparition (seemingl;
that of an old lady) was seen " to pass along the veranda ii
front of the drawing-room windows. One of the company, no
ticing her quaint, unaccustomed attire, asked Mrs. Deane wh<
that old-fashioned visitor of hers was. * Oh/ said she carelessly
'it is a neighbor of. ours who comes in occasionally/ and th<
matter passed."
The apparition was never seen outside of the house an<
courtyard.
We will give an account of one other case, coming froc
credible witnesses, and of fairly recent date. It is rather grue
some, but is of a rather special value, as the testimony of th
witnesses seems quite independent, and as it also appears tha
they had not previously heard of the house being haunted
It also gives some evidence on the point of transparency. W
will condense the account somewhat. The lady who is th
principal witness says :
The house is an old one, said to have been built before th
Rebellion ; it has all the appearance of dating as far back a
that, at least, the walls being unusually thick, and the roc
high-pointed and uneven. A large old-fashioned garden lie
in front, and a yard opening upon the public road at the real
The occupants at the time I speak of (July, 1873) were m
brother Henry, myself, and a servant woman.
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 177
On the night previous I had locked my door, as usual, and,
having undressed and put out my light, I fell into a sound,
dreamless sleep. I awakened, I should think, about 3 o'clock
in the morning.
Opening my eyes now, I saw right before me the figure of
a woman, stooping down, and apparently looking at me. Her
head and shoulders were wrapped in a common gray woolen
shawl. Her arms were folded, and they were also wrapped,
as if for warmth, in the shawl. I looked at her in my horror,
and dared not cry out lest I might move the awful thing to
speech or action. I lay and looked, and felt as if I should
lose my reason. Behind her head I saw the window and the
growing dawn, the looking-glass upon the toilette table, and
the furniture in that part of the room. After what may have
been only seconds — of the duration of the vision I cannot
judge — she raised herself and went backwards towards the
window, stood at the toilette table, and gradually vanished.
I mean she grew by degrees transparent, and that, through
the shawl and the gray dress she wore, I saw the white
muslin of the table-cover again, and at last saw that only in
the place where she had stood.
This evidence on the point of transparency seems quite
precise. It must be admitted, of course, that the mental state
of the witness was not favorable 'to accurate or scientific ob-
servation ; still, if the table-cover had been really visible to
her through the apparition, when it first went to the table, the
fact could hardly have escaped her notice ; as she saw it after-
ward, she would have seen it then, for her horror can hardly
have abated enough as the ghost stood there to make any
change in this way. Indeed, this horror remained for the rest
of the night, which she spent, she says, " with a perfect glare
of lamp-light about me, and not daring even to close my eyes."
She told • the story afterward to some friends, but appar-
ently it did not reach the ears of her brother, as will be seen.
The following is his evidence, as told by her, on the subject.
She says:
Exactly a fortnight afterwards, when sitting at breakfast, I
noticed that my brother seemed out of sorts, and did not eat.
On asking if anything were the matter, he replied: "No;
but I've had a horrid nightmare. Indeed," he went on, " it
^was no nightmare. I saw it early this morning, just as dis-
tinctly as I see you." " What ? " I asked. " A villainous
*vol. lxxxv. — 12
178 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [May,
looking hag/' he answered, " with her head and arms wrapped
in a cloak, stooping over me, and looking like this.' 9 He got
up, folded his arms, and pnt himself into the posture I re-
membered so well. " Oh, Henry," I said, " I saw the same
a fortnight ago.' 9 " And why did you not tell me before? 1 *
he asked. " Because," I said, " I was sure you would only
laugh." " I should be sorry," he said, " if any one laughed
at me if I mentioned this ; it has quite upset me." He then
described how the figure moved towards the door and disap-
peared. I asked him if she wore a cloak or a shawl, and he
said it might have been either — he was chiefly struck by her
malevolent face and her posture.
The following is his own signed account, dated August I,
1883:
So far as I recollect, it was about this time 10 or 1 1 years
ago, I was asleep in the house in question, and suddenly,
about 6 o'clock on a fine summer's morning, I was awakened
by a feeling or presentiment of approaching evil. I opened
my eyes, and distinctly saw the form of a darkly clad, elderly
female bending over me with folded arms, and glaring at m<
with eyes of the most intense malevolence and malignity,
tried to scream, and struggled to withdraw myself from hd
when she slowly and silently receded backwards, and seenc
to vanish through the bedroom door. I cannot say whetfca*
the door was locked. I generally keep it so at night, but
was certainly closed tight.
H. B. B., Solicitor-
Now for the third witness, a little boy, to whom the stox
had probably not been told. The lady says :
About four years afterwards, in the month of July, o:^
evening about 7 o'clock, my second eldest sister and two litK
children were the only people at home. The eldest child,**,
boy of about four or five years, asked for a drink, and ^
leaving the dining-room to fetch it my sister desired the ch -
dren to remain there till her return, leaving the door ope-
Coming back as quickly as possible, she met the boy, pern
and trembling, on his way to her, and asked why he had le
the room. " Oh," he said, " who is that woman ? Who is th -
woman? " " Where? " she asked. " That old woman th -
went upstairs," he answered. She tried to convince him th-s
there was no one else in the house ; but he was so agitate^
1907-] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 1 79
and so eager to prove it, that she took bis trembling band in
hers and brought bim upstairs, from one room to another, be
searching behind curtains and under beds, still maintaining
that a woman " did go upstairs."
A gentleman with whom we became acquainted in the
neighborhood, started when we first told him of what we bad
seen, and asked if we had never heard that a woman had
been killed in that house many years previously, and that it
was said to be haunted ?
The above narrative may seem to be rather at variance
with the general principle which we have laid down, that
ghosts do not seem to be interested in the presence of those
who see them, and even do not usually behave as if they were
aware of it. But it does not appear, even in this case, that the
ghost really was haunting the persons concerned. It was bend-
ing over the beds, gazing perhaps at them, rather than at their
occupants. And when the boy sees it, it would appear that it
was anxious to escape notice rather than to attract it.
On onty one occasion was the Jamaica ghost above men-
tioned recorded as saying anything. A servant met her in the
yard, and supposing her to be a stranger, asked what she
wanted. She turned, and with some sharpness retorted: "What
is that to you ? " As much as to say : " Can't you let a quiet
and respectable ghost alone?" Indeed, even on this occasion,
the evidence for the speaking is quite doubtful. There are
other reports somewhat better authenticated, in other cases.
With regard to the production of any physical effect by an
apparition, such as the opening of a door, the general trend of
evidence is rather against it. As a rule, the ghostly figure
seems to enter Or leave a room by passing through the door;
or, as in the last instance given above, by simply appearing or
disappearing while in it. There are cases, however, in which
the door seems to open for its passage ; but it is hardly pos-
sible to prove that this is not a mere delusion, such as can be
produced by hypnotism. Loud noises are often enough stated
as heard in connection with apparitions, as if heavy objects were
dropped, or moved across the floor. But it does not appear
that objects are found to have been certainly moved, by being
180 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [ft
found in some new position, on the occasion of an apparit
at any rate, in such a way that the movement must be ascri
to it. Still, there seems to be no reason why statements to
effect should be absolutely discredited, since the phenome
of the " Poltergeist," in which material objects are thrown aro
without anything visible to move them, is supported by a ^
considerable amount of evidence. Also there can be, it wc
seem, no reasonable question that in spiritistic seances s
phenomena occur, as we shall see later. If they occur with
an apparition, why should they not occur when one is seen
There seems to be sufficient evidence that brute animals
sometimes affected by the presence — so to speak — of appariti<
Of course it is impossible to ascertain what effect is produ
on them ; but there is no reason why they should not be s
ject to telepathic influences, which seem by no means to reqi
a rational nature like our own ; especially as it is quite evid
that their sensitive organs are in some ways — as that of d
for smell — more highly developed than ours.
Another matter, more important than this in the explanat
of apparitions, is. that they do not always take the form of '
man beings. There are quite a number of stories, fairly \
authenticated in the general literature of the subject. A li
collection of them is given in the Occult Review for Septeml
1906. Dogs, cats, and horses, in particular, have been seqn
appear quite frequently, according to credible witnesses. Si
accounts are still more frequent in the lives of the saints.
This brings us to a very radical question, applying not o
to the matter of phantasms, of the living, dying, or dead,
also to that of spiritism, which we have next to consider. 1
question has hardly been seriously asked, or its answer has b<
taken for granted, by most recent wricers on psychical subje*
The question, then, is this: Has an apparition or a p
nomenon of any kind, apparently representing any being wh
ever, whether living or dead, any necessary connection w
that being, or even with any thought or telepathic action
garding it proceeding from the percipient himself or any ot
human agent ? Or, in other words, may not an apparition
a manifestation of any kind be produced by some non-hun
agent, and take any form selected by that agent ? Has any <
any right to say that there are no such agents; or, if grant
that there are, that their power is restricted to the represen
I907-] Recent Results of psychical research
tJon of themselves? Why can they not represent any being,
though now not existing, or even never having existed, and put
;t into a form visible to us? Who shall say that they have
r*ot the power even to localize it, to produce actually in space
the image of whatever they please? If a deceased human be-
ing can have in any way the power to produce an "astral
form," or real objective ghost of himself, why cannot such a
^-eal ghost of him be produced by a spiritual power greater than
vwhat he himself can command?
And yet, strange to say, some will and do at once believe,
j i the apparition of even a dog or a cat seems well proved,
that it is thereby proved that the dog or cat — perhaps a pet of
t heirs — has a life after death.
The truth is that an apparition, however well established as
a fact, proves nothing conclusively as to the existence of what
it represents, To derive any certain conclusion from it, it must
have some other authority beside its own to vouch for it.
We do not mean to say that all such apparitions as we have
described need necessarily be absolutely discredited as giving
true or important information. It is certainly quite possible, and
indeed probable, that wraiths, such as those described in our
last article, may be genuine manifestations, coming Irom the
persons represented. Only we must not be too sure. And still
less can we be so in the matter of ghosts, especially when they
profess to give information as to their present state.
Catholic readers probably do, and at any rate should, un-
derstand just what we mean. So far, we have only spoken of
t&m impossibility of being certain that there are not other spirits
beside human ones, which are the agents in producing appari-
tions. But we, as Catholics, are certain that there are such
spirits, and that they may, if not prevented, produce ghosts or
phantasms, representing other beings than themselves. Indeed,
they are obliged to appear in some such way, as they have no
proper material or spacial form of their own.
The ghost, then, which we take to be a deceased human be-
ing, may really be produced by a spirit, either angelic or dia-
bolic. In the case, at any rate, of the apparition of a brute
animal, the diabolic explanation is the most probable.
It is evident, therefore, that the instinctive fear which is
common to the whole human race with regard to ghosts has a
very good reason. There is a danger, no doubt, in their ap-
182 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [May.
parition which we have good cause to dread. We should not
expose ourselves rashly to it.
Of one thing, however, we may be sure; that, if a ghost
comes to us unsought, there is no danger in it that we cannot
avert. We should, of course, fortify ourselves by prayer and
the means which the Church places at our disposal. But we
need not be panic-stricken, or avoid careful observation of what-
ever there may be which God allows to come to us.
But it is plain, also, that we should not place ourselves in
danger causelessly. There may be good reason to examine into
the matter of a haunted house; but, if the reports about it seem
well- founded, we should not do so from mere curiosity. Stories
like the last one which we have given above show at least the
probability of a malevolent influence, and there have been, and
seemingly are even now, some haunted places where real injury,
mental or physical, or both, may be apprehended, and indeed
has actually occurred. But there has been, we believe, no case
in which any harm has come from any ghostly visitation to
those who have observed the rules of prudence. And there is
not much danger that many of us will fail to observe these rules.
(to be continued.)
IS THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI-RELIGIOUS?
BY JOHN A. RYAN. D.D.
M
HIS' question receives a strong affirmative answer in
a learned volume that has just made its appear-
ance in a French version."
Owing to the decay of Christian faith, says
the author, religion is to-day in serious peril.
The dangers surrounding it resemble, in a measure, those that
grew out of Humanism in the fifteenth century, and out of
£)eism in the eighteenth. All things considered, however, we
fiave sufficient reason to thank God that we live in the present
3 ge. rather than in another. Among Catholic peoples religion
is everywhere flourishing, in spite of certain disquieting facts,
s uch as the los von Rom movement, the political apostasy of
[j^any Catholic nations, and considerable indifference to the
c i-]ings of religion everywhere. In this connection he accepts
p"ather Shinnors' extravagant estimate of Catholic losses in the
{J*nited States. Other authorities that he cites concerning the
Church in America are Pere Maignen, of " Americanism " noto-
riety, and Editor Tordivel, who once stood sponsor for the ob-
jectivity and veracity of Diana Vaughan. Continuing, Father
vVeiss declares that, while Catholics have no reason to despair
af either the present or the future, they should not leel secure
of victory, nor close their eyes to the evils that confront them.
As to the Protestants, they manifest everywhere almost com-
plete indifference to dogmatic faith. Even the divinity of Christ
is rejected by all but a small minority.
Chapters II. to VII., inclusive, deal with the causes, devel-
opment, and nature of the various errors that constitute the
present religious peril. First among the causes is placed the
modern science of religions, and especially the science of com-
parative religion. It is the teaching of the latter that all reli-
gions, from Catholicism to Voodooism, have grown out of the
same needs and rest upon essentially the same basis. Revealed
as well as natural religion is wholly a product of evolution.
Another modern study that has done much to bring about the
- U Pint Rtligitax. From the German of [he Rev. A. M. Weiss, O.P. By the Rev.
1 84 IS THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI-RELIGIOUS t [May
present deplorable situation is the philosophy of religion. Thi
science uses much the same methods as the science of compar
ative religion, and arrives at the same conclusion, namely, tha
religion is a natural product, corresponding to the environmen
in which it exists, and possessing consequently only relativi
truth and value.
The theory that the Christian religion stands in need of es
sential modification and reformation, constitutes another grav<
danger. It found expression during the early centuries of thi
Christian era in Gnosticism, later on in the errors of Huss
Wycliffe, the Protestant reformers, the Jansenists, and the Fe
bronians. To-day it speaks much of the " essentials " of Chris
tianity, and endeavors to show that these are merely one mani
festation of the " religious idea." With the evolution of life
thought, and institutions, the Christian conception has under
gone corresponding changes. This process will continue unti
Christianity will everywhere appear as a sort of " over religion, 1
and finally as irreligion, which is the form appropriate to com
pletely civilized humanity.
A third peril is found in the multitude of new religion
that have come into being within the last century. The autho
touches upon some twenty-five of these, from Buddhism (whicl
is new to the Occident) to " personal religion," and points ou
that all of them imply scepticism, moral and social misery, an<
the approach of irreligion.
As Protestantism possesses no principle of authority, its the
ology and dogmas suffer unceasing revision. The result to- da]
is a new Protestantism which denies the divinity of Christ, thi
inspiration of the Scriptures, and the absolute character of thi
Christian religion. Indeed, Protestantism seems to have com
pleted its course, and to be on the eve of transformation int<
irreligion.
Turning to Catholicism we find that, in times past as well a
to-day, attempts have been made to corrupt it under the guis«
of reforming it. Historical illustrations of this fact are: Semi
Arianism, Pelagianism, Monotheism, Jansenism, Gallicanism, Fe
bronianism, rationalism, and liberalism.* Especially noteworthy
* While the sense in which Father Weiss uses " liberal" and " liberalism" is a widely ac
cepted one, these words may, with perfect propriety, be made to describe something orthodo
and legitimate. In its widest acceptation liberalism refers to opinions or tendencies whicl
would, either in the sphere of belief or of conduct, expand liberty and restrict authority. Lib
eralism in the bad sense carries this process beyond reasonable and legitimate bounds. It im
plies excessive liberty. It has many grades, from the denial of all divine authority over man t>
IS THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI-RELIGIOUS?
BY JOHN A. RYAN, D,D.
IHIS question receives a strong affirmative answer in
a learned volume that has just made its appear-
ance in a French version."
Owing to the decay of Christian faith, says
the author, religion is today in serious peril.
"^Jhe dangers surrounding it resemble, in a measure, those that
^^rew out of Humanism in the fifteenth century, and out of
:XDeisni in the eighteenth. All things considered, however, we
JJ-i^'e sufficient reason to thank God that we live in the present
age, rather than in another. Among Catholic peoples religion
is everywhere flourishing, in spite of certain disquieting facts,
such as the los von Rom movement, the political apostasy of
many Catholic nations, and considerable indifference to the
things of religion everywhere. In this connection he accepts
Father Shinnors' extravagant estimate of Catholic losses in the
United States. Other authorities that he cites concerning the
Crkurch in America are P£re Maignen, of " Americanism " noto-
riety, and Editor Tordivel, who once stood sponsor for the ob-
jectivity and veracity of Diana Vaughan. Continuing, Father
Weiss declares that, while Catholics have no reason to despair
either the present or the future, they should not feel secure
ol
°f victory, nor close their eyes to the evils that confront them.
"- s to the Protestants, they manifest everywhere almost com-
plete indifference to dogmatic faith. Even the divinity of Christ
ls rejected by all but a small minority.
Chapters II. to VII., inclusive, deal with the causes, devel-
opment, and nature of the various errors that constitute the
P r *sent religious peril. First among the causes is placed the
m odern science of religions, and especially the science of com-
parative religion. It is the teaching of the latter that all reli-
gions, from Catholicism to Voodoolsm, have grown out of the
s *nie needs and rest upon essentially the same basis. Revealed
as well as natural religion is wholly a product of evolution.
Another modern study that has done much to bring about the
■ U P/fil Rflig.iMs. From [he German of (he Rev. A. M. Wetsf
*-o<m Collin. Parts. 1907. Pp. 395.
1 86 Is the Modern Spirit anti- Religious? [May,
The discussion, of which the foregoing paragraphs are an
inadequate synopsis, occupies almost three hundred pages of
the volume under review. From the references in the footnotes
we see that the author has consulted an enormous, indeed an
amazing, quantity of literature on the religious and scientific
movements with which he deals. His analysis of the sources
and constituents of the religious peril is so minute and so ex-
tensive that it can scarcely have overlooked any factor worth
considering. For this reason, if for no other, he deserves the
gratitude of all friends of religion who desire to get a compre-
hensive view of the obstacles and dangers by which it is con-
fronted. His presentation of this part of his subject seems.
however, to be unnecessarily prolix. It could be reduced witt
advantage by at least fifty pages. Indeed, it might be still fur-
ther condensed by the entire elimination of Chapter VI. ; for tb«
opinions and movements there discussed seem to have a merelj
historical interest, rather than any important bearing on th«
present religious situation.
To the Catholics of America the most interesting of th«
chapters summarized above is undoubtedly the one concernin]
modern neo- Catholicism, or liberal Catholicism. Being a men-
tal tendency and an attitude toward accepted principles, rathei
than a separate system of beliefs, liberal Catholicism can scarcely
be defined so as to exclude all vagueness and all possibility of
misinterpretation and misapplication. Thus, to say with Father
Weiss that liberal Catholicism exaggerates the importance of
modern science, and overestimates the natural to the detriment
of the supernatural, is undoubtedly to state one of its distinguish-
ing marks; yet the terms employed are such that the ultra-
conservative may utilize the description to stigmatize the mod-
erate liberal whose views are entirely within the limits of the
permissible and the orthodox. Liberal Catholicism must, to a
large extent, be defined in terms of "too much" and "toe
little," and consequently may readily be misapplied by those
who have an incorrect estimate of what constitutes "too much 11
and " too little." Those American Catholics who have been
unjustly accused of " liberalism " will have no difficulty in ap-
preciating this feature of the situation.
Moreover, there is one clause of the author's definition whicb
is so vague as to be almost inevitably misleading. It is the
statement that liberal Catholicism believes in the essential good-
ness of man. Yet the Catholic who accepts the modern, 01
I007-] & THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI-RELIGIOUS ? 187
f e s«it, view of the essence and natural consequences of original
sin* believes in a very real sense that man is essentially good.
f[ C holds that fallen man is as well equipped and as sound in
natural faculties as man would have been in the state of pure
nsttuic. Hence he maintains that human nature, as now existing,
j s not corrupted from, but corresponds essentially with, the nat-
ural or normal type of the genus homo. Surely it is not too
njtjch to say that this type is essentially good! On the other
haM to deny that man has any tendency to evil, or to say
ttiat his present state is not inferior to the state of original jus-
tice, is to incur a more severe censure than that of liberal Cath-
olicism. Belief in the essential goodness of human nature is
not among the specific qualities of liberal (in the bad sense) Cath-
olicism; for within certain limits it is in accord with Catholic
teaching.
Another overstatement by the author is found in his char-
acterization of t'ie attitude of some Catholics 'toward biblical
criticism. Certain portions of his language, in pages 298—301,
would seem to imply that any variation from the historical in-
terpretation of Old Testament problems, constitutes illicit con-
cessionism and reprehensible liberalism. Not a few of the tra-
ditional positions, however, such as the claim that "David is
the final editor of the Psalter, and Solomon the author of all
the contents of the Book of Proverbs," have been abandoned
by all Catholic biblical scholars. Other long-cherished exe-
getical traditions are no longer held by the more progressive
and better equipped of the Catholic critics. Thus the old view
of the Deluge, the rejection of which seems to Father Weiss to
savor of liberal Catholicism, is not shared by his fellow Domin-
ican, Father Lagrange (Cf. Historical Criticism and the Old
Testament, pp. 133, 134).
The defects noted in the last two paragraphs are slight in
comparison with the value of his description of liberal Catholi-
cism taken as a whole. The immense number of concrete il-
lustrations that he gives are especially timely and helpful. Al-
most all of the "liberal" opinions which he cites in Chapter
VII. are out of harmony with the authoritative teaching of the
Church. Some of the most prominent names quoted are: Doel-
linger, Mivart, Schell, Ronay, Ehrhard, Pichler, Loisy, Houtin,
Scholz, Sepp, and Alaux. With the exception of Mivart, whose
incursions into matters theological exercised very little influence,
all these are Germans or Frenchmen. Father Weiss is in a bet-
188 IS THE MODERN SPIRIT AN TI- RELIGIOUS t [May
ter position than any American to know how far the errors an
vagaries of these writers have affected the Catholic faith c
Continental Europe. It is his opinion that they constitute
religious peril almost as great as the ^Reformation, or the sccj
ticism of the eighteenth century.
Happily this mass of " liberal" literature is very little know
in America. Nothing corresponding to it is to be found in tl
utterances or writings of our recognized leaders, whether la
or clerical. It is true that Father Hecker is cited by the ai
thor as one of the minimizers of ecclesiastical authority ; bi
the sentiment attributed to him is rather vague, and besides
quoted from the mischief- making book of Fere Maignen. F\
ther Weiss likewise refers to that "so-called Americanism
(le pr^tendu Am^ricanisme," p. 310) which depreciated the "pai
ive " Christian virtues ; but his qualifying term takes about a
the sting out of the reference. More important than either <
these passages is his failure to characterize as "liberals" an
of the prominent Catholics who represent or inspire the pre
gressive (misnamed " liberal") party in the American Church
Thus we find no mention of the names of Ireland, Keane, Spal
ding, Lagrange, Prat, Hummelauer, Ward, Barry, or Gigot. I
is a matter for congratulation, therefore, that liberal Catholicism
as concretely interpreted and illustrated by such a competes
authority as Father Weiss, is unheard of in American Catholic
literature. The so-called liberalism that is sometimes attributed
to certain churchmen of America is evidently not regarded bj
the author as the genuine article.
So much for the genesis and nature of the religious peril
In two of the three remaining chapters (VIII. and IX.) th
author deals with the relation between religion and the moder
spirit. To the question "is a reconciliation possible betwee
modern ideas and Christianity ? " he returns a negative answei
For the modern view denies the Christian dogmas of creatiot
original sin, the immortality of the soul, the essential distinc
tion between good and evil, the supernatural, miracles, and th
necessity of the Redemption. Nor, continues the author i
Chapter IX., is the irreconcilability of Christianity and th
modern spirit due merely to these particular errors. It arise
from something deeper, something fundamental in the principle
and viewpoint of the modern man. What then do we mean b
the word modern ? Not precisely contemporary ; for Protagora
I
is the Modern Spirit Anti-Religious? 189
Lucretius, Arius, Felagius, Erigena, Abelard, and Occam, were
tru e modern men, just as sophistry, scepticism, Molinism, and
SoCtnianism, were true modern tendencies. As predicated of
literature, the modern spirit owes its origin to Kant. It con-
s , 6 [s essentially of the doctrine that man is his own lawful
master, both in thought and in action. It means the glorifica-
tion or deification of the individual. Hence the modern man
is likewise the legitimate offspring of liberalism. He rejects
the principle of authority, inasmuch as he recognizes no su-
perior who has a right to command him. The watchword of
ihe old time was authority ; that of the modern day is au-
tonomy. Faith, morals, economics, government, philosophy,
and even the principles of mathematics, are called into ques-
tion. All truth is held to be subjective, personal, relative.
Religion has worth and is true only in so far as it promotes
useful individual experiences. The following are some of the
most important of the long list of writers from whose words
these generalizations are drawn: Hartmann, Stirner, Grane, Rich-
ter, Paine, Sabatier, Cameri, Hermann, Eucken, Bahr, Frederick
Harrison, Tauernier, Runze, Harnack, Nietzsche, Pfleiderer, Nau-
ir.ann, and McCabe.
Since, continues Father Weiss, the radical error of the modern
man is the Kantian principle of the complete moral autonomy
of the individual will, there is iittle likelihood of his returning
to religion until he has discarded this preposterous doctrine.
A person may assent intellectually to all the articles of the
Creed, yet so long as he is not ready to submit his will to
ihe will of God revealing, he remains without supernatural faith.
He acts on the Protestant principle of private judgment, which
obviously is diametrically opposed to the Catholic principle of
authority. In this connection it may be noted that Kantism is
merely the Protestant principle more concisely and technically
enunciated. Small wonder is it then that Pius IX. proscribed
ia the final proposition of the Syllabus the doctrine that, "the
Roman Pontiff ought to come to terms with progress, liberal-
ism, and modern civilization." Reconciliation is impossible be-
tween fundamentally opposed tendencies, doctrines, and institu-
tions. Even natural religion is rejected by the modern spirit;
lor natural religion implies the recognition of God as Creator,
Sovereign Master, and Last End. Hence, "the modern man is
the one great obstacle to religion. The modern man who re-
190 fS THE MODERN SPIRIT AN TI- RELIGIOUS ? [1
gards himself as his own master, his own end, his own Go
he is the true religious peril" (p. 382).
The author's contention that Christianity and the m<M
spirit are hopelessly antagonistic, contradicts, at least verb
the theory of many American Catholics that the Church
the age are not of necessity mutually opposed. Father M
says that, " the dictum of Hartmann remains true, to wit,
the fundamental ideas of Christianity and those ot the mo<
tendency are irreconcilable" (p. 381). Said Archbishop Ire
in his sermon at the celebration of the silver jubilee of Card
Gibbons in Baltimore, October 18, 1893: "I indicate the
portunity of the great and singular churchman. . . . 1
must be taught that the Church and the age are not hopek
separated." In this sermon the Archbishop of St. Paul admi
that the modern age was guilty of many errors and exta
gances, such as naturalism, excessive self-esteem, devotioi
material things, love of innovation, and distrust of institat
that have come down from the distant past. All these, fa
ever, are accidentals, not the essentials of the age. In its de;
it is " instinct with Christian emotions; it worships unwitti]
at Christian shrines." It is witnessing a tremendous uphe
which is making for progress, for larger light and liberty. 1
ambitious of knowledge, of political, civil, industrial, and :
gioqs liberty. It desires to extend man's power over irrati
creation. These conditions and aims constitute the essenc
the 'modern age, and they are all in themselves good. Ton
the age as such, there is consequently no reason why the 1
tude of the Church should be unfriendly.
The differences between this view and that of Father W
are partly of language, partly of appreciation, and parti]
viewpoint. The Archbishop of St. Paul applies the terms " n
em" and "the age" to what is good in our present time;
author of Le Peril Religicux restricts them to features that
evil. The latter would probably acknowledge that all the cha
teristics of the age lauded by the former are, in greater or
degree, deserving of commendation. In the second place, t
very probably do not agree in their estimates of the pro]
tion in which the good and evil stand to each other. Fal
Weiss undoubtedly attributes to the evil characteristics a grei
and to the good characteristics a lesser, importance than c
Archbishop Ireland. Finally, the former most likely lovtl
1907.] IS THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI. RELIGIOUS? igi
and has less faith in the good features of the age, is less hope-
ful that they can be properly directed, and takes a darker view
of the dangers to religion from the evil features. He is inclined
to place emphasis upon condemnation rather than upon concili-
ation. In consequence of these differences, Archbishop Ireland
and Father Weiss seem to be wide apart, whereas they agree
as to principles, and on all matters of policy about which
agreement is essential. Probably the majority of American Cath-
olics, while admitting that Father Weiss is correct in his anal-
ysis and exposition of the evils that he deplores, would prefer
the language, the estimate, and the viewpoint of the Archbishop
of St. Paul.
The differences of language to which reference has just been
made suggest the question whether Father Weiss is justified in
applying the terms, "modern man," "modern spirit," "mod-
ern," "modernity," to the erroneous doctrines and tendencies
that he is describing. It is undoubtedly true that these errors
are more widely accepted to-day than they have been at any
previous time. They are, consequently, modern rather than
mediaeval or ancient. It is likewise true that many of the de-
fenders of these views and tendencies wish to appropriate the
word modern and its cognates. Thus Hartmann assures us that
the modem view acknowledges God as a being immanent in the
world, but protests against a God who acts externally and is-
sues commands. Grane declares that the modern man obeys
only those authorities that he himself has chosen. The modern
man, say the followers ol Nietzsche, regards all moral laws as
ridiculous inventions. Yet we may question whether these men
have a right to take possession of this term, and give it such
a restricted and opprobrious signification. Are not the spread
ol democracy, the advancement of physical science, the exten-
sive use of the inductive method, industrial progress, individual
initiative, and self-reliance, all products of the modern era?
Are they not as truly manifestations of the modern spirit as
this excessive egoism, this moral autonomism, to which Father
Weiss would confine the word modern ? He declares that the
word naturalism will not suit his purpose, since the doctrine
that he wishes to designate does not admit even natural reli-
The term scepticism is also inadequate. Possibly the
phrase "moral autonomism" would describe it as precisely as
any other, and more precisely than the terminology adopted
192 Is the Modern Spirit Anti-Religious? [M«
by Father Weiss. After all, we must try to be fair to the a
in which we live, especially since, as the author assures us, <
have reason to thank God that he has cast our lot in it rati:
than in some other age.
Whatever name be given to this spirit of rebellion agah
all moral authority, the thing undoubtedly exists. In so
form and to some extent it pervades almost all the non-Catl
lie literature of the day. Explicit assertion of it is not, inde>
often found. Man's complete moral, independence, is not
firmed in so many words. But the error is implicitly contaii
in many of the judgments and principles laid down concern
things in the concrete. Men who admit the existence of C
without recognizing the authority of any particular church,
not formally declare that God has no right to impose cc
mands upon them. They rather shape all their practical bel
and actions as though God never does impose commands. 1
moral law appeals to them chiefly as a code of rules which c
vention, utility, and good taste combine to render, not obli
tory in the moral sense, but more or less reasonable. They
gard the civil law as necessary within limits, but not as p
sessing moral authority over their consciences. They ne
think of assenting to a set of religious tenets on the grot
that these have been imposed by some authority. They ace
religious beliefs just as they accept rules of conduct — in so
as these seem to be reasonable or desirable. They regard the
selves practically as their own masters, as the final arbiters
the extent to which their own freedom should be limited.
Nowhere, perhaps, is this phenomenon more general than
America. Political and industrial freedom, together with
principle of private judgment in matters of religion, have d<
much to create, foster, and extend the theory of personal in
pendence or moral autonomism. The number of Americans *
accept the theory formally and completely, in the sense of
Continental writer quoted by Father Weiss, is not considerab
but a large proportion of our people do adopt it as a work
rule of life in almost all matters of belief and action. Wl
a particular belief or a particular canon of conduct, does
appeal to them as reasonable it is rejected. The mere fact t
it is urged by some religious or moral authority makes scare
any impression upon them.
Not a few of our Catholics are to some degree practical
1907.]
fS THE MODERN SPIRIT ANTI- RELIGIOUS ? 193
lonomists. That is to say, they acknowledge the teaching and
governing authority of the Church as a general proposition, and
accept on her authority many doctrines and precepts which they
do not fully understand, and yet refuse assent to, and compli-
ance with, certain other beliefs and commandments which do
not seem to them reasonable. This is, of course, illogical, inas-
much as they accept authority in one instance, and reject it in
another; but we must remember that few if any human beings
exhibit complete logical consistency in all their actions. Besides,
the persons to whom reference is here made, receive upon
authority those doctrines and precepts which, as a ruie, demand
no jjreat submission of intellect or sacrifice of will. Their insub-
ordi jnation is due, of course, to their environment, which is over-
laden with the atmosphere of moral autonomism. It is in the
literature that they read, in the theories and practices that come
und^r their notice every day regarding obedience to parents,
legislators, and churches, and in the excessive liberalism that
color's the non-Catholic's view of life as a whole.
The original and German version of Le Piril Religteux re-
ceived considerable adverse criticism, on the ground that its de-
scription of the religious situation was unduly pessimistic. From
the nature of the case, this criticism can neither be proved nor
disproved; for the terms in which Father Weiss states the ex-
tent of the " religious peril" are necessarily rather general, and
may not mean to the author as much as they have suggested
to his critics. Perhaps it would be more satisfactory and more
accurate to say that the dangers threatening religion are scarce-
ly as grave as he seems to think them. In particular he seems
to exaggerate the influence of the science of religions, of the
new religions, and of many of the contemporary exponents of
liberalism. Whether or not the picture it draws be too dark,
the book remains a most valuable mine of reference concerning
the literature of liberalism, scepticism, and "modernity." This
feature alone more than justifies its -existence. Its tone is ex-
cellent. The author has evidently tried hard to be fair, and to
write without bitterness or narrow, partisan feeling.
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.*
BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN. D.D.,
Anther tf '" My Nfa CuraU" ,- "Lulu Dtlmegt" ; " Gttnanaar," lit.
Chapter IV.
A SICK CALL.
■HE man of the world, who is not a cynic at
must be a saint or a scoundrel. If he. is tl
mer, he condones all things on the princi
infinite pity. If the latter, he forgives ever
on the grounds of universal depravity. Bu
have no ear for the " still, sad music of humanity," and
has not come to think, " what d d beasts your godlik
can be," there must remain only a kind of mild cynicism
contemns while it pardons.
Such was the frame of mind in which Hugh Hambertor
to Ireland. He had modified his ideas after three years
dence in what is called "the distressful country," so fa
he still recognized the metaphysical possibility of disintet
ness and unselfishness, and, with this, the possibility, hi
unimaginable, that he might yet have to change his entir
mate of human nature. He found it hard to understan<
the lazy, thriftless, drunken Irish, as he had heard the
scribed, could be the same as the quick, eager workers wh
employed ; just as he found it hard to believe that the gl
rainy, wet-sodden, rain-soaked island could be the island o
idyllic graces and charms that many a time he thought he
not change his home to Capua or Sorrento, even if he
mind. But it was in the matter of political, or rather
economy that his ideas had to submit themselves to the gt
revolution. It had become an article of faith with him tl
one instinct of humanity, innate, irresistible, was that of
ting." No one was free from the low desire. From the
* Copyright. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.
I9 07-] LlSHEEN 195
jn its cradle, stretching out its little hands eagerly for the glass
&ea a or piece of shining metal, to the capitalist who clutches
[jjs wealth, till it drops from his dead hands, it is all alike.
Everywhere the passion for acquisition; everywhere the greed
f gold; everywhere the reluctance to part with anything once
a cqn' rca *, except under the fierce grip of death. He remem-
bered how often he had practised this little trick on his most
intimate friends at dinner, or in a railway carriage, or at a pic-
nic- ne would procure for them all the delicacies of the sea-
son ; heap his table with costly and luxurious viands; order his
footmen or waiters to uncork costly wines; draw out all the
better elements of human nature under the influence of rich liv-
ing aQ d high thinking ; lead the conversation to high topics of
literature, or science, or humanitarianism, or even religion; see
the faces expanding and the eyes lighting and the smile mant-
ling; and then — suddenly drop a hint of unsuccessful specula-
tions, or banking perils, or sudden stock declensions; and it
would be as if a ghost stood in their midst. Faces would
lengthen and harden, his guests would shuffle in their chairs;
they would look askance at one another, and suddenly shut
themselves in silence. And Hamberton would smile and think:
Yes; it is always and everywhere the same. Touch the spring
and the harlequinade becomes a tragedy. Here in Ireland all
this was changed. These Irish drove hard bargains at fair and
market; were economical almost to miserliness in their homes;
knew the value of a shilling as well as any other race; but he
soon found that they lent at pleasure ; that the poor farmers
around were up to their necks in debt for each other in banks
and loan offices. And here this old priest 1 Hamberton had
taken him to his heart, because he was a priest — Hamberton,
an agnostic, an infidel — and, in turn, the old priest had warmed
towards this Englishman in a manner which was a daily sur-
prise to himself. Hamberton was so straight, so matter-of-faat,
so manly, so silent; he did such noble work in so unostenta-
tious a manner, that often and often Father Cosgrove caught
himself thinking, what a saint that man would be if he were a
Catholic; and what a paradise would Ireland be, if we had
e verywhere such noble and sympathetic benefactors to our poor,
struggling people. Yet the beautiful picture was dashed, as by
a fc>lur of blood, by one observation that Hamberton had once
196 LIS HE EN [May,
made in a moment of confidence and forgetfulness ; and it was
whilst pondering deeply on his words, and uttering a silent
prayer in his heart, that he was suddenly summoned one night
from his supper, and told that Piesce McAuliffe wanted to see
him on urgent business. He was in the little parlor to the left
of the hall, and had but to step into the hall to see his visitor.
"Well, Pierce, nothing wrong at Lisheen, I hope?' 9 he said .
" Oh, yeh, no ; nothing yer reverence, than* God ! " sai
Pierry.
" The old people all right?"
" Begor, they are, yer reverence," said Pierry, fumbling wit
his cap.
There was an awkward silence. Pierry turned his cap aroun
several times, turned it inside out, examined the lining, looke
around the hall, and at last peered through the parlor door.
"There's no one there," said Father Cosgrove. "What 1
the matter?"
"Sich a thing, yer reverence," said Pierry.
" What is it ? " said the priest.
"The quarest thing you iver hard in yer life," said Pierry^
" Weil, well, let's have it, whatever it is," said the priest.
" Begor, I don't know where to begin," said Pierry.
" Well, begin somewhere," said the priest a little impatiently^—
" Is it a sick call ? "
" 'Tis, an' it isn't, yer reverence," said Pierry.
" How can that be ?" asked the priest. "You mean it isn. "^ ■
serious ?"
"Well, 'tis serious enough," said Pierry, enjoying the my
tery. " But yer reverence needn't bring anythin' wid you."
" That is to say, there's no need for anointing ? "
"Divil a bit — I beg yer reverence's pardon — I mane, that
just it."
• " The poor patient is not in danger of death then ? "
" No ; but he's bad enough," said Pierry.
" Well, then, I shall come prepared. One never knows wh
may be the condition of the patient."
"Ah, you needn't, yer reverence," said Pierry smiling, "Y
won't anoint him."
" Oh, but I will though," said the priest. "That is, if I fi
there's danger."
I
I907.] LISHEEN 197
And Father Cosgrove went away and Pierry remained in the
Aa-1^ grimly smiling. He would not practise the joke on other
pr i «25t= ; but he knew the infinite patience and forbearance of
p-^ther Cosgrove.
When the latter came downstairs, Pierry began to think he
ha-<=3 carried the joke far enough, so he said :
"I forgot to tell yer reverence, he's a Prodestan'."
"Ob!" said Father Cosgrove, buttoning his greatcoat and
lo o king dubiously at Pierry. " 'Tis the strange boy at Lisheen ? "
" 'Tis, yer reverence."
"What have I to say to him?" said the priest. " He's not
one of. us."
** No; but he said he wanted to see yer reverence, and
ba«dly." Father Cosgrove reflected for a moment.
••I hope ye didn't put any notions in the boy's head?" he
s,i ici. "Did he send for me, or have you come of yourself?"
"He sint for you himself," said Pierry. "He said: 'I
nts to see that man,' Thim's his very words,"
"Then you were speaking about me?" said the priest.
* * Begor, we wor ; but we were sayin' nothin' bad about yer
reverence," said Pierry.
The priest smiled,
•'Very good," he said. "If the poor lad wants a word of
comfort, why shouldn't I say it? You go on, Pierce, and say
I'm coming."
It was very dark as he trudged along the moorland road
that led to the house at Lisheen ; and the soft mud created by
the late heavy rains splashed his boots and gaiters. But he was
qu I t:e heedless of such things. His thoughts were with his
Master; and, if they wandered from him, it'was to stray towards
the flock, of whom his care, though vicarious, was yet parental
and pastoral. And he began to wonder how strange it was that
his life should suddenly be linked with two souls not of his
fold — Hamberton, a stranger and an agnostic, and this poor boy,
who had come hither from unknown regions, and whose history
was obscure, except for the conjectures that he was fleeing from
justice and in hiding. He determined to be very cautious, to
measure his words, and limit his visit to a few short moments
of sympathy or help to a sick stranger. He should have known
by experience that caution was not one of his many virtues ;
that he had all the impetuosity of charity, and that he believed,
-<\
[May,
V . -
I
inn wou'id sot acknowledge it, thjd lie fast Ibowghts are al-
ways thoughts of virtue; ibe second are lie i a iti i 't i of pro
cent* and sei£
44 Your reverence if weicome,** said the old Taakhee, courte — . _
sying tc the aged priest, as be en te red with tbe salutation ocfc^
ws lips:
** God bid* all bere I ~
After a few moments of kind inquiries, be adced to be show--^^
toe patient, and was ushered into tbe bedroom where Maxwe . S |j
la/. The latter was much better, quite free from the dreaw^ j
feverish feeling be bad at first experienced, bwt still sufferinw^-ng
from the violent pains is bauds and feel. He looked at the oIT y
man, with that curious, half-wistful, half-fearful glance wiw^th
which Protestants often regard the priest to whom they haw^we f *
bad a first introduction — a glance that seems to say: |=s
" I know you are a mysterious thing ; whether good or iSll 1^-
I cannot say. But I crare your s y mpath y, if yon are capat^ J
of such!"
" Well, my poor boy/' said the kindly old man, "so y
wished to see me ? I hope you are feeling better."
" Much better, thank you/' said Maxwell, in a tone of sac
stiffness, that the priest began to think he was not wanted here
but had been the victim of a pious rase. The answer sounded
hard and metallic to his ears, accustomed as they were to the
affectionate and caressing accents of his own people.
" You have been very unwell, I understand/' said the priest.
" Very ! It is a relapse, or repetition, of an old ailment,"
said Maxwell.
" Well, you must cheer up. Courage is half the battle,"
said Father Cosgrove. " I hope you have good attendance and
every comfort."
" As much as human solicitude and every affectionate care
could give," said Maxwell. " The doctor wanted to order me
into the Workhouse Hospital; but they wouldn't allow it."
"God bless them!" said the priest. "They will have their
reward. ' I was a stranger, and you took me in. 9 But, tell me,
have you no friends, no relatives, parents, or a sister, to whom
we could write, and let them know of your condition ? "
"None! Absolutely none!" said Maxwell.
"You know you needn't be afraid of us," said the priest.
"Your secret is safe in the keeping of these poor people. No
1 907. ] LlSHEEN 1 99
one need ever know you are here, except you choose to re-
veal it I "
The words startled Maxwell. Had his secret been discov-
ered ? Did these people really know who he was. And, dreadful
-thought! was this the secret of all their kindness? The sug-
gestion actually frightened him. It would have been such a
revelation of human meanness, where he had seen but such
noble excellence. But he might be mistaken. He began to
feel his way cautiously.
" I have done nothing wrong," he said. "I have injured no
«nan. If it pleased me to become a laboring man, had I not
the right to do so ? "
"Of course, of course," said the priest. "And, according
to all accounts, you have been doing your duty faithfully and
fconestly. But you mightn't like the world to know you are
here. There may be people looking for you and inquiring all
about you; and you may prefer to remain where you are."
"I was not aware that I was an object of interest to any
one," said Maxwell, now quite uneasy. " I suppose people will
talk, and make all kinds of conjectures; but I don't heed, so
long as I am let alone."
" Quit* right ! quite right! my boy," said the priest. "And
perhaps, after all, the people are wrong in their thoughts about
you."
"What do they think, Father?" said Maxwell.
It was the first time he used the word that means so much
to the Irish peasant; and it almost choked him. But it soft-
ened yet more the heart of the good priest.
"Well, it is not right to tell, perhaps," he said, "and I hope
you won't be offended, because the people regard the matter
as a. virtue, more than a crime. But they have got it into their
heads that you have been in the army."
"Yes?" said Maxwell smiling.
I "And that you have taken French leave," said the priest.
"Oh, yes; I guessed so much," said Maxwell. "Is that
all ? "
"'That's all," said the priest. " And, as I tell you, the peo-
ple consider it no great crime."
"Well, they're quite wrong," said Maxwell simply. "I was
never in her Majesty's service; and I am not fleeing from
tice."
J jus.
3*. ¥ ]
jr «e*c X»fc4«&:*$ -urn mm t% je
:fc*r -&£*>> **m *ssm :» *ee "lie
/o^icrt^ ex + w?i Trun * wstaqz? waa sigsc
" /.* jp-5^ «^ »e i*l ««*« urmarr ~euxsnro* ems. of
3rnr die jxc a£
is so
I
X fin ****%£4 aut I «a he ii *aj he^ 3*it janfcc
" '/;.vs*r *>tzt> I 3i 40. a. sulk cbes; sad.
And
4* -jury «y, iy <bez0 r jc~*% z&ezz carrle as
*teie y*<*4^ j£X jui a s«*i a* light as a
***** **er izwaK, ce sr„ gectly."
"'/>*;, Ovi wli: hie» them*." laid
" H+, 4+ way* ts*a f eres. ;& this wcod. Peer people! riser trials
'•*iy ,VA*ZA* *x*it sympathies."
" *;s* y'st w:,l <*«e ? " said Maxwell aaxicosly. And, as tkfee
pfi4*t r.vi'ied, he c/vntisued :
" Ar*d f>me day I shall tell you my secret ; and you w~iU
h*Jp rr*e/"
" I have so many secrets burtbening mc, H said the priest,
" I dor/t care for more. But if I can help, I wilL"
" Vox your people's sake," said Maxwell, extending his
hari'l,
And the priest marveled much; for were not these the
jt/,t word* with which Hugh Hamberton solicited his visits
hi* own house ? "
ClIAI'TEk V.
AN INDIAN LETTER.
Calcutta, October 21, 189 —
(am .mm a : Your dear little note came in the nick of ti
Von will be pleased to hear that it saved a life — mine — fr
unphyxia, or apoplexy, or some nameless mode of exit from "t
to
e.
m
is
7.] LISHEEN 201
rrid existence, called Life. It was thus. There is one awful
.ason here, as you know, when men and women have to breathe
v<^a-?or, olten miasmatic, in a temperature of 120 Fahrenheit.
Tl^aere are punkahs and iced drinks and scandals, and such
ofclner stimulants as may make existence barely tolerable, but
th*«re are times when nothing short of an earthquake can give
you the slightest interest in life. Such a moment was that
when, reclining in a hammock on the veranda, your letter was
placed in my hand. I was completely used up, could not
breathe, nor speak ; could only wonder at the native woman,
wla.o, cool and unflurried, went about arranging things, whilst
tt&^ arteries in my neck and temples were swelling and throb-
bing, and the next thing would be — Suddenly came your note,
urm. biglictto di cielo, and, yes, carissinta, I am not jesting, it
woke me to life again. .1 did not shriek out, nor faint. Both
would be unbecoming, as you know — and, whatever happens, we
must do what is decorous, even in India. But I started, and
sa.ic3 something violent: "Cielo I " or something (but no one heard
m «); and the shock, pardon* the expression, dearest, has given
me back to life — to English official life in Calcutta — for another
season. So you have commenced the new role you will have
to play as benefactress to your quondam friend and Mentoress.
&ut, what do I think ? Nothing, dearest. I can't think. That
Xs » no effort of fancy can picture the little fay, Mab, in the
a wf ul tragedy of married life. There, now ! Forgive me ! I
1X1 ust not depress you. No fear, I hear you say. Nothing can
cypress me. I know it well; and hence do I write in answer
*° your request; but in terms which would kill another girl;
^ut at which you will merely smile.
But I must answer your conundrum. Of course, it will an-
8 ^er itself by and by; but I cannot deprive myself of the
Pleasure of saying some far-off day when we meet: I told you!
And now, dearest, sweetest little Mab, I'll tell you all about
**• Hitherto, you have been a child, a spectator, down there
lQ the pit, or in some cosy box, calmly munching caramels, or
Stapes, and watching the little drama on the stage. Doubtless,
you have often thought how much nicer it would be to go up
at *d mingle, as one of themselves, with [all the knights and
^ngs and princesses and heroines behind the footlights. You
tot quite wrong ; but, Che sat a, sari. You have cqvii
princess and the priestess and the shepherd girj <
202 LIS HE EN [Ma;
ine. You have uttered the fatal wish ; and, lo ! you are in tl
greenroom, far behind the scenes and lights, and all is reveale
Yes ; there are the supers and the attendants and the prompt
and the dresser. There are the pulleys and. the ropes. T]
golden helmet on King Arthur is tinsel and his shining breaj
plate of steel is but paper; and his sword, Excalibur, is
painted lath. The awful thunder is hidden in yonder tray; as
the lighting in that paper of magnesia. And all the prince
and princesses are in deshabille, sitting idly on the stage prop
ertics, talking scandal and drinking eau-de- vie. Yonder Sir Gal
ahad is flirting with Elaine; and Vivien is cajoling some ag*
Merlin, not for his secret magic, but for his money. For al
things begin, and end, here. You did not expect this. Nc
dearest, of course not; nor do you believe it now. You thin!
me an old, croaking raven, unprophetic, but for the fatal Never
more ! Ah, yes ; that Nevermore ! It means you cannot g
back to the stalls or box again — never again be a spectator c
the mighty drama. Only an actor. That is, hide as you lik
between old trunks and canvasses, there goes the manager 1
call ; and you must come out, and show yourself and play you
part before the footlights. There is no shirking the duty-
" Breaking heart," "scalding tears," " wounded pride," "lost op
portunities " — you cannot, you dare not plead such things. Di
your eyes, and compose your features, little Mab, and stc
gaily forth from the wings. Flay well your part in the litt
drama. Be proud and haughty and disdainful. Be cold as i<
and supercilious as — Mephisto. Contemn all things and all pe
sons; and the audience will worship you. The world likes 1
be despised. Envious eyes will watch you through opera glass*
to detect a flaw in your costume, a blur in your accent, a sp<
on your hands or face. Be perfect and despise them. The
will repay you with envy ; and what more can human hea
desire ? Play well your part. Life is but a drama ; and r
one can ask of maid or mortal to do more.
But, when you go back to the dressing-room — there, I sha
say no more. I have said too much. And, Che sara, sari.
I am wondering whether your future husband is the delical
boy I used to know long ago — Bob, Bob, Bob Something !
remember how you used to tease him, ridicule his little peaa
offerings, laugh at his moodiness, and call him back with a wot
or look. Well, do you know, dear Mab, I liked him. The bo
1907-1
had a heart that could love; and that is something, if the thing
is not petrified long ago by contact with the world. I think
my little Mab would be happy with him, unless, unless — shall I
say it? — she would practise too frequently, once too frequently,
her little caprices and wiles, and then ? There are some natures
that bear and bear and forbear, apparently forever, the little
frictions of life ; and show no more heat or fire than a piece of
sandalwood. And then, one day, they flare up suddenly into a
huge blaze of passion ; and then die out sadly into little embers
and ashes. And I think Bob, Bob, Bob What's His Name? is
one of those. But I don't know.
Mab, dearest little Mab, if you will marry, marry a tow-
he3.cied curate, who hasn't a particle of brains and but £&o a
yea-T, and you will be happy.
You won't cut a figure in society; but, with your chickens
and vegetables and babies and the love of an honest man, you
will be happy. But who wants to be happy? No one. At
least, I see half the world throwing happiness to the winds.
I am sending you a little Indian present. I hope it will
- |: ->t be broken en route. And I shall await, with much hope,
your account of the ceremony. Please write it in your most
vigorous and epigrammatic style, for the hot season is with us
vet; and we haven't had news of a single scandal from Simla
or Peshawar for ever so long. And tell me all that was said
uid what every one wore. I know you will keep your head and
notice things. And tell me all the banalities that shall be ut-
tered for long life and happiness, etc. ; and where you go for
your honeymoon ; and how you played your part as a much
married woman, and not a baby-bride of yesterday; and how
you stood the shock of intimacy, and the revelations of the new
being, whose life for evermore is inextricably linked with yours.
Yes, yes; these poor benighted Papists, wrong in nearly every-
thing else, are right in holding that marriage tie inviolable. Nay ;
there should be a strict law that marriage shall not be dis-
solved in death; because it is enough for each human being to
have one world revealed, and no more. My ! How I do run
on ! And I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of things that I want to
say ; and there will be no opportunity for another letter. Oh,
yes ; don't let that most detestable Wedding March be played!
I* is an abominable sacrilege on such an occasion. Get the
organist to play an "Ave Maria," or a sonata, or something, lest,
204 LIS HE EN [May,
when looking back, after many years, you should say: Woe!
woe ! Marriage bells mark the time of a departing soul. Bat,
oh, me 1 I am writing such a depressing letter ; and I know it
ought to be all congratulations and rejoicings. Put it down, dear,
to the awful climate, and our wretched livers, and believe me
always,
Cara, Carissima, yours,
Edith Chisholm.
P. S. — I have absolutely sent you no news. But there u
none to send. The same daily routine. You can guess its dull
dread monotony. Up before dawn— the only time of day anc
night when we can be said to live, for the air is crisp anc
light, and breathable. Tea and muffins at 6 A. M. Such littk
work as we need here — tending the few flowers beneath thi
veranda and reading some trashy novel. Then, up comes Sol
red, angry, and threatening, making all the heavens blood am
fire. Henceforward, no peace, no mercy from the Day God
Good Heavens ! to read these mad poets about pink-fingere<
dawns, when the dawn is a fiery furnace, heated seven time
over as the bad king did for the three children. And all da;
long and all night suffocation, relieved by the creaking oh tb
punkah- pulleys, and copious draughts of lemonade. How
envy you your Irish climate, with its quiet autumn splendoi
and mild wet winters. How I long for the cool, sweet, Iris
rains that fall so noiselessly, unlike [the angry deluges here
And your cosy winter firesides, etc., etc. There is no' new;
Oh, yes; do you remember that semi- brunette, Gerty Richards
Well, they say she is engaged to Lieutenant Whitbread. I don
believe it, although I knew he would be a catch. He has be
two lives between him and ten thousand a year in England
and one of these is an idiot. There is some talk of the Co]
lector General being recalled — something about accounts, whic
we poor women cannot understand. We know enough — to
much, God knows! And one thing I know well is, that I lov
you, dear little Mab, dearly, and wish you all bliss and happi
ness.
P. P. S. — I read this letter over, a thing I never do ; and
had a hundred thoughts to tear it up. What right have I,
said, to send such a jeremiad to a young girl? But then — wel
then, I close it with a few bitter tears. It is the climate, deai
1907.] LISHEEN 205
es t. Please believe so, and say so to yourself. What a dread-
ful Slough of Despond India must be, when Edith could write
m e such a letter. That's just it. Forgive it all, forgive it all,
little one ; and be happy, happy, happy !
E. C.
Chapter VI.
VISITORS AT LISHEEN.
A few days after the priest's visit, the little household at
Lisheen were startled by the sudden appearance in the farm-
yard of a lady and gentleman, evidently of superior station in
life. They first guessed it was a landlord apparition ; but this
idea was quickly dispelled, when they declared they had come
to visit the sick man, who had found refuge with, the humble
cottiers. Bob Maxwell, convalescent, was sitting by the kitchen
fire, his hands still swathed in cotton wool, when he heard him-
self suddenly accosted by Hugh Hamberton :
** Well, my man, and how are you ? Had a bad time, eh ? "
Maxwell rose with some pain, and confronted his visitors.
He felt the least touch of resentment at being addressed so
abruptly, and was about to answer coldly, when his eyes fell
on Claire Moulton, who stood beside her guardian, She was
clad in her usual simple fashion ; and the long, black cloak,
clasped at the throat with some fine silver ornament, revealed
her tall, shapely figure. The silk-lined hood was flung back
on her shoulders, so that her head was bare, but for the coronal
of hair that crowned it. She looked anxiously at Maxwell;
and the interest he excited gave a new animation to her fea-
tures, which glowed from the fresh air and the soft winds that
had played around them during their long drive.
Maxwell was sorely puzzled. At once he divined that they
belonged to his own class in life; but the simple, peasant dress
of the young lady led him to think that perhaps they belonged
to the better farming class, who come under the title of "gentle-
men farmers." However, there was no mistake about one thing.
Here were interesting visitors, and they manifested much con-
cern about him.
"Yes"; he said, "I have been very unwell. It was a re-
newal of an old malady, caught in a severe wetting."
"'So we heard," said Hamberton, surprised at the calm, easy
inderpendence with which Maxwell addressed him. "These things
206 LISHEEN [May*,
are not easily eliminated, and not easily avoided, as we ol^j
duffers know. But you had careful nursing?"
Hamberton looked around at the poor place, and at the me*).
Claire's eyes rested on the face of Debbie McAuliffe, which jtt at
then wore a strong air of resentment.
" I shouldn't be alive to-day, had I not/ 9 said Maxwell. ** I
can never thank these good people enough for all their kind.,
ness to me."
" So we heard, so we heard/ 9 said Hamberton. " If ever I
get unwell! you must lend me your young nurse here. There .
is more in kindness than in skill. Bat, look here, you are now
convalescent 9 and you need sea air. Come over to us at Bran-
don Hall, and we'll nurse you back to health again."
Maxwell shook his head ; and yet the thought of being
nursed by such a dainty figure as Claire Moulton was a tempta-
tion.
" I am bound to these good people," he said. " They could
have sent me out on the world to die, and no one could blame
them. They kept me here in spite of doctor's solicitations and
their own interests. I am happy with them. There is no place
where I can attain to health or happiness so easily as here
That is," he added, looking around, "until they turn me out."
The dark shadow that had iallen on Debbie's face whilst
Hamberton proffered his invitation now lifted, and she actually
laughed with joy at Maxwell's choice.
"Ah, I see," said Hamberton, "ye want to keep all tke
charity of the world to yourselves. Now, that's not fair. Hexe
am I, anxious to do a little good in this queer world while I
am in it, and you won't let me. What do you say now, ma'airm ,"
he suddenly cried, addressing the old woman. " Wouldn't it'
be only fair, when you all have done your share towards tfcmis
poor fellow, to allow us to have a hand in working him ba «k
to life and health ? "
" Faix, I don't know, sir," said Mrs. McAuliffe.' " Sure, 9 ^«
rale good of you to think of such a thing at all, at all; a. and
we all such black strangers to your honor."
" Never mind that," said Hamberton, in his brusque Engli sh
manner. "Never mind that. Here's what I propose. I ha»~ve
an empty cottage over there at Brandon Hall. You know wh^rc
Brandon Hall is?"
"We never hard of it, sir," said Owen McAuliffe.
.] LISHEEN 207
"You did, Father," said Pierce, breaking in for the first
imc. " Sure everybody knows the place where the people are
retting sich fine wages, and have sich fine houses."
" I never hard of it before/' said the old man. And Debbie
la r ted a look of fierce anger at her brother.
" Well, now, your son — I presume he is your son," replied
ft&mberton — "knows all about us; and that we are not such
)3L<1 folk. Now, if you will allow this poor fellow to come to
is for a few weeks, we will put him in that cottage, give him
ill he requires, nurse him back to health again. What do you
say ? "
"The poor fellow, about whom you are so anxious," said
Maxwell, with a slight accent of resentment, " has already noti-
fied you of his intentions. It remains for these good people to
say whether they wish me to remain here or not ! "
•' Oh, I meant no offence," said Hamberton, seeing Maxwell
bridle up, "I assure you. I just want to do all I can in this
distressful world while I'm in it ; and I just heard there was a
'ellow- countrymen of mine here in some trouble, and thought
* could help him. And Miss Moulton here, my ward, was equally
*nxious. Of course, we know that everything has been done
for y OU that could be done; but we just thought, that is, Miss
Woulton and I thought, that perhaps you would come around
picker with us."
" Yes " ; said Claire Moulton, speaking for the first time,
" that's just it. We simply want to help on a bit ; and we
English have a feeling for a fellow-countryman in distress. We
Vish you would allow us to help you. We do, indeed."
It was tempting, was it not? To be near the sea, to see
\ts ripples, to hear its musical and melancholy wash, to breathe
its odors, to feel its invigorating influence ; and, then, to be
nursed back to convalescence by such amiable and interesting
people — surely, it was not in human nature, least of all in the
heart of a solitary man, to refuse. And, then ! This man, of
*hom he had never heard before, was a philanthropist. From
*^*t ¥* tTr y had sa,( * J* was clear that he had brought a new
*°**J iff *° k ,S own ^'ghborhood ; that he was one of nature's
*b+* * **° would Qjear the bog and sweeten the fen and
f *V jtf* moorland, ^ n d lift the people out of the Slough of
aatf be, in fyct, a man of light and leadi
there % doubt, so Maxwell m
208 LISHEEN [May,
himself, that hitherto his own mission had been a failure. He
had suffered, but effected nothing ; and where's the use in need-
less suffering, where no results come forth ? What if he joined
hands with this powerful man, this bright and cheerful girl,
and, revealing his own wishes, enlist them in the same sacred
cause. -But, then !
He looked away from Claire Moulton's face and saw Deb-
bie McAuliffe's, silent, pallid, suffering. He saw the old woman
wiping away a secret tear with her check apron ; and be made
up his mind.
" I'm sure," he sai<J, " I am deeply obliged for your kind-
ness. But I am not a fellow-countryman. I am an Irishman.
And I am not in distress. I am poor; but I have wanted lot
nothing. And no rich man can boast of more. I am happy
with these good people; and have no wish to change."
Claire was looking wistfully at him. He felt her eyes plead-
ing with him. But he was firm.
" Well," said Hamberton, " we're disappointed ; and yotx
are, like all your countrymen, a fool to throw away a splendid
offer of a new home, good wages, light work — "
He felt Claire's hand on his arm, and was suddenly silent-
She interposed.
" You will allow us to call again ? " she said to Debbie, wb°
was staring angrily through the open door. "We sometiai
drive around here, and would like to see you all again, if
may ? "
The girl was silent. The mother spoke.
" Wisha, sure, Miss, we'll be glad to see you, and welcoi**
at all times. 'Tis good of you to come so far and see a po<
boy, who has nayther father, nor mother, nor home to g*
You'll be welcome, Miss, at all times to us, like all other d***""
cent, honest people."
" Well, then, we'll say good-bye ! " said Hamberton. " Shou %**
you change your mind," he continued, addressing Maxwe&'*
"just drop a note to Mr. Hamberton, Brandon Hall; or, be* - "
ter still, walk over. 'Tis only about seven or eight miles fro
here; and we'll put you up."
"Thank you!" said Maxwell curtly. And after a sm£
from Claire Moulton, and a deep courtesy from Mrs. McAullfT^*
the visitors left the cabin. Debbie stood like a statue, •***
made no sign, and spoke no word of farewell.
1907.] LISHEEN 209
Guardian and ward had driven a mile or so in silence be-
fore the latter said :
11 You see, Uncle, Father Cosgrove was right. There is some
virtue in the world."
"Yes; by Jove!" he replied, "there is. What a strange
people ! To take in a tramp, a beggar, and keep him and
nurse him through a dangerous illness, without hope of recom-
pense ! Yes ; there is a little hope yet for this most disastrous
world."
" You'll have to make a humble admission of your incre-
dulity and conversion," said Claire Moulton.
"Yes, I will"; he said. "The priest is right, even though
this is probably the only case to be found in the world. This
is genuine though. No hypocrisy or deception there."
"None whatever," said his ward, smiling. "The people are
transparent as glass. They have not learned the tricks of the
wo rid. Did you notice that young girl ? "
"N — no; not particularly !" said Hamberton. "She struck
m«r as a strong, buxom, country wench ; and no more."
" She stabbed me with her eyes while you were speaking,"
said his ward. "I think 9he is interested in that boy."
" No, no " ; cried Hamberton. " These Irish are as proud
as Spaniards, from whom they trace their blood ; and the
^tighter of a farmer would no more marry a laboring man than
& baron would marry a kitchen wench. And this man, from
whom we have got such a cold shoulder, is but a farm hand,
*&d, from what we have heard, a tramp."
Claire Moulton was now silent. They drove rapidly home-
ward and talked of other things. It was only after dinner that
*he asked her guardian if he believed that Maxwell was but a
farm band or a tramp.
" Ton my soul, Claire, I think you are interested in the
fellow. Are you now ? "
M There are others more interested than I," she said.
" You mean the family, the people who have housed him ? "
€€ Yes " ; she said.
M Of course they are. We saw that But what do you
^ean ? "
M I mean that I think you have still the victory
Cosgrove. That man is a gentleman; and tk$y <
vou lxxxv,— 14
~9
2 1 LISHEEN [May.
Hamberton was slow to grasp her meaning. When he did,
he stared at her blankly for a moment, and said:
" Good God ! what moles we are compared with women t
But, why do you say so, Claire ? I could see no marks of -
that."
" If he were a soldier," said Claire, " he would have straight- , ^
ened himself and stood to attention. If he were a workman, ^ M
he would have said, sir. He spoke to you as an equal, did he -g^ c
not ? "
" By Jove, yes " ; said Hamberton. " And, yrhat is more
he had the address and language of a gentleman. But, no
that's impossible! What, in. heaven's name, would bring a gen
tleman there?"
" That's a mystery," said his ward, " which time will unravel
But you have the victory over Mr. Cosgrove so far."
" True. And the thing is interesting in itself, is it not
We must watch the. development of it. It is something t
have a mystery to unravel so near us. But, everything is ^t.
mystery and a parodox in Ireland. We shall go there again*
soon. Shall we not ? "
" I won't," said Claire.
"Won't? You will. Or I shall say you are jealous of tha^
little country girl. No; not jealous, but afraid."
"Very well, I will," said Claire. "The thing may be inter-
esting. Whatever the man is, there is a story somewhere L
his life; and I am getting tired of Ned Galway and his pot
toes."
Which allusion will be explained in subsequent chapters.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
SOME VICTIMS OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BY ABBOT GASQUET, O.S.B.
II.
[HE English Benedictine nuns at Cambrat had not,
perhaps, full knowledge of the decree upon de-
cree made by municipal councils in the town, dur-
ing the months of August and September, desig-
nating what classes of persons were to be de-
scribed as " suspected," and consequently liable to arrest not only
^as subjects of the king of Great Britain, but still more as religious
clad in a proscribed habit, and not having taken the oath — these
nuns were all that time at the mercy any day of those agents
of the Revolution, who at last burst into their cloister, on Oc-
tober IS, 1793, in consequence of the imperative decree of
October to, forbidding any further, delay. Copies of many of
laese "seances" and "decrees" are at Stanbrook, and give
color to the few words used by Dame Ann-Teresa Partington
the opening of her "Narrative," which here follows:
.
^A " Brief Narrative " of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames
Cambtay, of their Sufferings while in the hands of the French
'^l^>Molicans, and of their arrival in England. By one of the
'^^zgious, who was an eye-witness to the events she relates.
Ann-Teresa Partington.
In the summer of the year 1793, the allied armies being
= ^.t the gates of Cambray, the Religious were repeatedly or-
e «- «d in the most threatening manner by the District of Cam-
r ay to lay in provisions for six months against the siege that
'^-s then expected to take place. They accordingly provided
"^^mselves with such a stock of necessaries as their finances
r «^ uld allow them to purchase. From the commencement of the
*~»lnappy troubles they had been constantly alarmed by the visits
X" decrees of the agents in the Revolution, who were nowhere
212 Some Victims of the Revolution [May,
more outrageous than at Cambray ; but the nuns, not being con*
scious of having given any offence, were willing to flatter them-
selves that they were in some safety. However, on Sunday, Oc-
tober 13th, 1793,* the District of Cambray sent four of their crea-
tures to fix the publick Seals on the papers and effects belong-
ing to the Nuns. These Commissioners arrived at the Convent
about half- past eight at night. The Religious were retired to
their cells, having to arise at midnight to perform their matins
office, so that it was some minutes before Lady Abbess, Lucy
Blyde, could open the inclosure door; at which they seemed
displeased. The very revd. Mr. Walker, who out of a motive
of charity assisted the nuns as their spiritual director, was onlj
just recovering from a very dangerous illness and was in bed;
but on hearing what was going forward, got up and came intc
the convent.
All the nuns being assembled, one of the men, who seemec
the most cruel of the company, read a very long paper, th<
purport of which was that all the effects belonging to the nun:
were confiscated to the nation. Mr. Walker began to expostu-
late with them, but their brutality soon silenced him. They then
proceeded to fix the seals on all the books, papers, &c, belong-
ing to the Lady Abbess and Dame Procuratrix, Dame A. T,
Partington, threatening them all the while how severely they
should be planished in case they concealed the smallest article
of their property. Having secured everything, they told the
nuns that they were now prisoners ; and then they wrote a long
account of their proceedings, at the close of which they added
by the desire of the Community, that the religious wished tc
remain prisoners in their convent under a guard, rather thai
be removed to any other place of confinement. This paper th<
Lady Abbess and Procuratrix signed. They went out of th<
Monastery about eleven o'clock to put the public seals on every*
thing in the outward buildings and apartments, one of whicl
was appointed for the use of the confessor. This they did wit!
utmost severity. They then arrested the revd. Messrs. Walke:
and Higginson. The last mentioned was a young religious man
who, in consideration of the age and declining health of th<
• This harrowing scene is related also by another eye-witness, Dame Ann-Joseph Knight
in a letter dated from Woolton, August 20, 1795, which we give further on, after the " Narra
live."
Some Victims of the Revolution 213
mer, had been some months before appointed to assist him.
prevent them from having any conversation with the nuns
y took them away instantly. It was near twelve when the
irds conducted them to prison, Mr. Walker was quite broken
h age and infirmity. The nuns had the affliction of seeing
£tl& that passed from their adjoining convent. They thought
th 2ft»t they were dragging them to prison for immediate execu-
tiojn; but Providence kindly reserved them to be their support
in another place of suffering. What the religious felt on the
asion may be better imagined than expressed.
That night they confined them in the town house. Next
rning they were removed to the Bishop's Seminary, which
for-raerly belonged to the Jesuits, but was then turned into what
they called a Maison dc Detention. There they remained till
the 20th of November, 1793, deprived of the most common
necessaries. They were once a day and a half without any
other food than one bit of bread. They began to suspect that
their death was to be effected by their being left to starve.
No one durst serve them with victuals. They wrote to many
ton. - iceepers and assured them of immediate payment for the
scanty sustenance they asked for; but so hateful was the name
°f ^ priest in Cambray, and the people so terrified at what they
saw going on, that no answer was ever, returned. They could
not prevail even with a barber to venture to attend them. At
length a good woman, Marie Demal, who had lived servant with
the nuns, hearing of their distress, had the courage to visit
them instantly, and in spite of every danger and difficulty pro-
dded victuals for them the best she could get. She continued
her charitable assistance till they were removed to Compiegne.
^ r - Walker frequently said afterwards that she had saved his
life.
But to return to the nuns; from the moment the Com-
m *ssioners from the district entered their house on Sunday night,
they found themselves strictly guarded ; but they were still
i m *de to hope that they might remain in their convent as they
k had desired ; even some of the members of the district assured
I them in the most solemn manner there was no danger of their
1 being removed from it. That this was all treachery the nuns
1 were afterwards well assured ; for the day after this sol***
: '\ Promise had been made them, Friday, the 18th of Octobi
214 Some Victims of the Revolution [May,
they were seized upon by a body of light horse guards, part of
whom surrounded the street door, whilst the rest entered into
their convent with a crowd of blackguards at their heels. A very
brutal man, sent by the district of Cambray, was at their head.
When he came up to the inclosure door, his first question was,
have you laid in a provision for six months? On being assured
that had been done, he seemed for an instant at a loss what to
say ; but after a short pause he gave orders that the nuns
should be totally out of their house in half a quarter of an
hour, and that they should take neither trunk nor box with
them ; he only allowed each one of them a small bundle. His
figure and manner of speaking appeared so savage and insult-
ing that the nuns were in the greatest terror; so that, amidst
the hurry and confusion of so sudden a calamity, overwhelmed
with sorrow at being thus turned out of their beloved abode,
and for want of sufficient time to make up their bundles, many
of the nuns went away with only the clothes they had on. At
this afflicting moment the future want of every necessary found
no place in their minds, they were stupefied with grief. The
Frocuratrix, however, petitioned to carry off a small book,
where was written a few memorandums very useful to her; but
the ill-natured man to whom she addressed herself wrested the
book from her hands, telling her at the same time to fetch
brandy for the Hussars, which she instantly was obliged to do;
while the barbarous man was running about the house with a
club in his hand, ready to make any one feel the weight of it
who did not make haste to be gone. Thus in less than half
an hour they were completely turned out of their whole prop-
erty, without being able to learn from any one what was to be
their fate. They thought death would soon have followed, and
expected every moment to see the fatal guillotine.
In the street they found one coach and two carts, each of
them strongly guarded by a detachment of Hussars on horse-
back, with naked swords. The nuns were soon hurried away.
The Hussars seemed much displeased at this barbarous usage;
some of them shed tears, and on the way, with the most feel-
ing compassion, they even lent their cloaks to those of the re-
ligious who were in the uncovered carts, to keep them from
starving. Through the whole dismal journey of five days they
did all they could to soften the hardships they saw the nuns
1907-] SOME VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION 215
exposed to on all sides; but it was not in their power to hinder
the populace from loading the religious with insulting language
wherever they passed. Besides, when the nuns arrived in any
town to pass the night, they were guarded by the soldiers who
did duty at the prison in which they happened to be lodged.
Among them they met with a variety of insults, insomuch that
they always dreaded the approach of night. The nuns were
twenty in number and a novice upon probation when they were
expelled from the convent, viz,, Mary Anselm Ann, Jane Alex-
ander, Elizabeth Sheldon, Margret Burgess, Elizabeth Haggers-
ton ; Mary Blyde, Abbess; Teresa Walmesley, Louisa Hagan,
Elizabeth Knight, Elizabeth Partington, Mary Partington, Mar-
gret Barnwall, Agnes Robinson, Ann Shepherd, Helen Shep-
herd; Lay Sisters: Ann Pennington, Louisa Lefebevre, Magd
Kimberiey, Ann Cayton, Martha Friar; Jane Miller, Novice.
The Hussars who conducted them did not at first know whither
the nuns were to be taken. They were strangers to the country,
and had been sent for from some distance for the grand pur-
pose of carrying prisoners from Cambray. They received orders
every night how they were to proceed the following day. At
last the nuns found that the appointed place of their captivity
was Compiegne, where, being at a distance from every friend,
they must have little or no hope of recovering any part of their
large property.
The first night, Friday, they were lodged in a very ruinous
place at Bapaume.* It had the appearance of having been a
convent; it was almost destroyed, the windows all broken, &c.
The violence of the rabble was so great here that the nuns
were very happy to be taken out of the carts into any place like
a house. The Mayor of this town was a native of Cambray and
was well known to the nuns, one of his sisters having had her
education among them; but he now knew nothing of them, nor
showed them any favour. He was highly displeased at their be-
* The following hill, paid for by the Commune later on, on November 5, as pari of Ihe
expense* of the journey, is among the Cambrai Archive papers :
" Received for the Halting place at Bapaume :
" 8 Candles tor the men,
" 3 do tor the infirmary,
•" 2 do lor the Sisters of Charity,
■• 6 do for Ihe English Nuns.
••6 do for the sentinel."
We shall see, presently, candles named by ll
I
216 Some Victims of the Revolution [Ma.3
ing in the religious dress, and said the people of Cambray hat
acted against the law by not making them shun a dress whicr
the law had proscribed.
The jailor of this prison seemed a quiet man, and his daughte
was so kind as to buy the nuns two faggots, some very brow
bread, and a kettle of boiling water. They made tea, but sugsi
and milk were delicates not to be thought of, or at least not t<
be had. They were so exhausted with grief and the fatigue the)
had gone through that day, that most of them could not eat
the bread. They laid their wearied bodies on the floor and they
spread a few bundles they had brought with them to stretch their
limbs upon, and even in this state they were frequently dis-
turbed by the guards looking through the broken windows.
The next night, Saturday, they past at Peronne, in the cita-
del. Here they were guarded by the national troops, whose
brutality can hardly be described; nothing cofild be more dis-
agreeable than their language and behaviour. A woman who ap-
peared to belong to one of them, molested the nuns by every
means she could. However, amongst all this cruel treatment
they had the comfort to meet with some friends. A woman,
whose father in better times had been employed by the nuns
had the courage to make her, way to them in the prison. She
and her husband bought for them bread, small beer, and a fe*
boiled eggs, which was really a treat. Some of the nuns hac
eat nothing for two days. Here they found a few bedstocki
full of dirty straw, on which the soldiers had slept apparentlj
for some months. The nuns for a time were much afraid o
the consequence they might procure by lying down upon it
At last excessive weariness overcame that difficulty ; but then
was no rest to be found in this place of horror. The soldien
were passing to and fro the greatest part of the night, ever
through the room which had been assigned to the nuns. Nex
morning, by the favour of an Irish lady who was there in arres
tation, the nuns had one cup of tea before the Hussars came t<
summon them to continue their tedious journey.
On Sunday night they rested at Ham. On their arrival
there was, as they expected, a great stir among the rabble, eacl
one crying out Aristocrates to the Guillotine; but this languagi
was become so familiar to the nuns that it had lost much of thi
effect it had at first. The prison they were lodged in being a
,h e skirts of the town, they got out of the carts with fewer of
1 the m°b attending them than usual ; not to be insulted to a
treat degree now seemed a favour. The Governor of this place
happened to be in town, an humane man ; he gave orders that
the nuns should have a room to themselves and allowed them
clean straw, which was spread all over the floor. Thpy were
happy to li e down upon it, and the night passed without any
noise or interruption. They were also permitted to buy a candle,
and, what was more to their purpose, something to eat. The next
morning the Governor called upon them, and on parting with
them, recommended himself to their prayers. They attributed
(this shew of kindness to the good will of a poor woman who
had the care of the prison. She had lived at Cambray in the
neighbourhood of the nuns, and she seemed to be much affected
on seeing them in their present distress. It gave her particu-
lar concern to see them go in carts, while all the other prisoners
(a few men excepted) were carried in coaches to their several
destinations. She thought, as every one did, that the nuns were
exposed in carts for no other end than that they might be the
more insulted.
Monday night they stopt at Noyon. It is impossible to de-
scribe the fright they were in on their arrival. There the carts
had no sooner stopt in the Market Place than thousands of
people assembled in the most riotous manner around them; for
nuns to appear in the religious dress was at that time the worst
of crimes. Some talked of tearing them to pieces, others said
they would bury them alive with their proscribed dress. The
Hussars repeatedly endeavoured to speak in their favour, but so
great was the noise and the tumult among the populace, which
in a short time had increased to a dreadful number, that not a
Word could be heard. Not only the streets, but the windows
and the tops of some houses were full of spectators. The Hus-
sars, finding it impossible to keep any order, sent for the soldiers
quartered in the town, by whose assistance the nuns were at
last taken out of the carts, half dead with fear, after having been
detained in the Market Place near an hour, amidst a variety of
the most outrageous insults and threats. One instance alone
may shew the temper of the people in their regard. One of the
nuns, Mary T. Shepherd, when she was taken out of the cart,
being scarcely able to stand, fell against the horse which was at
iqo7-] Some Victims of, the Revolution 217
2i8 Some Victims of the Revolution [M^j,
the side of her. The beast immediately struck her, at whl^jj
the rabble set up the most insulting shouts, and claped th^; r
hands for joy.
The soldiers who came to assist the Hussars guarded the
nuns that night, and were extremely civil to them. One of
them, a very young man, wept most bitterly. Out of compas-
sion, they conducted them to a decent inn instead of the com-
mon prison, and they allowed them to call for whatever thtyr
could pay for. Two officers took particular care of them, the*
younger of whom for a time could not refrain from tears. Th^
head officer of the Hussars came twice to the inn to see them~
but nothing could revive their spirits. The thought that they
must again be exposed on the carts was too distressing to ad-
mit of any comfort. Their kindness, however, was a great al-
Jeviation of the pungent grief and distress of the nuns. It is
three years since these scenes of horror happened ; yet the
writer of this declares that her blood chills whenever she thinks ~s
of that dreadful day. Those who have experienced such dis- —
tress will excuse her for expressing herself so feelingly on thi
subject.
Gratitude to a merciful Providence over us in all our dis
tress, prompts me to remark here, that though the mob sai
everything shocking and surrounded us on every side, as if t
tear us into a thousand pieces, and on one occasion cut off a
piece of one of our veils, yet not one of them laid a ham
upon any of us, and in every place some were found who she*
tears of compassion over us.
The nuns left Noyon about nine on Tuesday morning. The
had covered their veils with coloured handkerchiefs and di
guised themselves as much as they could, in order to appe
as they sat in the cart, like the French villagers, who wear
hats. This precaution was of some service, for on the road t
people seemed at a loss what to make of them.
About four in the afternoon the nuns arrived at Compi&g
and there the Hussars left them, after having said much
their favour to the Mayor and two other members of the d
trict, who came, attended by the national guards, to receive t
prisoners.
The Hussars were natives of Normandy, most of them you
men about nineteen or twenty years of age. The nuns w
:
t<f0 7-1 Some victims of the Revolution 219
t he more surprised at their civility, as they were giddy and
ve t-y profane in their language to one another.
The prisoners brought from Cambray to Compiegne at that
tim c were fifty-two in number, the nuns included." They were
a jl confined in one house; it had been a convent formerly.be-
l 0> -»ging to the nuns of the order ol the Visitation, but was then
a common prison. The gentlemen of the district of Compiegne
ve - »-y frequently visited the prison ; when they called upon the
nts ns they asked them a hundred questions, but upon the whole
thesy behaved with civility. The Procurator Sindic, seeing them
na ,l f starving, had the goodness to write twice to Cambray to
desire the Municipality of that city to return some part of their
wearing apparel ; but they sent none. The nuns had a room
assigned to them in the infirmary of the convent. The adjoin-
ing apartments were occupied by prisoners of all ranks and de-
scriptions; their number increased daily. They -were chiefly
from Cambray and its environs; whole families were sometimes
brought up at once. It seems this place had been fixed upon
in preference to Cambray, because it was more within the reach
of the assassins of Paris, who were then deluging the streets
of that capital with human blood.
On the 25th of November, 1793, a great number of prison-
ers were brought from Cambray, among whom were the revd.
Messrs. Walker, the young priest, his assistant, and the Honble.
Thos, Roper. It is not easy to express what the religious felt
when Mr. Walker appeared, as they had not the least reason
■ The date of arrival at ihe prison of Cornpiigne is borne out by a list copied from the
Archives of the town of Cambrai, giving names, dale of arrival. length of detention of each
Canibm prisoner, wiih ■ space for observations od each. The en lira list of the Camurai
Nuns there appears, arrived 1st. Brumaire Ian II : the dealh of each one of the four to date,
excepting Dame Margaret Burgess, who survived till April 6th. laier than the drawing up of
(he list. Under head " Observations." Ihey are designated in a long running line by Ihe
word: " Religieuses de Cambrai." which line also includes Ihe names of six others, evidently
the Sisters of Charity, already referred to on the journey in the bill for candles. No noiicc
occurs in (he lent ol the " Narrative " regarding these Sisters of Charily ; they were certainly
not lodged in the same room with the Benedictines, and probably these latter never knew who
ihejr were. Apart from these names, but in the same list, are a few other Nuns (all French],
the Order not staled. It would be inteiesting to learn the ultimate fate of these co-prisoner
nuns. Two Ladies, both subjects of Great Britain, appear on this and olher lists ; of one.
Elisabeth Ganot fe Stack, we know nothing, but ihe other. Miss Cusack. was a friend to the
Community whilsi at Cambrai, where she resided. She it the Irish Lady referred to in the
"Narrative" lor kindness shown at Peronne. Further down in the lisl occur the namesof
Father Walker and Father Higginson. the former is spelt " Waquert, entered 5 Frimaiie
iN'ov. 3 j), died 34 Nivose, 50 days detention." Hon. Mr. Roper appears as "Thomas
ftopert.'"
220 Some Victims of the revolution [May,
to hope of ever seeing him again. He also seemed much af.
fected. The pleasure of seeing him was, however, greatly al-
layed by orders which were immediately given that he should
by no means come near the nuns, one of the members of the
District having observed to his colleagues that, if he was al-
lowed to visit the nuns, some part of religious worship might:
probably be kept up among them ; which, he said, they were
bound to root out entirely. For a time the nuns saw him sel-
dom, and always with fear and great apprehension. I have
reason to think that it cost him a great deal to be obliged to
pass his time with a set of men, whose manners and conversa-
tion were shocking to common decency.
Soon after this, the very man who had, with a club in his
hand, turned the nuns out of their convent at Cambray, was
sent after them to prison. He was removed to Paris soon after,
where it was said he lost his head. Such was the fate of many
who had been particularly active in promoting the unhappy
revolution.
For a time the gaol allowance was a pound of bread for?
each person per day, and one good meal, the expense of whicta
was to be defrayed by the prisoners jointly ; the rich paying
for the poor; and strict orders were frequently given tha^-
equality should be observed, according to the new republican
law. That no one might escape unnoted, the prisoners wer -
called over twice every day.
About the beginning of January, 1794, most of the nuns fe ~
sick. Eight or nine were confined to their beds at the sa
time, and the rest so much indisposed as to be scarcely abS
to help their dying sisters. A good woman who sold milk M
-the prisoners took great compassion of them and came to as
sist them, but in a short time fell dangerously ill herself. Th^
unfortunate accident made others afraid to come near th
The disorder was a fever proceeding (as the doctor said) fro- z
great hardships and chagrin. They had still only one room
the whole community (twenty-one in number), several of whc
were now drawing near their end. Every one seemed to pi
them ; but, the fever beginning to spread among the prisone
each one feared for himself. Upon this it was thought pro
to. allow the nuns a small adjoining room ; and the prisoners
general, who were about an hundred and sixty, were permitt:
i9<>7-] Some Victims of the Revolution 221
to walk in the garden, a favour which had not been allowed them
before. The windows in the nuns' room were unnailed, that
they might open them for a little fresh air; but it was the
middle of winter, and the weather so very damp and wet that
this allowance was of no avail to them.
On the 1 2th of January, about two o'clock in the morning,
Mr. Walker found himself very ill, but would not disturb Mr.
Higginson till the usual hour of* rising. Among the prisoners
was a doctor, Dr. Dufeuille, from Cambray, which was a fortu-
nate circumstance for all the sick. He was called about seven
o'clock, and declared Mr. Walker's case to be dangerous. He
grew worse fast, so as to alarm every one ; for the prisoners
all esteemed him. He fell into his agony in the evening, and
[ expired near two o'clock, having been ill only twenty-four hours.
It was thought by some to be gout at his stomach that so sud-
denly hurried him off ; but the doctor always affirmed that the
m &ny hardships he had undergone, and the want of necessaries
■
requisite for a person of his age and weak health, had not a
'ittle contributed to his death. Many of the nuns were at that
time too ill to be informed of this catastrophe ; but the distress
°f the few who were informed of it was great beyond expres-
ton. The circumstances the religious were then in made his
loss to be severally felt and long deeply regretted by the nuns.
He had for some years past been as a father and an exemplary
Mend to each of them ; having remained with them by choice,
IQ the hardest of times, even when his life was in danger, and
*he n he might have lived comfortably in England. During his
0| *g confinement he was never heard to let fall one word of
c °a*plaint, though few had suffered so much as he. He died
* s he had lived, like a good religious man. The writer of this
* e 'I remembers that sorrowful day. He had lived 73 years;
rf.^^ng twenty of these he resided at Rome, and had received
^tinguishing tokens of esteem from his present Holyness, Pius
. ^ VI. The last seventeen years of his life he had, with great
" r# *~1it to himself, held the office of President- General of the
~**%Iish Congregation of the Order of St. Bennet.
Jfext morning, January 14th, while Mr. Walker's corpse was
*** in the prison, Dame Anselm Ann died, aged 79- On the
r ^l f t he same month, Dame Walmesley breathed her last,
^^ ^ # About the end of the same month, Ann Pinnington,
222 Some victims of the Revolution [M^ r
a lay sister, who till then had been of the greatest service
about the sick, fell dangerously ill. Her disorder was a gan-
grene in her arm, which from the first threatened her life.
Nothing could be had in the prison proper to apply to it, nor
would the Commissioner who was over them that day, though
he was in the prison and thoroughly informed of the nature of
the disorder, allow anything to be procured from the town ; so
that 24 hours had elapsed before anything material was done.
In the meantime the mortification had spread prodigiously and
her life was despaired of. She expired on the 6th of February,
about three o'clock in the morning, aged 60. Towards the
beginning of March, the same year, the surviving nuns began
to recover, though but very slowly.*
The District of Compiegne now began to treat the prisoners
with great severity. Very many had been sent from Cambray ;
the District there had seized all their property, but would allow
nothing towards keeping them from starving. On the 6th of '
March three of the members of the District of Compi&gne cam
to the prison, escorted by a detachment of the National Guards
The prisoners were all ordered to assemble in one large room
some of the nuns were still confined by sickness, so that onl
a part of them could attend. All the prisoners stood like con —
demned criminals. The Procurator Sindic made a long harangu
putting them in mind that thay had hitherto been served wit
one meal per day, but nothing had been paid for so liberal
treatment (as he called it) ; that the people of Compiegne we
resolved to reimburse themselves one way or other. The priso
ers alleged that they had already been stript of everything
their houses plundered; that to think of forcing more fro
them was cruel in the extreme. These expostulations, true 9
they really were, had no effect. The Procurator Sindic agsfc.2
and again told them that if the sum of French livres was m.
collected amongst them and sent to the District before 10 o'clc*
next morning, they should be punished with the greatest sevc
*On April 6, of the same year, died Dame Margaret Burgess. It is by evident overs i
that her name is omitted in this original, as it is given in its right place in other early co>
of this same manuscript. There arc at Stanbrook copies made from the Archives of the M j
of Compiegne, of the Register of the deaths of all the above named, excepting of that
Dame Teresa-Joseph Walme.sley, which could not be found. They are long, formal acts.
ing even the ages as well as the names of the officers sent to ascertain the death and r<
the bodies of the defunct from the prison. We do not think the text would be of any in
to casual readers, though they are documents prized at Stanbrook.
1907.] Some Victims of the Revolution 223
ity. The prisoners being by no means able to furnish the sum
demanded, they were on the nth of March stinted to coarse
brown bread and water. Many of the nuns were still unwell
when this severe order took place; some of them were even
confined to their beds. Six red herrings, which they happened
to have when this command was given out, was all they had
for three days; not being allowed to buy anything, not even a
little salt. A surgeon of Compi&gne, who had attended some
of the nuns, was so compassionate as to go himself to the Dis-
trict when the members were assembled, to beg as a favour
they would permit a little broth to be sent to Dame Alexander,
who was near eighty years old, and had been confined to her
bed about six weeks of a fever, which terminated in an hectick
fever and an imposthume. He was refused: on which, as they
*ere told, tears gushed into his eyes. Be that as it may, all
Wiat the nuns got by the charity of this good man was a heap
°f compliments of condolence from the Mayor and from some
of the Magistrates; but they gave us nothing.
Their wants growing every day greater, they applied to some
of the inhabitants of Compiegne for needlework; but the win-
do xws of the room they occupied being most part blockaded, little
co tald be done materially to mend their condition. In order to
raise money to buy bread, they contrived privately to sell,
though at a vast loss, a few gold crosses, &c, which they
happened to have about them when they were taken from
Caxiabray.
The magistrates of Compiegne, finding that nothing could
be got from the District of Cambray, were every day more and
more importunate with the prisoners for money, which they had
not to give. # One day they came to take away their beds,
which consisted of each a mattress and one blanket. A charit-
* Turning over a number of papers copied from the Town Archives of Cambrai, at vari-
°** date*, from February to May, 1794, we can trace how thoroughly correct are Ann-Teresa
Arlington's remarks here. Here is one, just as a sample, dated 6 Ventose, Year II. of the
Republic (26 Feb., 1794). The Authorities at Compiegne address the following complaint to
^municipal officers' of the Commune of Cambrai :
** "Your Comit/ dt Surveillance has lately sent us 3a new prisoners (de*tcnus). Over-
powered by the passage of troops, and being without barracks, we can scarcely lodge them.
Bui ho* are we to feed them ? All the provision sellers declare that if they are not paid under
«fcht days, they cannot advance any more victuals. You know that we are barred out from
ill resources of the district treasury ; our own is entirely exhausted. There is nothing left for
us but to put your fellow-citiiens on ordinary prisoners' fare, if you do not procure for us the
w»ey required within the limits of time fixed by our creditors. Citizens, Colleagues, we have
224 SOME VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION [May.
able friend gave them money to leave the nuns there a month
longer, at the expiration of which they came and made ye
same bustle again ; but another friend promised to pay for them
a month longer, and thus they went on, always under the ap.
prehension of being obliged to lye on a few locks of straw.
(to be concluded.)
used up all our resources ; in the name of humanity make use of yours, in order to minister to
the sustenance of your fellow-citizens and your brothers ! All we have to offer you in their be.
half is the continuation of such care and regard as are compatible with the law. Health ud
Fraternity,
" Signed " Notel,
" Carden,
L.-|-S. " Herbert,
,4 Bernard."
*
After some sittings of the District Council at Cambrai, it was resolved, on March 16,
••after mature deliberation, that, seeing the nation has seized on the goods of all subjects of
the King, of Great Britain," the English women at Compiegne have nothing left and are now
to be classed among " the Poor," consequently the richer of the d&enui must pay the cost of
victuals. "It shall be the same as regards the j English Priests (sic.) and of the woman called
Cusack and her attendant." Then it goes on to say what is to be done respecting the
" Stack " and other persons who still own some property in Cambrai apparently. Returning
the English Nuns, ft is repeated that " Reupere and Wacaros " (»'. t., Roper and Walker) are
the same case as the Nuns, and finally that the former Sisters of Charity, " Ci-devant Sans,
de ChariteY' shall come under the same measures as those taken for the English.Nuns, "
devant Anglaises " (sic.) It is noteworthy that Hon. Thomas Roper is here classed as a pric
one of the three English priests ; furthermore, recollecting that one English priest had died
January, no pains is taken to distinguish his name from that of the survivor, a manner of p
ceeding found to prevail even in death warrants of that terrible period ; hence, Father H
ginson is not named in the document, only Roper and Walker.
At last on March 18 (28 Ventose), deciding to refer the difficult case of the starving pri
to the " Representative of the people " at Arras, a higher authority, the Council sent in a
tition to this individual, who is no other than the bloodthirsty tyrant Joseph Lebon, in whi
after quoting the law of the 26 Brumaire (Oct., 1793), which required the rich prisoners to
for the poorer de*tenus, the council goes on to ask in what way funds are now to be raised
the support of the Compiegne prisoners, " the law being silent as to the mode, is it to
District, or how?" Then follows a terrible statement: "Pressed on the one side by
municipality of Compiegne which has stated that provision vendors have actually ceased no
furnish any food, and on the other fearing to fail in our duty by the provisional suppli
have been forced to raise, because of the absolute destitution of the dltenus for the mom m
we turn to you, citizen, that, by your authority, you may point out the path we are to folV
&c, &c." The savage reply of Joseph Lebon came from Arras, dated March 19 (29
tose), addressed to the municipality of Cambrai :
" I have reason to be surprised that a municipality of Compiegne should now dare t<
mand of the nation exorbitant sums, &c, &c." He concludes his harangue by advising
not to trouble about " Food vendors who have been furnishing splendid repasts to
conspirators." Starvation was clearly staring in the face of the Cambrai Nuns, de*ten
the Compiegne gaol !
Ho
THE FRANCE Of RENE BAZIN.
BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD.
lovers of France and of the French people, po-
litical events of the past few years — the antago-
nisms, the angry tecrimi nations, the overt perse-
cution — have been a ceaseless cause of melan-
choly. The France that we love, at once light-
arted .■■■■. .1: tistic, thrifty and laborious, would seem to have
vanished behind the clamor of controversy that is kept alive
by the anti-Christian policy of the present government. Almost
it would seem as though the nation, together with the outward
emblems of its Catholicism, had flung away much of its former
fascination. To those who find themselves in this pessimistic
mood, easily induced by a study of the newspaper press, I would
recommend the novels of Rene" Baiin. He restores to us a
sex&se of proportion, of the essential value of things, and shows
us the French people striving, living, and suffering as before,
and, if we except L'holet, singularly little touched by contem-
porary events. He carries us away from Paris, away from poli-
tics and religious intolerance, right into the heart of France.
K.« ignores the life of sport and wealth and fashion, which fills
^r-ee- fourths of the novels issued by the great publishing
bouses, and tells us instead of the every-day life of the de-
mocracy in its normal aspects. He is familiar with the condi-
tions of labor, not only in the rural districts, but in the large
industrial cities — Nantes, Lyons, Ntmes — and he has the gift of
penetrating the distinctive characteristics of each. Baztn is a
close student of life, without ever being betrayed into a sor-
did realism; he enters deeply into the trials and even the
*rongs of the poor, but without bitterness or class- hatred ; and
«ough. his novels are frequently, sad, and sometimes even tragic,
"*/ are all permeated with the optimism of an undaunted
fotfa.
'n not a few qualities of Rene Bazin's art he reminds me
■^■lphonse Daudet in his earlier work. I find in it the same
'Vol. lzxzv.— 15
226 The France of Rene Bazin M&Kr
tenderness, the same limpid style, the same directness of visio —
It is, perhaps, a tribute to Bazin's essentially French geni
that it is impossible to draw any helpful comparison betwei
him and any English novelist of to-day who, like him, male
a special study of how the poor live. He is never broadly
humorously realistic like Pett Ridge; never sordid and cf.
pressing as the late George Gissing in his least happy momenf—
was apt to be; above all, never effusively sentimental like GS
R. Sims. His outlook on life is invariably refined and medita —
tive; and even when he deals, as we shall see, with topics pain*
ful in themselves, with social conditions that call urgently forr« *
reform, or, as in Lcs Ober/e, with the passions roused by an in — — - •
surgent patriotism, there is no hint of coarseness in the treat- — >
ment, even one may concede a certain lack of vigor. He -^» e
charms and wins by his gentler qualities, and seekers after —w~x
strong meat had perhaps better turn to other authors.
It must not be assumed, because Bazin can be recom- — _^-
mended safely for family reading, that he is in any sense a
colorless writer of mediocre talent. Born and bred in Angers*
and a lecturer on law in that city for well-nigh thirty years, it]
is neither in jurisprudence nor on the banks of the Loire thai
his reputation has been made. One of his earliest novels, Un*
Tdche d'Encrc (1886), won for him the appreciative notice or
the editor of the Debats, who invited him to join his staff, and
through the pages of that journal, Bazin was able from the
first to reach that wider Parisian public, with whom ever sine*
he has remained popular. Four years ago came the officiac
recognition of his talent in his election, in succession to Ernes
Legouve, to the French Academy, which had previously
him the honor of crownihg two of his works, Une Tdche d'Encr*?
already mentioned, and Sicile, a volume of travels. Meanwhile Je,
year after year fiction had flowed from his facile pen, and h _«s
novels have come to be accepted by critics, not only as singi
larly charming works of fiction, but as more accurate presen
ments of certain aspects of French national life than any oth
contemporary novelist can produce. His books are, in a ve*
real sense, etudes de moeurs contemporaines. Each one is plao
in a fresh setting — Anjou, Jersey, Alsace, La Vendee, the plaL
and sea- ports of Brittany, the stone quarries of the Creuse, » — t^r,
as I have said, in the industrial quarter of some provinc ^^k^al
town — and in this way he presents a series of impressions at
7.] The France of Rene Bazin 227
f*r~^t hand of industrial and rural life, impressions far closer to
t,Yx ^^ essential truths, though disguised as Action, than the de-
tailed descriptions of outsiders, however intelligent, such as we
ha.ve from the pen of Miss Betham- Edwards, who can never set
<de her anti- Catholic bias, or even from so acute an observer
-Mr. J. E. C. Bodley.
It is the more recent of Bazin's works that display his tal-
t: in its mature robustness, and it is to them I propose to
draw attention, omitting for the moment any reference to early
novels, such as Une Tdche d'Encre and Madame Corentine y in
wh i ch the author's stronger characteristics are scarcely devel-
op ed, or even to the later Les Oberle, written with the special
purpose of illustrating the gradual Germanization of Alsace and
Lorraine. So too I propose to say nothing here of sundry at-
tractive volumes of travel in Italy, Sicily, and Spain, the out-
come of the professor's vacation wanderings, as being beyond
the special scope of this article. Those who are. drawn to
Bazin's works, not only by a love of romance but by a desire
to penetrate below the surface of French provincial life, will
best attain their object by reading La Terre qui Meurt and
&on*tienne, dealing with the life of the poor in rural districts,
and De Toute Son Ante and L'Isofe'e, with the ideals and sor-
rows of city work-girls.
-Z,a Tern qui Meurt is an attempt to portray that passion for
the soil which has lain at the root of French agricultural pros-
perity in the past. The district described with geographical ac-
curacy is the Marais Vende'en, the fen- land of La Vendue, the
w >de marshy tract, intersected by canals, that lies along the
shores of the Bay of Biscay, and is inhabited by stalwart peas-
ants of simple, laborious habits and extraordinary pride of race.
Various circumstances, however — foreign competition, the ravages
°^ the phylloxera in the vineyards, and increased facilities of
co *nuiunication bringing the young people into contact with the
0u tside world — have all tended to modify the conditions of this
Primitive life; and the problem presents itself, can the soil of
France continue to nourish its cultivators as ot old ? Toussaint
** Ut "nineau is the type of* the patriarchal farmer, who, clinging
w *th a grim pertinacity to the land that his family has ploughed
0r generations, and venerating with feudal devotion M. le Mar-
^ Ul s at the Chateau, sees with anguish his children drawn away
m U> the vortex of city life, and learns with incredulous horror
228
The France of Rene Bazin
[May,
qp:
that the absentee landlord has resolved on selling the estate.
No one is more fitted than Bazin to do justice to this theme of
simple tragedy, to the pathos of old Lumineau's sorrows and
the futility of his struggles against the tendencies of the day.
So, too, no one conveys better than he both the laboriousness
of agricultural toil and the joy and hope that spring from the
mystic sense of working in close union with nature. The book
is rich in essentially French motives : the rejoicings of the
family at the return of Andre from his military service, the de-
parture of the young conscrits of the year, the patient submis-
siveness of the lovers beneath paternal displeasure, the patriar-
chal marriage customs. For Ren£ Bazin has too much faith in
the fundamental qualities of his countrymen to present a pic-
ture of unrelieved gloom, and the pervasive melancholy of his
tale is illumined by the charming idyl of the love of Lumineau's
younger daughter for her father's farm-hand, Jean Nesmy.
Rousille, strong, loving, immovable in her fidelity to her fiance,
and yet childlike in her absolute innocence, is a very winning
presentment of the peasant maiden. Her sweetheart, Nesmy,
has no money, and comes from the Bocage, and old Lumineau's
pride revolts against any one save a native maratcJur marrying^^
his daughter. Yet, in the end, when Mathurin is dead an
Andre has sailed for South America, and EMonore and Fran-
cois have settled at Nantes, the lonely old man comes to se»
that Rousille and Jean Nesmy are the gifts whom God has sen
to be the comfort of his declining years. Thus, in spite
many trials, a prosperous future to the homestead is foresh
dowed through the solid virtues of the young couple, an*
Bazin brings his very powerful study to a close on a note
optimism.
A far sadder aspect of peasant life is shown in Donatien
(1903), the only novel, save L'Jso/ee, in which the tragedy
circumstance is allowed to prevail over the author's idealis
It is a tale of abject poverty and suffering, but the suffering
less the outcome of the poverty than of social conditions, whic
cry out all the more urgently for reform because by many e
cellent Christians they are accepted with complacency. The fir
and most widespread evil is the custom of taking the your
mothers of the working-classes away from their own home-duti
in order that they may nurse the babies of the rich. T
second — a specifically Parisian evil — consists in the shocki
**
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Vfi
n-
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*nt
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*a-
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of
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s
-h
st
_es
1907.] The France of Rene Bazin 229
promiscuity of that "sixth floor" to which the rich tenants of
Paris flats relegate their servants, both male and female, with-
out any attempt at supervision — a condition of things, it is satis-
factory to know, which is to-day being zealously combatted by
Catholic philanthropists. Donatienne, who gives her name to
the story, falls a victim to both these social evils. Tempted by
high wages, she leaves husband and children in their Breton
tome to take service in Paris, and with disastrous rebults. It
is typical of Bazin's methods that his novel is concerned far
less with Donatienne's adventures in the capital than with the
unhappy fate of her neglected children and deserted husband,
driven from their homestead by want, and compelled to tramp
tcross France in search of work. Even though, in the end,
>o natienne's heart responds to the cry of her children, and little
Todmi's unwavering faith in her absent mother lends a touch of
►mance to the piteous story, the family happiness has been
recked beyond repair, and nothing save misery would seem to
1>efore them in the concluding pages. Yet throughout it is
►*: on the weak, ignorant peasant woman, but on society at
e, that the responsibility for the human suffering is shown
lie, and the novel might almost be classed as a roman a thise,
k-^ it not that Bazin is too refined an artist unduly to em-
assize his moral.
"The reason, possibly, why Donatunm is a less attractive,
*ugh, in my opinion, not a less skillfully constructed, story
xi some others, is that it does not contain any carefully-studied
tinine personality. Undoubtedly Ren£ Bazin's most charac-
stic quality is his gift for delineating girl nature. It is a
t gift among French novelists, and I know of no other con-
porary writer who has evoked so charming a series of girl
tines, each one far indeed removed from the conventional
tue of French fiction. The two novels of city life now to
msidered, the one written ten years ago, the other pub-
the year before last, and, in a certain sense, complement-
predecessor, have this in common, that both are empha-
studies in girlhood. De Toute Son Ame reveals very
ind delicately how a work-girl may be lead to dedicate
her poorer sisters through the religious life. V Isolde
w a g* r l ma y be flung back upon the world she has
/ renounced by the Government of the day, and the
ensues. Both books are perm****'' - fttholic
230 The France of Rene Bazin [May,
atmosphere, and the religious sympathies of the author, which,
in some of his novels, are kept somewhat in abeyance, are in
these allowed free play. Both, though full of incident, possess " ^
the merit of revealing what is permanent and normal in the
French character, rather than what is accidental and sensational, I ^
and so are deserving of a more detailed analysis than his other | r
books.
De Toute Son Ante relates the history of a little milliner of
Nantes, and I remember no more captivating presentment o£
the French working- girl type than Henriette Madiot. She pos-
sesses as her birthright a refinement and an artistic sense ta
which her Anglo-Saxon sister can rarely lay claim ; enthusiasti
over her work and irreproachable in conduct, she is at the sam
time gay, pretty, and elegantly dressed, the only abnormal thin
about her being her sensitive appreciation of personal finery^. -^,
which, partly born within her, has been cultivated and de — — -
veloped by years of training under the most fashionable mil- Ki-
lmer in the town, of whose workrooms a vivid, lifelike picture ^re
is presented. It is in the contrast between the long hours anc±^ m^i
limited pay on the one hand, and the perpetual frSlement witUT ^t\\
the luxury of the rich on the other, in the development, s+>^^ S{
essential to success in her craft, of all those gifts of refinem
and taste which are likely to unfit her for her daily life of to :
and poverty, and for her normal future as wife and mothe*
that Bazin sees the pathos and danger and psychological in-
terest of the life of the French work-girl. Henriette has be
loved from childhood by a stalwart young Loire fisherman, bw
is it likely that the '* first hand " of Madame Cl&nence, earn-
ing her hundred francs a month, whose creations are covets
by all the fashionable women of Nantes, will consent to setv
down to domestic drudgery in a fisherman's hut ? Henriea
hesitates, partly from doubt as to her own feelings, proud
she is of le grand Etienne, and partly from affection for the
uncle whose home she shares ; and while she waits and hesita
there grows up in her heart a craving for a wider family tim
that given to married life, a closer service of the poor thaik*
feasible for the mothers of children. She had passed unhar
through the temptations of an industrial city, but knowledge
its evils had come to her early, through the unhappy expe
ences of some of her companions, and in her short hours-
leisure she had befriended many a sick child and stranded w»
1907.] The France of Rene Bazin 231
girl; so that, when the moment of ultimate resolve comes, she
feels impelled to consecrate herself wholly to ntes pauvres, and
to serve them for life as a Sister of Charity.
Writing some years ago {Contemporary Review, February,
1901), Mr. Edmund Gosse compared De Toute Son Ante with
Mrs. Gaskell's early Victorian tale of factory life, Mary Barton.
Allowing for differences of race and religion, the comparison is
not without truth, for Bazin gives us a wider view of indus-
trial conditions than is contained in Henriette Madiot's home
circle. At its worst the life of the city is represented by the
successful manufacturer, M. Lemarte, from whose relations with
his work-people all social human intercourse has been eliminated.
M. Lemaril pays a day's wage for a day's work and no more ;
the sick are thrown aside, the aged are dismissed without a pen-
sion, and labor saving machinery is introduced without any ef-
fort being made to find employment for the displaced hands.
Tlx« result is seen in unmerited suffering and class hatred, and
all those social conditions that drive the workers into Socialism,
which employers like Leon Harmel have done so much to com-
bat by their Christian, democratic teaching and high ethical
standard. In sharp contrast with Henriette, whose whole life is
inspired by the spirit of Christian charity, is her brother An-
t°ine, an example of superficial intelligence and weak moral
character, perverted by false economic theories. The moral is
never made insistent, but the reader understands that Christian
faith alone can sanctify both the home and the factory, and
°*n save France from industrial warfare. And the book, hav-
m g been written ten years ago, ends on a note of hopefulness.
It is far otherwise with V Isolde. This poignant story was
Written some two years since, in the full tide of the indignation
&roused by M. Combes' treatment of the religious orders, and
tt* pages are permeated with the sadness that must fill the heart
°f every patriotic Catholic at the course of current events. The
book contains no arguments, no protestations — it merely records
1Q simple, direct language the fate of a little community of
teaching nuns dispersed by administrative decree. There is
Nothing uncommon either about the sisters or their circum-
stances — once again it is the normal rather than the accidental
that attracts Bazin — and, as we read, we know that a simila r
**te must have befallen hundreds of obscure communities
f °Und themselves cut off suddenly from the acho
232 The France of Rene Bazin [May
on which their activities were centred, deprived of the happi
ness of a life dedicated to God's service, and flung back upo
a world that in many instances had neither work nor a horn
to offer them. Bazin has wished to show that if the religt
ous life confers distinction and beauty on good or even medi
ocre natures, it is almost a necessity of self-preservation fo
certain highly strung temperaments, and to deprive them of th
congenial atmosphere in which alone they can blossom an
bear fruit is to condemn them to sterility, if not to self- destine
tion. With a few skillful touches, the individuality of each o
the five sisters composing the little community of St. Hilde
garde is clearly defined, and the reality of her vocation mad
plain. Quite admirable is the portrait of the Superior, Soeu
Justine, her courage, her solid sense, her warm, maternal affec
tion for those committed to her care, and not less so that o
the little lay sister, Soeur Leonide, toothless and tireless, a peas
ant girl taken from the fields and the vineyards. But from th
first page it is clear that the heroine of the story is the young
est and best beloved of the community, Soeur Pascale, the mo
pathetic and piteous study of girlhood that the author has
far achieved.
Pascale Mouvand might have been a younger and traile
sister of Henriette Madiot, both alike work- girls of unusual re
finement, with an instinctive recoil from the ordinary humarrm
joys of marriage and domesticity. But, whereas the reader onl
follows Henriette to the threshold of the cloister, Pascale is in
troduced radiant and placid in her blue serge habit in th
midst of her community on the eve of the news of its di
persal. . It is only in a long retrospect that we see her, a slim
delicate, golden-haired girl keeping house for her father, on
of the most competent silk- weavers in all Lyons. Old Adolph
Mouvand is a type of admirable craftsman and solid, faithful
Christian, who, one fears, must be growing rare in industrial
France. Faced with the sacrifice of the daughter on whom all
his affections are centred, he relinquishes her without a murmur,
believing it to be the will of God, and brings her himself to
the convent door. Very skillful and delicate is the psychology
which reveals the gentle, scrupulous, yet unstable nature of the
motherless girl drawn to the religious life, not by any mystical
emotion, but by a common-sense convictioa that to be good
herself she must live with good people, and by an instinctive
*
1907.] The France of Rene Bazin 233
dread that, left to her own devices, the worst might befall
Jier.
11 She had said to herself one day: 'Maybe in the world I
3hall be lost more quickly than other people. I need a shelter.'
. • It had seemed to her that her frailty was changed into
strength when she was under orders, that lor a long while, pos-
sibly forever, she would need a firm, enlightened, and loving
direction."
" When, five years later,- the blow falls and the sisters of
tbe Lyons convent learn that their mother- house can do noth-
ing for them, and that they must accept laicization, Sceur Jus-
tine's most ardent prayers are for her little Pascale. Poverty
and loneliness await them all, but the mother's heart divines
that Sceur Pascale's future is fraught with far more tragic pos-
sibilities. Her father is dead, she has no home, no money, no
m£tier t no knowledge of the world, nothing but a child-like
prettiness and short golden hair. She takes refuge with the
only relations remaining to her, a widowed cousin and her son
at Nimes, to whom she had once paid a pleasant visit with her
lather. Pascale's lamentable fate, between the despicable Veuve
Prayou and her still viler son, cannot be related here. It is
so piteous a record of vice and treachery, deliberately effecting
the ruin of a frail human life, that, told with less restraint and
less admirable judgment than Ren£ Bazin has displayed, it
would be almost unreadable. He tells it as it were from his
heart, with a passionate sense of pity that such soul- tragedies
should be possible. For, just because Pascale had aspired
higher and had tasted of spiritual joys, her fall is the more ir-
re parable and her own sense of degradation more intense. Not
**1 the efforts of Soeur Justine can avail to rescue her from the
ta ils that have been woven round her, and death alone releases
^r from a misery beyond her powers of endurance when once
c °Oscience had re- asserted itself. The second half of the book
*
15 undoubtedly the strongest thing that Bazin has written, and
"*fe impression is heightened by the vivid sketches of popular
W^ in hot, dusty Nimes woven into the narrative.
Such is Bazin's latest novel, which has carried his reputa-
tion f ar beyond the frontiers of his native land, and has done
***Uch to awaken dormant sympathies, and to dissipate the mis-
apprehensions concerning the treatment of the religious orders
*** France which are to be met with even among Catholics.
234 The France of Rene Bazin [May.
L Isolce is, however, a novel of the moment, mainly inspired by
the stress of public events, and, remarkable as its immediate
effect has been, it may possibly, from those very circumstances,
fail to secure that more permanent popularity which we may
hope to see bestowed upon some of its predecessors. Tbe
French nation has no cause to be other than gratified at the
long series of pen portraits of itself that this gifted son has
given to the world, and, it may be presumed, will not soon
weary of their perusal. It is rare, indeed, to find an outlook
on life so sane and sober in a writer of such charm of style
and such unerring artistic taste, but that Bazin, being an avowed
Catholic, should nevertheless be as appreciated in France &s
he is to-day, is at least a hopeful sign. Latterly he has al-
lowed himself to be drawn into an exposition of his views otl
many topics of the moment — in a volume of essays entitled
Questions Litteraires el Sociales (1906). For my part, it is bis
practice rather than his theories that captivate me, and I loc^lrf
forward to more girl heroines to rank with Rousille and He:
riette Madiot and Simone L'Her&c, and more candid, pea
t rating studies of the popular life of the French people, if or*,
to enable us to remember that Paris is not France, and Pa
society in no way representative of the nation at large.
THE FLYING WHEEL.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
When I was young the days were long,
Oh, long the days when I was young :
So long irom morn to evenfall
As they would never end at all.
Now I grow old Time flies, alas!
I watch the years and seasons pass.
Time turns him with his fingers thin
A wheel that whirls while it doth spin*
There is no time to take one's ease,
For to sit still and be at peace:
So fast the wheel of Time turns round,
The silence hath no other sound.
And that which is to be is over,
Over good times of love and lover :
And one was young but now grown old
Shrinks from the darkness and the cold.
And one scarce dreams that youth is o'er
Ere age is knocking at the door.
Oh, whirling wheel of Time be still,
Let me be quiet if you will !
Yet still it turns so giddily,
So fast the years and seasons fly,
Dazed with the noise and speed I run
And stay me on the Changeless Oner
The Flying Wheel
I stay myself on him who stays
Ever the same through nights and day
The One Unchangeable for aye,
That was and will be: the one Stay,
O'er whom Eternity will pass ;
But, as an image in a glass
To whom a million years are nought,
I stay myself on a great thought.
I stay myself on the great Quiet
After the noises and the riot.
As in a garnished chamber sit
Far from the tumult of the street.
Oh, wheel of Time turn round apace !
But I have found a resting-place.
You will not trouble me again
In the great peace where I attain.
THE OLD ROMAN CHANT.
BY ETHELRED L. TAUNTON.
jJOI'E PIUS X., in his " Motu Proprio" of the 22d
of November, 1903, speaks of the Plain-Song as
" the chant proper to the Roman Church, the only
chant she has inherited from the ancient fathers,
which she has jealously guarded for centuries in
V.* Wturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faith-
ful as her own, which she prescribes exclusively for some parts
of her liturgy, and which the most recent studies havi so happily
restored to its integrity and purity." And on the 25th of April,
'904, the Pontiff writes: "The melodies of the Church known
93 Gregorian, shall be restored in their integrity and purity ac-
Co r"ding to the most ancient codices; but, at the same time,
s P«cial account will be taken also of legitimate tradition as con-
fined in the codices of the different centuries and of the prac-
lc al use of the modern liturgy."
It is well known that the Benedictine monks of the French
~ 0r >gregation of Solesmes have been untiring workers for the
"«storation of the Plain- Song. It is not necessary for me to
'escribe their patient research and careful study. These are
v ell known. Dom Potbier was the founder of the school;
l od others are enjoying the benefits of his labors. This is
18 it should be; for all real students work for the sake of
** r uth and its development. Practically, the Vatican edition of
^Iain-Song is confided to Dom Pothier, aided by others of his
c °ngregations. It may not be, therefore, without interest to
ln quire what is their aim and what is their principle.
The aim is certainly, as the Pope says, " to restore the Ro-
^Jn Chant to its integrity and purity " ; and this they have
succeeded in doing in a great measure, if we accept the truth
°f their guiding principle, which is that given in these words
™Y the illustrious Dom Gueranger, the founder of the Solesmes
Congregation: "Lorsque dcs manuscrits differents d'epoqui tt dt
P&ys s'accordent sur une version, on peut affirtner qu'on
1 k phrase Gregorienne."
238 The Old Roman Chant [Ma.
Now I hold that the principle is fallacious, for when brougbt
to the test of historical facts its vice is made manifest. Such
reasoning does not commend itself to students of liturgy, say,
as regards the real Gregorian Mass Book. Then, why should
it hold good as regards the Plain- Song? I hold that the Chant:,
restored according to this principle, is not the old Roman Chant
at all, but a Gallican version. If we want to get that which
St. Gregory reformed, we must look elsewhere than to a model
of the tenth or eleventh century.
There are few who know anything about this period — one
of the most critical of liturgical history ; and Dom Gueranger*
with all his great gifts, did not possess such a knowledge. In-
deed, I may say, the study had not begun in his time; at any
rate, it has gone beyond the limits of his horizon. Some few stu-
dents now know that there was a critical period of change and
revision which influenced every side of life ; and they also know
that the movement fell under the irresistible law of reaction.
Now, when we get a variety of MSS., the earliest dating from
about the beginning of the eleventh century and hailing from
localities all under a certain non- Roman influence, we are hardly
in a position safely to declare confidently that the Gregorian
phrase is refound — i. e. 9 the true form of Roman Chant coin*
piled and re- edited (ccntonized) by the great Benedictine Pop^t
St. Gregory I. Let us look at dates. St. Gregory died in 6o4-
The MS. appealed to as the genuine Chant (MS. 339 in the
library of St. Gall) dates, most probably, from the beginning of
the eleventh century or the end of the tenth. The Solesn&C
editors place it between 9S6 and 1017. Hence we have to ac-
count for a gap from the beginning of the seventh to the be-
ginning of the eleventh centuries — say, in other words, for *
gap of about four hundred years more or less. If we credit
the story told, in the eleventh century, by Ekkeard, about tb*
sojourning of Romanus at St. Gall in the ninth century, w*
have still a gap of over two hundred years of a critical period
in the history of the Plain- Song. Think for a moment. Soto*
folk juggle with centuries as though they were decades. Vf*
are dealing with a period which represents a time as distaf*
from the day of St. Gregory as the reign of Pope Julius I**
from that of Pius X. What vast changes arise in such tin
even on more vital subjects than Plain-Song! Agaii), when
consider the history of St. Gall and its Gallicizing instinC^
9o7.] The Old Roman Chant 239
ackcd.as it was by a powerful Celtic influence, we are forced
) pause before we accept as pure Roman a MS. which hails
o0i such a locality.
Then, the complexity of this particular Chant, its wealth of
ttdil and the exuberance of ornament, make us hesitate before
: o«pting a MS. of the eleventh century as a true copy of an
igfinal 400 years older. For surely the process of nature
iVirards that decadence which is the necessary goal of all ere-
: ^d things, is from the simple to the complex, from the nec-
tary and unadorned to the ornamental. We must also bear
1 mind that St. Gregory did not compose the music ; he com-
piled and corrected existing melodies. This action of the great
>ope is in itself a proof oi the ease with which the Plain-Song
zatk be corrupted. If it became corrupted before, why should
it escape the same fate after, the death of a pope whose reforms
were misliked at Rome. From what we know of the severity,
simplicity, austereness, and directness of the old Roman spirit,
it seems to me that the Solesmes version of the Chant is actu-
i/Jjr out of keeping with the whole tone of the age and place
dere it is supposed to have originated.
^tforeover, even a cursory examination shows us that the St.
all MS. contains many things which find no place in what we
ay safely recognize as the pure Missale Gregorianum. Take
« part only, the Masses for the Sundays after Pentecost. Did
Gregory know anything about these or about many feasts
'the Proprium Sanctorum or the Commune Sanctorum t If
« Sundays after Pentecost are a Gallican invention, then the
liasic of half of the year, as we now have it in the Proprium
'/ Tempore, has nothing to do with St. Gregory ; and yet we
an st recognize its kinship with the music for the period from
advent to Pentecost.
The inference, therefore, is that the music given to us in the
Solesmes edition has nothing to do with St. Gregory and does
lot represent the old Roman Chant. If I am referred to what
s called the Gregorian Antiphonary, I may reply, with Mgr.
>uchesnes, that this is " a book which is far from being homo-
eneous and free from Gallican influences." In fact, the term
^egorian is one to conjure with; and the saint has been made
-sponsible for much which is not his at all. There are, there-
►re, grounds, from internal as well as external evidence, from
-arsons a priori et a posteriori, for concluding that a MS. which
240 The Old Roman Chant [Ma
contains what the Gregorian Missal did not contain (I .do n<
mean a few instances only), cannot claim to be more than basci
perhaps, in parts on the original. And the more we find th;
it departs in spirit from the original type, the less confident
can wfe have in its claim of purity and exactness.
Before, then, we can accept Dom Gueranger's principle, a:
this is one set forth and accepted by Dom Pothier, we wa
evidence that the lapse of over two hundred years, in a loc;
ity under non- Roman influence, is no difficulty in supposi
that the Roman Chant, sent by Pope Paul to Pepin about 7<
and again by Hadrian to Charlemagne about 784-791, had be
preserved pure and undefiled. I might put the problem bi
further and ask : How far can we say that the Hadrian Sac:
mentary, of 784-791, really represented the pure and undefil
edition of St. Gregory, and not rather a version based, inde
on the Gregorian, but with the additions and changes wh
would be in accord with a known trend of events ? I am p
fectly aware that what was said to be the exemplar antipbon*
was kept at Rome; but this is an argument which must 1
be pushed beyond its legitimate force. It need not detain
here. I put these points forward to show how very complex 1
question really is, and how rash it is to claim for the Solesn
edition anything more than it represents itself to be, .viz., 1
purest form (though even this seems open to doubt) we have
the Chant as it existed at the beginning of the eleventh century
the Monastery of St. Gall, four hundred years after St. Gregory
revision and two hundred years after the date of Romanus. Tl
very period was a critical one, as I have said, in the histo
of music which was marked by discoveries of far-reaching in
port.
We know that the Gallican Chant was in full use win
Hadrian sent his books to Charlemagne and when the latt
sent singers to Rome to learn the true method of singing,
the influence of the great Emperor was put forth on the si
of Romanizing the Gallican Church, the intestine struggles th
went on after his death and the dismemberment of his empi
led to a marked and natural reaction from his policy. The c
reasserted itself. Moreover, Charles' action itself was that
blending and adding. He did not simply adopt the Rom
Mass Book and enforce this one and none other. Eventua
Rome, ever receptive, adopted as her own the compilations
ICJ07-] THE OLD ROMAN CHANT 24I
[Ije Emperor and the English Alcuin and made way in her own
rites for many Gallican innovations.
These are my reasons for holding that Dom Gueranger's
principle is fallacious and that labors conducted on this princi-
ple do not lead us to the right end. If, then, Solesmes has
failed us, in what direction shall we look? Before giving a
direct answer, let me invite attention to the great place that
the true Roman Song, as revised by St. Gregory, has in the
history of England. I will indicate some passages given by
Venerable Bede [d. "35] in his Ecclesiastical History ; and by
these it will be clear that the Roman Chant was one of the
most precious traditions brought to England direct from the
great Benedictine Pope.
X. Although the Pope replied to St. Augustine that if the
Ar«=libishop had found anything either in the Roman or the
Gal lican or any other church which might be pious, religious,
and righteous, he was, although bred in the Roman Church,
to xTiake choice of the same and teach it to the church of the
Et» gjlish, "For," adds the wise Pontiff, "things are not to be
loi^^d for the sake of places, but places for the sake of things " ;
yet St. Augustine did not introduce the Gallican Chant into
Er*gl an d. He brought the Roman Song.
2. When St. Paulinus [d. 644] returned to Kent, after Edwin
was slain, he left at York James the Deacon, who "was extra-
ordinarily skillful in singing; and when the province was after-
wards restored to peace and the number of the faithful increased
he began to teach many of the church to sing according to the
custom of the Romans or of the men of Canterbury."
3. When Theodore [d. 690] came from Rome: "from that
time they began in all the churches of the English to learn
Sacred Music, which till then had been known only in Kent.
And excepting James, above mentioned, the first singing-master
in the churches of the Northumbrian was Eddi, surnamed
Stephen, invited from Kent by the Most Reverend Wilfrid."
.4. St. Wilfrid [d. 709], ordained as bishop of Rochester
^utta, who "was very skillful in the Roman style of church
ttiusic, which he had learnt from the disciples of the holy Pope
C»r egory."
5. At the synod of Heathfield there was present John, arch-
chapter of St. Peter's and abbot of the Monastery of St. Martin
Rome, who came to England by order of Pope Agatho [d.
VOL. LXXXV. — 16
242 The Old Roman Chant [Majr,
682]. St. Benedict Biscop brought him, " that he might teac£a
in his monastery the method of singing throughout the year
it was practised at St. Peter's at Rome." John not only taugh
the monks of Wearmouth, but such as had skill in singing an
had come from almost all the monasteries of the same province
to hear him. He was invited to teach in other places.
6. Acca, who succeeded St. Wilfrid, " invited to him a cele —
brated singer called Maban, who had been taught to sing by-
the successors of the disciples of the blessed Gregory in Kent.'™
During his twelve years' stay at Hexham, Maban restored tca^
their former state the Chants "which were corrupted either bj^
want of use or through neglect."
From these extracts it is clear that the old Roman Chant
obtained at Canterbury and was jealously guarded there, an<J
that the custom of the men of Canterbury was looked upon
by the rest of England as being that of Rome ; in other words,
no more or no less than St. Gregory's own chant. Was it,
then, any wonder that when the Norman came, the vanquished
struggled against the novelties introduced by the conquerors,
and made every effort to keep what had come to them from
Rome itself ? Down West at Glastonbury, once the home of
St. Dunstan (and this throws a new light on 'the saint: Qui
capit capiat), a weird scene was enacted. Thurstan, a Norman
abbot, had been thrust upon that house. He despised all Eng-
lishry. " This shameless abbot, attempting to compel the monks
of Glastonbury to give up the Chant which had been intro-
duced into England by the disciples of the blessed Pope Greg-
ory and to adopt the Chant of the Flemings or Normans, which
they had never learned or heard before, a violent tumult arose
which ended in a disgrace to the Holy Order." So says Vita-
lis ; and Florence of Worcester adds that the new chant, which
Thurstan wished to introduce, was that of William of Fecamp.
How the matter sped when the ruthless abbot brought in armed -
men to force his monks is thus told in the chronicles:
" Then were the monks sore afeard of them and wist no
what to do and fled hither and thither. And some went int
the church and locked the door after them; and they (the sol-
diers) went after them into the minster and would drag the
out for that they durst not go out. And a rueful thing the
happened that day ; for the Frenchmen brake into the cho-
and shot towards the altar where the monks were; and so
1907.] The Old Roman Chant 243
of the knights went up to the up-floor and shot downwards
with arrows towards the Halidom, so that on the Rood that
stood above the altar stuck on many arrows. And the wretched
monks lay about the altar and some crept under it. and cried
with yearning to God, craving his mildness, for that they could
get no mildness from men. What may we say but that they
shot sorely and that others brake down the doors there and
went in and slew some of the monks to death and many
wounded therein, so that the blood came from the altar upon
the gress (step) and from the gress upon the floor. Three were
slain to death and eighteen were wounded."
This was the pitiful result of trying to force another form
of the Chant in place of the Roman Song introduced with
Ch ristianity into England. The Conquerors were inexorable;
and in music and church matters generally, as well as in civil
things, England became Normanized and the French ruled.
Our old Sarum use and music, dear to us as it is by its asso-
ciations with five hundred years of religious history, is not
Roman but Norman, and influenced by the Gallican ideas which
bad more fully reasserted themselves after the death of Charle-
magne.
If, then, Solesmes fail us, in what direction should we search
f°r what remains of the old Roman Song ? Putting aside such
r etrinants as are to be found in the Missal to-day and in the
A-mbrosian rite (where also we must not forget that time and
c ha.nge have left their mark), I am convinced that in such pieces
35 we have of the old Anglo Saxon Plain-Chant we shall find
sufficient of what remains of the old Roman Song to give us a
true idea of its spirit. This, I think, is a field that has never
been worked at by students.
There are in our public and private collections Anglo-Saxon
"ASS. still glorious with their superb decoration and telling the
tale of that wonderful outburst of artistic life which marked
the period of St. Dunstan. One of these, a priceless Psalter,
^hich evidently belonged to Canterbury and was taken posses-
sl on of by Cranmer, whose signature it bears, has been lately
discovered; and I have had the opportunity of seeing it.
Joined to the Psalter is a Hymnary which is marked with the
ne ^mes. One of these melodies has been deciphered and re-
veals a composition, simple, well accentuated, and hitherto un-
sown. I must not dwell on this; nor is there any necessity,
244 The Old Roman Chant [Majr
as competent scholars are now at work on the MS. and we
wait with every confidence for their verdict. But I saw suffi
cient to confirm me in a conviction which, for some years, ha^-
been forming itself in my mind, viz., that Anglo-Saxon MSS.
will give U6 the real clue to the nature of the old Roman Song
of St. Gregory. I think it highly probable that the same fate
that befell many classical works has overtaken most of these
MSS. The old Anglo-Saxon books went out of fashion after
the Conquest which introduced and forced " the Chant of the
Flemings and Normans/ 1 with much else, upon an unwilling
people. Here and there copies were kept in cathedral and
monastic libraries as historical monuments; but I think the
disused books were, in many cases, scraped and cleaned up so
a6 to use the parchment again for other works that the Scrip-
torium had in hand. If this be so, the search should be di-
rected to the discovery of palimpsests. Chemistry has mad
easy the revealing of the ancient writing that was rubbed o
to create a clean surface; and priceless treasures of literatur
have been recovered in this way. Other remains of the ol
Anglo-Saxon Chant may be discovered in the bindings of late
works ; for in many cases sheets or parts of sheets of disuse
MSS. are found so employed ; and some of these contain musi
cal notations which will add to our store of knowledge.
I do not think, unless great luck befalls students, that, as
have already said, we shall be able entirely to reconstruct t
old Roman Song; but enough is being found to show th
whatever may be the value of the Solesmes Chant, it is not
restoration, entire and pure, of the Gregorian music. Its ve -^-y
spirit is different. Compare it with the grave, sober chant <^f
the Preface (the Ferial form, I think, is the more ancient) ^>r
the Pater Noster. Here we have sweetness of melody joined to
a wonderful simplicity. It is almost one note for one syllabi ^^;
and if there is sometimes more than one note to a syllable, it
is only for the smoothness of the progression. And one i
portant point. The words reign supreme; they are never lo
in a whirl of intricate musical phrases, some of great beaut
indeed, but destroying the word and causing the hearer to lo
the sense in a maze of sound. The principle sing as you woufc
speak is impossible when you find forty or fifty notes on som
one syllable of a word.
I look upon most of the eleventh century chant, where it i
M
1907.] The Old Roman Chant 245
not an original composition, as a variation of a simpler melody.
Musicians know how easily a simple phrase can be added
to by well-known devices, until it differs from its original
simplicity — say, as does a hat when it leaves the milliner's
hands. Once a simple straw hat; now it is a confection! The
trimmings make all the difference. The Solesmes version is, I
hold, a trimmed one; an over- trimmed confection, which is far
removed from simplicity. I might add that another MS. of
St Gall (No. 359), which P&re Lambillotte, S.J., considered to
be an authentic copy of the antiphonary of St. Peter's, contains
only the Graduals and Alleluiatic verses; in other words, sim-
ply the show pieces which gave the singers opportunities for
exhibiting their powers of execution and endurance. Once the
principle of the old Roman Song is made clear, it should not
bs a task beyond our powers to disentangle the fundamental
melody from the overgrowth which at present chokes it; and
thu s do again what St. Gregory did twelve hundred years ago.
In the " Motu Proprio" Pius X. denies the active partici-
pation of the faithful in the sacred mysteries and in the public
and solemn prayers of the church. I do not think that there
ls any evidence that at Rome the faithful ever indulged in
congregational singing during the Liturgy. But if the true
spirit of the Roman Church be that of simplicity and sober-
ness, it has also another characteristic, viz., that of practicality.
If the Holy Father wishes the people to join in the Plain-Song,
the music set before them must be such as they can sing.
Putting aside the variable parts of the Mass, such as the In-
tfoits, etc., and taking only the invariable portions, is it pos-
sible to get the people to join in elaborate Kyries, for in-
stance? Take the Kyrie No. II., of the Vatican Edition. Not
only is the music difficult, the intervals hard, but the method
advocated by the Solesmists (which robs the Chant of all viril-
ity) is so highly artificial, that it would be impossible to get an
ordinary congregation to sing it as it is said it ought to be
8u ng, No ; practicality demands an altogether simpler form of
^usic; and this will be found in the old Roman Song, not in
Seventh century perversions.
I am quite sure that what I have written will cause many
hard sayings. Long use has somewhat inured me. It was G
I think, who said : " Much music marreth men's ma
Shakespeare wrote more than he meant in the Una
246 The Old Roman Chant [Mi
The Plain-Song is most just : for humours do abound.
That's just where it is. Humors do abound. The Solesmes i
vival is a humor; a fad, a fashion; but it is not final. It wi
pass like many another; and better things await us. Meanwhile
let me make myself clear. I make these remarks about th
Solesmes version in no carping spirit, and without the slightes
desire to disparage the labors of the Benedictines. I mast will
ingly admit and admire the learning and scholarship displaye
by the French monks. We owe them a deep debt of grati
tude for the example of patient research which shows that th
old tradition of the grand Maurist school is not forgotten^..
While thinking that Dom Gueranger's principle, upon which^
they have been working, is fallacious, I acknowledge that the
have rescued from oblivion much that is of the greatest valuer
They know the limits of their work and they would be the la^
to claim more than the facts warrant. It is the humor of them,
friends that abounds. The purpose of this article is rather t
stimulate students to work in fresh woods and pastures ne
where faithful labors for the Church will be rewarded wi
more important results.
flew Boohs.
In imitation of the old Irish wn
IRISH HISTORY. ers, Dr. Joyce prefixed to his n
markable Social History of Irelan
statement of " Place, Time, and Cause/ 9 setting forth a,
cause/' that it was written to give glory to God, honor to
x-«land, and knowledge to those who desire to learn all about
km « old Irish people. In what measure it attained the first ob-
e<^t we have not the duty of determining. It certainly does,
>lz> piously , attain its second purpose, by the wonderful mass of
evidence it has brought forward to show that the ancient Irish
were as well advanced in civilization, as orderly and as regu-
lar, as the contemporaneous peoples of other countries, and that
they were in possession of a highly organized social system
that must have been the slow growth of many centuries. Dr.
Joyce's great work was, necessarily, too costly to meet with ex-
tensive popular sale, and to be within the reach of the thou-
sands "who desire to learn all about the Irish people/ 9 He
has, however, as far as possible, met this drawback by publish-
ingT the present compendium, which contains all the facts and
information concerning the people that are to be found in the
arger work. Only quotations, bases of deductions, and refer-
ence to authorities, have been omitted, in order to bring the
>oolc within much smaller compass. It does not deal with leg-
ndary or pre-historic times ; but with those only of which
lere remains authentic record. Every scrap' of evidence, writ-
•n and monumental, Dr. Joyce has thoroughly sifted, with the
•suit that we can form a very accurare idea, not only of the
>litical and public life, but also of the domestic life, even in
tail, of the ancient Irish. The first part of the work deals
th government, military system, and laws; the second with
igion, learning, and art; the third with social and domestic
• Under the latter head we have a, large quantity of inter-
ng information on such subjects as food, fuel, light, public
tels, dress, agriculture, industries, weights and measures,
*ts, pastimes, social observances, wills, burials, funerals, and
y others. The general impression conveyed by all the tet-
any is that the Irish were a highly intellectual people
4 Smtlltr Social History of Ancient Ireland. By P. W. Jojr<*. M.A
f ork : Longmans, Green & Co.
248 New Books [Ma
removed from the barbarism which some writers have attribut
to them, though not quite as superior to all the rest of t
world as some of their fond and imaginative descendants believ
them to have been. It need not be said that Dr. Joyce's wot
has been done with due regard for the methods and responsL
bilities of scholarship.
The new history of Ireland from the pen of Father D'AL
ton # will cover the ground from the earliest period down t<
the present day. Two volumes have appeared; the first c^
which extends down to the end of the reign of Henry VIII _
the second brings the narrative as far as the establishment
legislative independence in 1782. The ample size of these voT^
umes has allowed Father D'Alton to treat his subject with-
satisfactory fullness. He is simple, clear, and, at times, pictur-
esque. The temper of the work is fairly critical, though not
unfrequently our author does not acquaint his readers with the
existence of an opinion at variance with the one he favors.
For example, regarding the birthplace of St. Patrick, he holds
that the balance of evidence is in favor of Boulogne ; and there
is no reference to Bury's opinion. We are surprised, too, to find
neither Bury nor Zimmer in the bibliographical list. Again,
regarding the authenticity of the Bull " Laudabiliter," one would
have expected that the able monograph of Thatcher would have
been at least alluded to. But we must judge Father D'Alton's
achievement by the purpose with which he starts out. His aim
is not, evidently, to contribute anything original in the way of
research or criticism ; but to produce a popular history by a
judicious selection of the best materials that his predecessors
have furnished. Consequently, though he is careful to verify
his sources, he, usually, spares the reader any tedious disquisi-
tions on their value, and through these two ample volumes he
proceeds to give a flowing narrative of the political and mili-
tary events of the country, in a fashion more accurate, per-
haps, and more impartial than many of those who have don<
the same work before him. But a real history of Ireland sinc» ^zzt
the Norman Conquest is still to be written — and who ever wouW^d
undertake it must leave the beaten track to seek for knowledf^^^e
on a vast number of subjects, concerning the social, rrlifinn m ^
* History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By Rev. E. A. D'Alt* _ -»p n
M.R.I. A. In three volumes. Vols. I. and II. New York: Benziger Brothers.
7.] New Books 249
d^>mestic side of the life of the people, which has been almost
*c**ally neglected by those who have compiled Irish history of
3 last seven hundred years. Study the vivid picture of an-
nt Irish life as it is set forth by Dr. Joyce, in all its phases,
:n examine these histories of later days, where we find scarce-
ly a hint concerning the real life of the people — and the ex-
tezrat of the field open for original research becomes apparent.
It: is true that the data may be meagre. But this can hardly
be an objection in an age that has seen the wonderful results
wfc*ich, from still more scanty materials, in the cognate field of
ancient Celtic, have been attained by German industry and
scientific study.
A second series of lectures on Irish subjects, delivered
before the Irish Literary Society of London, has just been pub-
lished under the editorship of Mr. R. Barry O'Brien. They fall
within the period which extends from the accession of James I.
to the execution of Charles I. The Rev. S. A. Cox gives an
account of the Plantation of Ulster, and does not spare either
the Planters or the English Executive. Mr. Philip Wilson dis-
cusses Strafford and the events which led up to the Rebelr
lion in 1641. Dr. Donelan tells the story of the Confederation
°f Kilkenny, and emphasizes the moral of lost opportunities:
'» There is nothing more sad in all Irish history than to read
*ha>t when Cromwell, with a comparatively small army, had sub-
•
) u gated Ireland in a few months, 40,000 Irish swordsmen took
service in foreign countries. They had missed their chance."
An enthusiastic believer in the superiority of the Celtic race,
Mf. Molloyf has assembled all the evidences, legendary, con-
jectural, and documentary, upon which rests the claim of the
Celts to have been the original discoverers of America. Of the
v alidity of that claim he has not the shadow of a doubt. He
°3ils upon his Celtic kinsfolk to remember the glories of their
^ce, " when our people were the standard-bearers of a civiliza-
* l °n that was peculiarly their own " ; to remember " that this was
at a period when the present Anglo-Italio-Judaic civilization was
^Qiost unknown ; that, either consciously or unconsciously, we
* Studies in Irish History, 1603-1649. Edited by R. Barry O'Brien. Dublin and Belfast:
Bp °wne & Nolan.
t The Irish in America One Thousand Yeats Before Columbus. By Martin J. Molloy,
^stori : Angel Guardian Press.
2$o New Books [Ma
have neglected our own ideals, and have been the mainstay
these foreign ones, thereby degrading ourselves, and, in a corre-
sponding degree, elevating those who, when in position, have
ruthlessly sacrificed us, and compelled us to carry the cross ©/
their civilization instead of our own, producing the conditions
as they exist to-day — our ignorance of the glory and humanity
of our ancestors, while we display an immense knowledge of a
barbarous European civilization which is, and ever was, an-
tagonistic to the manners, customs, and welfare of our Celtic
race ! "
A fairly objective account, from a
JOHN CALVIN. sympathetic point of view, of the
By Williston Walker. Geneva reformer's career • and of
the part he played in the devel-
opment of Protestantism. While the biographer acknowledges
that Calvin's system, as a whole, has lost its hold, he claims
that its educative effects may be traced through lands in which
it has held sway even among those who have widely departed
from its habits of thought.
This fine historical volume f is ap-
JOUTEL'S JOURNAL OF LA propriately dedicated to the mem-
SALLE'S VOYAGE. Q ry of John Gilmary Shea who,
forty years ago, projected the series
on the Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, of
which this is the concluding volume. The first was issued in
1852. It comprised the narratives of Marquette, Allouez, Mem-
bre, and A. Douay. The second, which appeared in 1 861, is
made up of the narratives of Cavalier, St. Cosme, Le Seur,
Gravier, and Guegnas. Besides the text of Joutel's Journal,
the volume contains the Preface of the French bookseller to the
original edition, the Preface written by "Sieur de Mitchell,
who methodized this Journal," and a valuable bibliography of
the "Discovery of the Mississippi Valley," by Mr. A. P. C.
Griffin, at present Chief Bibliographer of the Library of Con-
gress. The body of the volume is a reprint from the first
English translation of 17 14, of the original French edition of
1 7 13. This story of the last voyage, which proved fatal to the
* John Calvin : The Organizer of Reformed Protestantism , 1509-1564. By Williston
Walker. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
t Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7 1 New edition, with Historical and Bio-
graphical Introduction, etc. By Henry Reed Stiles. Albany, N. Y. : Joseph McDonough.
D07.] New Books 251
% r ^a.t explorer, is full of interest, at times even fascinating.
Wutel was a man of some education, of an observant mind,
*T\d loyal to his great leader. After the murder of La Salle
^ conducted the remnant of the band through innumerable
hardships and dangers, over the eight hundred miles of wilder-
ness that separated them from Quebec. In his plain, matter-
of-fact diary, the heroic character of La Salle stands out in
full relief. "A man of iron," as John Fiske says, "if ever there
was one — a man austere and cold in manner, and endowed
with such indomitable pluck and perseverance as have never
been surpassed in the world." The historian of the explorers
might have added that, in high purpose and deep religious
character, few men of action have stood higher than the hero
of this narrative.
This, edition of Father L^picier's
INDULGENCES. study on Indulgences might al-
By Lepicier. most be called a new volume. It
indicates the result of careful re-
vision, judicious amplification, and a large number of additional
notes. The last named feature of the work is mainly due to
the author's desire to refute at least some ol the contentions
and interpretations of facts to be found in the too well-known
work of Dr. Lea on this subject. The general plan of the ori-
ginal edition is preserved. The doctrine of indulgences, as it
exists in Scripture and tradition, is first expounded. Then the
history of the practice of indulgences, from its root in the peni-
tential discipline of the primitive Church, through the transi-
tional period from the fifth to the tenth century, into the sub-
sequent period of active development during the crusades, till
it culminated in the great jubilees of the later centuries. Fa-
ther Lepicier devotes a chapter to the use and the abuses of
indulgences, which is, perhaps, the most interesting in the book,
from the controversial or apologetic point of view. Admitting
that gross abuses existed at certain times, he points out that
such abuses nowise vitiate the principle, and are not to be
urged against the doctrine itself. He very pertinently observes,
that modern writers who dwell so insistently upon these abuses,
owe their knowledge of them, for the most part, to documents
and records relating the condemnations by ecclesiastical author-
* Indulgences : Their Origin, Nature, and Development. By Rev. Father Alexins M. Le-
picier, O.S.M. Second Edition. New York : Benziger Brothers.
252 New Books [Majr,
ity against the abuses. Indulgences, Father Lepicier admits,
" became an indirect source of riches to the churches in favor oi
which they weve granted, or to neighboring places." But, he
points out, " the alms for which a prelate grants an indulgence
must necessarily have, in his intention, a holy destination/*'
Money, of course, he says, that was originally destined to a
noble end, may have been diverted by individual greed front
its proper object. Again, Father Lepicier shows that, through,
the trusting faith of the people in the Church, fabulous con*
cessions were invented. " At Ancona, for instance, it was sop-
posed that Alexander III. had granted to the inhabitants of
that town as many indulgences as there are the grains of sand
that a man can scoop up from the shore and hold in his two
hands. Some prelates, but little better instructed than their
flocks, and men whose intentions were not unimpeachable, oc-
casionally exceeded what was wise in their grants." But, even,
when abuses most prevailed, there were men who, seeing the
danger attending the association, in any way, of indulgences
and money, set their face against it. " We read as follows in
the life (of Blessed Stephen of Aubazine) : When he had laid
the foundations of his church, the Bishop suggested that h e
should provide for its completion 'by sending throughout tt» c
neighborhood circular letters of indulgences, so as to gain tl* e
people's offerings by these abundant spiritual gifts, accordis>€
to the practice of all church builders.' The saint would a^>*
consent to it. ' God forbid/ he said, ' that we should introda^ e
a practice that might scandalize the people and bring troub»l e
on ourselves! God forbid that we should go from church
church, advertising privileges and granting indulgences that
alone can bestow.' " Father Lepicier offers an answer to tl
the questions: Why do we see such prodigal liberality in
granting of indulgences to-day? And, Why are plenary indt*^~
gences attached to such easy works as repeating a simp^ c
prayer ?
To produce a book of information^'
THE LAST SUPPER. containing about four hundred a* ^
By Meagher. fifty pages, on the Last Supp^^*
would tax the powers of the
equipped scholar that exists in the Church or outside of it t<
day. When, therefore, we took up the present volume,* whia
• How Christ Said the First Mass; or, tht Lord's Last Suffer. By Rer. J. L. U
New York : The Christian Press Association.
.] New Books 253
>f the above-mentioned size, we expected to find it cast in
lold unknown to scholarship. We were not disappointed,
t is a grotesque farrago of legends, wild conjectures laid down
,9 accepted interpretations, irrelevant digressions, personal rem-
nlscences, disquisitions on all sorts of subjects, including the
>ri£rin of wedding customs, the antiquity of the flute, shoes,
inci the evolution of the Prince Albert coat. Theology and
iccl esiastical history are affronted by a sustained purpose of
incJing in the Old Law the origin of everything pertaining to
the rites and ceremonies of the Mass, the vestments of the
priest and bishop, etc. Even the sacred text itself is not re-
spected, as, for example, we are referred to the Acts of the
Apostles for the statement that during the Apostles' time Mass
was celebrated with flowers, candles, and ornaments on the al-
tar. While the Talmud, the Torah, Eversheim, and Migne's
Currs-us Scripture* Sacra are laid under heavy contribution, the
elementary instruction of the catechism is neglected. We are
told that at the Last Supper Christ consecrated the Apostles
bishops to take part with him in saying his first Mass; but,
we are informed, there is no record of the time when the " di-
ocesan priesthood, represented by the seventy-two disciples,
separated from the episcopate represented by the Apostles, and
become an order of simple priests differentiated from the bish-
ops.** This regrettable volume is of a kind to foster false ideas
Wong the faithful, and to bring the Church and her teaching
into contempt
Although this author does not
r BE IMMORTALITY OF radically depart from the tradi-
THE SOUL. tional method and arguments of
By Fell. Catholic philosophy in his exposi-
tion and proof of the doctrine of
immortality, he gives them a certain freshness, and increases
their persuasive force, by the ease and amplitude of his treat-
ment. He insists strongly on the proof from self-consciousness,
the unity of the Ego, and the existence of free will. Omitting
the proofs based on the nature of concepts, universal ideas, he
d well s upon the nature of the intelligent soul as a whole. He
develops fully the arguments found in man's tendency towards
° a Ppiness and aspiration after immortality, the postulates of t
T J* Immortality of the Human Soul Philosophically Explained. By Cfof
^•l^fcedby Laurence Villing, O.S.B. St. Louis: B. Herder.
254 New Books [Ma*
moral nature, and the consensus of mankind. One is naturalL
tempted to compare the work with the treatment of the sain
subject in Father Maher's Psychology. We should be incline
to say that, while Father Maher would make more impressio
on a man of scientific habits, the present work would appes
more strongly to the larger number of persons who approac
the problem less from the dialectic than from the practical stand
point. When treating the question of the universal belief c
mankind, the author has ventured upon the exegetical topic <
the existence of the doctrine of immortality in the Old Testa
ment. Here* there is need for some revision in the light of thi
present views held by Catholic scholars, especially concerning
the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Since scientific inquiry turned to-
HUMAN PERSONALITY, wards the systematic investigate
By Meyers. G f abnormal psychological states
and activities, real or alleged, soci
as hypnotism, thought transference, clairvoyance, and the " disin
tegration of personality," an immense mass of evidence ha
been accumulated of facts and phenomena which cannot be ex
plained on the convenient hypothesis of fraud. A large quan
tity of such evidence was published in one work about fou
years ago by the late F. W. Meyers. Readers of The Cath
OLic World have had an opportunity to form some idea c
one section of the book through the articles on Spiritism re
cently contributed by Father Searle, who drew his facts chiefl
from Myers. That work consisted of two bulky and expensiv
volumes. The present abridgment,* made by a son of the authoi
is scarcely half the size. It will, however, be sufficiently larg
- and full for the ordinary reader. Without eliminating anythin
characteristic or typical, the editor has compressed the origins
into this one volume, by occasional condensation, and by re
taining only a few characteristic cases, in many instances, ou
of a large number presented in the original. The scope of th
work is, principally, to collect evidence of the phenomena dis
cussed. Nevertheless, the author enters to some extent on th
more difficult and dangerous path of interpretation and theory
Here, in many cases, we must decline to follow him, while full
appreciating the value of the book as an accumulation of re"
* Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. By F. W. Meyers. Edited ^
abridged by his son, Leopold Hamilton Meyers. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
I907-3 NEW BOOKS 255
a t>le data on questions that press for more attentive study than
they h ave hitherto received from our philosophers and psychoid
ogi3* s -
We have here an attempt, • by a
RELIGIOUS; BELIEF. follower of Professor James, to
By Pratt. analyze the attitude or state of
belief into its various phases or
constituent elements. Any one accustomed to the precision and
rigo*" °f scholastic methods, will be surprised to find the author
ignore the crucial question, What is the difference, if any, be-
( We en the state signified by / know, and that signified by I be-
lirzs&? Taking belief to mean "the attitude of assent to the
reality of a given object," he distinguishes three types of be
lief — primitive credulity, such as is manifested in the young
child; intellectual belief, or the assent which comes from intel-
lectual motives, after doubt has arisen ; and the beliefs, of many
sorts, which draw their strength from the field of vital feeling.
These three types he proceeds to study in the historical field
of religion, and finds the three exemplified in various stages of
Christianity. Then he proceeds to investigate, through the help
of the conclusions he has reached in the previous analysis, the
present status of religious belief. Here he gives the results of
an inquiry he started, by the questionnaire method, "to dis-
cover the relation of argument and unreasoned experience to
popular belief/' that is to say, to find out, by inquiry from a
large number of persons, how far their religious belief is a
matter of intellectual conviction, or an impulse of the soul
towards an object of which it experiences the need. The book
will repay study. We must, however, submit that Professor
Pratt's definition of intellectual belief stands in need of modifi-
cation. On what grounds is the assertion made that intellec-
tual belief must be preceded by doubt ? Why, for instance,
cannot the child, who first believes something that his parents
have told him, subsequently, without calling the belief in doubt,
exercise his intelligence and thereby acquire a reasoned con-
viction of what from the first he believed? This is, certainly,
frequently the case. If, on the contrary, a period of doubt
must intervene between the assent of unqestioning belief, based
on trust in others, and intellectual conviction, an intermediate
* Psychology of Religious Belief By James Bissett Pratt, Th.D. New York: The Mac-
millan Company.
,6 New Books [M;
cage of scepticism had to be traversed, every Catholic dk~£~Zd
/ould necessarily be an heretical doubter before passing icm^ro
idolescence.
The purpose of this book • is t:<
LITERARY FORGERIES, convey some idea of the lar
By Farrar. space which literary forgery occ
pies in the intellectual history c»f
the race, and of the influence it has had upon the destinies c»f
the world. If we are to judge the book by this grandiose pur* -
pose, it cannot be called a complete success. Although sacSi
forgeries as the Letters of Phalaris % or the pseudo-Shakespearea.xa
tragedy of " Vortigern," by which a boy of eighteen deceire^d
many scholars, shall always remain curiosities of literature, and,
perhaps, to a minor extent, problems of abnormal psychology",
it is overestimating their importance to assign to the entire col —
lection any great influence on the world's literature. The num-
ber of literary forgeries which have appreciably affected the for-
tunes of the world are very few indeed. This may be seen at »
glance by looking at this very volume. Of the sixteen chapters
it contains, which comprise most of the established cases of re-
markable literary forgeries, only one or, at most, two relate
cases which had any bearing on actual life. One of these i*
the ecclesiastical forgeries of the early middle ages, and the other
the Eikon Basilikc, which contributed to the restoration of tb«
Stuarts. Mr. Farrar suggests that the number and character
of some of the forgeries that have been exposed afford gm**
reason for suspecting that historians must have been deceived
by a vast number of others which have eluded detection, and
that there has been a wholesale incorporation of fictitious docu-
ments into the pages of history. This conclusion, however, *•
conjectural. Certainly, the history of the Marie Antoinette let*
ters prove clearly enough that history has, to some extent, bee*
vitiated by errors imported into it through the perverted i*>
genuity of manufacturers of evidence, which has proved t^
much for the vigilance of critics. The story of the Byron a*
Shelley letters, which deceived men in the most favorable p
sition for detecting them, and which were foand out by a me
accident, carry a useful lesson, just now, for those who, in if
measurably more important matters, place almost boundless co
fidence in expert criticism. The brilliant enterprise of M. Vn
• Literary Forgeries. By J. A. Farrar. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
x^o7-\ NEW BOOKS 257
L>er»* s Lucas, too, has a moral worthy of consideration by our
ricfa. American collectors, who pay large prices for documentary
souvenirs and autographs of historic personages. The reader
who will decline to gauge the book by its author's professed
purf>ose, will find it a very enjoyable ramble through an attrac-
tive by-way of literature.
How often has the old translation
CONFERENCES OF ST. of the Conferences of St. Francis
FRANCIS DE SALES. de Sales, with its ridiculous galli-
cisms and its many other defects,
pro "^oked the remark : " Why does not somebody give us a
goo <3 English version of this classic of the spiritual life ? " If
forty years has been a long time to wait for the desired work,"
it is pleasant to find that when a new one has at length ap-
pes>-Ted, it leaves no opening for criticism. Though two names
ares associated as editors on the title-page, Dom Gasquet is
alox^e in introducing the translation to the public. Abbot Gas-
qu et tells us that Dom Benedict Mackay had actually begun
th«? revision when death put an end to his labors. He pays a
his;* tr ' DUte t0 tne dead scholar, whose studies went for some-
thing in the excellence of this volume. "What his loss has
be«n to this undertaking, only those who know what he has
done in editing the works of St. Francis de Sales can appre-
ciate. For more than twenty years he had been allowed by the
Superiors of the English Benedictines to devote himself to this
labor of love. The fourteen published volumes of the great
Annecy edition form his most fitting monument. It has been
lately said of him that there can be no doubt that by his death
we have lost the man who knew more about St. Francis de
Sales than any one else, living or dead." The eloquent Preface,
written by Cardinal Wiseman for the translation of 1S62, is pre-
fixed to the present one.
Through this collection of essays.f
^ AMERICAN PROBLEMS. grouped roughly under three heads,
By Baker. Ideals, Sociological Problems, and
Education, the thread of unity is
» Tki Spiritual CanJtriMii (St. Francis dt Sales). Translated from the Annecy Text
of ia »3. under the Supervision of Abbot Gasquet and the late Canon Mackay, O.S.B. New
V °'k : Bemiger Brothers.
* ^Smn-Uat Pnblimt. Essays and Addresses. By James H. Baker. M.A., LL.D., Pres-
'dent of the University of Colorado. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
VOL. LXXXV. — 17
25 8 new Books [M«o%
the purpose to point out some of the weak spots in the pre*,
ent prevailing public and individual standards of conduct, whicri)
are to be made whole, not by public legislation, but by private
effort, individual and social. Mr. Baker emphasizes the social
motive as an incentive to work for the curing of the present
weaknesses, which he attributes not to decay, but to the exuber-
ance and bumptiousness of a young and vigorous nation.
This is a philosophical rather than
THE ATONEMENT. a literary dissertation* on a pro-
By Dinsmore. found idea, which has manifested
itself from the beginning as one of
the elemental chords of human life; that is, the idea of sin,
retribution, and reconciliation. Assuming that literature is life
in its highest expression, Mr. Dinsmore undertakes to show that
it is this idea of offence and subsequent reconciliation which
gives their value to some of the great masterpieces of litera-
ture — Homer's Iliad; the Plays of iEschylus and Sophocles;
the Divina Comedia ; Shakespeare's " Macbeth," " Richard III./*
"The Winter's Tale/' "Henry VIII./' and "The Tempest ";
Paradise Lost ; Adam Bede ; The Scarlet Letter ; and some other
classics. From the persistence of this idea, he draws an argu-
ment for the truth of the doctrine that sin has separated man
from his Creator, and that Christ is — to use a scholastic term
which, probably unknown to the writer, summarizes his disser-
tation — the principium reductivum, by which man is reconciled
to God. This study is in fine contrast with the manner in
which the people who belong to the " art for art's sake " school
treat the great masterpieces of literature.
With the development of the fam-
HISTORY OF DIPLOMACY, ily of nations, which this work pur-
By Hill. sues, its own specific character as
a history of diplomacy becomes
more pronounced. Intrinsically, as Mr. Hill observes, diploma-
cy is an appeal to ideas and principles rather than to force. *
Having but little of the modern machinery by which diploma-
cy is now carried on, the Middle Ages employed the thing it-
self on a vast scale and with far reaching results. The present
* Atonement in Life and Literature* By Chatlcs Allen Dinsmore. Boston : Houghton.
Mifflin & Co.
NEW BOOKS 259
lume," covering the period from the Hundred Years' War
to the end of the Thirty Years' War, has to deal with
he rise of national sovereignties, the preponderance and grad-
.1 decline of the Papal temporal supremacy, the Reformation
and its consequences all over Europe, and the establishment of
international law. It might be called a history of European
statesmanship for the period under consideration. To treat such
a vast subject in a single volume, even though of large size,
imposes the necessity of condensation to such a degree that the
significance of all events, and the complexity of the forces in
play, can with difficulty be held up to view. It is, perhaps,
the most meritorious characteristic of Mr. Hill's work that he
shows a good sense of proportion, and resists the temptation
of crowding up his pages with masses of insignificant details.
Another merit is his impartiality and freedom from pre-con-
ceived theory. The Papacy, of course, looms large throughout
all this era, and throughout it receives from the author a treat-
ment which, for fairness, contrasts favorably with the works of
many general historians of the period. A history of this kind
cannot have the interest of one which records every side of
life. Yet, if the study of history is chiefly valuable for the les-
sons of human experience it records, we can find those lessons
more ready to hand in a work of this kind than in one
where we must constantly wade through accounts of campaigns,
marches, and countermarches, lists of troops, stories of battles
and manoeuvres, which may possess some value for the profes-
sional soldier, but can do little towards increasing the practi-
cal wisdom of anybody else.
In printed form, the sermons of
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. Father Maturin hardly deserve to
By Maturin. be called striking; so it must be
that they do not, in any adequate
measure, represent the qualities of his spoken discourse. The
spontaneity and directness and simplicity of a preacher tell less
in his favor when he writes than when he stands in the sight
of a listening multitude. In the pages before us,f therefore,
• A History of Diplomacy in Ike iHternatienal DtvitofmiHl of Europe. Vol. II. Tie Ei-
tiUiikmenl of Territorial Sovereignty. (Maps and (ables.) By Dai id Jayne Hill. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co.
I Law of tht Spiritual Life. By B. W, Maturin. London and New York: Longmans.
Green & Co.
260 New Books [M^sy,
we find things that may be criticized from the literary stars d-
point, limitations which will prevent the book from exercisi »g
the same influence that its author would readily command in
person. At the same time, for those who appreciate sincere*
sensible, and profound spiritual lessons, this series of sermons
on the Beatitudes will be an acceptable book. The discernin g
reader will easily perceive the superiority of this volume to tfa«
ordinary book of sermons, and will not hesitate to pronounce i^
well worthy of publication, as it stands. Father Maturin's char-
acteristic tone runs through the whole set of discourses; first
and last, he is a teacher of the things of the spirit. He i a
practical, clear, penetrating, and encouraging. He strikes harmed
at sin and points the way to holiness clearly. Books like hi &
are good to have by our side, for reasons which the folio win ^
passage will help to make plain in part:
" I think there is no one capable of such daring, perhafȣ
even of such badness, as the woman who wants to throw her-
self into the tumultuous life around her and is held back 1>3
the fact that she has not the natural gifts that would bring hex
to the front. The restraints that she chafes against, the thinS" 3
that she sees and hears, and interprets perhaps as even worse
than they are, all prepare her for a reckless plunge when sb<
gets the chance. If she has been religiously brought up sb<
revolts against the standards which she tries to imagine hoi**
her back. The beauty and easy ways of human life, from whid*
she is shut out, rouses in her a fierce antagonism against wb***
she considers the narrow lines of her training, and her rel
lious and bitter spirit throws them to the winds and tears th<
to tatters at the first chance she gets."
Judging from the character of t£* e
CHURCH HISTORY. handbook,* which the good Sist^* 5
By the Sisters of Notre Dame. Q f Notre Dame have written i *> r
children, we should say that if tl* c
average collegian or seminarian were obliged to submit to
examination in recent church history at the hands of
women he might well look forward with trepidation to the
deal before him. The adult who would be a thorough mast**
of the contents of these one hundred and thirty odd pap
* Leading Events of the History of the Chttrch. NVrittcn for Children by the Sisters of
trc Dame. Part V. Later Modern Times. New York: Bcnziger Brothers.
x9 oll NEW BOOKS ,61
l^-lit congratulate himself on possessing a very intelligent ac-
u^intance with almost every important fact, movement, and
oe «-sonage that figure in the fortunes of the Church in Europe
j I0 m the rise of Jansenism till the death of Leo XIII. It is
a complete history on a reduced scale, in < which the proper
p r c» portions are carefully retained, the more important features
pl a ced in bold prominence, and their significance explained.
The style is lively and the method of treatment displays a
breadth of view and impartiality of judgment not always en-
joyed by those who look at Catholic interests from a convent
window. One or two excerpts from different sections may be
submitted to give some idea of the quality of the whole. From
an excellent brief synopsis of the history of GaiHcanism we
quote the paragraph regarding the Assembly of 1682: "Up
to this point there had been no regular ecclesiastical action in
the matter. When the council was called in 1682 its members
were carefully chosen, under pressure from the government, so
that the votes might be entirely in the royal interest. In spite
of the absence of some of the most distinguished theologians,
such as Bourdaloue, Mabillon, Fenelon, and others, the resolu-
►tions of the Assembly were issued under the title of ' Declaration
of fclie French Clergy.' The Archbishop of Paris was a mere
tool of the State. Bossuet, almost the only Bishop of note who
took part in the so-called council, was under obligations to the
kin^ - , and was not magnanimous enough to set his duty to the
Church above human considerations. He accepted, though with
reluctance, the important part assigned to him, and, pronounced
the opening speech." Another age and another land: "The
theory of evolution, in its Christian sense, was applied by Car-
dinal Newman to matters of religion in his Development of Chrts-
tiezra Doctrine, in which he shows that Catholic dogma, ever the
same, has nevertheless grown with the ages, and taken new
shapes to suit the varying needs of the changing times. The
vitality of the Church is proved by her living teaching, which
assimilates the ever-increasing store of human knowledge. Thus,
in the thirteenth century, the current Aristotelian philosophy,
which was supposed to be directly hostile to Christianity, was
made Use of by St. Thomas Aquinas to give logical precision
and accuracy of expression to the scholastic theology. Nor
can it be doubted that the scientific discoveries of modern
times, when fully understood and developed, will harmonize
262 NEW BOOKS [May.
perfectly with the teachings of the Church, and prove once
more that truth is incapable of contradicting itself. Protestant-
ism, on the contrary, denies the possibility of evolution in dog-
ma, and abides by the letter of Scripture. The consequence of
this stagnation is that when Scripture does not fit a particular
case, there is no other refuge than negation, and negation
means liberalism in its most extreme form/' Where the stand-
ard of excellence is so high it is scarcely worth while to note
one or two trifling inaccuracies that have struck the eye. Ar&<i
.we shall merely note, without making the obvious comment
that, while the revival in Germany, the Oxford movement, Catt»-
olic emancipation in Ireland and England receive due consider or-
ation, there is not a line to indicate that within the pale of tine
universal Church there is a region called America.
The handiest volume — and <
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS, most sorely needed for ready x~ re-
ference — of the complete works *>'
Shakespeare has just been published by Houghton, Mifflin & C^ *•
The present book * is comparatively small ; light in weight ; «
•cellent type; careful setting; and handy arrangement; with
appendix of textual notes and a glossary. It serves the p
pose of one who would carry a Shakespeare with him for X^^
summer or on a journey ; and of one also who must refer to ^°
authoritative reading of Shakespeare's text. The editor has b«^ n
unsparing in his care and research. The present text is founcS ^^
on an independent examination of the early Quarto and F£ ** s
Folio editions of Shakespeare's works; and the editor gives ^^ c "
tailed reasons for his selection in a preface to every play ^-*
poem. To the editor and publishers of this volume we can **°
but express our heartfelt thanks, and we recommend it i» ^*
cordially to the scholar, the student, and the general reader^—-
* The Complete Dramatic and Poetic Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by Wil
Allan Neilson. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
jForeign periodicals.
f Tablet (16 March): An application has been made to the
Pope for the establishment of Catholic houses of study
for women at Oxford and Cambridge. Since a decision
of Propaganda in 1897 it has been unlawful to establish
such colleges, although during the past decade many
Catholic women have followed the University courses.
The delegation was favorably received by the Pope and
it is expected that the decision will soon be communi-
cated to the Archbishop of Westminster. There will
probably be a long series of beatifications at St. Peter's
during the year 1908, but none during the present year.
The situation in France is reported to be unaltered :
"The Bishops are simply marking time."
(23 March) : A complete summary of the " New Theol-
ogy " is here given. It is divided into ten portions, re-
lating especially to "Revelation," " Faith," and "Dog-
ma." The system is declared to bt erroneous, a priori^
narrow, obviously heretical and subversive of the Chris-
tian and Catholic faith. An appendix of quotations' is
given to illustrate these statements.
(30 March) : A criticism of Dr. Gore's statement of the
relations existing between the "New Theology " and the
Anglican Church. His endeavor to establish a harmony
between the two seems to compromise his own position,
and leaves him open to the charge of inconsistency.
At the Public Consistory, to be held on April 18, the
Pope contemplates the creation of six new Cardinals.
There is no prelate of English-speaking countries among
them ; indeed, all but one of them are Italians.
? Month (April) : Writing on " The Shepherd and the Flock "
the editor says: "If ever there was a time when the
need of the Shepherd's voice was felt to guide the be-
wildered flock, assuredly it is now; and if ever the voice
of Christ's vicar spoke in tones the unworldly dignity of
which might seem impossible to gainsay, it is as Pius X.
has spoken in this French crisis." The result of this
has been that the Church's enemi**
she renounces the one claim wl
264 FOREIGN PERIODICALS
— the exercise of any living practical authority.
Rev. P. de Vregille describes the kind of mind peculi
to the French and the English. He finds each intellc
tual type trying to realize its own type in the physic
theories proposed, and he thus gives us a view of tk* t
influence of both English and French minds on the d^.
velopment of physical science. Father Thurston, writ*
ing on "The Early Cultus of the Blessed Sacrament/'
finds no evidence of what we should now call a visit to
the Blessed Sacrament earlier than the year uoo. A
few alleged illustrations of such earlier than this period
are rejected by him. Probably the first real example is
found in a letter written, in 1166, by St. Thomas of Can-
terbury. In the MSS. of the Ancren Riwle of the twelfth
century evidence is found of the full realization of the
Eucharistic Presence.
The Crucible (March) : A teacher will find most suggestive the
exposition of the Munich Catechetical Method by Dom
Lambert Nolle, O.S.B. Though the authors of the Method
do not claim Newman as an authority, their priciples are
identical with those brought out by the great Cardinal
in his Grammar of Assent. The distinction between no-
tional and real propositions is explained, and the effective
way of reaching the will through the imagination and
the emotions, by means of concrete presentations, is ex-
pounded. The writer hopes to encourage study of this
method, which is both Newman's and that of the Asso-
ciation of Catechists in South Germany. Miss A. A.
McGinley speaks of " Some Values of Impersonal Teach-
ing," pointing out defects in the Catholic system of edu-
cation which are traceable to an excess of personal teach-
ing.— — "The beauty which is from within," writes Miss
Petre, " does not fade with time, but is deepened by th
nobler struggles of life. Such beauty is personal, no mer
accidental quality of body. The cult of mere ugliness r
the lack . of taste and artistic feeling, deserve no honor
or respect; but, while exercising reasonable care that th»
body may be a worthy vehicle for the soul, we shall^
in time, scorn those artifices which make us appear oth
than we are. We shall take more pride in making o
looks than in letting our looks make us ; and to
7-] foreign Periodicals 265
ashamed of our faces will become tantamount to being
ashamed of our souls." We are glad to know from
the Editor that the Catholic Women's League has come
into actual existence, and that the work is fast assuming
definite form. The good women in this movement are
doing a noble work in a noble manner, and must elicit
interest and sympathy from every quarter.
n f£* national Journal of Ethics (April).; Reform in the matter of
the death penalty occupies the attention of Mr. Carl Heath.
The moral perceptions of the more enlightened members
of a nation, he says, are always ahead of its criminal
codes. To effect a change means, in a democratic coun-
try, to first change the view of the average citizen. No
easy task, for the average man is not only conservative
in his views of moral problems, but to his natural con-
servatism is added a heavy weight of indifferentism that
has first to be overcome. Hence, the bringing of criminal
law into line with modern day ethical standards is a phe-
nomenally slow process. Of all examples, the most strik-
ing is that of the legal penalty of death for murder.
The writer voices the sentiment of a movement which is
working for the exclusion of women from the death
penalty, and the introduction of the principle of grada-
tion as regards crimes of murder.- The ethical aspects
of economics are pointed out in a discussion of the sub-
ject by Prof. W. R. Sorley of the University of Cam-
bridge. There are two ways in which economic inquiry
leads up to and is connected with questions of ethics.
On the one hand, the action of human beings is not
determined by purely economic forces. Economic mo-
tives do not operate — do not even exist — by themselves.
So the modern economist, in order to secure a broader
and truer knowledge of his science, has been forced to
study a class of facts which are properly ethical. On
the other hand, the real objective worth of things is de-
termined by ethical, not by economic, standards. Con-
vinced that woman has a definite, peculiar contribution
to give the civilization of this age and those to come,
Mr. F. Melian Stowel! urges her right to all the means
necessary for her full development. She, from whom so-
ciety is daily demanding more and more service, should
266 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
be allowed some control in its direction. Those who be-
lieve with Clough, that human beauty and grace are
grounded in utility and reason, will be little disturbed at
the disappearance of the refinement that comes from do-
ing nothing if they can hope for the refinement bom of
doing things well.
The Hibbert Journal (April): Rev. R. J. Campbell urges th«
need of bringing together on wider lines the men who, i
various religious communions, are in sympathy with th
standpoint of the " New Theology." The need of th
hour, he insists, is the strong assertion of our fusdamen
tal Christian unity, or at any rate of the idea of soci
brotherhood based upon spiritual sanctions. The obvious^
glaring thing in the world of human affairs to day is
that the Church has been trying too long to save met
from suffering in a world to come, and has been onl;
partially concerned about the root- causes of suffering ic
this. Faith has too often been deprived of its moral con-
tent, and spoken of as if it had only an intellectual con-
tent. The ethical and spiritual reawakening of Christen-
dom is at hand. The aim of the new " Catholic Move-
ment," says Latin us, distinguishes it from all precedinj
movements of a liberalizing tendency in the Catholi
Church. Its character is essentially scientific. It has
religious as distinct from an apologetic value ; that i
to say, it tends not merely to conserve existing religiou
beliefs as legacies from the past, but to infuse into the
fresh life and vigor from the realities of modern experi
ence. Thoroughness and sincerity is the note of its phi —
losophy throughout. First and foremost, it will hav
done once and for all with that timorous and pitiabl
system of concessions and half-truths, than which noth^
ing has tended more to discredit religion among serioim~ t
thinkers. As M. Paul Desjardins has well said, we d- -^
not make concessions to truth ; we simply recognize i "**:
Nay, more, if we are lovers of truth, we welcome **~
and if we believe that God is truth, we see in each ne
acquisition of science an. addition to our knowledge
God. Catholic thinkers speak of dogma as being psych.
logical, in that it reflects the psychology of those w
enunciate it and those for whom it is enunciated. D
7_] Foreign periodicals 267
mas arc thus relative, but they contain the absolute,
and are indeed conditions under which the absolute is
made known to us, in so far as we can know it. He
who thus conceives religion, will rid himself of that fal-
lacy of finality, and all that narrowness of vision and pet-
tiness of mind aptly described by a French writer as the
tradition of the little books that make God little. This
is the spirit of the new movement, says the writer. It
realises the futility of trying to twist facts to suit theo-
ries derived from a past which was destitute of the
knowledge we now possess; what we have to do is to
adjust the theories to suit the facts. To him, he con-
cludes, it seems that, both in the circumstances of the
time and in the nature of the Latin religion, these are
forces that make strongly for the realization of the ideal
of faith without superstition, and obedience without ser-
vility, which leaders like Fogazzaro and Laberthonniere
are setting before the Catholic world. Sir Oliver
Lodge discusses "A Reformed Church as an Engine of
Progress." To make the National Church this, he says,
there will be needed: first, more spontaneity and less
monotony in Church service of all kinds, and the aban-
donment of mechanical uniformity in worship; second,
more liberal education for ministers, and the broadening
and simplification of tests, so as to exclude as few good
men as possible; third, and consequent upon these two,
clear-sighted recognition of the signs of the times, study
and enlightened encouragement of true beneficence, and
stalwart opposition to all abuses of power. It is a not-
able feature in the theological unrest of to-day, says Rev.
Frank Ilsley Paradise, that no serious attempt has been
made to define the nature and functions of the Church.
There are in the Protestant world at least several con-
ceptions of this sacred institution which cannot be brought
into agreement. It is for "The Living Church " that the
writer pleads. When we have grasped the id^a that the
Church is called to bear witness to the true life of God,
and the true sonship of Christ — that it must at last em-
brace " the whole human society, organized for the spirit-
ual ends of man " — then the question of metaphysics
and the niceties of definitions grow insignificant before
268 Foreign Periodicals [Ma^
the sublime and compelling purpose for which the Chur^
exists. To those who would explain the miracles ,
healing in the Gospel Narrative by the Neurotic Theory
Dr. R. J. Ryle says that they must show that diseas*
which Christ cured were of the kind which experieo c <
proves to admit of psychical treatment ; and, moreover
must make clear that the way in which the cures w&e
effected was the way by which, at the present day, such
cures are effected when What has been called moral thera-
peutics has been the method employed. For it is to be
remembered that only a very small portion of diseases
to which human flesh is heir are nervous diseases; and
that of nervous, again, only a very small and unimpor-
tant group admit of cure in this way.
Le Correspondent (10 March): "The Elections and the Public
Spirit in Germany " is an anonymous contribution in
which the dissolution of the Reichstag and other national
questions are discussed. The recent elections demonstrate,
the author concludes, that in the very heart of Europe
there are sixty millions of people who are ready, at any
moment and on any question, to hand over to their re-
gent the reins of government when he says the word.
M. Jules Arren reviews Fr. Vaughan's The Sins of So-
ciety. These sermons are most interesting, from a socio*
logical standpoint, as a study of the manners and cus-
toms of English society. They can also claim attentior
as examples of the ultra-modern method of preaching.
(25 March) : A recent work, Fenelon et Madame Guyon, bj
M. Masson, is reviewed by Henri Joly. This work con
sists of new and unpublished documents. One sees ii
these evidences of a faith which prohibits reflection, of \
will which is employed continually in securing absolut<
indifference. This is, without doubt, a dangerous narcotic
The same writer reviews a new correspondence
St. Francis de Sales. In this we find no exchange o
flatteries, such as characterized Fenelon's, but a frank
open avowal of friendship — a friendship strong and ardent
founded on a higher love and noble faith. Jean Rode:
describes the reform movement in China. It is spreadinj
everywhere with unexpected rapidity along educations
and commercial lines. One of the most progressive China
'.] Foreign Periodicals 269
men is Ho Kai, a graduate of the University of Aber-
deen. Hong Kong is the centre of the Liberal Move-
ment.
Vj (s March) : M. de Vregille continues his defence of the
Jesuits' attitude toward Galileo! In this number he first
pleads the case of Bellarmine. This learned Jesuit, it
must be admitted, transmitted to Galileo the condemna-
tion of the Inquisition which, in 1616, declared the new
theories unacceptable. But with the later and more im-
portant condemnation of 1633 he could have had noth-
ing to do, having died twelve years before. Only one
of the three consultors in 1633 was a Jesuit. The chief
conflict waged against Galileo by the Jesuits was in the
field of philosophy, where, as true defenders of tradition,
they vigorously opposed the innovation of Galileo.
(20 March): M. de Tongu&iec presents an analysis and
criticism of the idea of Truth in the " new philosophy "
of Bergson, Le Roy, and others. The charge is made
that they do not use terms in their proper meaning. The
writer claims that the scholastic phraseology is either re-
jected or interpreted wrongly, *. £., truth is made en-
tirely subjective by the new school. A return to tradi-
tional definitions is strongly advocated. In the domain
*of religion this new conception of* truth is said to be
dangerous, for mere fecundity and endurance of dogmas
*re taken as sufficient grounds for the truth of said
dogmas. Frequent references to the works of Loisy
seem to denote our reviewer's attitude concerning the
exponents of this new school of philosophy.
&*mocratie Chrctienne (March) : If the servants of Christ are
*o obey his injunction to " teach the nations," what sci-
ence is required of them ? Not merely theology, insists
M. Paul Lapeyre, in an address to some seminarians, for
authoritative, a priori teaching on matters not of faith
has ceased to be popular. A broad spirit, springing from
a practical knowledge of conditions, must replace the
spirit which tends towards dogmatic pronouncement, it
the religious teacher would influence in any degree, even
his Catholic auditors. The character of priesthood as
such is no longer an infallible passport to the hearts of
the people. That must be reinforced by personality and
270 foreign Periodicals [Ma
active sympathy, if the divine teacher would have a
thority that commands. The men are urged to stu
how the people actually live, how they ought to lr
and what are the processes which must be corrected
progress towards the ideal would be realized. Since j
cial evils are the fruitful source of private vice, it is t
merely expedient, but absolutely imperative that the cl<
gy should co-operate in the effort to mitigate them.—
It is difficult to. define Socialism, regarded as a genei
idea, for the term is applied indiscriminately to eve
species of reform movement. The idea fundamental
all socialistic tendency, however, admits of analysis, a
to this it is subjected in the present number. Sociali:
is essentially economic. Questions' of philosophic imp<
have worked themselves into the discussion, but rea
have no legitimate place there. The suggestion is ma
that we Catholics study Socialism, not with the purp<
of finding refutation for its possible errors, but with tl
of forming an estimate of it pro or con, which will
based on a scientific understanding of its aim and mea
The Catholic social movement in Italy is second
activity to none in Europe. M. Toniolo, professor
the University of Pisa, writes of it with an enthusia
which is characteristic of the leaders of the movem<
everywhere.
La Quinzaine (March) : Charles Dupuis concludes his discuss
of the system of equilibrium with an article on its c y
lution. The efforts and struggles of Lamennais s
Lacordaire, which resulted in the final suppression
UAvenir, form the theme of C. Boutard's contributi
Ch. Florisoone estimates the value of the legends
the saints. They are not history, but unlike history tl
aim is to console and strengthen, and finally to elev
towards the absolute perfection of God.
(16 March): With deep regret we note the an noun
ment that with this number La Quinzaine closes its b
liant, honorable, and useful career. In its valedicfc
the distinguished editor reviews its history and, mode
but confidently, points out the successful labors it
sustained in the promotion of intellectual developm*
organization of the movements for social ameliorat
;r_] Foreign Periodicals 271
and social justice. Although, like every other good work,
La Quinzaine has been subject to adverse criticism from
persons whose honesty of purpose and good intentions
are unimpeachable, this hostility has had nothing to do
with its suspension; for, on the other hand, it has had
wide support. But, unfortunately, the support has failed
to express itself concretely, and the directors feel that
their resources do not warrant a continuance of the pub-
lication. M. Fonsegrive defines with precision, and abun-
dantly defends the principles which guided the policy of
himself and his associates. He deprecates the tendency
of some minds who perceive a heretic in everybody, how-
ever loyal he may be, who differs from their own views
— " there is as much danger, in a period of transition
like the present, in standing still as in going forward."
Critical methods, regulated by prudence and guided by
loyalty, have, he reminds us, achieved victories and con-
ferred benefits on Catholic truth, and their help will
prove necessary and effective in an increasing degree in
the future. M. Fonsegrive gives a masterly outline of
the present intellectual situation in France, as well as in
the Church at large, and indicates the lines on which
present dangers are to be met successfully. The regret
we feel at the announcement of La Quinzaine % s disap-
pearance is deep and sincere. It is tempered by the as-
surance M. Fonsegrive offers that in future he may still,
in Le Correspondant ', keep in touch with those pens who
made its pages vehicles of light and learning.
K Jteligiosi (Jan.-Feb.): P. Semeria, in a long study of the
authorship of the Imitation, concludes that Thomas h
Kempis has the best claim to that honor. He concedes,
however, that this conclusion is not without its difficulties.
— L. Franceschi proves that the progress of evolution-
ary biology leaves intact the ancient belief in a Creator
and a providential Ruler of the Universe. C. di Jeano
gives a summary sketch of the state of Byzantine Chris-
tianity at the time of the Arab invasions. P. Minoc-
chi tells us that since his article in the previous Studi,
in opposition to Father Tyrrell, he has been receiving
many letters in praise of his criticisms, but many more
in censure of them. He has been especially rated for
272 Foreign Periodicals [It
the article because, it is charged, it will tend to pre
dice ecclesiastical authority against Father Tyrrell. '
these allegations he replies, vindicating his impartial]
and good faith, and once more declaring that, at lea
by implication, the famous Confidential Letter contai:
statements irreconcilable with the fixed dogma of Cathc
icism.
Stimnten Aus Maria Laack (March): Under the title "T
Social Democratic Family of the Future," Fr. V, Cat
rein, S.J., begins a criticism of certain socialistic vie
of the home and the marriage bond. Fr. Cathrein sho
what he believes to be essential to the home accordi
to the Christian conception. Its primary purpose is t
generation and education of children. He calls att<
tion to the part which family life has played in e
vating and Christianizing our nations. One of the i
sidious attacks of Socialism on the present order is,
believes, its attempt to discredit the Catholic doctri
of the indissoluble marriage bond and to experimc
with new and, as it professes, more nearly ideal fori
of family life.
Current Events*
Notwithstanding the assurances
Russia. given by M. Stolypin that it
is the fixed determination of the
tar and his advisers that Russia is to become a constitu-
ted monarchy, in which law and not arbitrary will is to
& dominant, there was a moment since our last notes were
rritten, and since this declaration, when the best informed au-
borities felt sure that the Duma was again to be dissolved.
' The dispersal of the Duma is said to be resolved upon ; noth-
n S short of a miracle can save it." This miracle has hap-
>fcUed; the Duma has not been dissolved — up to the present.
x> iong, however, as its existence depends upon the will of one
D *n and backstairs advisers, its existence is, at the best, pre-
*Hous. But even if the worst happens, Russians can never
t?*in be the victims of an unmitigated despotism ; seeds have
*en sown which must bear fruit. The only question is whether
he reign of law is to be established peacefully and by discus-
ion, or through the throes of a bloody revolution.
The hope that the evolution may take place peacefully, and
- brought about through the instrumentality of the present
*wa, rests, of course, upon the moderation of its members.
*ut moderate means will be adopted depends largely upon the
tion of the Constitutional Democrats, and upon their securing
b co operation of a majority in the Duma. The extremists,
ether on the Right or the Left, are the enemies who stand
the way. The refusal of the government to work with the
\stitutional Democrats, its attempt even to ostracize them,
\s another obstacle to the attainment of the hoped-for re*
So far, however, such a catastrophe has been averted.
he interest which attaches to the attempt now being made
mighty empire to rise from the depths of an oppressive
ly to a measure of freedom, justifies a more detailed chron-
lan the proceedings of an ordinary parliament deserve.
resident of the Duma, on his reception in a special au-
by the Tsar, was assured by his Majesty that it was
eat satisfaction that he witnessed its opening. In the or-
on of the house by the election ofi various officials a
u uucxv.— 18
274 Current Events [Ma
narrow and sectarian spirit was shown by the Opposition, i
asmuch as it refused to elect any member of the Right. T
favorable impressions of the first day soon vanished; the \
was soon filled with rumors of an immediate dissolution — rum<
which were based upon the common hostility to the Duma
the Reactionaries on the one band and the Revolutionists
the other. Amnesty for all political offenders and agrarian i
form, together with the field Courts-martial, were the cruc
questions. At the end of the first week military preparatio:
it is said, had already been made in view of a dissolution. T
situation was saved by the moderation displayed by the great a
jority of the members of the Duma. The momentous words
M. Stolypin in his exposition of the government's programs
when he indicated his willingness to accept the decision of I
Duma upon those proposals, even if contrary to the govei
ment's wishes, seemed to render success certain. And so tb
would have done if his assurance could have been relied up<
The question of the field Courts-martial showed, however, tl
this was not the Case.
The rock upon which the Duma nearly split was the 1
brought in by the Constitutional Democrats for the abolition
the field Courts martial which were established by Ukase 1
August. To these Courts-martial it may be remembered \
given the power of trying and summarily executing within a f
hours all persons taking part in revolutionary or riotous p
ceedings. The measure was of so arbitrary a character that
would not be dreamt of in a properly organized country. N
withstanding his declaration made a few days before, M. Sto
pin opposed even the consideration of the Bill. His opposit
was not without result, for although the Bill was referred t<
Committee, urgency was refused, as M. Stolypin promised t
the Courts -martial would not act except in the most urg
necessity. This, together with the action of the Socialist grou
led to the belief to which we have referred, that the disso
tion of the Duma had been decided upon. Happily the be
has proved to be without foundation.
Agrarian measures have occupied in the main the subsequt
attention of the Duma, The Extreme Left advocates wholes
expropriation, in order to increase what all admit must be i
creased, the holdings of the peasants. The government,
course, resists this, but admits its admissibility in exception
Current Events 275
s ^s. The debates on this question have offered a striking con-
trast to the fierce irreconcilable character of those which took
| aC e in the first Duma. Finally, the Budget has been sub-
mitted to the Duma's consideration and has been referred to a
Committee for detailed discussion. Although great efforts to
redu ce expenditure have been made, there is a deficit which
will necessitate an increase of taxation, Such is a brief record
of th e proceedings so far of the second Duma,- these proceed-
ings afford grounds for both hope and fear.
&y the death of M. Pobiedonostzeff the most dangerous en-
emy °f the new order has been removed. He forms a striking
inst» rlce ' °f which many might be given, of the harm wrought
by tl"* c sincere holder of erroneous notions. The failure of all
his et (Torts is, too, a proof of the impotency, at least in our
days, oT the alliance between would-be orthodoxy and despot-
ism. The resultant state of Russia, morally and politically, is,
to use a hackneyed expression, a good object-lesson of the fail-
ure of brute force. During the reign of Alexander III. and
the earlier part of that of the present Tsar, of whom he was
the tutor, M. Pobiedonostzeff was the power behind the Throne.
He treated religious dissidents with such barbarous cruelty
that Horreseo referens — some have almost been ready to thank
God that Tophet has been ordained of old as a place of pun-
ishment. To him is due the compulsion which led the Uniats
of Poland some years ago to join the Orthodox Church. And
yet this man, who was so brutal in his methods, was the trans-
lator into Russian of the Following of Christ, and is said to
have kept constantly on his table a copy of Emerson's Essays.
The relations of Russia with foreign powers remain un-
changed. Its first backward step since it became a power has
been taken. As stipulated in the Treaty of Portsmouth, Man-
churia has been completely evacuated, except for a few soldiers
who serve as guards of the railways. The Dowager Empress
Marie, sister of the Queen of England, has been paying a (air-
ly long visit to that country. A Russian Squadron has visited
England. The sailors were enthusiastically received, and a mes-
sage oi welcome was sent to them by the King. All this contri-
butes in some degree to the rapprochement between Great Britain
and Russia, the accomplishment of which has been long ex-
pected and eagerly desired.
276 Current Events [May,
The first session of the new Reich-
Germany, stag adjourned without any note-
worthy achievement. The supplies
asked for by the government were voted — even those for the
colonies, although in a somewhat modified form. These were
the occasion of the dissolution, in December last. It is left to
the future to reveal how the government will succeed in rally-
ing to its support the hostile elements, of which the majority —
if there is to be a majority — must consist. On the one hand,
the Conservatives representing the agricultural interests wish to
maintain, (if not to increase, the tariffs which Liberals and
Radicals representing consumers wish to diminish. The latter
are anxious to increase the power of the people by making
ministers responsible to the Reichstag; the former look upon
such proposals with horror. There is one anomaly, however,
which, although it calls in all strict justice for amendment, will
doubtless call in vain, for the existence of the present majority
depends upon its maintenance. On account of the ill-adjusted
arrangements of constituencies, due to the movements of the
population since the establishment of the Empire, the minority
of the people have the majority of representatives in the Reich-
stag. The groups which support the government are weak
among the masses, while the real mind and will of the people —
so far as a majority is the right expression of them — is repre-
sented by the opponents of the government. This adds to the
difficulties of an already difficult task.
The composite character of the Empire — it being a Federa-
tion of States, each with its own parliaments and ministries —
adds to the difficulty. At the present time in the Prussian
Chamber certain questions with reference to education are being
discussed, and this discussion leads to a union between the par-
ties which are opposed to each other in the Imperial Reich-
stag ; the Conservatives and the Centre have entered into an
alliance against the Liberals and Radicals. The latter naturally
resent being thus thrown over when their support is not nec-
essary, and being made use of as tools when their support is
needed, and characterize the policy as amphibious and wanting
in sincerity.
The Chancellor's difficulties are increased by the state of the
national finances. The value of the Imperial loans has sunk in
the time of the profoundest peace. The three per cents, for
Current events 277
example, being valued at 84:90. The resources of the Imperial
Bank are strained to the utmost. Among the causes assigned
(or this depression, is the Bourse legislation passed a few years
ago at the instance of the Agrarians. This legislation testified
to their recognition of the principles of commutative justice —
whether this recognition was the motive for their action we can-
not say. Its effect has been to restrict the operations of the
stock market, for it prohibits transactions in differences and with-
draws legal sanction from such bargains, and has thus been the
means of sending out of Germany millions of capital. The re-
peal of this legislation, or at least its modification, is one of
the demands of the Liberal Party in the Reichstag. If the Con-
servatives oppose it, the government's majority will be imperilled.
Of German activity in the world at large there have not been
wanting signs. The project of neutralizing the entrance to the
Baltic, of which mention was made last month, is declared by
Swedish journals and by the Danish Minister to Great Britain
to be one which would not be entertained by either Sweden or
Denmark. There certainly has been no clear proof that the
German government has committed itself to so dangerous a
scheme. A better proved allegation is the activity of German
agents in Morocco. Trade concessions are, it is said, being
granted daily to German subjects. Moorish natives are being
despoiled of their lands to satisfy Germans, thus evading the
Act of Algeciras. What is really a German military mission has
been sent to Morocco. The Maghzen's army is being placed
under the command of German officers ; while a German en-
gineering corps is constructing bridges, roads, and railways.
Everything is being done to inflame the minds of the Moors
against the French ; how successful these efforts have been is
shown by the murder of Dr. Mauchamp. Such are the allega-
tions made in Paris, and they are more or less confirmed by
advices direct from Morocco. The support of Germany has
given confidence to the Sultan, and has given him courage to
resist the reforms which are so necessary, not merely for his
own subjects, but also for the safety of foreign residents.
In one sphere, however, of her activity Germany demands
the warmest approbation. Turkey's Sultan has been forced to
bow before the demands of the Kaiser's representative. The
whole story forms a vivid illustration of what is still possible
under unmitigated autocratic rule, A gentleman named Fehim,
278 Current Events [May,
an Aide-de-Camp of the Sultan and a General of Division, has
for many years distinguished himself by various atrocities, and
has enjoyed complete impunity on account of relationship and of
his being a special favorite with the ruler, who is himself styled
throughout his Empire as the " butcher." Fehim first became
famous by walking out of his house in the capital, revolver in
hand, and shooting down the passers-by in the street. Some
fourteen persons were wounded, whether fatally or not is not
known. No punishment, however, was inflicted upon him, and he,
with such an auspicious beginning, became in a few years almost
the uncontrolled master of the lives of the unhappy subjects of
the Sultan. Under his control was placed a force of 140 men,
who were made independent of the police and carried out his
behests. As is well-known, the Sultan governs by an elaborate
system of espionage, and in Constantinople Fehim was the spy-
master. Not only the property, but also the virtue of the wives
and daughters of Abdul Hamid's unhappy subjects have been
at the mercy of Fehim. In an evil day, however, he allowed
his greed to lead him into conflict with a subject of the Kaiser.
The ambassador of Germany at Constantinople demanded the
exile of the Sultan's right-hand man. Considerable resistance
was offered, but in the end the demand was conceded, and the
career of Fehim has come to an end. When civilized powers
can be brought to act with decision, they are able to do good
work ; this the action of Germany makes clear. The pity of
it is that it is so seldom that they can be induced to act ht
harmony.
The attitude of Germany to the approaching Peace Congn
at The Hague has not been made perfectly clear, especial 1;
with reference to the question of the limitation of armaments -.
It is to Germany, as at least one of the principal causes^ «,
that the burden caused by vast armies of Europe is due. I*"" _t
was in order to relieve Europe of this burden that the Tsar ^r
urged the assembly of the Congress in the first instance, al
though he did not include this proposal in the programme
the new Congress. Great Britain and the United States, backe
by Italy and Spain, are, however, strongly in favor of the lim
tation of armaments being discussed. Germany at first w;
thought to be strongly opposed even to the raising of the qu<
tion, but it is now understood that she, while looking upon
as sure to be fruitless, will raise no determined opposition.
1907.] CURRENT EVENTS 279
Discussions are still going on be-
Austria-Hungary. tween the Empire and the King-
dom to settle the twelve-year-old
dispute as to their economic relations. While hopes exist, no
settlement has so far been made. The feelings of large num-
bers of the Austrians are very bitter towards the Magyars who
have in recent years been giving them so much trouble. This
is exemplified in a manifesto issued by the Christian Socialist,
or, as it is otherwise called, the Catholic Anti Semitic party.
This manifesto declares that the Magyars have oppressed, ex-
ploited, and made slaves of all the non- Magyar peoples of Hun-
gary, of her German citizens, and of the Slav and Rumane
nationalities. Not only have all those various peoples suffered
from the Magyars, but the Austrians themselves have been put
under their yoke, for they have thrown upon Austrian shoulders
nearly the whole of the immense military burden. The mani-
festo ends with the cry : " Away with the autocracy of the
Magyars." Included in this programme of the Christian Social-
ist party is the demand of compulsory insurance against ac-
cidents and old age.
There is no room for doubt that a strong feeling in favor
of separation is showing itself both in Austria and in Hungary.
That Austria would draw nearer to Germany, and Hungary to
the Balkan States, as the result of the economic separation
which Hungary desires, is recognized as in the highest degree
probable. In contrast to the feeling which existed a few years
ago, which in Austria deprecated the very mention of separa-
tion of any kind, within the last few months resolutions have
been adopted in all the Austrian Provincial Diets which indi-
cate that all are prepared to take a stand, if not against Hun-
gary, at least for Austria, in protection of her interests. The
Austrian tendency for separation is divided : in the view of
some the German provinces of Austria should seek incorpora-
tion into the German Empire, while in the view of others a
"Greater Austria" should be formed, and Hungary and Croa-
tia should be reincorporated in a Federated Austrian Empire.
The long series of mishaps which
France. have happened in the navy, and
which has culminated in the de-
struction of the lena, has raised the question as to the effi-
280 Current Events V^y,
ciency of the republican management of the marine defences.
The frequent changes in the supreme management have, it is
said, rendered efficiency impossible, while mutual jealousy and
indiscipline have contributed to the same result. The desire
for economical administration has also been a contributory
cause. The Committee appointed to inquire into the Iena dis-
aster dismissed the idea that it was due to treachery or mal-
ice, attributing it to spontaneous combustion of powder, which
ought not to have been left so long on board.
Certain skilled workmen of Paris, because all their demands
were not granted, without any regard for the convenience of
their fellow- citizens, showed, by striking without any notice
having been given, that workingmen could and would, when
they had the power, be as arbitrary and tyrannical as any
king or emperor. They found, however, that the government
of the Republic was as much opposed to anarchy, and as well
able to resist it, as every other civilized government. In fact,
the French government is even more rigid than is that of some
monarchies, for it is refusing the right of forming Trade Unions
to all servants of the State.
Not a few things have contributed, together with the strikes
actual and threatened, to give to the Socialistic movement in
France a decided set-back. The agitation with reference to the
enforcement of the week day of rest, the proposed income tax
with the inquisitorial inquiries which it involved, the attempts
to bring influence to demoralize the army, have caused a re-
vulsion of feeling, and lead many to look forward to the adop-
tion of a more conservative policy.
The seizure of the papers of Mgr. Montagnini, made by the
French government, has been the occasion of flooding the French
press with columns and columns of extracts. According to M,~_
Flourens, a former Republican Minister of Foreign Affairs, thisa
act of the French government was a violation of international-]
law and courtesy, and an injury to the whole Diplomatic Corpsa
in Paris. It remains a mystery how the press got possessions
of the papers, and it is perhaps doubtful whether trust can be=
reposed in what has been published. According to M. Piou B
the political leader who figures prominently in various trans —
actions, Mgr. Montagnini is by no means accurate in some o=:
the reports which are given by him ; while according to Mgi —
Lacroix, the Bishop of Tarentaise, the report given by Mgir^
J9 o
■7.] Current Events 281
m fB.tagnini o£ what the former said at the Conference of Bish-
ops was ridiculously inaccurate, and proved that he could not
h a v « obtained his information from any one who took part in
•he Conference, but that the lamplighter or floor- scrubber at
t hes Archbishopric must have been the channel. The extent of
Hgr. Montagnini's acquaintance with the products of French
lea.rning is indicated by his reference to the well-known Mgr.
Batiff°'i rector of the Catholic Institute at Toulouse, whose book
on the Breviary has been translated into English, as " a certain
Batiffol." The whole character of the denunciation, said to
have been transmitted to Rome as published in the papers, is
such that we lean to the conclusion that it cannot be anything
else than a fabrication. On the other hand, nothing in the
whole of the matter published indicates that the Holy See de-
parted in the least from the course marked out by Pope Leo
XIII. The Republic is the established form of government and
to t»e treated and recognized as such.
The murder of Dr. Mauchamp, to which we have already
referred, brought to a climax a series of outrages and compelled
the Prench government to take the important step of occupy-
ing "Ujda, a town in Morocco bordering on Algeria. At first
there were fears that this would be resented by the power
which is protecting Morocco. The provocation given to France
was, however, recognized as justifying the step. France dis-
claims all intention of permanently remaining in possession, and
will retire when her claims for compensation upon the Moorish
government are satisfied.
The territory of France has been increased by some 20,000
square kilometres of rich land, and her population by some
^00,000. This is due to an agreement just made with the King
of Siam, which brings to an end the strained relations which
have existed for about fifteen years. Certain concessions have
also been made to Siam.
The project of a Channel Tunnel has been withdrawn. Lord
Cromer's proposals in regard to the Egyptian Capitulations
would not increase in Egypt the influence of France. The en-
tente cordiale, however, between England and France is so well
established, and also so necessary in the present state of Europe,
that it will not be appreciably weakened.
'What may be a step in the direction, at all events, of reconcil-
■ <=> n with the Church has been taken by the Conseii d'£tat. It
282 Current Events [Ma^*
has annulled the decrees of the Combes 9 ministry which dissolve
a certain number of religious orders devoted to both teachin
and hospital work. These orders will still be prevented iro:
opening schools, but they will be allowed to continue their wot
as nurses. The fact is that it has been proved impossible t
find persons able and willing to do the works of mercy former-
ly done by religious communities. There are signs that it may—
not be long before it will be found necessary to recall the teach-
ing orders as well. At all events, some of the teachers ar^r
giving the government a great deal of trouble by their desire
to ally themselves to an organization whose one object, in the
eyes of the authorities," is to destroy the existing state of things,
M. Clemenceau has had to tell them that France will never
dream of handing over to such teachers her sons, or allowing*
sabotage to be practised upon young intelligence: sabotage mean*
ing wanton destruction of instruments and products of labor.
•
The Giolitti ministry still remains
Italy. in office, although it has not done
its work to the complete satisfac-
tion of the country. The Premier is accused of shirking par-
liamentary discussion and of exercising dictatorial powers. The
railway system stands in the utmost need of reformation. Com-
plaints have been rife for years, and the situation is getting
worse every day. Commerce is being ruined for want of means
of transport. The trains keep no time. Robbery is frequent.
Ahy one anxious to have state-management of railways should
study the Italian situation to see how badly the state may serve
its customers.
The German Chancellor, Prince Biilow, having gone to Italy,
it became the duty of Signor Tittoni, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, to pay him a visit. This visit, it was announced, had no
particular political significance. It resulted, however, in the
declaration on the part of Prince Biilow that Signor Tittoni and
he were in complete accord with one another, and in absolute
agreement upon all points of international politics now pending.
The meeting was a demonstration to Europe of the vitality o|^
the Triple Alliance, and an assurance to Italy of Germany*
good relations.
1907.] Current Events 283
Spain is on the eve of a general
Spain. election, the Cortes having been
dissolved on the last day of March.
The Conservative government now in power will, in all proba-
bility, secure a majority, as governments in Spain are not at
all scrupulous about using their influence at the elections. The
visit of the King of England to Cartagena, and the enthusiasm
of his reception, add strength to the friendly understanding be-
tween two countries which, for a long time, have been far as the
poles apart.
The rising of the peasants in Ru-
The Near East. mania was very like the Jacqutrii
of the Middle Ages. Wholesale
destruction of property took place; and, for a time, the capi-
tal was in danger. In the beginning the movement was purely
agrarian. The peasants were ground down by the farmers and
middlemen, most of whom were Jews. This is another instance
in which those who are oppressed themselves become, when
they have the power, oppressors. As the movement advanced,
however, it took upon itself a new character, and destruction
pure and simple became the leading motive. Villages, country
houses were burnt in the most indiscriminate manner. A new
ministry had to be formed — this ministry promised a large
number of measures of relief to remedy the evils under which
the peasantry had groaned. The character of those measures
affords an explanation of the reasons for the uprising.
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.
ARRANGEMENTS are now in progress for the sixteenth session of tb e
Summer-School at Cliff Haven, N. Y., on Lake Champlain. The work
of preparation assigned to the Board of Studies is nearing completion, and
the report from the Chairman, Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P., contains the
following announcements relating to the schedule of lectures from July i tf
September 6, a period of ten weeks:
First Week, July /-j. — Lectures by the Rev. John Talbot Smith, LL.L> —
President of the Catholic Summer-School. Subjects : The First French R^
public; The Second and Third French Republics.
Special programme for the Fourth of July, to be arranged in conjunctii
with the Patriotic Song Recital by Francis T. Molony, M.A., member of t
Manhattan College Alumni Quartette, New York City.
Second Week, July 8-12. — Studies in Astronomy, by Professor Den
O'Sullivan, Catholic High School, Philadelphia.
Four Evening Song Recitals by Elizabeth Pattee-Wallach, Philadelphi
with selections from the composers of many lands. Under the title of
Hour in Dixie, she introduces plantation and Creole folk-songs, with poe
and stories from noted authors. From the Philadelphia Inquirer this notie
is taken :
Miss Pattee, who has a remarkably attractive contralto voice, of unusu
sympathetic quality, showed in her rendition of some of the Southern classi
that she was an artist of no mean ability. She interspersed her vocal effor-
with dialect stories and poems, which were as thoroughly enjoyed as t
songs. The latter included the best compositions of Paul Dunbar, Jo
Chandler Harris, Edgar Justis, Roy Smith, and H. T. Burleigh. The
were rendered in a manner which provoked enthusiastic encores from t
select audience present. There is a rare charm in Miss Pattee's singin
which is not only extremely sympathetic but unusually fascinating. One
the best numbers was a negro melody in French dialect, like the Creo
which was given with great fidelity to the original. Miss Pattee accompanL
herself on the piano and displayed marked ability as an instrumentali
The concert was a splendid artistic success.
Third Week, July /5-19. — Lectures by the Rev. Robert Schwickerath, S
Subject: Great Epochs in the History of Education.
Evening lectures on Humor in Literature, by John T. Nicholson, Prr~ -S^ n-
cipal of Harlem Evening High School, New York City. Travels in the C7 -for-
bidden Land of Tibet, by the Rev. D. F. McGillicuddy, Worcester, Mass.
Fourth Week, July 22-26. — Lectures by the Rev. James J. Fox, S.T.
St. Thomas' College at the Catholic University, Washington, D.C. Stihjg— » ^t:
Relations of Church and State from the Earliest Times Contrasted with I^ 1 ~^f es-
ent Conditions in the United States.
f
I
I907-] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 285
Evening lectures on The Church as Custodian and Interpreter of Holy
Scf ipture, by Ihe Rev. William L. Sullivan, C.S.P., St. Thomas' College at
the Catholic University. Selections from Canadian Literature, by the Rev.
Q er »ld J. McShane, S.S., Montreal, Canada.
fifth Week, July tg-August s.— Lectures by Joseph Dunn, Ph.D., As-
s ist;» rl1 Professor in Celtic Languages and Literature at the Catholic Uni-
versi')'. Washington, D. C. Subject- Gaelic Literature (Alumnae Course),
as shown by Old Irish Verse— The Official Poets and the Bards — Poems of
[j at tare; The lomramha, or Sea- Voyages of the Ancient Irish ; The Tochm-
haf-ca. or Courtship of the Ancient Irish.
Evening Song Recitals by Miss Maggie McCann,* from Australia. Lee-
tur« s on Parliamentary Agitation, by the Hon. Michael J. Ryan, of Phila-
delphia, President of the United Irish League of America.
Sixth Week, Augurts-g,— Lectures by the Rev. John T. Driscoll, S.T.L.,
Diocese of Albany. Subject : The Reconstruction of Religion in France after
the French Revolution, especially as indicated by (a) The Literary Revival ;
ftj The Philosophical Movement; (c) The Social Movement Introduced by
the Confraternity of St. Vincent de Paul.
Evening Lectures — illustrated — on The Irish Abbeys and English Cathe-
drals, by Mary Catherine Crowley, Boston; The Catholic Pioneers of the
Pacific Coast, by the Rev. Michael P. Smith, C.S.P... New York City.
Seventh Week, August 12-16. — Lectures by James J. Walsh, M.D.,
Ph.D., LL.D., Dean of Fordham University Medical School, New York
City. Subject: Evolution, Old and New. (1) The Greeks and St. Augus-
tine. (2) Before Darwin. (3) Darwin. (4) After Darwin. (5) Heredity.
Evening Lectures on Studies in French History, by the Rev. John J.
Donlon, Diocese of Brooklyn, dealing with the relations between (a) Philip
the Fair and Boniface VIII. ; (b) Louis XIV. and Clement X. ; (c) Napoleon
I. and Pius VII.; frf, 1 The Republic and Pius X.
Eighth Week, August 19-23. — Lectures by Professor J. C. Monaghan,
of t*ie Department of "Commerce and Labor, Washington, D. C. Subject :
Corr»merce Not Opposed to Culture.
Evening Lectures by Dr. John G. Coyle, New York City. Subjects:
General James Shields, Warrior, Justice, and Senator from three States;
Matthew Lyon, the Man who Elected Jefferson. The Catholic Memories of
Lake Champlain, by the Rev. Daniel J. O'Sullivan, St. Albans, Vermont.
-This will serve to introduce Miss Maggie McCann,
a well-knuvu and highly respected resident of Melbourne, who proposes visiting the United
Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
ALPHtlD DEAKtV,
Melbourne, 13 July, loafi. Prime Minister.
Town HALL, Mkleoubne, 14 August, roe*.— This will serve to introduce Miss Muggie
XtcCann. who has for some years past been an active member o! the musical profession in this
city. Ai an artist ihe is very popular, and much respected by the public and her colleagues.
and has been always ready lo lend her aid in the cause of chanty. Mis.5 McCann is now visit-
ing the United Kingdom, Canada, and America, where she intends 10 follow ber profession,
ssful ca
HeHht WiidOs, LorJMjy,
286 The Columbian Reading Union [May
Ninth Week, August 26-30. — Lectures by the Rev. Francis P. Siegfried
St. Charles' Seminary, Overbrook, Pa. Subject: The Old and the Ne^
Philosophy of Life. In this course the aim will be to formulate some of th
main principles on which the Catholic Philosophy of Life is based, and t
compare them with some contrary principles now being advocated.
Evening Lectures by the Rev. Francis Clement Kelley, President of tl
Catholic Church Extension Society, U. S. A. Subject: The History ar
Character of the American Volunteer Soldier. Irishmen in the Amcric;
Revolution, and their Early Influence in the Colonies, illustrated, by Patri<
J. Haltigan, Editor of the National Hibernian, Washington, D. C.
Tenth Week, September 2-6. — Lectures by the Rev. Francis Clement K<
ley, on The Dream of Equality and its Realization. The Rev. John Talb
Smith, LL.D. Subjects: Literary Fads, Ibsen and others ; Literary Idol
Hugo and others.
Reading Circle Day, August 23.
Conference — September 2 — On the Advancement of Parish School
under the direction of the Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P.
Round Table Talk for Catechists and Sunday-School Workers — Septa
ber 3 — by Mrs. B. Ellen Burke, editor of The Sunday-School Companion, a]
The Helper, published under the auspices of the Confraternity of Christi
Doctrine, No. xo Barclay Street, New York City.
Lessons in Gaelic Dancing by Loretta Hawthorne Hayes, Waterbui
Conn.
Instruction in Music by Professor Camille Zeckwer, Director of the G<
mantown Branch of the Philadelphia Musical Academy.
Classes for Children in the Ralston System of Physical Culture, wi
Swedish Movements, etc., by Catherine Collins, Boston, Mass.
The list of preachers, with names of distinguished visitors expected di
ing the session of 1907, will be given to the press at a later date.
The Prospectus, containing rates of railroads, etc., may be obtained
sending two cents in postage to the Secretary, Charles Murray, No. 5 E;
4 2d Street, Manhattan, New York City.
• • •
Vance Thompson, an American magazine writer, who has interview
most of the famous men of the world, has never been impressed by any
them as he has by Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal Secretary of State.
a recent number of Everybody's Magazine he reports an interview with '
Cardinal on the religious persecution in France, and thus describes the p
sonality of the young prelate whom events have made a world-figure,
follows:
The Cardinal is the most modern of men; the Romans know him o
as the great Secretary of State — that state constituted by 250,000,000 of I
faithful. They see him when he drives abroad in his old world coach, dra
by black stallions. Those who know the man will tell you what a good ga
of golf he plays, how he can send a rifle bullet through a ten-cent piece
twenty yards.
These are things worth knowing about a really great man. And Me
del Val is, moreover, an accomplished man. He speaks all languages. Z
I907-]
BOOKS RECEIVED. 287
English is perfect, he is a finished scholar, an extremely fine diplomatist, a
rare Judge of men.
J have met most of the strong men of the world and judged them as one
may $ DUt I have never been face to face with a man ot such essential power.
This is tne impression you take away ; calm power. There is no imperial
hysteria ; there is nothing strenuous and ill-balanced. You feel yourself in
the presence of what the scientists call intra-atomic energy — something beau-
tiful and still and irresistibly strong. And this is interesting and important,
because to Cardinal Merry del Val is committed the conduct of the battle
now waged in Europe for God and the ideal.
Of all the men in high place, he is the youngest. He was born in Lon-
don, of distinguished Spanish-Irish parentage, in 1865. Before he was
thirty -nine years of age he was a Cardinal; a year later he was made Secre-
tary of State. In his hands was placed the greatest administrative trust that
any man holds upon earth. Pius X., as the Romans are so fond of saying,
is a taoly Pope; it is upon the Secretary of State that the burden of the
Churob has been laid. And he has entered upon a great battle for liberty,
perhaps the most important battle fought in France since the days of Clovis.
M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Ha ***>er & Brothers, New York :
G.
Christian Science. With notes containing corrections to date. By Mark Twain. Pp. 357.
Price $1.75. The Giant's Strength. By Basil King. Pp. 342. Price $1.50. 1 he
Mystics. By {Catherine Cecil Thurston. Illustrated. Pp. 191. Price $1.25.
•.Putnam's Sons, New York:
The Country House. By John Galsworthy. Pp. 307. Beside Still Waters. By Christo-
pher Benson. Pp. 410.
*^- X*. Dutton & Co., New York:
The Disciple of a Saint. Being the Imaginary Biography of Raniero Di Landoccio Dei
Paglraresi. By Vida D. Scudder. Pp. 383. Price $1.50.
*^- -Appleton & Co., New York:
Mother. By Maxim Gorky. Illustrated. Pp. 500. Price $1.50.
wgmans, Green &*Co., New York:
The Gospel According to St. Paul. By William Porcher Dubose, M.A., S.T.D. Price
$1.50 net. By mail, $1.62. Oil and Wine. By George Tyrrell. Price $1.40. Sin. By
the Rev. H. V. S. Eck, M.A. (The Oxford Library). Price $1 40. Hypnotism and
Spiritism. By J. Lapponi. Price $1.50. Readings from Law's Serious Call. Price
60 cents.
imtano's, New York :
The Demetrian. By Ellison Harding. Pp. 315. How to Preserve the Local Self Govern-
ment of the States. By Elihu Root. Price, postpaid, 15 cents.
288 BOOKS RECEIVED. [May, 1907.]
Benziger Brothers, New York:
Folia Fugitiva : Leaves from the Log-Book of St. Eranwald's Deanary. Edited by Ret.
W. H. Colgan. Price $1.50. Leading Events in Church History. Part V. By tke
Sisters of Notre Dame. Price 30 cents. Stimulus Divini Amoris of Doctor Born'ov**
ture. Price $1.25. Notes on Daily Communion. By F. M. De Zulueta, S.J. Price 3P
cents.
Union & Times Press. Buffalo. New York:
The Catholic Confessional and the Sacrament of Penance. Illustrated. Pp. 60. Pa^X 1 -
Price 15 cents per copy.
A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago:
The Missions of California and the Old Southwest. By Jesse S. Hildrup. With 35 fl Jt msr
trations from photographs.
Houghton. Mifflin & Co., Boston :
New Chronicles of Rebecca. By Kate Douglas Wiggin. Pp. 278. Price $1.25.
Little, Brown & Co., Boston:
The Malefactor. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Illustrated. Pp. 304. Price $1.50. A J»/
Jane of Kentucky. By Eliza Calvert Hall. Illustrated. Pp. 283. Price $1.50.
Small, Maynard & Co., Boston :
Intimations of Immortality : Significant Thoughts on the Future Life. Selected by He- Jo
Philbrook Patten. Pp. xxxL-245. Price $1.50 net.
Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau, Boston :
A Modern Martyr : Thtephane Ve"nard. Translated from the French by Lady Herbt^^it.
Revised and Annotated by James Anthony Walsh. Pp. 235. Price 90 cents.
Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Ind. :
Essentials and Non- Essentials of the Catholic Religion. By Rev. H. G. Hughes. Pp. n -**-
Price 75 cents net. The Question of Anglican Ordinations. By Abbot Gasquet, O.S. M£ •
D.D. Pp. 52. Paper. Price 15 cents.
Government Printing Office, Washington:
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Edited by Frederick Webb Hodge. ^**
two parts. Pp. ix.-972.
Department of Agriculture, Topeka, Kansas:
Fifteenth Biennial Report 0/ the State Board of Agriculture — Kansas. Vol. XX. lyutf""'
1906.
The Mysell-Rollins Company. San Francisco, Cal. :
The True View of the Present Persecution in France. An appeal to the unbiased judgmer* 1 *
of the American People. By Rev. Joseph C Sasia, S.J. Paper. Pp. 52. For free 6\i *""
tribution.
The Courier Publishing Company, Berkeley. Cal. :
Discrimination Against the Japanese in California. A Review of the Real Situation.
Herbert B. Johnson, D.D. Pp. 133. Paper.
Victor Lecoffre. Paris :
L Education Populairc : Les Uiuvres Complementaires de I '^ cole. Par Max Taxman
Activite's Sociales. Par Max Turmann. Dcuxieme Edition. Les Reordinatwns.
surle Sacrament de I'Ordre. Par. M. l'Abbe Louis Saltet. Price 6fr.
Bloud et Cie, Paris:
Gerbet. Par H. Brcmond. Price 3 fr. 50. Introduction aux Etudes Liturgiques. Par % *
Rme Dome Cabrol. Pp. 169. Price 3/r. L'Orde Naturel et Duu. Par. 1 Abb* Alfred -1
Tan guy. Pp. 386. Price 4/r. 50.
E. Nourry, Paris :
Le Crise du Clerge. Par Albert Houtin. Pp. 344. Price 3 fr. 50.
Aubanel Frkres, Avignon, France:
Les Quatre Livres de la Femme. I. Le Livre de l'£pouse. Pp. xix.-l86.
P. Lethielleux, Paris:
La Theologte du Nouveau Testament et V Evolution des Dogmas. Par l'Abbe* J. FontiiD ^^ mtt
Pp. XXXII.-576. Price 4/r.
Ch. Poussielgue, Paris.
Le Reveil du Catholici>me en Angle terre au XIXe Siecle. Par J. Guibert. Pp. 390.
A. Picard et Fii.s, Paris:
Tertullien — De Praescriptione Hereticotum. Tcxte Latin et Trad. Francais. Par
de Labriollc (University Fribourg). Price 2/r.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. LXXXV. JUNE, 1907. No. 507.
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
BY GEORGE M. SEARL.E, C.S.P.
V.— SPIRITISM.
Iflggggggggj&E are now prepared to examine a matter which is
jfrUAW I probably the most interesting to the public in
■ flflfif general of all those in the domain of modern
»>^^RWjg psychical research. This matter is the possibil-
8l9sSl3&SjPj ity of communicating with disembodied human
spirits. If such communication were proved to be practicable,
the immediate result would be, of course, the assurance that the
human spirit or soul does really continue to exist after death.
A-nd this assurance is of immense importance to those who have
l°st that which the Christian religion gives ; that is to say, to
** majority, in all probability, of those who pass for, or, at any
r **e, consider themselves to be, the more intelligent classes of
*°ciety, both here and in Europe. We do not mean that these
!a -called intelligent or cultivated people have become convinced
t»»t there is no life after death, but merely that they have no
firrn conviction that there is ; they do not feel sure about it, as
ev erybody, practically, in Christendom did, say before the eigh-
teenth century. Such a destructive effect on Christian dogma
*as sure to come from the illogical and absurd nature of Prot-
estantism. The wonder is that Protestants retained their belief
,& even the most fundamental truths of revelation as long as
they did; but now dogmatic belief among them is diaaDn*orin»
rapidly, and the contagion has spread even w '
Copyright. 1907. TBI MlSETONABT SOCIBTT OF ST. F
in thb State or Nevt You.
VOL. LXXXV. — 19
290 Recent Results of Psychical Research [June,
who do not well understand the grounds of their faith, or are
trying to find a pretext for ridding themselves of it.
Outside of the Church, however, there are many who are
not themselves so much to blame for the loss of their faith in
a future life. They never had any better reason for it than that
which they inherited from Protestantism, and they have found
out that this reason is not sufficient. But there are many among
them who are not satisfied with this loss, and who would gladly
have the assurance of a life after death that their ancestors had
So anything which seems to be such an assurance is heartily
welcomed by them. As was remarked in the beginning of our
articles, the very title of Mr. Myers' book, Human Personality
and its Survival of Bodily Death, is a sign of this. All the
other facts, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, of hypnotism, of phan-
tasms of the living, of the dying, or of the dead, were mainly
valuable to him, and are to most of those who read his book*
as showing the existence of the human spirit as distinct from
the body, and as not subject, necessarily at any rate, to tke
causes which destroy the latter.
It follows, of course, that the most interesting facts of all
to those who do not look on the matter from a purely scien-
tific point of view, are those which seem to distinctly bear on
this great question of the immortality of the soul. So much i*
this the case, that the American investigators of the subject of
psychical research seem to have become almost entirely absorbed
in this branch of it ; and there is, even in the English Society r
a tendency in the same direction. Attention seems to concen-
trate on mediums, rappings, levitation of tables or of person^
automatic writing, trances, etc. The first point of interest i*f
of course, to prove that the phenomena are, in many cases **
any rate, not due to trickery or fraud; the second, to show that
they are not produced entirely by some abnormal though 00*
conscious action on the part of the medium or other person*
present ; the third to ascertain, if possible, that the agency *°
which they are, at least partly, due is the one that it purport*
to be ; that is, that of some definite person deceased ; in other
words, to obtain what are called " proofs of identity."
With regard to the first point, the idea that the whole busi-
ness can be accounted for by jugglery of some kind is, we &f
say, now an exploded one among those who have paid scri<**
attention to the subject. Of course there has been from the I*
p
1907.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 291
ginning a good deal of that sort of thing mixed up with the
genuine article, especially among what may be called profes-
sional mediums, who make a living out of this business. With
some of them it may have been mostly, or even entirely, trick-
sry of some kind. Apparatus of any kind, cabinets, screens,
:urtains, etc., naturally and rightly suggest some merely natural
means of accomplishing the result ; and results produced with
such accompaniments can never be quite free from suspicion.
With the regular juggler one does not complain of such things,
:or he does not profess to get along without them; the question
5 how he gets along even with their aid. But, there is no
■cason why a disembodied spirit should need them at all.
The first examination of supposed mediums, some fifty years
go, was made, mainly if not entirely, on professional ones.
Their tricks were either discovered, or shown to be probably
liscoverable, and the impression was produced that the subject
fas not worthy of serious investigation. Of course many, who
tad been brought more face to face with it, did not share this
mpression ; but, undoubtedly, it was the prevalent one among
cientific men, and prevails with many of them even now. Lit-
is interest, therefore, as we have previously said, seems to have
>een felt, about this special matter, by the Society for Psychical
Research in its earlier years. But, after some time, it began to
>e forced on their attention by some facts which could not be
gnored. Probably the most remarkable of these, in England at
iny rate, were the phenomena exhibited in the case of the Rev.
N. Stainton Moses. The facts which we give are taken from a
nemoir by Mr. Myers, in Vol. IX. of the proceedings of the
society.
Mr. Moses was born in 1839. He took his degree at Ox-
ford in 1863, it would seem, was ordained in the Anglican
Church, and became curate at Kirk Maughold, in the Isle of
Man. He seems to have held Anglican views of no extreme
ype, on any side, and was always beloved and highly respected
>y his parishioners and others who became acquainted with
lim. He afterwards became a curate at Douglas, also in the
sle of Man, and later in Dorsetshire. In 187 1 he accepted a
mastership in University College School, and retained this posi-
ion till 1889, when" he resigned it on account of ill health.
-le died on September 5, 1892. For seven years, from 1S69
o 1876, he was tutor to the son of Dr. Speer, who had brought
2g2 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [June,
him through a serious illness in 1869. The physical phenomena
brought about by him as a medium began in 1872, and lasted
till 1 88 1. His automatic writing was from 1873 to 1883. I
1882 he aided in the foundation of the Society for Psychica
Research; but abandoned it in 1886, on account of what h
considered its unduly critical attitude toward Spiritism ; at whic
we can hardly be surprised, considering his own very extra
ordinary experiences. The Society, as we have seen, in its
early years, took very little "stock" in this matter, and paid
little attention to any evidence concerning it.
Mr. Moses suffered a good deal in health from time to time;
but the phenomena in his case do not seem, at any rate, to
have been due to any morbid condition, for they were at their
best when he was in his best health, and declined or disap-
peared altogether when he was ill.
Every one who knew him seems to have been strongly im-
pressed with his sincerity and the genuineness of his convic-
tions. Probably his fellow-workers in the Society regarded him
as under some delusion, but no one seems to have imagined
him capable of any conscious trickery or fraud. His medical
adviser, Dr. Johnson, of Bedford, testifies, however, that he
was a man " of exceptional ability, and utterly free from an
hallucination or anything to indicate other than a well ordere
brain. 11 It would appear that Dr. Johnson does not use the
word " hallucination " in what may be called the technical o
telepathic sense, but rather as meaning a disordered imagina
tion. He further says: "I think that those who knew hi
best would not for an instant doubt that all he stated wer
facts and words of truth."
It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Moses was not
" professional " medium, giving public exhibitions for money o
for any other purpose. Most of his extraordinary phenomena
occurred simply in the presence of the Speer family and othe
private friends. He examined, however, into those of othe
mediums, and was naturally somewhat inclined to credulit
though several times he detected fraud in their performance
He was, evidently, not in a " ring " with any one else. No
to give a few of the experiences. Of course we shall have
condense very much.
With regard, first, to movements of heavy objects, such
tables. Mr. Moses says :
yf."\
igo7-] Recent Results of psychical research 293
All that I have described (of movement) occurs readily
when the table is untouched. Indeed, when the force is de-
veloped, we have found it better to remove the hands, and
leave the table to-its own devices. The tilting above noticed
has been even more marked when the sitters have been re-
moved from it to a distance of about two feet. It has rapped
on the chair and on the floor, inclined so as to play into a
hand placed on the carpet, and has been restored to its
normal position when no hand has touched it.
The table to which he refers was not very heavy, weighing
on ly about 40 lbs. He mentions, however, an instance testi-
fied to by Mr. Serjeant Cox, in which the table was very
massive, so heavy that the united exertions of two strong men
were required to move it, even one inch. The difficulty was
increased by its standing on a Turkey carpet. It would appear
that not Mr. Moses himself, but some other medium, was with
Mr- Cox on this occasion. Only they two were present. They
stood on opposite sides of the table, about two feet away from
it. First the table moved about seven inches along the carpet.
Then it rose three inches from the floor on the medium's side,
then the same distance on that of Mr. Cox. The medium, then
holding his hand four inches over one end of the table, asked
that it should rise and touch his hand three times, which it did;
the; 11 the same was done at the other end for Mr. Cox. On
one occasion, when Mr. Moses was visiting a gentleman inter-
ested in the subject, it was suggested that they should try the
effect of placing their hands on a pillar work-table belonging
to his wife. It was filled with reels and tapes, and the appli-
ances of needlework. Mr. Moses tells us:
We had scarcely touched it when it began to move. It
danced about like a live thing; executed a series of gyra-
tions, first on one foot, and then on another ; and finally lay
down on the floor and jerked all its contents about the room.
It rose again unaided, bounded off the floor, and waltzed
about the room. When it was still I held my hand over it,
and it began to quiver, and finally rose from the floor until it
touched my hand, which was ten or twelve inches above it.
It afterwards rose to the height of eighteen inches or two
feet. While this was goiug on, a column of light was visible
over it.
movements of this kind, of tables and other ob-
294 Recent Results of Psychical Research [June,
jects, became so common in Mr. Moses 9 experiments as not to
excite the slightest surprise. One might say that they were *
matter of course. The movements were quite different, as is
plain from the instance just given, from those which most pec-
sons imagine to be the only ones obtainable in spiritistic seances,
and which they readily explain to their own satisfaction by un-
conscious pressure exerted by those present, if not by tricke«r-y
of some kind.
The phenomenon of personal levitation, in which the mediu xn
himself is raised from the ground or floor, occurred quite early
in Mr. Moses 9 experiences. On August 30, 1872, he tells cms,
that during a seance
I felt my chair drawn back irom the table and turned u**to
the corner near which I sat. It was so placed that my fa.ee
was turned away from the circle to the angle made by t2ae
two walls. In this position the chair (evidently with HKt.
Moses still in it) was raised from the floor to a distance of, I
should judge, twelve or fourteen inches. My feet touch «<i
the top of the skirting-board, which should be about twelve
inches in height. The chair remained suspended for a fi
moments, and I then felt myself going from it, higher
higher, with a very slow and easy movement. I had
sense of discomfort nor of apprehension. I was perfectly con-
scious of what was being done, and described the process *°
those who were sitting at the table. The movement was v
steady, and occupied what seemed a long time before it
completed. I was close to the wall, so close that I was afc^ c
to put a pencil firmly against my chest, and to mark the sj^ *
opposite to me on the wall paper. That mark, when me^^*
ured afterwards, was found to be rather more than six f^ e *
from the floor, and from its position, it was clear that my he-^ 4 *
must have been in the very corner of the room, close to t
ceiling.
He adds :
This experiment was more or less successfully repeated
nine other occasions. On the 2d of September, 1872, I
from my records that I was three times raised on to the tab^-^*
and twice levitated in the corner of the room. . . . I^ 11
the third case I was thrown on to the table, and from that p* 1 *
sition on to an adjacent sofa. The movement was instantan-^*
ous ; and though I was thrown to a considerable distan c ^ g >
and with considerable force, I was in no way hurt.
I907-] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 20,5
If Mr. Moses and his friends had been Catholics, they might
have had a temptation to pride, or at any rate have been in-
clined to regard bim as a saint ; for levitations like those just
described are often recorded in the lives of the saints, specially
in that of St. Joseph of Cupertino. The Church, however, is
careful to warn us that this phenomenon is no certain proof of
sanctity, and indeed that miracles in general, worked during
this life, are not. It seems quite probable that Simon Magus
ivas raised in the air much higher than Mr. Moses.
There is very strong evidence, however, of phenomena in
jVlr. Moses' case, much more extraordinary and startling than
this of levitation ; namely, of the bringing of objects from other
rooms of the house into that of the seance, through closed
doors. Mr. Moses testifies as follows:
On August 28 seven objects from different rooms were
brought into the seance room ; on the 30th four, and amongst
them a little bell from the adjoining dining-room. We al-
ways left gas brightly burning in that room and in the hall
outside, so that if the doors had been opened even for a mo-
ment a blaze of light would have been let into the dark room
in which we sat. As this never happened, we have full as-
2 from what Dr. Carpenter considers the best authority,
1 sense, that the doors remained closed. In the din-
ing-room there was a little bell. We heard it commence to
ring, and could trace it by its sound as it approached the
door which separated us from it. What was our astonish-
ment when we found that, in spite of the closed door, the
sound drew nearer to us! It was evidently within the room
in which we sat, for the bell was carried round the room,
ringing loudly the whole time. After completing the circuit
of the room, it was brought down, passed under the table,
coming up close to my elbow. It rang under my very nose,
and went round about my head, then passed round the circle,
ringing close to the faces of all. It was finally placed on the
table.
It seems hardly necessary to repeat other instances of the
same kind. They occur often in Mr. Moses' notes. Consider-
ing their absolute opposition to the laws of nature, so far as
these are known, it cannot be expected that they will be gen-
erally accepted. Still, it is difficult to see how the phenomena
can t>e accounted for in any ordinary way. Dr. Speer specially
'I
296 Recent Results of psychical Research [June,
testifies on one occasion to a large stone being "brought in
(through locked doors) from my study. Hands held the whole
time." Either in this he is lying, or some outside party is fur-
nished with a key to bring the stone in through the locked
door and lay it on the table. But that seems impossible to
accomplish without detection by the members of the circle,
even though the room was darkened, as it usually was. If
they know that it is being done, why do it at all ?
The seance room, as has just been stated, was usually dark-
ened, more or less. Unless we assume that the whole record
is a fabrication, concocted by the members of the circle, there
is a genuine reason for this, on account of the necessity of ex-
cluding ordinary light in order to see the extraordinary ones
which are testified to. But if we assume that the whole record
is false, why should it state that the room was darkened? If
one is going to tell a lie, one might as well tell a good-sized
one. Why not say that the objects brought in were seen to
emerge from the wall or the substance of the door in broad
daylight ?
As to these self-luminous objects, stated to have been see
in the darkened room, they were usually in the form of col
umns (as in the instance above given) or of globes or indefinit
masses; occasionally of hands or arms, or whole figures. Bu
sometimes the light was generally diffused, so as to show th
furniture of the room. Mr. Moses says, under date of Januar
IS:
The room was lighted with a red light, sufficiently strong t
enable us to see perfectly what was going on. We could o
serve the lifting and floating of the table to the height of t
feet or more.
Dr. Speer independently confirms this, as follows:
January 15. — Seance in red light. Great movements of t
table. It was repeatedly lifted up to the level of our fac
even without touching it.
He also says :
January 25. — Seance. A candlestick brought from u p ■» -^\
room through closed doors, and was thrown at Mr. M«
hurting him much. The table was repeatedly lifted, hig]
than ever.
igo7-] Recent results of Psychical Research 297
Mrs. Speer adds :
We saw a form surrounded with light standing between
myself and the medium.
In Mr. Moses' experiences another phenomenon was fre-
quently recorded, which seems to have been peculiar to them,
or at any rate what may be called a specialty ; namely, the
presence of perfume of various kinds in the seance room. This
wa s not only perceptible to the nose, but frequently fell in a
liquid form, apparently from the ceiling. This was of very fre-
quent occurrence. The following case seems to be unusually
well tested. Mr. Moses says:
We all joined hands, Mr. Percival standing up and leaning
over the table so as to reach my hands. We grasped hands,
and our palms were upwards. Whilst in that position, a
flood of scent (verbena) was poured into our hands. Mr.
Percival 's hand was filled with more than a teaspoonful. Mrs.
Speer received a considerable quantity, and my hand and
arm were thoroughly wet. The table was drenched with
scent all round. The door was locked, and the room empty.
A more complete objective test cannot be conceived.
This experience was by no means confined to the seance
room, Mr. Moses says:
After the seance Dr. S and I walked up and down the
dining-room, I smoking a cigar. The smell of scent became
palpable through the odor of the tobacco. I casually said:
"' Now, if thty would put it on the blotting pad we could see
it." (A pad lay on the table.) Immediately wet scent fell on
the pad, and this phenomenon was repeated a dozen times, I
should think.
The following, however, is still more extraordinary :
Quantities of dry musk have been from time to time thrown
about in the house where our circle meets. On a late occa-
sion it fell in very considerable quantities over a writing-desk
at which a lady was sitting, in the act of writing letters. It
was mid-day, and no one was near at the time, yet the parti-
cles of musk were so numerous as to pervade the whole con-
tents of the desk. They were placed, for no throwing could
have produced such a result, at the very bottom ol the desk,
and between the papers which it contained. The odor was
most pronounced ; and the particles, when gathered together,
296 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [June,
testifies on one occasion to a large stone being "brought in
(through locked doors) from my study. Hands held the whole
time." Either in this he is lying, or some outside party is fur-
nished with a key to bring the stone in through the locked
door and lay it on the table. But that seems impossible to
accomplish without detection by the members of the circle,
even though the room was darkened, as it usually was. If
they know that it is being done, why do it at all ?
The seance room, as has just been stated, was usually dark-
ened, more or less. Unless we assume that the whole record
is a fabrication, concocted by the members of the circle, there
is a genuine reason for this, on account of the necessity of ex-
cluding ordinary light in order to see the extraordinary ones
which are testified to. But if we assume that the whole record
is false, why should it state that the room was darkened? If
one is going to tell a lie, one might as well tell a good-sized
one. Why not say that the objects brought in were seen to
emerge from the wall or the substance of the door in broad
daylight ?
As to these self-luminous objects, stated to have been seen
in the darkened room, they were usually in the form of col-
umns (as in the instance above given) or of globes or indefinite
masses; occasionally of hands or arms, or whole figures. B«*t
sometimes the light was generally diffused, so as to show tbe
furniture of the room. Mr. Moses says, under date of January
IS:
The room was lighted with a red light, sufficiently strong^ * G
enable us to see perfectly what was going on. We could o*>
serve the lifting and floating of the table to the height of t^^
feet or more.
Dr. Speer independently confirms this, as follows:
January 15. — Seance in red light. Great movements of *: *
table. It was repeatedly lifted up to the level oi our fac^^
even without touching it.
He also says :
January 25. — Seance. A candlestick brought from
room through closed doors, and was thrown at Mr. M-
hurting him much. The table was repeatedly lifted, higfc^*
than ever.
joy.] Recent Results of psychical Reseai^ct^t 297
Mrs. Speer adds:
We saw a form surrounded with light standing- between
myself and the medium.
In Mr. Moses' experiences another phenomenon was fre-
quently recorded, which seems to have been peculiar to them,
>r at any rate what may be called a specialty ; namely, the
presence of perfume of various kinds in the seance room. Tliis
wis not only perceptible to the nose, but frequently fell in a
liquid form, apparently from the ceiling. This was of very fre-
quent occurrence. The following case seems to be unusually
veil tested. Mr. Moses says:
We all joined hands, Mr. Percival standing up and leaning
over the table so as to reach my hands. We grasped hands,
and our palms were upwards. Whilst in that position, &
flood of scent (verbena) was poured into our hands.
Percival's hand was filled with more than a teaspoonful.
Speer received a considerable quantity, and my hand And
arm were thoroughly wet. The table was drenched witlx
scent all round. The door was locked, and the room empty.
A more complete objective test cannot be conceived.
This experience was by no means confined to the seance
room. Mr. Moses says:
After the seance Dr. S and I walked up and down t2j^
dining-room, I smoking a cigar. The smell of scent becaaxa«
palpable through the odor of the tobacco. I casually ftai<j -
" Now, if they would put it on the blotting pad we could *e^
it" (A pad lay on the table.) Immediately wet scent fell o»
the pad, and this phenomenon was repeated a dozen tixuem, j
should think.
ta following, however, is still more extraordinary :
Quantities of dry musk hxrt rets iron: tfmt to ti&t tirv^xi
about in the house where orr croe sasss* Ojd a lai* <•*-*-*-
sum it fell in very oooszoeritue cT^tsnrtiei vr*x a »r;tii^-<Ut,;r
*t which a lady was sitting, ix tit a~ vf writix^ >t. z *
was mid-day, and no coe we* xez 2* tLt vxvtt j*2 ti* y* *-
desoi attsk m ere 30 xrrmrr pia £.* ts ptrrs^e tie » / W-* '.v.
tots of the desk. Ti«y vsr* i>-cuc 5vr «» !irw*'£ '.vi .'.
•■4 htema tibe j^jt 1 ^ wrrirx :n *~jzrjz-wz* 7'*** v-v?
£*«. wii*ri £2£^*r?*.',< *Vfc*^**« *
298 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [June,
made up a considerable packet. Some time after this, when
at a seance, I saw something which looked like luminous dust
on the table. No odor was perceptible, but in my clairvoy-
ant state I saw a heap of luminous particles, which appearedL
to me extremely brilliant. I described it, and, putting otrfc
my hand, I found that there really was a heap on the table —
I inquired what it was, and musk was rapped out. We d<
murred, for no odor was perceptible, but the statement m
reiterated. After the seance we gathered up the dust, whick^.
looked like musk, but had no smell whatever. The next morn— —
ing, however, the odor was powerful enough ; and the pow — .
der still exists, and is indubitably very good powdered musk „
It may be noted that if Mr. Moses had been of a scientifi^c:
turn of mind, he would have taken special pains to prevent hi ^
inodorous musk from being tampered with. A scientific maz^n
would have taken precautions to prevent anything else from bfe ^
ing added to it, and would have stated that such precaution ,«
had been taken. Beside the physical phenomena which hav^
been described, musical sounds were frequently, we may sa»y
regularly, heard at his seances; but we need not describe thei
in detail.
It is hardly necessary to remark that these phenomena we:
apparently produced with the object of showing the genuine
ness of the " communications " received from various spirits,
claiming to be those of deceased persons. These communica-
tions were in themselves about on the level of those usually-
obtained on such occasions, and need no special comment. On
this matter, in general, we shall have more to say hereafter.
We will only say now that there seems to be little doubt that
Mr. Moses himself thoroughly believed that he was really receiv-
ing communications from the departed ; he jumped, as spiritists
almost invariably do, to the conviction that the " spirits " were
incapable of lying, and were, of course, just what they repre-
sented themselves to be.
It is quite impossible, in our space, to give anything more
than a very superficial notion of these " experiences " of Kir.
Moses and his friends; or to discuss thoroughly the hypothesis
that they were produced by fraud or trickery, on his part, or
that of his associates. We must content ourselves with giving
the verdict of the Council of the Society, that as far as he him-
self, at any rate, is concerned, " the supposition that the ptie-
I9&7-] Recent Results of Psychical Research 299
nc> fHena are to be explained by deception on the part of Mr.
jj^ses, whether in a normal or an abnormal state, is in a very
hi^h degree improbable."
kWe shall devote the remainder of this article to ah investi-
gation made on the extraordinary occurrences observed in the
ca.s e °f a medium more celebrated, though perhaps not more
extraordinary, than Mr. Moses, namely, Mr. D, D. Home. This
investigation was carefully made by Sir William Crookes, F.R.S.,
one of the most eminent scientific men of the world. His re-
port gives full accounts of eleven seances held in 1871. (Sir
William was Mr. Crookes then. He was knighted in 1897.)
The first three were at the residence of Miss Douglas, 81 South
Aiidley Street ; the last at that of Mr. Walter Crookes, 24
Afoteombe Street ; the remainder at his own house, 20 Morning-
ton .Road. The room seems to have been sufficiently, though
not brilliantly, lighted, with candles or gas most of the time.
Even when these were not used, there was a fire in the grate,
and light from the street.
On the first occasion experiments' were made on the matter
of table-tipping. The table used was a round table with a
centre pillar supported on three legs, and weighing 32 lbs. To
lift one leg off the ground by means of a spring balance hooked
under its edge was found to require normally a force of 8 lbs.
In the first experiment seven persons in all being present,
and all, except the experimenter himself, lightly touching the
top ; he, attaching the balance to it in the way just described,
found, on Mr. Home giving the word: "Be light," that a pull
of only 2 lbs. was required. At the word : " Be heavy," the
balance showed 48 lbs; the hands of the sitters were placed
wt€J(r the table, to be sure that they could exert no force to
keep it down. Their feet were drawn back under their chairs.
Also, one of the gentlemen took a candle and looked under the
table, to make sure that no one touched any part of it. Sim-
ilar experiments were made on other occasions.
Another very remarkable performance was given at this
sitting by Mr. Home. He
went to the fire aud, after stirring the hot coal about with his
hand, took out a red-hot piece nearly as big as an orange,
and, putting it on his right hand, covered it over with his
left hand, so as to almost completely enclose it, and then blew
into the small furnace thus extemporized, until the lump of
300 Recent Results of Psychical Research
charcoal was nearly white-hot, and then drew my attention ~^Ko
the lambent flame which was flickering over the coal, axiKd
licking round his fingers.
He had previously laid a similar coal on a fine cambc~£ <
handkerchief, folded. Only a small hole, about half an inch i
diameter was burnt in it, though the experiment was continue
for some time, the coal being blown on as before. Mr. Crook <
afterward examined the handkerchief in his laboratory, an
" found that it had not undergone the slightest chemical prepar-
ation that could have rendered it fire-proof.' 1
Mr. Home was in a trance at this time.
At the second seance,
The table rose completely off the ground several times,
whilst the gentlemen present took a candle and, kneeling
down, deliberately examined the position of Mr. Home's f
and knees, and saw the three feet of the table quite off tli
ground. This was repeated, until each observer expresse
himself satisfied that the levitation was not produced by m
chanical means on the part of the medium or any one el
present.
Mr. Home himself was levitated at the eighth seance, hel
at the Mr. Crookes' own house. Mr. Crookes says:
We all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a height o
about six inches — he had been standing previously qt*i*
erect — remain there about ten seconds, and then slowly
scend. From my position I could not see his feet, but I A
tinctly saw his head, projected against the opposite wall,
up, and Mr. Walter Crookes, who was sitting near where ^^**
Home was, said that his feet were in the air. There was
stool or other thing near which could have aided him. M<^
over, the movement was a smooth, continuous glide upwar
s.
At the eleventh seance, at the house of Mr. Walter Crook ^^~ *
Mr. Home asked Mrs. Walter Crookes to remove the chair fr< *
under him, as it was not supporting him.
He was then seen to be sitting in the air, supported
nothing visible. Then Mr. Home rested the extreme top
his head on a chair and his feet on the sofa. He said he
supported in the middle very comfortably. The chair t
moved away of its own accord, and Mr. Home rested flat o
the floor behind Mrs. Walter Crookes.
7-] Recent Results of Psychical Research 301
On another occasion :
The water— a water boltle— and tumbler now rose together,
and we had answers to questions by their tapping together
whilst floating in the air about eight inches above the table,
and moving backwards and forwards from one to the other ol
the circle.
At the fifth seance, at Mr. William Crookes' own house, the
being turned up, and all hands off the table and joined, a
which had been on the table rose from it to the height
about ten inches at one end, and about five inches at the
er, and then
floated about for more than a minute in this position, sus-
pended in the air, with no visible means. of support. It moved
sideways and waved gently up and down, just like a piece of
wood on the top of small waves of the sea.
Some very remarkable musical performances were given at
se seances, at Mr. William Crookes' own house, with an ac-
dion belonging to himself. Probably the most remarkable
; this. Mr. Crookes says:
Mr. Home still standing behind Mrs. I and Mr. Walter
Crookes, the accordion was both seen and heard to move about
behind him without his hands touching it. It then played a
tune without contact and floating in the air.
Mr. Home then took the accordion in one hand and held it
out so that we could all see it (he was still standing up behind
Mrs. I and Mr. Walter Crookes). We then saw the ac-
cordion expand aud contract and heard a tune played- Mrs.
William Crookes and Mr. Home saw a light on the lower part
of the accordion, where the keys were, and we then heard
and saw the keys clicked and depressed one after the other
fairly and deliberately, as if to show us that the power doing
it, although invisible (or nearly so) to us, had full control over
the instrument.
A beautiful tune was then played whilst Mr, Home was
standing up holding the accordion out in full view of every
one.
1 e paper or report from which the above extracts have
taken was written in 1SS9, eighteen years after the seances.
tic facts were not given from memory, but verbatim from
302 Recent Results of Psychical research [June.
notes taken at the time. He says in the paper with regard to
these notes:
Their publication will, at any rate, show that I have not
changed my mind ; that on dispassionate review of statements
put forth by me nearly twenty years ago I find nothing to r&— 1
tract or alter. I have discovered no flaw in the experiments
then made, or in the reasoning I based on them.
I am too well aware that there have been many exposure s
of fraud on the part of mediums ; and that some members »i
the Society for Psychical Research have shown the possibility
of fraud under circumstances where Spiritualists had too rea<
ily assumed it was not possible. I have myself frequently de-
tected fraud of various kinds ; and I have always made it »
rule, in weighing Spiritualistic evidence, to assume that fraia^l
may have been attempted, and ingeniously attempted, eitbex
by seen or unseen agents. I was on my guard even in D. E>.
Home's case, although I am bound to say that with him I
never detected any trickery or deceit whatever, nor heard ata-y
first-hand evidence of such from other persons. At the same
time, I should never demand that any one should consider
Home, or any other medium, as "incapable of fraud," nor
should I pin my taith upon any experiment oi my own or
others which fraud could explain. The evidence for tfce
genuineness of the phenomena obtained by Home in my pres-
ence seems to me to be strengthened rather than weakened l>y
the discussions on conjuring, and the exposures of fraud whiola
have since taken place. The object oi such discussions is t.o
transform va%ue possibilities of illusion and deception into rf^.
finite possibilities ; so far as this has yet been done, it ha»^ x
think, been made more clear that certain of Home's phenox^^e-
na fall quite outside the category of marvels producible \y
sleight of hand or prepared apparatus.
(to be continued.)
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.'
BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D..
Anther of " My Ntvi Cnrait" ; " Cuki Ditmtgi" ; " Gltnimaar" tic.
Chapter VII.
TESTING FOB GOLD.
I
BHE anticipated victory over Father Cosgrove had
its origin in one of those frequent conversations
between himself and Hamberton that went on
at Brandon Hall. Nothing pleased the cynical
^^■^H^Q Englishman more than refuting the optimism of
the humble priest, who saw all things in the mirror of his
own guilelessness and self-effacement. Many a debate, that
would have been heated but for the gentleness of the old priest
and the laughter of Claire Moulton, took place as to whether
pure disinterestedness could exist in this world, and under the
ordinary conditions of humanity. For a long time the priest
had the victory in the very immediacy of Hamberton's own
workmen, who had been loyal and obedient and faithful, not
so much from a sense of the profits that might accrue, as from
gratitude to so excellent a benefactor.
"Psha!" Hamberton would cry, "the fellows would turn
against me to-morrow if another employer came who would
offer them a shilling a week more. They know they can't do
better. Gratitude? There's no such thing 1"
" Well, I misunderstand them very much if that is the
case," said the priest. "I go amongst them a good deal; and,
believe me, if you needed it, there are a hundred willing hands
a t your command. As for Miss Moulton, you know her pres-
ence is a sunbeam in the poorest cottage."
'* For what she brings ! " said Hamberton.
" No, no; if she came empty-handed, she would be just as
welcome, Is this not so, Miss Moulton?"
"* It is so, Father. Uncle is wrong, all wrong. I'm sure the
* Copyright. 1906, Longmans, Green & Co.
304 LlSffEEN [June,
people are not grasping. At least, I should be much disap.
pointed if I found it otherwise."
" And you will find it/ 9 said Hamberton.
"Never! never!" Father Cosgrove said emphatically. "The
day Miss Moulton's shadow shall not be welcome across every
threshold in this parish I shall despair."
" Wc shall see/ 9 said Hamberton. Swiftly and suddenly came
his prophecy and his justification.
He was, as we have said, much in the habit of searching
for minerals ; and picking up bits of quartz, etc., in which might
be a possibility of gold. A'nd a few times he journeyed to
London to have these specimens tested. This did not escape
the sharp eyes of his workmen, who at once attributed tbeLi
own unusual wages to the fact that Hamberton had found gol
and " was coining. 99 The marbles, they argued, bits of colore
stone, could not pay him; nor could any explanation of hi
presence on this wild Kerry coast, and his munificence to the
selves, be found, but in the fact that he had discovered son*-,
auriferous vein, and was secretly working it. These poor wor
ers had as poor 'an opinion of human nature as Hamberto
himself. They would have killed with scorn the idea that an
man could do good from purely philanthropic motives. The
school had been a hard one ; and there had been no place f
high or generous estimates of their kind.
The ring-leader in this new suspicious movement towar
Hamberton was a small farmer and day- laborer named Ne
Galway — a knowledgeable man, because he had been at a Kerr
hedge-school and could say the answering at Mass. 9 Tis qui
true his quantities were not always correct, and he had a te
dency to mix Irish and Latin together. But he was the "be
eggicated " man in the townland, and there was considerabl
deference for his opinion. Ned had watched with shrew
suspicious eyes the taste Hamberton had manifested for certai
pieces of rock, and certain kinds of gravel ; and he conclude
that the " masther " was finding gold and secretly amassing
huge fortune. And what were their wages? In one sen
good ; but, relatively to the vast wealth Hamberton was s
cretly accumulating, simply a .mere pittance. He brooded ov
the matter a long time, whispered his suspicions to othe
and then, unknown even to his confederates, he made seve
careful assays himself.
I9o7 .] LISHEEN 305
I-Ie secreted a large quantity of gravel, and took it by night
to a l° ne 'y spot where a clear, mountain stream rolled down
amongst grasses and hardy ferns, until it lost itself in the sea.
In the deep midnight, and lighted only by a dim stable lan-
tern , he washed the red gravel, eagerly looking for some dim
specks that would reveal the presence of gold. Alas! nothing
remained but a little red mud, that refused to scintillate in the
light.
Then he got some quartz and broke it into powder in his
back yard, his good wife wondering what he was searching for.
This, too, was a failure. A couple of flakes of some glinting
material, that looked like glass, and this was all. The dream
of untold wealth had vanished from his eyes, only to make
him more and more certain that Hamberton held the secret.
So, by degrees, many murmurings were heard, as the disaffec-
tion gained ground, and the belief in Hamberton's millions held
them spell-bound.
He listened patiently and said nothing; but, like a calm
Englishman, he made inquiries, and found that that unsuccess-
ful miner, Ned Galway, was at the bottom of the discontent
that now raged among his people. He also heard — there is a
traitor in every camp — of Ned's unsuccessful assaying for gold;
and he took his revenge.
In the hearing of a young son of Ned's — a little fellow,
cute as a fox and cunning as a wesael — he threw out a hint
that, unless the quartz were boiled down until every grain of
earth or clay were eliminated, and unless the gravel were sim-
ilarly boiled in a leathern bag, the gold would refuse to ap-
pear. The hint was taken ; and Ned's poor wife had hard
times during the next few weeks to boil the potatoes and cab-
bage lor the midday dinner, while Ned's stout pots were sim-
mering with huge deposits of quartz and gravel.
Hamberton waited for a few days ; and then strolled in, as
was his wont, and talked to the cottagers in his easy, familiar
style — talked about the weather and the crops and the hay and
the potatoes.
" By the way, Mrs. Galway," he cried, going over and
stirring with the ferule on his cane the huge masses of quartz
that were being boiled in one of the largest pots, " I heard that
you had excellent potatoes. These they ? "
tol, lxxxv.— 30
306 LISHEEN [Jurse,
"Yes, your honnor"; said the poor woman. "They^«
wanderf ul intirely this year, Glory be to God ! "
"They look nice and floury/ 9 Hamberton said. "But they
seem rather hard."
" They'll come all right when they're well biled," said Ned ,
looking suspiciously at Hamberton out of the corners of his eyes.-
" And this/ 9 said Hamberton, stirring up the bag which, is
another pot, held the auriferous gravel, "a leg of mutton,
Jove! That's right! That's just what we want! I can
now, like the French king, that there is a fowl or somethi
better in every pot in my little kingdom."
" God bless your 'anner. Sure, 'tis to you and to the gn
God we owe everything."
Hamberton should bring Claire to see the wonderful pre
perity of his people. The pots were still simmering.
"Look here, Claire, look at this," he cried, again stirri
up the quartz, " look at these for potatoes ! "
" They are not potatoes ! " said Claire Moult on, who *^~
not in the joke. "They seem hard as stones."
"An' sure they are shtones, me lady," said Mrs. Galw
"Sure, we left the masther have his little joke about potato
and the King of France, and every wan with a chicken in
pot. Them's only chanies that Ned does be clanin 9 to put
the dhresser, or outside on the wall."
"The devil!" said Hamberton. "And the leg of muttoss- ?
I suppose that's meal for the chickens ? "
"Yerra, no, yer 'anner; sure you're innicent. That's qtm-^3
a little sand up from the sayshore that Ned does be screen
to make cimment for the little piggery outside ! "
Hamberton laughed quietly; but he spread the story
and wide amongst the men, about Ned Galway boiling qu
for chanies and boiling gravel for cement. The rest were »^*
slow to understand ; and public opinion veered around, and 9^*
steadily against avaricious Ned. And he had to stand a n** 3 ^
ning fire of questions ever after; for the Irish are unrelenti* 3 ^
when they have turned a joke against some poor victim.
"Yerra, Ned, are the praties biled a-yet?"
"Yerra, Ned, when will ye be axin' us up to ate that i^&
of mutton wid ye ? "
" Begor, we know who's coinin*. 'Tisn't crocks of goc^**'
but rocks of goold we're afthqr findin' now-a-days.
»»
X907-] LISHEEN 307
" Well, Mary " — to the wife — " plase God, we'll see, one of
these days, rowlin' in yer carridge and pair."
•' Wisha, thin, sure 'tis we don't begridge you yer good
fortune. Sure ye aimed it hard, stirrin' and bilin' and rinsin'
night after night. 'Tis the divil's own work to get at that
same goold ; and, sure, whin ye have it, little good it is, they
Father Cosgrove was taken into the confidence of Hamberton ;
t>mat only half-way. In his simple, guileless fashion he believed
at his poor parishioners had received a sudden accession of
salth, and he was genuinely glad of it.
" I'm delighted to hear ye have come in for somethin'
od," he said to Mrs. Galway.
"Yerra, no, yer reverence"; the poor woman would say,
ut they must be afther bavin' their jokes."
"But all this golden quartz and gravel that Ned has been
breakin' up ! I believe Mr. Hamberton thought they were
potatoes."
" His 'anner is fond of his fun wid poor people," she would
reply. " And, sure, we're depindin' on him, and can't say a
woid agin' him."
And they didn't. They saw the "masther" was no joke;
a n.d that there was pretty deep meaning in his jesting. And
he would have punished Ned Galway severely, but that he ar-
gued, in his own cynical way : He's no worse than every one
*ls^ ! Poor devil! What is he doing, but what every capital-
ls * and speculator is doing the wide world over?
But the discontent and conspiracy were at an end. They
w ^te killed by the practical jest. f
"These Irish are like the Jacobins," said Hamberton. "A
c *ever mot will always pull down the barricades."
But it gave him the text for a little honfily which he
Pleached at Father Cosgrove some time after.
"There are two classes of men in the world, Rev. dear
**ther t that are intolerable — preachers and novelists. The for-
mer, because they teach a religion, whose practices they know
*° be impossible ; the latter, because they paint an ideal world,
a Utopia of morality and goodness and benevolence, which
never existed and never could exist. Every sensible man knows
that the real and only business of life is gettirig something— 1
pleasure, profit, revenge, victory ; a wife, her moitoey, Urge divi-
308 LISHEEN [June,
4ends, broad acres, your enemies under your feet, your friends
fearing you and depending on you. Now, when we all know
this to be the sum and aim of all human existence, why will
a certain class of men in snowy surplice take to telling us
that this — the fact that stares us all in the face — is a delusion,
that it does not exist ? What would we do with a man that
would tell us the sun doesn't shine at midday, nor the stars at
night ; that fire doesn't burn, and cold doesn't freeze ? Clap a
strait-jacket on him. And that's just what I'd do with all
preachers. Strip them, unfrock them, as good Queen Bess did;
and clap on the strait-jacket. But these confounded day-dream
ers and romancers are worse. They pretend that such a cloud
world is realized in everyday life; they give the credulou
world pictures of pure attachment, generous deeds, high' mo
tives, sincerity, honor, which every one knows cannot, and.d
not, exist. What is the result? Plainly, that the young an
unsophisticated, instead of being taught the terrible truths o
existence, go out as day-dreamers into a hard and terribli
world ; and have to learn by bitter, personal experience th
what their romancers taught them is all a lie. And 'tis all th
same and everywhere the same. London broker and Ker
peasant, American trust-thief and Ned Galway — 'tis all t
same. By the way, I'll break that fellow, I think!"
" No, no ; you mustn't " ; said Father Cosgrove. " He h
a big family and is not a bad fellow at heart."
"Certainly not. A first-rate fellow, until he was bitten
the mad dog. Well, for your sake, I'll give him a chan
But don't speak of disinterestedness again. There's no su
thing."
" There is, there is, there is " ; said Father Cosgrove t
umphantly, at which Hamberton bent his eyebrows and Cla
Moulton laughed.
" Another mare's nest? O man, great is thy faith 1" sj
*
Hamberton.
"What would you think, now, of a family in this paris
said Father Cosgrove, " in this parish," he continued slo
trying to make his description graphic,* "and within a £^*w
miles from here — a poor family, a very poor family, whose
cattle had been seized for rent, or rather driven away, lest tfaey
should be seized — "
"That's better," said Hamberton. "Go on!"
»
i
9 7-] LlSHEEN 309
"Well, this family, rack-rented, poor, distrained, takes in a
, or fellow, a wandering tramp from nobody knew where, fed
■-. i m » clothed him; and when he was sick, as he was lately,
nursed him, and wouldn't allow him go to the Workhouse
l-jospital — wouldn't allow him go to the Workhouse Hospital,
Ithaough he had fever — 'twas only rheumatic, but still it was
a — defied doctor, nursed him themselves through all that
f£%r*r, stayed up at night with him, and — and — and — "
*' Were well paid in the long run, I bet," said Hamberton.
"Paid? How could he pay? A tramp, a begger, and an
j£r* glishman," said Father Cosgrove.
™ That caps the climax," said Hamberton. " When they
GO tjld. take an Englishman to their heart, they must be Gospel
Christians in very deed."
"Well, see for yourself," said the priest. "And, mind you,
t hese poor people had to get milk for that poor fellow down
from where their cows were hidden on the mountain. And,
j-ni nd you, they hardly know his name; and they certainly
I don't know where he came from."
"Have they no suspicion?" said Hamberton.
"Suspicion? Yes; but only suspicion. They think he is a
deserter from the army!"
"Hallo! That explains it," said Hamberton. "There al-
ways is an explanation. They are ' agin the government ' ;
and it is a satisfaction to know they are sheltering a rebel.
There it is, always something besides real sympathy and love.
But we must see our fellow-countryman, Claire, and bring him
over here. There's an empty cottage down there near that
scoundrel's, Ned Galway ; and we'll put him there, and he can
keep a watch on Ned's prospecting. I'll give that fellow one
chance for your sake, father; but if I find him tampering with
the men, I'll certainly dismiss him. By the way, where does
this model family live?"
"At Lisheen, about six miles to the east of this. You'll
find what I say is right."
■•Very good, mon pire, we'll give you every chance to
prove your optimism. Lisheen ! Lisheen ! Claire, remember
•he name ! "
■^ell she did remember it. They visited Lisheen, with the
result we have described.
3IO LIS HE EN [J
Chapter VIII.
A LETTER FROM IRELAND.
Dublin, December 12, 18 — .
Dearest Edith : I have been in the greenroom, and h&'V^
seen it all, just as you describe; but I have not seen the a*r~~-
ful banalities you imagine. And I have been on the stage
a little — and I think, but I must not be too sure as yet, uii
I have heard the critics, that I performed my little part fairl
well. The audience was vulgar enough, loudly- dressed and ir«
cantly staring. My six bridesmaids. were under sixteen — this
insisted upon ; four were under twelve. They haven't bitten t
apple of the Tree of Life as yet, and are still in their prime
innocence. But Maud Beresford kissed me, which is a
sign ; and others some, not in my hearing, but all things rets
nodded and whispered : " An 9 if she knew " ; and, " Was Urn
a wedding-bell or a passing-bell ? " And one said : " Pride $J
eth before a fall 19 ; from all which you will conjecture,
that my debut on the stage of married life was a fair succe
At least, I like it. The prompter's call has no terrors for m
and I think my complexion stands well the footlights. No;
have not the slightest desire to go back to those lonely
stupid boxes again. I have gone beyond the caramels and
sugared lemons; and I was tired of mere staring and wond
ing. "Give me action, action," was the cry of my heart;
my cry has been heard ; and it shall go ill with me if I
not perform my part so well as to excite the admiration of
friends, the spleen of my enemies; and what more can hum** 1
female heart desire?
But to drop metaphor — you led me into the detestable b^*
bit — why did you write me such a doleful, lugubrious lette*"
If it were written from foggy London — where we have just be^** 1
the fog yellow as the Tiber and thick as the darkness of Egjrl**
— I could understand it. Everything is thick and heavy ther* *
and the atmosphere clogs the ink in the pen, and the thongta*^
in the brain ; and Puck could not be merry. But to get su<^**
a letter as yours from " India's coral strand, 91 from the land **
shining pagodas and skies of eternal blue — it was a profanatk^***
Rainy seasons and steaming grasses and tropical heats wo** *
I
a
I
1907.] LISHEEN 311
explain it. What is it, dearest Edith ? There is a note of
sadness, even of despair, running through it all. Surely your
life is not unhappy. I cannot think it. You — who were so
jolly- so careless, so light-hearted — to send me, and on such an
cc&sioD, so terrible a forecast 1 Write again, dearest Edith,
n c3 say you retract it all, that it was all a horrible blunder,
orC ,vigbt on by the heat depression. Or else I shall never allow
1 ph to return to India. But I haven't told you about Ralph.
oo*"* l start at the name. The boy you mentioned — he was but
t»oy, compared with Ralph — took a mild attack of insanity,
a strange, weird delusion, from excessive reading and poring
oV ^r nonsensical books; and has gone down to the south of
Ireland on some Quixotic expedition, from which it is expected
j, e cannot return alive. I did him no injustice, I assure you.
1 warned him again and again to beware of ideas that, however
nice they may seem in books, are never adopted in life, except
within the walls of an asylum. It was no use. He would see
for himself. He calmly dropped me, without a word of expla-
nation, and went his way. When people marry an idea, they
cannot wed a wife. Otherwise there would be incompatibility
of temper, etc., which we read of in the courts.
Now, Ralph Outram — that's my dear husband's name —
Ralph Outram, C.B., late of the Indian Service, has no ideas;
and he is an archangel. He has mounted up, step by step,
in the official and social ladder, until he has very nearly
reached the top; and thence he has stooped down and drawn
up little me! The height is dizzy; but I keep my head.
We had a delightful few weeks in London, where he seemed
to know every one, even the proletariat, for some queer people
called at our hotel to see him, but he drew the line sharply at
these. We had quite a round of parties, theatres, and then we
ran down to a quiet seaside place called Littlchampton, away
from the big, noisy world, and this was delectable. Not that
I dislike the big, noisy world; oh, no; it is all right, espe-
cially when one can look the thing steadily in the face. But
for one, just — well, on the stage, a little retirement away from
the glare is sometimes welcome. But Ralph is an angel. Ever
so considerate and kind and gentle ; he has a strong side, too,
to his character. He says all old Indians have. They must
have from their intercourse with natives. One little instance
gave me a shock, but filled me with admiration for such a
5 1 2 LISHEEN Jane,
great, strong protector. One of the proletariat (Ralph alwir^
calls them thus) presumed too much, and became offensive-^
Ralph was infinitely tolerant. Then he took the fellow, is i&
he were a child, in his arms, and dropped him into the utw^
of the hotel. It was the evening we left London for Little—
hampton.
And now one word about my little presents: They were
many — I send you the Irish Times by the mail, as I cannot
recount them in a letter-— and beautiful Very beautiful and
very costly. One species was absent, and I thanked heaven.
The vile, the detestably vulgar, cheque. It is one of the mostzr
dread signs of modern decadence. Ralph cannot see it. Bob.
men look at these things so differently; and I shall educate
him. But how shall I thank you, dearest Edith, for your In-
dian present. I assure you its beauty took away my breath _
The intense polish of the porphyry vase— it is porphyry, is i«
not? — the perfect outline and finish, and the sudden contrast
with the little green, coiled cobra at the bottom, gave me »
start of surprise, which soon yielded to pleasure. One vulgar
woman declared she saw a fac-simile, but on a much larger
scale, at Chatsworth ; but this was a little feminine boasting*
No ; there's nothing like it in the world. So every one says.
One or two affected creatures pretended, while admiring the
exquisite vase, to have received a sudden shock when they saw
the beautiful reptile. But this was an affectation. And some
tried to make it a sign of something — a hint, an indication!
But this, of course, is absurd. There it remains, until I shall
create for it a special place in my new drawing room. Yoor
lovely card that was in it Ralph picked up and kept as a tal-
isman, he said, because you wrote in his beloved Sanskrit. H<
won't tell me what it is, except good wishes and all forms c
Oriental and fanciful felicitations. Some day, dearest, wbc
you have returned home, we shall talk the whole thing ow
and you will translate the beautiful poetry for me.
One little drawback I must mention. Poor father, in
failing health, was depressed about it all. He couldn't com
church, his feet are so swollen ; but he has . been extrer
kind. Somehow — there ! I must tell you everything, the f
and the grays mix themselves up so much in life— I fei
set his heart too much on my marriage with Bob Maxi
the young fanatic, who has lost his head about Socialistic
IQO?] LlSHEEN
x\cs, etc. — and I know he was hoping up to the last moment 1
(t> have heard tidings of him. Not that it would matter much.
I t-iad long ago made up my mind that I would follow my star;
ir% *d that no girlish or parental caprice should deter me. I knew
[ £-iad a destiny, and that I must fulfil it. But poor Pap had
;e <r his heart on Bob — his father was an old military comrade —
ir , *d sometimes he looks depressed and sad, and murmurs:
> f oor Bob ! Poor Bob ! " Ralph is highly amused ; and repeats :
• ^'oor Bob ! Poor Bob ! " until I have to laugh. " Bob must
,^.xig his own gait," he says ; " I only wish I had my ring
j^^k." This was a talismanic ring, given Ralph by a Brahmin,
oS - a Buddha, or something, out there in India; and Ralph
Polled with it to Mr. Maxwell, as a kind of pledge or secuiity
tt-fc at the latter would do his part in the mad undertaking. The
ring is valuable, I believe; and Ralph says he must have it
back, It was all a madcap business transacted in a Dublin
club; but no one took Mr. Maxwell seriously until he asked
for the ring; and then Ralph couldn't refuse it. But father is
gloomy over the matter. Ralph says it is only the depression
of gout, which will wear away.
There, now, I think I have told you everything. Oh ! I was
I near forgetting. 'Tis only a trifle; but you are so good as to
[be interested in every little thing that concerns me. The poor
organist at the cathedral did grind out the Wedding March from
Lohengrin ; but he broke down suddenly. Something went
'prong with the hydraulic engine, or something else ; but we
ad gone! Otherwise, I — not I, but some of my dear friends —
I cm Id say it was an evil omen. I hope I am above such things;
some people are so superstitious. Anything more? No;
kcept that I love you dearly, dearest Edith, and dream and
learn and dream of the day which shall reunite us. Do you
low, I sadly need a friend ; and I have not one. With which
mfession, I remain, as ever,
Yours, etc., Mabel Outram.
I P. S. — Ralph tells me that he is some relative to a great
Btram, who distinguished himself in India, far back in the
Titeenth century, or seventeenth, I quite forget which. N'im-
Isn't Ralph, too, great, or shall be? M. O.
Vhtn the little woman to whom the above letter was ad-
314 LISHEEN June,
dressed, received it on a dull December morning, as the old
year closed sorrowfully, she uttered some ejaculations that wer^
quite unintelligible to her Hindoo maid. And all day she went
around sorrowful and mute, so that her husband asked h?r
anxiously at dinner:
"Is't a mutiny at Delhi, or an approaching earthquake m
Edith ? I never saw you look so glum ! "
To which she only vouchsafed the dumb answer of puttin^g
her finger on her lips, and waving a certain letter in the aiar-.
Once or twice he heard her murmuring: "Porphyry vasfe |
Cobra coiled at the bottom ! Sanskrit ! " But he was too wis
to ask further questions.
Chapter IX.
POOR REYNARD.
Much as he struggled against it, Maxwell became every da
after Hamberton's visit, sunk in profound melancholy. Th
had brought with them that atmosphere of refinement and weal
to which he had been now for months a perfect stranger; a
this had awakened reminiscences of the past life of gracio
ease and pleasure, which was his natural environment. Na
it must be confessed that, after this visit, Lisheen took on
aspect of sordid poverty which it had not worn before ; and
shall it be said ? — Debbie, his nurse, his handmaid, whom he h
come to regard with a kind of brotherly affection, and wh
rustic health and comeliness he had often wondered at, su
denly shrank into a mere country girl, rough, strong, healtl^L- -
but sadly wanting in the nameless graces that surround her cit
bred sisters. The whole revolution in his feelings was horril
to his conscience and his honor ; and he struggled manful
against it. But it would come back. That visit had shed
light on the floor of the humble cottage, in which the old,
miliar aspects of things could never be seen again.
And then, as he brooded over this sudden change in
feelings, the conviction would force itself upon his judgm^^i
that his mission had failed. He had done nothing. These j>^^<
pie were — where he had found them some months ago. Xr-I
was so far from having lifted up the entire population, that 1
had not even helped on a single family. All that he Is ac
I9 o7.1 LlSHEEN 315
j r ^iinied of in his sunniest moments had been dissipated. He
ha.«J gained but one thing — the grace of illumination, the deep,
close insight into a condition of things that seemed to him
d e operate. Whatever he had read or heard of the sordid and
iu mble condition of peasant life in Ireland paled into shadows
b = fcre the reality ; and " Good God ! " he cried, " imagine some
quarter of a million of people living under these conditions.
1%% « very stones should cry out."
In marked and violent contrast with his own failure, was
tt»e reported success of this Englishman, Hamberton. He had
ma.de many cautious inquiries of Pierry and of the priest as to
trie success of Hamberton's work. Yes; there was no denying
jt. Hamberton had swept away a foul village of rotten cabins,
and replaced it with a comfortable and picturesque little hamlet
of neat, red-tiled cottages ; Hamberton had burned some rot-
ting coracles and placed a little fleet of safe and shapely ves-
sels in the harbor. Hamberton had put up a little fishing-pier;
and Hamberton had torn open the bosom of a hill that had
sheltered its treasures with ignoble secrecy since the creation
of things, and with the appliances of science had established
an industry that was repaying him and yielding a decent liveli-
hood to his workmen.
"'What wages does he give?" asked Maxwell.
"'Fifteen shillings to boys; twenty and twenty-five shillings
to men," said Pierry, as if he were relating something legend-
ary and fabulous.
Father Cosgrove confirmed the legend, adding that he never
allowed the men to work more than nine hours a day — seven
to nine; ten to one p. m. ; two to six p. K.
" And they have never struck ? "
"No; they have murmured, but no more."
"We need the hand of the Saxon over us as yet," said
Maxwell, in confession of his own impotence.
But the sense of failure galled him. How could he ever go
back to Dublin, and face his own class again ? The time was
running on; and, so far, he could see no way out of the ter-
rible difficulty wherein he had deliberately placed himself. If
he could only see Hamberton, confess his identity and his fail-
ure, and seek for light and leading ! But he had given his an-
swer, curt and clear enough, and how now could he break with
these people who had bien so humane and kind? It was a
3 i 6 LISHEEN [ June,,
horrible impasse, this to which his .precipitancy had led him-
and, apparently, there was no escape.
A few days before Christmas the long-expected letter earner
from a daughter in Philadelphia. There were many excuses for-
the delay — sickness, hospital expenses eating away whatever—
little reserve had accumulated, etc., but it contained a posta^^
order for £$ ; and there was great jubilation at Lisheen.
" I'll take it in to the agent," said Owen McAuliffe, " an<
get a clare resate from him. And thin we can bring down thi
cattle. I hope it will be a long time before we can have U
clare the manes agin!"
11 Av you take my advice/' said Pierry, " you'll buy a shu :
of clothes for yerself, and a dress for Debbie, and let us hai
one dacent Christmas dinner; and pitch that ruffian to tl
divil."
"Betther have an aisy mind an' our night's rest," sai
Owen. "Sure I have not wan dacent shleep since our cattily
wos removed."
So the old man took in the five pounds to Tralee, trudgic^e
the whole thirteen miles thither and back, and returning with ^
sad countenance.
" He wouldn't take thim," said he in explanation. " E— S e
demanded two pounds, twelve and sixpence more — costs, ina.e
said — which I hadn't to give him. I'm afeard he manes mis-
chief."
" I'm dom'd glad he didn't," said Pierry. "Did you brixig
us anythin' from town for the holidays ? "
"Not much," said the old man, dragging out of a frayed
and broken bag a scraggy piece of raw beef and a bottle of
whisky. "'Twas hard to brake Mary's bit o' money; bufc I
thought ye'd be expectin' somethin'."
" The ruffian does mane mischief," said Pierry. "Butwc*ll
be ready for him; believe you me, we'll be ready for him."
Christmas Eve came around — that blessed season when men
seem to forget for a while that life is a warfare, and to re-
member that momentous saying: " A new commandment I gi've
you — that you love one another, as I have loved you." Ala^l
It fell cold and bleak, and darkened by shadows of coming ilVs,
on the little household at Lisheen.
One incident touched Maxwell deeply, revealing as it <&- id
awful depths of poverty and hardship. Right over the fi«r~e-
I007-J LISHEEN 317
place there hung two pigs' heads, so dry, so hard, so blackened
by eternal smoke, that for a long lime he had supposed them
to be wooden ornaments or articles of an unknown use. That
they could be used for human food never remotely entered his
[niii'-i. until this momentous Christmas Eve, when it was sug-
gested that, perhaps, they could make the sacrifice, and use
one of these as a kind of condiment to the ragged beef which
the old man had brought from Tralee. At first the idea was
scouted, the old woman protesting that she would feel lone-
some-like, if she missed it from its accustomed place; but
probably it was Maxwell's presence that finally decided that
the bacon should be used with the beef.
"Two kinds of mate," said the old man jokingly. " Begor,
we're gettin* on in the wurld."
And yet it was a lonesome Christmas — probably the most
utterly miserable time Maxwell had yet spent.
St. Stephen's day dawned bright, crisp, and cheerful ; and
the two young men, Pierry and Maxwell, started out for a
long bright walk up the mountain-side. It was about eleven
o'clock, and they had mounted a declivity or two, when sud-
denly the music of a horn and the baying of fox-hounds broke
on their ears. It startled them both into feelings of swift and
eager joy ; for Maxwell was a keen sportsman, and one of his
many sorrows at Lisheen was to see the pheasant and the par-
tridge whirring over his head whilst his fingers twitched for the
weapon that was not there; and Pierry, like every farmer's son
in Ireland, was prepared to walk twenty miles to a race or a
meet. They both wheeled around, and saw, deep down in the
level, a gay assemblage of pink and black coats, hats shining
in the sunlight, and the dappled coats of the hounds. They
swiftly descended and came out on the road, and made their
way down to the meet. The huntsman was consulting some
farmers or laborers, who were pointing hither and thither as if
to demonstrate the places where a fox was likely to be found.
■When the two young men mingled with the throng they just
heard the name "Nettervitle " addressed by one of the gentle-
men present to a horseman, who sat his horse without grace,
and was otherwise distinguished by short stature, a furtive
look, and a pair of bristling moustaches fiery red, and sharply
cut at the ends.
In an instant, Pierce McAuliffe divined that this was the
318 LlSHEEN [June,
hated agent, who threatened rain to their humble household,
and while his passions flamed up, he swiftly decided that, no
matter what the consequences might be, he would shame that
fellow before the crowd.
" Here/' said the huntsman, impatient at the delay, white
the fierce dogs ran aimlessly between the horses 9 legs, " do yoo
know which of the two covers, Lisheen or Ahacross, is likely
to hold a fox today?"
He spoke to Pierry and Maxwell.
" I dunno," said Pierry, with a drawl ; " but I can put ye
on the track of as big and bould a fox as there is from here
to Dingle this minit."
" Where ? where ? " was shouted, as the horsemen bunched
together.
"There, jest behind ye," said Pierry, pointing to Netter-
ville.
There was a titter; and to escape, Netterville, under pre-
tence of exercising his animal, leaped a fence, which, roaghly
constructed of stones, gave way beneath the horse's hoofs, irf
cantered into a field, where the stubble of last harvest still 1*7-
In an instant Pierce McAulifTe was after him.
" Get out, get out, d you," the boy cried, " get out of
an honest man's lands, you thundering rogue."
The horseman wheeled round at the challenge and coo-
fronted the young man, who was now in a dreadful fury.
" How dare you, you, sir, speak to a gentleman in tint
manner ? I'd cut your hide well for you."
11 Would you ? " said Pierry, coming over. " You darttrt
lay a wet finger on me, you d d coward, and you know it
Come, out o' this ! None of your exterminators and evictbofl
will hunt over my lands to-day."
The whole group had now gathered at the fence to witck
the singular episode. And Netterville, pale with rage ***
shame, gnawed his moustache, and made his horse caracok
around.
" Come, come," said Pierry; "no nonsense. Out of tW
field, or, by G , I'll make you."
There were now cries of anger from the whole hunt, a**
many queries :
11 Who's this fellow ? Who's his landlord ? We must fl*
an example of him," etc., etc.
,
I9<^7-] LlSHEEN 319
And one said it was the Maxwell estate — which made Bob
j,j3.xwell shudder; and others said it was the Bernard property ;
ao «J others that Netterville knew best, and would take a subtle
re v'<nge. He was still pulling his horse round and round, dis-
liking to be conquered, and yet conscious that he was breaking
the law, when Pierry, stung to madness by the remarks of the
., e nittl crowd, struck the animal smartly on the haunches, and
leaped aside just as the riding whip of Netterville swished in
the air over his head. Again Pierry struck, and again Netter-
ville strove to lash him with his whip ; but the boy was too
agile, and lightly leaped back. At this juncture Maxwell, hav-
ing shouted to the huntsman: "Call off the hounds, if you
don't want bloodshed ! " leaped lightly over the fence, and ap-
proaching Netterville said, with the accent and manner of one
gentleman addressing another:
*' You must be aware, Mr. Netterville, that this young man
has a strict legal right to stop hunting over bis fields, and that
you are putting yourself in the power of the law by assaulting
him. Come, let me lead your horse!"
"Who the devil — ?" Netterville was saying, when Maxwell
quietly took his horse by the head, and, as the bridle swung
loose in the rider's hands, cantered the animal gently across
the stubble and led him through the gap on to the road. Then,
lookimg up, he saw Hugh Hamberton and Miss Moulton watch-
ing with interest the whole proceeding. The former, his face
set sternly and his lips tightly closed, was looking vacantly across
the field. He was evidently studying this strange object-lesson
in Irish life, and apparently his sympathies were with the boy
who had merely asserted his legal rights. Claire Moulton,
looking very trim and perfect in her riding habit, was slightly
f:ushed, and that strange gleam came into her eyes as in every
moment of excitement. Maxwell was turning away, when she
nodded in a friendly manner towards him; and Hamberton,
waktng up, said gravely :
"You did that well, my young friend, very well indeed.
Come, Claire! "
They galloped after the hounds; and then, for the first
time, was Maxwell aware how shabbily he was dressed and how
piebian a picture he must have presented to these new-found
friends, in whom he had begun to feel a strange interest. He
feed down at his mud-soiled boots, his blue trousers stained
320 LISHEEN [Jun<
with earth and badly frayed at the extremities, his overcoa
gray and wrinkled and greasy, his brown hat slightly indcnte
and badly discolored, and he grew red with shame.
" I'd have killed him if you hadn't interfered/' said a voic
It was Pierry's; and his white face and manner made it cle
that he meant it. " An 9 it was a chanst that will never cot
again. They couldn't hang me, for it was he broke the law.
The young men returned home, whilst the hunt moved aw
across the country towards Ahacross ; and the . short, brig
winter day was darkening slowly towards evening, when agi
the deep baying of hounds, and the sound of the horn, dr
. them forth from the fireside.
This time, following the sounds, they went up towards f
hills, Pierry armed with a thick bludgeon, and as determined
in the morning to allow not one of that hated band to cross
fence of his fields. When they had reached the heights, th
saw the huntsmen laboring heavily across some fields bene*
them, and looking further up they saw the hounds slowly a
laboriously toiling up the fields, their tongues lolling out sic
ways and their dappled skins white and panting with cxhaustr
A little in advance, and making his way apparently toward
farmer's cottage just outside the bounds of Lisheen, was p
Reynard, now making one last desperate struggle for life,
had given them a glorious run for many miles across the c<
try from the cover at Ahacross ; and now, as he stumbled we
across the ploughed field, he could not be distinguished, ej
by practised eyes, from the brown earth, so discolored w;
with dirt and so slow and heavy his movements. The h<
were leaping the fences into this field, as he approached the
yard ; and they were now silent from fatigue, and the cei
that they had reached their quarry. One or two huntsme
one lady, were leading, when suddenly the fox disappeare
the ground had swallowed him ; and the hounds, rushing
here and there, set up short yelps of disappointment.
There was a large crowd of country people assem
watch the hunt ; and they were as deeply interested in 1
den and unexpected termination of the day's sport as tt
men who had ridden across country, and who now c
hot, querulous, and angry. No one could tell what hac
of Reynard, until one old hound, whose experience aton
loss of scent, tracked the animal down to where a nan
1907-] LlSHEEN 321
ncl, on the level of the field, seemed to lead through the ground
across the road. It was so narrow and so blocked with bram-
bles, that the hound could only put his nose into the aperture,
whence he immediately withdrew with a long deep howl of dis-
appointment. In a short time, the whole hunt had assembled,
horses and men panting and foam- flecked with the fierce exer-
tion ; but after a pause of a quarter of an hour or so, the hunts-
man decided that Reynard had escaped, and he drew off his
bounds, and faced homewards. With the terrible instinct for
destruction which still lingers in human hearts, the hunt, ladies
and gentlemen alike, decided that it would be worth while to
wait and unearth the fox ; and they asked a few peasant lads
present if there were no means of driving Reynard from his re-
treat. Maxwell, who with Pierry was standing by, could not
help saying, as he forgot for the moment his assumed character :
* ' Let the brute alone ! He has given you a good day's
sport; and will give another. D6n't you see the hounds are
gone !
There were some profane answers to this burst of indignation ;
some supercilious queries: "Who is this fellow?" etc., etc.,
which were interrupted when a young peasant lad put in a fox
terrier in the channel, and the hounds and huntsman were whis-
tled after to return. In a few minutes the poor hunted brute
emerged from the channel at the other side, and wearily crossed
a potato patch near the farmer's outhouses. There was a shout
of triumph from the horsemen, the huntsman rode merrily up,
the hounds gave tongue once more, and the hunted animal ran
wearily back and forward 6n a ditch that bounded the farmer's
haggart. When the hounds plunged down into the potato gar-
den the fox, with one last effort for life, leaped up and strug-
gled wildly to get a foothold on the thatch of the barn. He
succeeded, and for the next few minutes, he ran across the ridge
of the barn, whilst the hounds came beneath, yelping at their
victim and tossing their tails wildly. The whole hunt stood still,
watching the end. Maxwell was furious. It was cold-blooded
cruelty, without an atom of sport. He told the huntsman so ;
he told the horsemen so'; he told the ladies so. They looked
on and laughed. After about ten minutes 9 vain endeavor to tire
oat or elude his foes, it was clear the fox's strength was fail-
ing'. There was nothing for it but to wait. Then one fierce
vol. lxxxv. — 21
322 LISHEEN [June.
dog leaped up and pursued the exhausted animal. Without a
cry, or moan, the poor brute rolled down the thatch, and (ell
into the jaws of twenty hounds. In a few seconds he was torn
limb from limb, and nothing remained but a few scraps of skin
and bone. The huntsman deftly saved the brush, and cantering
over to where Claire Moulton was holding in her horse, he gal-
lantly offered it to her. But she put it aside with a gesture of
disgust ; and Maxwell, again forgetting himself, could not help
saying :
"Quite right, Miss Moulton I It was the most brutal and
unsportsmanlike act I ever saw I "
Which remark again excited the curiosity of the crowd, who
could not reconcile Maxwell's manner with his dress and com-
pany. And many were the conjectures that were made, as the
hunt broke up and the horsemen filed slowly homewards in the
deepening twilight. And Pierry too was lost in thought as he
trudged slowly down the hill to Lisheen.
" Perhaps, after all," he whispered to himself, " Debbie may
be right. No wan but wan of theirsel's would sp*ke up to thim
that way. But what, then, can he be doin 9 here ? "
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
|HE mental habit, universal in modern nations, of
thinking of wealth in terms of money, and of as-
sociating money with nearly all forms of self-
realization, is due to the rSle that money and
credit symbols play in life, and to the circum-
stances in which we seek to possess them. In this way, popu-
lar judgment and aim are drawn away from the nature of
v^ealth and lives are misdirected. Attention was directed in a
/"^rrner article to the relations of wealth, money, and credit, but
( -f may serve present purposes to hear the soliloquy of Robin-
son
Crusoe on them.
If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it
or the vermin ; if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must
be spoiled ; the trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the
ground. ... In a word, the nature and experience of
things dictated to me, upon just reflection, that all good
things of this world are no further good to us than they are
for our use ; and that, whatever we may heap up indeed to
give others, we may enjoy as much as we can use and no
more. The most covetous griping miser in the world would
have been cured of the vice of covetousness, if he had been in
my case, for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to
do with. ... I had, as I hinted before, a paicel of
money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterl-
ing. Alas, there the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay. I had
no manner of business for it ; and I often thought with my-
self that I would have given a handful of it for a gross of
tobacco pipes ; or for a hand mill to grind my corn ; nay, I
would have given it all for six pennyworth of turnip and car-
rot seed out of England, or for a handfull of peas and beans
and a bottle of ink. As it was, I had not the least advantage
by it or benefit from it.
^"ossibly any one else, if in Crusoe's situation, would have
^^ en as wisely. But we live in an artificial, intense age, when
324 The Economic Motive [June,
money is supremely desirable, when it enters our thought and
ambition in spite of us. When any reformer, as for instance
the Socialist, proposes to do away with some of the confusion
of motiver and of values of life, and to restore natural functions
of things to their natural place, we look on him as an enemy,
a menace to the social disorder which we call order. A view
of the role ol the economic motive in life will enable us to
understand much of Socialism's spirit and aim, and while we
cannot believe in its remedy for social ills, we may see the
justification for some of its attacks on present conditions and
institutions.
I.
As soon as the average boy commences to correlate his ex-^.
periences and make inferences from them, he discovers tha*~,
money is prominent in life as a desirable thing. Its remote
meaning is hidden from him, yet he learns to associate it me^
chanically with many forms of pleasurable activity. He r
ceives money for being good ; unthinking friends give hi
money as a present. It is given to him to heal bruises wh
he falls, to stop his tears, to induce him to take medicine
With money the boy can buy candy or pop corn. At scho
he reads about money; his examples in arithmetic, in pa
days at least, concerned it. At Church he hears money di
cussed; at home he hears conversations and maybe quarr
about money, cost, expense, saving or spending. His ho
experience associates privation and discontent with lack
money, joy and abundance with its possession. We are
surprised then when the boy of eight announces that he wS. M
when he is a man, ''buy all the oil and raise the price a
get rich " ; or when the little girl, just old enough to go
school, " plays church " by putting a real plate before an ima.
inary congregation and awaiting imaginary contributions, whi
she will place in her imaginary bank.
Example, suggestion, positive teaching, imitation, all con
in representing money to the young as a magic thing, pow
ful, desirable ; to be thought of, sought, possessed. In earl
years, the child experiences both acquisition of it and its s.
render in buying things. An average child will give all of
money for anything that he wants, as he has no idea of c
i907.] The Economic Motive 325
proportion, or of the difficulties of acquisition. But all or near-
ly all of the forces that act on him in his formation tend to
develop, mechanically, at first, and later by reasoning, the no*
tions of price and cost, judgment of the average- values of
things and of the amount of money that one should or should
o°t pay. With this may appear a consciousness of the value
of saving, of accumulating, of the range of choice that it allows,
of the value of future pleasure over present enjoyment, of the
i-elation of money to life ; and out of the whole mental situa-
tion emerges the pure economic motive of getting as much as
possible for as little outlay as possible.
There is a dawning realization, however, that, after all,
moT^ey itself must be bought, and the price must be paid. It
c0 5ts labor, self-denial, foresight, thrift, deliberate surrender of
c as e and waywardness; study, and obedience to the will of
ot l-»«rs. It may be that most men are practically equal to one
arl other in their willingness to have and to use money, while
th^y differ vastly in their willingness to pay these prices for it.
possibly no more pathetic and spiritually disorganizing situation
is presented in the modern world than that of men of great at-
tainments and unquestioned power paying willingly, eagerly,
health, conscience, culture, home, for money-
Excepting the small number who inherit money, the millions
face life in their young years under the necessity of " making ,
their living." The world is indifferent to them. It is a sad-
dening and hardening process that transfers the youth from
home, where he means so much, to the world, where he means
so little, and brings the thought in full force to him that life
is a. struggle and he must enter it to win, or go down. Com-
mentaries, rich and varied, on civilization, on institutions, on
life, run through the mind as a young man looks at the rapid-
ly moving mass of humanity, crowded thick and forbidding, in
one another's way, jostling, obstructing one another, and won-
ders where he may find a safe place. As life is organized,
making a living means making money, and the young man finds
all of his earlier experience of the value and power of money
reinforced by his pressing need of it. If his parents have not
money, he must go to work early in life and earn. If they
educate him for law or medicine, he must wait for years to be
independent. As he turns toward the world to earn his living,
he makes a discovery of greatest importance. He has no ac-
326 The Economic Motive [June,
cess to the natural sources of wealth. These are owned as
property by individuals, and, if he would work or " make a
living, 9 ' he must work for or be hired by some one who owns
the ordinary sources of income. He must make himself valua-
ble to the property owner; he must show traits that are pro-
fitable. And he finds, last of all, that the employer is just is
eager to increase his amount of property or money as he him-
self. He finds further that, on the whole, the employer is in
control, and that their interests clash at the very heart of in-
dustry, in the process of distribution.
It may be said that this is an inaccurate presentation, for
the employer who accumulates property, engages in business^
assumes risk, furnishes directing genius, is thereby the great
est benefactor of the laborer, who is required only to labor
But this is the employer's view, and we are .tracing the wa;
to Socialism. There the view described dominates and the othe
is slurred over.
II.
There are among men wise and foolish, keen and dull,
and bad, industrious and lazy, farsighted and shortsighted. «
provident and improvident, selfish and unselfish, blundering an<
shrewd ; in brief, individuals are strong or weak, and there
many forms of strength and of weakness. The first concern »'
all of them is provision for physical existence, the securing 9 4
the wealth, food, clothing, shelter required for life, or the se-
curing of money by which these may be procured in seasotm.
Led, no doubt, by experience, which teaches a most impresshr^
lesson, society assumes that, on the whole, men are as lazy »-*
they dare be, and that the incentive of personal exclusive pos-
session of property seems to be the greatest security of th-
race against its own tendencies. It believes that prospect
power, gain, and enjoyment invites genius to serve the race L *
its industry, and that necessity compels the millions to wor~'
when they would otherwise idle. Whatever the historical prc^ #
cess, these appear to be fundamental assumptions employed t ^
defend actual industrial organization. It is said of Johnson tl
the pension which the king gave him " reduced him to his
tive indolence."
As a result society, through the state, tells the iadivido*'
1907-] . THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE 327
that he must make his own way. It authorizes competition,
(sanctions private exclusive ownership of all kinds of wealth,
and ignores all individual differences among men. Life is thus
made into a combat, and success, measured in terms of money,
becomes costly. In addition to overcoming self by discipline,
foresight, and judgment, to overcoming nature by labor, the in-
dividual must overcome his fellowman by cunning or superior
genius, if he would take the economic prize. An able and suc-
cessful railroad president said recently in writing of Brother-
hood in Business : " My judgment throws to the wind all the
theories of equitable distribution by brotherly love or by legis-
iation. I believe that, in economic affairs, the only way to get
a fair share is to be prepared always to fight, and, when nec-
essary, to fight for it."
Difference of skill, intellect, foresight among men, is a fun-
jarnental sociological and economic fact which the State itself
ignores. Hence law and policy in the State allow for the re-
sult 9 of these differences. Granting, then, intense desire for
money or property, competition for it, and differences in skill,
luck, foresight, judgment among men, it cannot but happen that
society will tend to divide into two camps — that of the strong
and that of the weak. The able, farsighted, self-disciplined,
educated, thrifty, and keen among men will tend to acquire all
property, all power, and mastery; while the weak, uneducated,
unskilled, shortsighted, self-indulgent will be in misery or in
the power of the former in their economic relations. This would
be the first natural tendency in the circumstances, but so many
artificial elements enter the situation — the legal organization of
property, inheritance, freedom of disposal, organization of credit,
confusion of standards — that we find many who are useless and
stupid owning property, and able to hire brains to operate it,
while uncounted thousands of willing, thrifty, honest men and
"omen are held down through lack of opportunity, of edu-
cation, or by the uncharted blunders that appear to throw the
social universe out of harmony.
"We find then, on the whole, strength of property, strength
°f genius, and of leadership; the strength of establishment, of
nearly all corroborative learning, as of law, and the strength of
c iv-iland moral and social sanction amalgamated. And it.would
seem that motives that concern money, and activities related to
1 *■ are fundamental in this process of concentrating the forms
328 The Economic Motive • [June,
of strength. "The wealthy who, as luxurious idlers, spend
money and make trade, or, as captains of industry and lords o£
enterprise, employ labor and organize the prosperity of king-
doms, will never be without great social power. From the de-
pendence of the working many on the moneyed few, flows a.
patronal authority which sends its tinge far into law, religion^
morals, and policy" (Ross).
In the camp of the strong an atmosphere, a philosophy, an
point of view are developed. Men are there because of quali
ties which insured ascendency or of accidents of social organi
zation, which in some way perpetuate it impersonally. Thes
strong are individualists; they believe in struggle, conquest ; i
the fixed and final sacredness of their social position, of thei
property, prestige, and theories. They insist on judging all me
and opportunity by themselves, their success. Their standar
of justice is one which insures to them what they have, f
every large social group attempts to make its own moral cod
The strong tend to forget absolute morality and to make thei
relative. They judge state and religion by reference to ec
nomic interests ; the former exists to protect life and prope
as judged by them. Many men high in finance and in affai.
of state, non- Catholics, appear to think that the main value
the future of the Church is to suppress Socialism among t
laboring classes. Not long since, the Wall Street Journal, co
menting on the decline of faith, said: "There is no one w
would not prefer to do business with a person who really
lieves in a future life." "If there has been a marked decline
in religious faith, that fact must be of profound, far-reaching
significance. It alters the basic conditions of civilization. It
becomes a factor in the markets. It changes the standards and
affects the values of things that are bought and sold."
The property interest seems to be the basis of cohesion of
the strong. And state defends it substantially; Church defends
it in all essentials and laws sanction it. Here we find, then, a
philosophy of life, a judgment of human nature and established
conditions which place social power in the hands of the strora
The first natural effect of competition among unequal m
struggling for limited prizes, is to throw all to the strong £
nothing to the weak. Alter this division, naturally, competiti
may go on in both groups. There are degrees of strength, sl
strong may compete with strong. But this struggle is o
»igOi-] The Economic Motive 329
higher plane; it is not for existence, as in the first case. It
j s for power, victory, increase ; and a time comes when the
strongest combine, end competition, and live in established
peace.
But this process creates a group among the weak. Into it
are thrown they who have no strong to defend or assist them.
Here are massed the dull and stupid and careless; the self-
indulgent and the short sighted. And the strong look out on
these and sit in judgment on their defects of character and sins
of choice, and justify to themselves the many privileges of their
self- righteous strength. But the camp of the weak contains
more than these. There are brave and intelligent men and wo-
me n to whom opportunity has been denied; there are those
f skill in craft and ambition in heart who found the struggle
too much. There are those whom environment damned before
baptismal water brought the dawn of grace to their ransomed
s01 ils. And so we find in the camp of the weak, massed in
oX1 e jumble of indiscriminate condemnation by the strong, the
xve akiiess of poverty and of ignorance and of low ambition and
uncultured natures and of intemperance and of lives unlit by
hope; the weakness of economic dependence and of defence-
less subjection to landlord and merchant and marketman.
Weakness as well as strength has instincts. Among these
millions who are the weak, it was inevitable that many forms
of strength would appear. Giants have come and gone among
them ; prophetic voices have called out to them and, stinging
them to fury as by the quick crack of a threatening whip, roused
them to action. But time has corrected much, and now recog-
nized and orderly action succeeds. This prostrate weak class
attempts to rise and becomes conscious of its weakness. It
finds law in the way ; it finds property organization in its way;
it finds prevalent standards of justice in its way; it believes —
very often — that God and religion are in its way. The experi-
ence of life in many thousands has shut these out from every-
thing that might engage their acceptance of law, justice, and
religion. And so, in labor union, the weak speak strongly,
'hough conservatively, uttering a new philosophy, a new judg-
menl of property rights, a new concept of the functions of law,
anci they engage the strong in battle. Beyond the unions, a
ivider philosophy springs up, that of Socialism; the voice of
the; weak, the exploited, appealing for a new justice, a new in-
330 The Economic Motive [June,
dustry, a new organization of property. And, in the complex
psychology of this revolt of weak against strong, we find atht-
ism and free love and confiscation and violence and class hatred
mixed in streaks with Socialism and unionism and much law-
less feeling. Keen will be the mind and calm, indeed, the judg-
ment that will disentangle all of these threads, trace each to
its beginning, and explain the weaving. But fatal surely to
social peace and harmful to progress will be the error of those
who mistake the essential character of the struggle, and fail to
see tht; deeper moral issues that divide society. Personal ex-
perience of life is the text-book of the weak, and they read its
pages lighted by ideals that the great teachers of humanity have
sanctioned. The difference is not so great between the strong
one who staggers from the banquet table, drunk and overfed.
and the weak one who staggers from the saloon, drunk and
underfed. We pity the former as he is carried to his richly
furnished home in his carriage, and we blame and despise tla«
latter when he is carried from the gutter to a cell by a patrol
wagon. The difference is great, however, in the complicate*!
social processes back of each of the two facts, and these re-
main to meet each other in struggle for mastery.
III.
Back of the economic schism of society into two states——
those of the strong and of the weak — are these simple facts -
that men vary in power; that private exclusive possession of
property is encouraged ; that men are competitors for property I
that money symbols and credit symbols facilitate the holding
of great quantities of wealth ; that the economic function of
society is entrusted to individuals; and that through economic
activity in the main wealth may be accumulated. Everything
in the history of the strong tends to make them self centred*
selfish, forgetful of larger and nobler relations of life. Perhaps
it would be well to modify the figure which represents society
split into two camps, and to say rather that two philosophies I
have developed out of the circumstances of life ; that of tb« I
strong and that of the weak, and that all of the marked ten* I
dencies of life seem to indicate that -finally they must come to I
issue. Back of trade unions, Socialism, single tax, populistfc m
agitation, as we have known it ; back of the more temperate ■
1Q07-] THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE 33 '
r[j U t none the less determined, criticism and complaint that are
j, e ard every day in nearly all circles, lies a common, instinctive
judgment that the strong — they who command property and sit
j n legislature, and speak in courts and pay great salaries to
learned men wno direct and defend them — have been grasping,
selrlsh, cruel in the use of the unchecked power that they en-
joy. And in this the weak are one. There is enough articulate
feeling against the strong to overthrow them ; but its efficient
assertion is hindered because thousands cannot see any way out.
Throughout the great middle class, in which the hope of any
nation must lie, and in whose happiness is found the real test
of any civilization, we find fear, resentment, and discontent.
Centralization is going on ; laws in vain attempt to check it.
More and more the strong extend their empire and the weak
feel danger's threat. The merchant in the town, whose thrift
gave him capital, sees his business dwindle before the invasion
of the great mail order houses of the large cities whose im-
mense catalogues furnish pleasant reading to prospective buy-
ers. The dealer in agricultural implements is confronted by the
strong who, in their organized heartlessness, compel him to sell
their machines under terms that mean practical slavery. The
dealer who once, thrifty and independent, made a comfortable
living in handling oils is ordered by the strong to close his
doors and vanish, and an agent of the strong replaces him. The
strong build up great department stores, and dozens of little
me xxhants, who had lived well and independently, are driven
out; of business. Not only the laboring millions, who never
were independent, but also tens of thousands with some capital,
pluck, and ambition, feel the tightening grip of these strong
ones, and see for themselves or their children one fate ahead
descent into the ranks of the hired as wage earners.
It is true, the process which tends to split society into the
two camps has not worked unhindered. While the state pro-
fesses equal regard for all, it cannot take account of diffeiences
in strength and weakness among individuals. However, it does
attempt, in a general way, to strengthen individuals through
education. The elaborate provisions made for free schools,
with a recent tendency toward compulsory attendance, consti-
tatG some guarantee that many will be well equipped to begin
''*«;„ and will enjoy some comfort, otherwise not to be looked
for- But the main bitterness of life, the sharpest contrasts
332 The Economic Motive [June,
\
which cut deep and embitter, the most effective tyranny an<
successful exploitation, take place in manners which the te\
does not reach. The state commences to see this, and it^s
struggle against the strong in the name of all is impressive _
Labor legislation, railway legislation, new methods of taxation ^
are first steps by which the state endeavors to discipline th-
strong and draw them back to right relation to society at larg<
Sometimes the state wins and sometimes it loses in its struggles
But the weak are awake ; their feeling is intense and they ar
slowly discovering their power of numbers. They find th**,
the strong are represented in every branch of state activity-
that sympathy, traditions, and conditions are with the stron;
These are favored by the whole situation, by actual law, pr<
sumptions, and procedure. They judge the weak by these ar*«j
condemn them. The weak judge the state and law and tk* e
strong by their personal ideals, their life experience, and th^i r
human instinct of justice; and at that bar the strong are judged
to be cruel, selfish, lawless.
The state, in taking this attitude of indifference to individta^j
differences, necessarily relied on morality and religion to tem-
per the results and to harmonize relations among men. And so
morality, with its absolute ideas of human relations, and r^li.
gion, with its absolute estimates of man and of all things, have
been mighty forces endeavoring to right things. But the strong
have insisted on coloring morality and religion in one way and
the weak have had to test and judge them in another, until we
have practically two moral codes and two religions — one of the
strong and one of the weak. And this has served only to em-
phasize the unhappy schism into which society has fallen.
Christianity looks on the race in organic unity, liberty tem-
pered by charity, strength sanctified by service, weakness en*
nobled by loyalty and compensated by the joys of trust, valua-
tions disciplined by absolute truth and enlightened life. Christ
relegated the economic motive to the lowest place and placed
glory and self-realization in those moral and spiritual relations
in which all may be rich and none need be poor.
The strong have experienced a development and created an
atmosphere in which these features of Christ's law do not thrive,
and the weak have found themselves in conditions where th*^^,
theoretically, might more easily obey Christ's valuations, but: aV
the facts and processes of life tend to embitter them, enger*.<3ke
,^o7-] Ihe Economic motive 333
a Spirit of suspicion, a sense of helplessness, and a dtmand for
p e ace and comfort here in life. And in the process, Christian-
ity appears not to be successful in re-establishing peaceful rela-
tions between the strong and the weak, The strong are losing
religion rapidly, and the weak seem to lose it with equal rapid-
ity but with less apparent blame. Some tel] us that the attitude
is against churches and not against Christ; others say that it is
abandon of all religion ; others claim that, where external forms
are retained, religion no longer possesses the internal transform-
ing power without which it is not religion. Christianity is, then,
in a. hard way. If it is driven out of nearly all business until
social groups construct their ethical codes independently; if it
j s losing its power over the strong as their manner of life and
of surrender to the economic motive would show; if it is losing
its power over the weak as is alleged on so many sides; it is
not strange that, in the face of this great process of economic,
moral, and religious disintegration, some sort of constructive-
movement should appear claiming to rebuild the social structure
into symmetry and life. Socialism is just such a movement and
it professes just such a purpose.
IV.
The weak commence to discover their identity of interest,
their power of numbers. They know that ultimate human au-
thority is in the state; that the state is democratic and that in
a democracy numbers is the last form of strength. Socialism
is at heart an organized effort of the weak to get possession of
the machinery of government, in order to reorganize industry
democratically; to change our economic institutions in such a
way as will hinder the economic motive from dividing the race,
and to furnish an economic basis of society on which it will be
possible to realize ideals of service, brotherhood, and culture.
This states its best intention, not its dangers.
On the whole, Socialism appears to misunderstand itself quite
s much as its enemies misunderstand it. We find it on all
ities of us, established as a hope, taught as a system, diffused
s ^ sentiment, and fearless as a criticism of the existing order.
"s literature tells us that it is and that it is not atheistic ; that
i s and is not against Christianity; that it does and does not
-■^.c:h materialism; that it does and does not favor free love,
334 THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE [June.
disintegration of the family, class hatred, and confiscation. It
is strange that we can so easily overlook the actual materialism
of society, resulting in a very direct way from the inevitable
psychology produced by our institutions, and take such offence
at the presence of many materialists among socialists. It is
awkward that we overlook patiently the rapid and unmistakable
disintegration of the family among both strong and weak v post-
ponement of marriage, falling birthrate with its implications, loss
of home atmosphere, all due largely to facts connected with the
economic motive, and then allege against Socialism that it en*
dangers the family. It is peculiar that we find property rights
indiscriminately so sacred, and personal rights, humanity's rights,
rights of children and of mothers and of fathers, so difficult of
demonstration and so doubtful of realization. If those of us who
feel that the present industrial order should be defended, were
to listen patiently to the indictment of it prepared by Socialism,
• and then shrink from no fact and evade no inference, no matter
how unwelcome, we might learn more from Socialism than we
appear to learn. And it we applied the same severe logic to
our own proposals for reform that we employ against Social-
ism, we might be led to see that we match impossibility against
impossibility in much that we write and suggest. This will be
seen in a brief review to follow, of the aims and means of
Socialism and of the attitude taken in our literature against it.
E VICTIMS OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION.
BY ABBOT GASQUET, O.S.B.
III.
BN the 1 7th of May, l"94, at eight o'clock in the
morning, above twenty members of the District
of Compiegne, and six or seven of Robespierre's
creatures from Arras came to the prison, escorted
by a hundred and twenty guards. The prisoners
nstantiy ordered each one to their own quarters, and a
posted at every door in the prison. A soldier with a
sword was also stationed within the nuns' room, and
i- ordered to take care the nuns did not open a window,
:ave the room for a moment; and, above all, that they
no papers. Some of the nuns turned pale and almost
I, which the Mayor observing, he, with bis usual good
towards them, ordered the guard to sheath his sword.
licer soon after made his round and asked the guard in
why he had not his sword drawn. He told him the nuns
ifraid, at which the officer began to scoff, and said some-
about the guillotine, and with horrid imprecations com-
d the guard to draw his. This made the nuns more
While they were in this situation, from time to time
icard the jailer call the prisoners, one at a time ; the men
md then the women, to a lower room; but no one re-
The nuns durst not speak to each other for fear of
lard. After they had been in the most cruel suspense
out nine hours, the nuns were called down. It was then
the evening. Before they got half way down the stairs,
r orders were given, and one of the nuns, D. A. Robin-
ho could speak French, was ordered down. The nuns
>re returned with a guard, and only this young leltgious
inducted to the room below. The Commissioners imme-
' began to search her pockets; but the Mayor checked
so that they were not so insolent to her as they had
to others. Nothing of value having been found about
336 Some Victims of the Revolution [j une ,
them, they were dismissed, and the whole tribe of rough fel-
lows, about thirty in number, came up with them to the room
where the nuns all were. One of them (who was a fallen priest)
could speak a little English. He was a busy man on this oc-
casion, and was the orator. He addressed the nuns in a man-
ner which seemed the most proper to terrify them, enumerating
the punishments that would certainly be inflicted upon them if
they concealed either writings or anything of value from them.
The Procuratrix produced the little paper money they had, and
laid it before them. The nuns in general assured them that all
their writings had been taken from them at Cam bray. After
asking many questions, and talking in a low voice to each
other, they withdrew, leaving the money upon the table, which,
however, the nuns durst not touch. They then proceeded to
search all the prisoners' beds, men and women, pulling the
straw and everything else about the rooms. They took every-
thing of value ; such a trifle as a silver thimble did not escape
them. In the course of this examination they pulled the wo-
men's caps off their heads (some of them were ladies of qual- '
ity) unpinned their gowns, and searched them in the most cruel
manner. If they found a crucifix or a reliquary of gold or sil-
ver, they took it; if it was of a baser metal, they broke it and
sometimes gave the bits back to the owner. From the Hod.
Thos. Roper and the Rev. James Higginson, who were our
companions in prison, they took everything they could find ;
viz., a metal watch and two beautiful gold repeating watches,
which had formerly belonged to the Revd. Fathers Walker and
Welch. This last mentioned gentleman had ended his life with
the nuns at Cambray during the early part of the revolution.
Having stript the other prisoners of everything of value, they
were returning to the nuns' room, when one of the prisoners
addressed the Mayor as follows : Surely, sir, you are not going
to search those poor nuns a second time ? You know how bar-
barously they were used by the people of Cambray, and at
present you are well assured that they live in the greatest pov-
erty, having only the poor pittance which they gain by their
needle to maintain them. The Mayor seemed to be pleased
with the person who spoke in their favour, and after a short
pause turned off, called the guard out of the nuns' room, and
soon after went out of the prison, attended by the administra-
tors of the District (as they called themselves) and the guards.
i9°7-] Some Victims of the revolution 337
This was one of the most suffering days we ever passed, though
in those times of universal terror the nuns experienced many
sorrowful ones.'
The prisoners from the time I am speaking of were treated
with greater severity than they had ever been before. They
were in the greatest distress. Some of them passed days and
weeks with no other food than bread and water; a few of the
prisoners of Compiegne entertained a hope of escaping a pub-
lic execution, yet this seemed to take no effect on their morals,
for they were for the most part very ill livers; though few days
passed but one or other of them was taken out of the Com-
piegne prison and thrown into the dungeon, to be ready for
execution. Here some of them remained till the death of
Robespierre, others were carried to Paris, and an end put to
their existence by the guillotine.
About the middle of June, 1794, sixteen Carmelite Nuns
were brought to the prison, and lodged in a room which faced
that which was occupied by us. They were very strictly
guarded. They had not been long there before they were,
without any previous notice, hurried off to Paris, for no other
crime than that an emigrant priest, who had been their con-
fessor, had written to one of them. In this letter, a bishop,
who was also an emigrant, had unfortunately desired his com-
pliments to an old gentleman, who was cousin to the nun to
whom the letter was directed. He was a man of great prop-
erty, a crime not easily overlooked in those days. This vener-
able person was carried to Paris with the nuns. A servant who
attended him seemed ready to die of grief, and the good old
man shed tears at the parting.
The Carmelite Nuns quitted the Compiegne prison in the
most saint-like manner. We saw them embrace each other be-
fore they set off, and they took an affectionate leave of us by
• This terrible day is probably the same recorded in an official paper of Cambrai, dated
3 Prairial. An II. (the 2ad of May, 1794) th« difference being slight wirli Dame Partington's
17th, under Ihe circumstances. " In Virtue of a Decree of Lebon. certain eitiiens, named,
presented themselves at Compiegne in order to seize at once nil papers in the house of deten-
tion there, where suspected 'persons' were shut up, persons from Cambrai and elsewhere,
None of Ihe names of the English nuns are on the till of persons searched, but amongst many
ethers are ' Catherine Cusack, aged 40, an Irishwoman living at Cambrai. Nothing found on
her.' ' An Englishman, Jack Igginson, aged 30, ci-devant priest ; four pieces found on him.
signed ' (i. *., Father James Higgitison). 'Thomas Roppert. aged 50, Englishman, officer
in tlie ci-devant regimen! of Dillon ; 3a pieces found on him, signed ' (i.e., Hon. Thomas
Roper). ' Plowden-Ta/f. aged 57. Englishman; 3 pieces, signed, found on him.' 'Three
Nuns, *t>n-asttrmmths, Robertine. Eleanore, and Pulcheria Conpigny ; also one sister of
charily.""
VOL. LXXXV,— 22
338 SOME VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION [June,
the motion of their hands, and by their friendly gestures. On
their way to the scaffold and upon the scaffold itself (as we
were told by an eye-witness of credit, Monsieur Douai) they
showed a firmness and a cheerful composure which nothing but
a spotless conscience and a joyful hope can inspire. It was
reported that they sung or said aloud the Litany of the Blessed
Virgin, until the fatal axe interrupted the voice of the last of
them. They suffered on the 16th of July, 1794, the feast of
their Patroness, B. Marias de Monte Carmelo. One of this holy
community happened to be absent when the rest were taken
Paris. She concealed herself in different places till the deatt^
of the Tyrant Robespierre, which' happened on the 28th o
July, 1794. When this monster was removed, she returned to
her friends in Compiegne, and frequently visited us in prison.
She gave us the names and the ages of her sisters who were
put to death. They are as follows:
Croisi, Ag& de 49 Ans, De Paris; Trozelle, 51, De Com-
piegne; Haunisset, 52, De Reims; Le Doine, 42, De Paris;
Pellerat, 34, De Lazarts; Tourret, 79, De Monij; Piedecourt,
78, De Paris; Brudeau, De Bedfort; Brard, 58, De Boert;
Cretien, 52, De Evreux ; Dufour, De Beaune ; Meuniere, 29,
De Franciarde ; Soiron, 55, De Compiegne; Soiron, 45 ; Rous-
sel, 52, De Compiegne; Vezelot, 30, De Compiegne.
One of this community was novice, and two others were
portresses, or Extern Lay sisters.
Two or three days after the Carmelites were taken to Paris,
the Mayor and two Members of the District of Compiegne
called upon us in the prison. We were still in our religious
dress, which he had frequently wished us to change; but we
always alleged that we really had not money sufficient to fur-
nish ourselves with any other clothes than the ragged habits
we then wore. The same day he returned to us again, called
two of the nuns aside and told them that they must put off
that uniform, as he called it; that he durst no longer permit
them to wear that prohibited dress ; that should the people grow
riotous, we should be more easily concealed in any other dress
than in the religious one. The truth was, he expected, like the
Carmelites, we should soon be conducted to Paris for execution,
and he was afraid he might be put to trouble if we were found
in the religious garb. Being again assured that we had not
money to purchase other clothes, he went himself to the room
[907.] Some victims of the Revolution 339
vhich the good Carmelites had inhabited, while in prison, and
>rought some of the poor clothes they had left behind them
here. These he gave to us, telling us to put them on as soon
is possible. We were ia great want of shoes. The Mayor
avilly said he would get us what we wanted, but one of the
ailors bluntly told the Procuratrix we should not want shoes
ong. On leaving the room the Mayor turned to Mr. Higgin-
;on and said: Take care of your companions— as much as to
ell him, prepare them for death, for he had nothing else in
lis power, as the Mayor well knew.
The next day the news became public that the poor Car-
nelites had all been guillotined. The old clothes which before
ippeared of small value, were now so much esteemed by us,
hat we thought ourselves unworthy to wear them ; but, forced
>y necessity, we put them on, and those clothes constituted the
greatest part of the mean apparel which we had on at our re-
urn to England. We still keep them, a few articles excepted,
vhich we have given to particular friends.
The prisoners at Compiegne were still importuned to pay
>ff the old debt (as they called it) for the allowance of one
neal per day, which had formerly been given them, but which
lad long since been withdrawn, in so much that during many
nonths before we had leave to quit this tedious confinement,
ve had not even bread given us unless we could pay' for it.
The two last months of the year 1794, and the beginning
>f the year 1795, being extremely severe, we had a great deal
o suffer from wants of various kinds, especially from want of
uel, as no one had a sufficient quantity of clothes to keep her-
elf (though the youngest of us) moderately warm. The room
ve inhabited was large and very cold, but no entreaties could
>btain more than one single blanket for each nun. The scar-
:ity of provisions also increased in a dreadful manner. Bread
vas so hard to be got, that no one inhabitant of the town was
>ermitted to purchase more than a certain fixed allowance,
vhich made a very scanty portion. Guards were placed at
jvery baker's shop, and in their presence the bread was
weighed out, to each one his pittance, till the whole poor stock
vas distributed ; but commonly there was not a sufficient quan-
ity of it to supply more than half the people who were ex-
acting to have each a little; so that no day passed without
some tumult in the town. The bread for the most part was of
340 Some Victims of the Revolution [June,
the very worst and most disgusting quality; yet we thought
ourselves very fortunate when we could buy a sufficient quan-
tity of it. Very frequently, when we had finished one poor
meal, we had not a morsel left for the next.
The English throughout every part of France had more than
once petitioned for some mitigation of their sufferings, and
some of them had with becoming freedom pointed out the ab-
surdity of detaining in confinement so many innocent sufferers,
for the apprehension of whom there had never existed a pre-
tence of justice. At last it was decreed that all foreigners
should have an allowance of two livres paper money per day.
Bread was then sold at three livres per pound. This allow-
ance, besides its being irregularly paid, was utterly insufficient
to subsist upon in the state in which France then was, paper
money being then reduced to a very low rate. We received
this allowance for the first time on the 23rd of December,
1794. It was then counted to make the value of twopence
halfpenny, or at most threepence per day, English money.*
Some months after this the prisoners began to be treated
with more lenity than they had yet experienced. The Honble.
Thos. Roper and the Revd. James Higginson had liberty to
* The following paper is copied from the Archives Nationales, of Paris : It bears exactly
on this subject.
6 Vendiaire, Tan III. de la Republique.
The Administrators of the district of Compiegne to the Comiti de Secours publies de la
Convention Nation ale.
Representative Citizens: Certain former English Nuns, living at Cambrai, have
been transferred to the house of detention at Compiegne. They have lived there up to this
present with other dltenus, more fortunate than themselves ; but at this moment, the house is
emptying and they are without resources. They addressed, on the 39th Fructidor last, a peti-
tion upon which we invite you to be so good as to pronounce as soon as possible.
At the bottom of the page. '• Given over to be reported upon, to Citizen Paganel. De-
cision of the 6 Brum aire, An III. (ou : 1794).
On the same sheet.
Paris, 27 Brumaire, III.
To the Representative Citizens Composing the Comiti de Secours, the National Commission
of Civil Administration, etc., etc.
Representative Citizens: The English ex-Benedictines of the former house of
Cambrai, transferred from the said Commune to that of Compiegne, demand help from the
Republic. Their goods have been confiscated in virtue of the Decree of the 18- Vendemaire,
Year II., relative to the arrest of all subjects of the King of Great Britain. It seems that they
have already addressed their complaint as to the state of destitution in which they are. The
General Council of the Commune of Compiegne attests that they have conducted themselves
during their imprisonment with an exemplary resignation, and that, up to this, they have lived
only on the help afforded by the more wealthy detenus who have now just been liberated, and
also by their work, which is insufficient of itself for their subsistence. The Same Council cer-
tifies, moreover, that they are unprovidecTwith garments and linen, and it joins its entreaties
to theirs for an amelioration of their lot. We await your orders to fly to the help of these un-
fortunate women, the ex-Benedictines detained at Compiegne.
1907.] Some Victims of the Revolution 341
190
go into the town. This was of great service to us. Mr. Ro-
per showed himself indefatigable in using every means possi-
ble to procure victuals and fuel for us. He carried the wood
himself, and ran from shop to shop to buy us bread. But,
notwithstanding this seeming liberty, the prison was still very
disagreeable. The soldiers had no longer power to command
us as formerly ; yet the door to the street was open night and
day, so that it was scarcely possible to step out of our room
without meeting a crowd; one part of the prison being turned
into a guard house, all came in and went out as they pleased.
The garden, too, was always taken up by the soldiers and the
rabble. About this time the convention frequently ordered the
prisoners of war to be sent from one town to another, to show
them to the people. When those bodies of prisoners passed
through Compiegne, a number of them were always lodged in
our prison, and nothing distressed us more during the whole
of our confinement, than on such occasions to meet with brave
Englishmen in want of the most common necessaries of life,
and to see them treated with the greatest scorn and contempt
by the most despicable of the French Jacobins, who were quite
elated to have an English soldier under their feet. Whenever
these prisoners arrived all was noise and confusion, and we ex-
pected nothing less than to see the house on fire. The weather
being remarkably cold, they burnt everything they could iay
their bands on.
Seeing no prospect of an end to the miseries of the unhap-
py country in which we were confined, and provisions growing
so scarce and dear that it became quite out of our power to
procure them, we at last resolved to apply to Paris for pass-
ports to return to our native country. The Mayor of Com-
piegne privately advised us to take this step, and assured us
of his assistance. Accordingly a petition was drawn up and
signed by the whole community. The Mayor forwarded it to
the convention at Paris and seconded it by a letter in our fa-
vour. About ten days after, our liberty was announced to us
by the district of Compiegne. After this we contrived to bor-
row (the good Carmelite above mentioned assisting us) sacred
vessels and ornaments, that we might have the happiness of
hearing one Mass, the only one we had during our eighteen
months' confinement, and we were in the greatest fear the
-hole time of it.
342 Some victims of the Revolution [June,
In order to raise the necessary supplies for our journey we
contrived privately to draw money from England, though at a
great loss, by the way of Hambourg. A charitable gentleman,
the present Edwd.. Constable of Burton, Esq., had two years^
before given us leave to call upon him for money what wc^
might want, in case we came to be in distress, which he seemecS;
to foresee would happen. The horses being for the most par
taken for the army, we found it very difficult to get carts t^
transport us to Calais. After many delays, a great deal of e^
pense and trouble, the whole community left Compi£gne,oa tt\ c
24th of April, 1795, in two carts; four of the eldest nuns hav.
ing gone off a few days before in a coach. We were in the
prison at Compiegne eighteen months and five days. In Our
journey we made Cambray in our way, but had not courage
enough to cast a passing glance at our dear convent, which,
from the time we were driven out, had been turned into a
common gaol* (it was then in a ruinous condition) out of
which very many had been dragged to the guillotine. On one
day twenty- five persons were dragged to the market place in
Cambray and there guillotined, among whom was a most pious
and learned priest, Mr. Tranchant, who had frequently sung
Mass in our church. He was saying Mass in his own house
and his niece serving him; they were immediately hurried to
prison, not allowing him time to take off his vestment.
*This is verified by several papers in the Town Archives: " Maison des ci-devant An-
glaises," {sic) stands in a list of Cambrai prisons during the Revolution. In January and Feb-
ruary, 1794, there are papers ordering prisoners to be removed to the house of the "ci-devant
Anglaises," which one paper qualifies as capable of holding a certain quantity of prisoners.
It is pretty clear that hatred of religion was at work in the arrest of the Benedictine Commu-
nity and in the seizure of their property, although the law including all British subjects is the
plea. There were other English houses of secular people in Cambrai, and their owners arrested
as such. Why is the epithet " ci-devant Anglaises" so constantly given as distinctive of the
Benedictine Nuns only ? Evidently to secure the hatred of the populace more surely. "On
21 October, 1793, tne Council (Municipal Council of Cambrai) charged two of its members (0
join with the Commissaries of the district to operate a verification of all the papers in the
Maison des Anglaises. Instantly a member arose and demanded that the street called ' Rut
des Anglaises,' should henceforth bear the name of ' Rue de la Montague* Another member
observed that this street, which up to this time had had in it a Convent of English Women, is
now funfied of it, and so he demanded that it should be called ' Hue Purifi/e.' Purifiit was
adopted." Another paper, dated 10th of November, 1793, states that a deputation of the
Societd'Populairc went to the Municipality to demand a formal change of name for certain
streets, i. e , that of "L'Evechi" into that of " Rue Lepelletier" ; that of " Rue des Anglaites"
into that of " Rue Purtfi/e." How long this amended name stuck to this street we cannot say;
but we are glad to assure our readers that at this day it is still called : Rite des Anglaises, recall-
ins the sweet memoiy of the English Benedictine nuns, who for nearly two hundred years
in their Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation, founded for the lineal descendant of
More and her eight companions, related also to other English martyrs.
1907.] Some Victims of the Revolution 343
We found that our houses and effects had been publickly
sold, but had not been paid for. We were also informed that
our enemies had made the common people believe that the pre
vailing scarcity was greatly to be attributed to the English nuns
having amassed such quantities of provisions. This was made
an accusation against us by the very people who had ordered us
to prepire provisions against a siege, or to be expelled ye town.
The Revd. James Higginson went six or seven times to the
town house, thinking to expostulate with the District upon their
cruel behaviour, and to assure them that one time or other we
should call them to account; but he was refused entrance.
Finding nothing could be done, the community followed Lady
Abbess and three old religious, who, as I said before, set off
from Compiegne a few days before us. We found them at
Calais, where they had been some days. We rested one night,
and on the next morning. May 2d, the whole community sailed
from Calais in a Danish vessel, Captain Johnson. We happily
landed at Dover the same evening, in number sixteen religious,
Mr. Higginson, and Roper. The next day being Sunday, we
rested at Dover, and reached London about ten o'clock on
Monday night, May 4th. We remained at the Golden Cross,
Charing Cross, London, till Wednesday, the 6th, when the chari-
table Marchioness of Buckingham, hearing that our situation was
exceeding unpleasant at a common inn, sent the chaplain of her
family, a clergyman of the Established Church, to inform us
that she had provided a house for us at the West end of the
town during our residence in London. Here she was the first
person to visit us and afford us every comfort in her power,
and the respectable clergyman above mentioned copied the ex-
ample of his noble patroness. Many instances of civility and
kindness we experienced during our stay in London, for several
of which we are indebted to persons unknown to us; but that
Being who has promised to repay a cup of cold water given in
alms for His sake, will not let their charity go unrewarded.
Gratitude obliges me to mention here one friend in particu-
lar, vie., Mr. Coghlan, Book Seller, who tho' a person in busi-
ness and possessed of no great riches, yet rendered us most
substantial services. It was he that first made us known to
the Marchioness of Buckingham, and we owe him thanks for
many other favours.
The community remained in London about twelve days, dur-
<ly
tut
344 Some Victims of the Revolution [June,
ing which time the Rd. Mr. Cowley President and Rd. Mr.
Brewer concluded that we should take the management of a
school for the education of Catholic young ladies. Nothing but
the great desire we had to maintain ourselves and be no burden
to our friends or society in general, upon whom Providence has
permitted us to be reluctantly thrown, could have prevailed with
any of us to have undertaken such a charge, worn out as we
found ourselves with past sufferings. But superiors letting us
know that such was their pleasure, we left London in three
companies on different days, as we could get places in the
stage coach. The last company arrived at Woolton, May the
2 ist, 1795, where we experienced every civility and kindness.
Mrs. Porter and Rd. Dr. Brewer entertained the whole com-
munity a week at their house, with great good nature and com-
passion rendering to each one every solace possible, till we got
settled in a school which had been for about six years under
the superintendance of the Rd. Dr. Brewer, but the manage-
ment of which he now resigned to the nuns. Here we have
now been near three years, during which time we have found
no abatement in the kindness and charitable attention show'd to
the community, not by our friends and relations only, but by
our country folks at large.
We are not less grateful for the allowance of a guinea per
month for each religious, which in common with so many other
of our fellow- sufferers, we have received from Government ever
since our arrival in our native country ; and we shall always
think ourselves under an additional obligation of praying for
the welfare of England.
We had not been long settled at Woolton before Edwd.
Constable, of Burton, and Francis Sheldon, of Wycliffe, Esquires,
honoured us with a visit, to see their Aunt in particular, but
paid great attention to the community in general — many one
of whom were old acquaintance to them both. They brought
with they a French priest, to whom Mr. Constable allowed forty
pounds a year. As we had no Mass nearer than Mr. Brfcwer's
Chapel, he offered to leave him at Woolton, which we joyful
accepted of; and he has since that time remained with us. To
help the community in general. Mr. Constable also gave an al-
lowance of ;£6o per annum. It is paid quarterly and we have
reason to hope it will not be withdrawn till something falls out
to enable the community to live without it.
-
7-] Some victims of the revolution 345
appendix.
The following letters, written after the Community reached
England, will be of interest and bear out what the " Narrative"
f Dame Ann-Teresa Partington has already stated :
First. A letter from Dame Ann-Joseph Knight to her brother,
Alexander Knight, Esq., of Sixbill Grange, Lincolnshire.
London, May 5, 1795.
Dear Brother: I have just a moment quiet to let you
:now I am safe arrived after a great deale of mortification and
rouble, but hope God Almighty will help us through. All I
lave to depend upon is you, my dear Brother, as they has
tript us of all intirely ; but at the same time there are
nany much worse off, as there are many gone to the next
vorld and we were affraid of it. I must now beg the favour
>f you to come here as soon as you possibly can ; I don't
mow the name of the inn we are at, but Mr. Bennet will tell
rou. I am affraid you have not heard of the death of my dear
\unt about a year agoe, after attending me in a long illness.
They could not tell me of her death for some time after. I
von't say any more of all that now, as I feel more than I can
:xpress; and the goodness I have allways received from you
□akes me depend upon a little quiet before the last moment.
am tollerably well, thank God ! and hope to be still some
ittle service to you and family, which I shall be happy to doe
,5 long as I am able. All thanks kind to my Str. and chii-
iren. I hope you will be here soon.
I am, Your ever affectionate and loving Ster,
Elizabeth Knight.
Second. To the same, from Ann Taylor, a friend in London.
9th May, 1795.
My dear Friend: I have this moment brought your Sister
her " Mistress," • as she calls her, to my house. I under-
tand the lady is Aunt to Mr. Constable. They are better than
ould have been expected after the uncertain state they have
>een in, and the fatigue of a voyage and journey. Your Sister
esires to inform you that they are to go to Lancashire as soon
s possible, and hopes you will be in Town before they go, as
he says she must go when the rest does. . . . etc., etc.
• Dame Frances Sheldon, aged 75, *hom she tenderly loved.
346 Some Victims of the Revolution [June,
Third. To the same from Mr. Henry Robinson, London,
who writes on May 9, replying to Mr. Knight's inquiries:
" I was this morning favor'd with yours of the 7th inst.,
and in consequence made enquiries after the ladies of Cam-
bray, whom I find are at present very comfortably situated at
No. 2 Hereford Street, a House belonging to Lady Bucking,
ham, which her Ladyship is so good as to let them have free
from any expense. This being the case, I have advised Mrs.
Dunn & Taylor to let your Sister remain with the rest of the
Community, as I understand they are to set out for Lancashire
on Monday or Tuesday next. I have two of these poor un-
fortunate Ladies in my House at present ; they are part of
those from Dunkirk, relations of Mrs. Robinson's. The dis-
tresses these poor creatures have suffered are really dreadful,
but 1 hope you will soon have an account of your Sister being
again comfortably settled."
Fourth. There are letters, after the arrival at Woolton, be-
tween Mr. Knight and his Sister, Dame Ann -Joseph, whom he
also visited there. None are so directly to our purpose as the
following, written by Dame Ann- Joseph to a cousin:
Dear Cousin : I should not have been so long in writing
to you to assure you of my taking part in your affliction in
the loss of my dear Uncle, whom I remember very well. I
did not hear the news till I arrived, in London. I assure you
I prayed for him and recommended him to the rest of our
poor Family, which is but small, and indeed, to say ye truth,
I am more surprised it is not worse after all we have gone
through, but I won't tire you with all our misfortunes, as I
fancy you may have heard from my dear Brother, or rather I
may call him Father; he has been to see me. I can't but say
I should be glad if you were not so far off, but we may be
happy to have any house, as we have lost all we had. By bad
luck our money was placed in France, and they always seemed
to give us hopes we should not be disturbed, provided we
would make our provisions for six months, which we did and
paid all. And even the very morning they turned us out,
they came to us to see if we had done as we were ordered. I
had the keys of the great doors at that time; and when I
opened the door I saw 3 great men with clubs in their hands.
I never was so frightened in my life. They told us we were
■
1907.] SOME VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION 347
o go out just then. We begged for a small space of time, but
:ould only obtain half an hour at the most. All our linning
was in the water for the wash and our bread in the oven, and
cou must imagine in the bustle we were then in we could not
io much. I for my part went to my cell to gather a few things
ind make up my bundle, but in all my hurry I took chiefly
rags and left all that was good for anything. And we were
ill much in the same case, some of us had scarce a shift or
anything to put on ; we had one Coach, and the rest were all
carts. We had guards, which was happy for us, as we should
never have arrived at our journey's end without. We were all
in our Habits. They insulted us all the way, and even cut
some of our veils; the guards did all they could to hinder
them, but could not. We had four days in that condition, and
never a bed at night but one; at last we arrived at Com-
piegne, where we were put into a large room all together; no
distinction of people, the beggar and the rich were all treated
alike, egallite. We lived for the first three months very well,
had our diet from the cook's shop ; after that we were put
upon bread and water, and was sometimes even without that,
as they would give no one leave to come to us. Had it not
been for a poor woman who sold milk, we must needs have
starved, though after all this they were better to us than many
others, and would help us underhand, and said we were inno-
cent; it was hard for us to suffer. They even robed the other
prisoners of all they had, money, watches, and other things.
We had a guard in our room that day from 8 in the morning
till 4 in the afternoon, and could not stir out, not even for ,
what was necessary. You may imagine we were frightened as
we expected them every moment and was affraid of our lives;
but, thank God ! nothing came, nor they never was rude to us
in any kind of a way, though in the Habit; they seemed rather
to have some little respect for it. We had the affliction in
that time to loose 4 of our Family and a Gentleman, our Chief
Superior, he was a very great loss to us, one of the_ other
ladies was my Aunt, but I did not know of her death for some
time after, as I was at that time very ill and they durst not
tell me, and I really believe if they had, I should never have
seen my own country. I am affraid you will be tired of my
account, but I assure you it is all truth and not half what we
have had; we could have no recourse to our friends, therefore
348 Some Victims of the Revolution [June.
was in want of money. One of our Ladies had a little of her
Nephew's that gave her liberty to help in distress, which she
did ; but with great loss to us, as we had nothing but paper
money, which was very little value. But all this is past, thank
God 1 and our heads are safe ; but I really think it has ruined
our Constitutions, or at least hurt them very much, and I, for
my part, an old woman though, thank God 1 am tollerably well,
but not strong. The Gentleman who was so kind as to help
us keeps a school for Young Ladies a little way from this
house, and has given it up to our care, that is to teach wotb
and other things. We have now a good many and expect!
more. I hope, if ever you meet with an occasion of recom*
mending any, you will ; and I hope they will be content I
have nothing to doe with that occupation, as I really could
not, and am too old. I beg you will give my love to Cousin
Dick and Compts to all my acquaintance.
And believe me, dear Cousin,
Yr ever affectate Cousin till death,
Elizabeth Knight.
My address is Woolton, Nr Liverpool, Lancashire.
August ye 20th, 1795.
D]
THE ENIGMATIC VISION.
BY REV. THOMAS J. GERRARD.
" Videmus nunc per speculum In icntgmale " (t. Cor. xiii. n).
1 FRUITFUL source of much of the present-day
confusion in religious thought is the failure to
realize the analogical character of our knowledge
of God. In one sense the confusion serves a good
purpose. It is instructive. It demonstrates that,
d a multitude of distracting doubts and difficulties, there ex-
i deep down in the collective human consciousness a need
clear ideas about God, a thirst for the Beatific Vision. Only,
vever, by recognizing that our present knowledge, compared
h the Beatific Vision, is but an enigmatic vision, and that
i wc see as. through a glass in a dark manner, but then face
face can we control our felt need for the sight of God and
tcr it into perfection. To have honestly faced the fact that
r present vision of God is but a faint passing shadow of the
timate and enduring Reality is to have made a great step in
ir intellectual salvation, avoiding on the one hand an attitude
indifference or nescience with regard to religion in any form,
id on the other hand the tendency to make a God whose
»ge and likeness is of our own individual taste and fashion-
s'
The question, then, which I set before myself is not whether
'd exists — that is taken as proved — but what is my conception
God? To help me to state my principles, ancient as they
• I shall utilize our master theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas,
' to help me to apply them to modern exigences, I shall
>1 myself of that great student of the modern mind, Professor
liam James.
fn the first place, then, I will say that I have different con-
fons of God at different times and places. I have a dif-
t conception of him now from what I had as a child. I
different conceptions of him according as I am at my
or at my p rie-dieu, or in my pulpit. At my desk I think
^d chiefly, -n intellectual abstractions. At my prie-dieu I
350 The ^Enigmatic Vision [June,
think of him chiefly in childlike images. In the pulpit I en*
deavor to make a happy combination of intellectual abstractions
and childlike images. I hold that it is the function of the for-
mer to correct the latter, and of the latter to visualize the former.
I take for granted that I do not now see God as he really
is. Whatever knowledge I have of him, therefore, is but a
shadow of the Reality. This all- important principle, although
apparently so rudimentary, needs special' emphasis in these days
of failing faith. Men have too often identified the shadow with
the Reality. The shadow which they have been cultivating has
proved inadequate perhaps to their intellectual, ethical, or re*
ligious needs. Then, rejecting their unsatisfactory shadow, they
think they must needs reject the Reality. They forget the warn-
ing of the Apostle about thinking childlike thoughts in child-
hood and manlike thoughts in manhood. Or, perhaps, they
fail to realize that even the thoughts of manhood, according tee-
the same Apostle, are but, as it were, the sight of the sum.
through smoky glass (oi' ^j^Tpou 4v a!v(Yn<r:i).
There are, however, as I have said, two kinds of smok
glass: one that I use at my prie-dieu and one that I use
my desk. At my prie-dieu I think of God in the language and
thought-forms of every-day life. Then, when I go to my deslr,
I find that all those pictures which I have been enjoying whilst
on my knees have a certain crudeness about them. I find that
the qualities and actions which I have been attributing to God .
involve contradictions and imperfections which the philosophical
mind sees are incompatible with a perfect being. So, in order
to get a more correct idea of God, I must strip my prie-dieu
images of all these imperfections. Or, rather, I must abstract:
from them their perfections and attribute those perfections t<^-
God in an infinite degree. Thus my thought-forms about G
fall into two categories, the concrete, which I associate with m
prie-dieu, and the abstract, which I associate with my writing
desk. The Greek Fathers classified the former as xa-nQYop^xr
a^oppr^x, or y/jj-rtxa, and their corresponding science as QeoXo^
Gj'^oX'.y.Ti, whilst the latter they spoke of as xaTYj-ppi^aTa ?fiiet
or i^occixTtxi, and the corresponding science as OeoXoyfa dteoBeix?tx
The function of the one is to enable me to form as "real" a
conception of God as possible. The function of the other is
to enable me to correct the inadequacies of such conceptic^u.
Thus whilst, on the one hand, I am saved from worshipping s/?
„.
7.] THE ^ENIGMATIC VISION 35 1
nthropomorphical fetish, on the other hand, I am saved from
/orshipping a metaphysical abstraction.
The value of the shadows will be better seen, perhaps, if I
:xp1ain the various ways in which I cut them out. First, I
00k at certain qualities in men, say goodness, wisdom, and
power. Then I reflect that, since those perfections came from
God, they must exist in God. The shadow is thus considered
in its positive aspect. ' God is, as the schoolmen say, its causa
extmplaris. Secondly, I look at these same qualities in men
from a negative point of view. I see that they cannot possibly
exist in God in the same manner as they exist in men. Since
Cod is a perfect being, the petfections in question cannot have
hose limits both of extension and of intension which I see they
iv« in men. Thus I may say that God is good, meaning that
possesses goodness in an infinite degree, and I may say that
;> cj is not good, meaning that God does not possess that par-
: i pated goodness which is limited both in extent and richness.
lis second way of looking at analogies is called by the school-
ed, the via remotionis, or, the way oi getting an idea of God
r- taking a shadow of him, as found in creatures, and remov-
g; from that shadow all its limits and imperfections. Thirdly,
txiay combine both the positive and the negative. The seem-
,g contradictions are saved in transcendence. If, for instance,
:**; mercy of God seems to imply an imperfection in his rigor-
us justice, then I must remember that the attribute of justice
s only an analogy; that it is only a shadow of the Reality;
hat although it gives me an impression of something eternally
rue, yet such impression is not commensurate with the eternal
ruth. The schoolmen speak of this way of regarding analogies
s the modus emintntior. The three ways may be likened to
he methods of the fine arts. Just as a painter produces his
icture by putting paint on his canvas, so I use the positive
'ay of forming my shadows — I take qualities from creatures
nci I transfer them to God. Just as a sculptor produces his
atue by chipping off pieces from a block of marble, so I use
'e negative way of forming my shadows — I think of qualities
1 creatures and I remove the limitations. And just as a poet
alces his word-picture more by metaphorical suggestion than
Y exact description, so I use the more eminent way in form-
ig my shadows — I take the qualities of creatures and, know-
g that they are all realized in infinite degree in God, I con-
352 The ^Enigmatic Vision [June,
elude that any mutual exclusiveness which they have in crea-
tures must be transcended in the simplicity of God. I do not
know how. I only know that it must be somehow.
The difficulty of apprehending this more eminent way lies
in the tendency to regard God as if he were the greatest and
topmost of a pyramid of creatures, whilst he is even more than
generically distinct from all. It is not a question of mote or
less. In the goodness of man and the goodness of God there
is no common measure. So, on the same principle, the jus-
tice of God cannot be measured by man's justice; not that
God's justice is in any way contrary to man's justice, but that
it gathers it all up and transcends it beyond human thought
In the endeavor, however, to apprehend this transcendent as*
pect of analogy care must be taken not to lose sight of the
creature's relationship to God. God is certainly outside the
category of creatures, yet, at the same time, creatures are the
offspring of his will. Whatever is possessed by them, is pos-
sessed by him without limit of kind or degree. Thus, by tak-
ing all the three aspects of analogy into account, I can both
save myself from the taunt of anthropomorphism and guard
myself against the pitfall of agnosticism. I can say, with the
Greek Fathers, that God is at the same time all -names, name-
less, and above all names (xavcovu^oc;, ava>vuiJ.o<;, 6xepa)vuy.o<;). These
technicalities are beautifully summed up in St. Gregory Na-
zianzen's "Hymn to God":
" In Thee all things do dwell, and tend
To Thee who art their only end ;
Thou art at once One, All, and None,
And yet Thou art not all or one.
All -name! by what name can I call
Thee, Nameless One, alone of all ? " •
I now pass on to apply the foregoing ancient principles to
some modern exigencies. As a type of the modern mind, as
one who is as fair as he is fearless, I suggest Professor William
James. I do not know any one, outside professedly scholastic
* Sol evt Travra (livet, col V a8p6a xdvia 06a£ei,
Sj Tiavrov t£Xo<; 8set, y.al el<; xal zdv?a xat oiBlv.
OiyJ iv £wv, ou xavxa. IIavu>vu|Jis, xw? ce xaXlaw
Tov ^.ovov dy.XiqtjTOv ;
1907.] THE .'ENIGMATIC VISION 353
scholars, who seems to have a better grasp of the scholastic
position. The great psychologist's summary' of the scholastic
doctrine regarding God's attributes is a piece of synopsis worthy
of any scholastic professor. It is only when he conies to con-
sider its practical bearing on conduct, that I must respectfully
beg leave to differ from him. He does well, however, to insist
on the fact of the bearing of science on conduct. "What God
hath joined together," he says, " let no man put asunder. The
Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked
[he fact that man's thinking is organically connected with ' his
:onduct. It seems to me to be the chief glory of English and
Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view."
[ do not know exactly what he means by " continental " schools.
The organic connection, however, has never been lost sight of
n Catholic schools. If there are chairs of dogma in which the
science of theology is expounded, there are also chairs of pas-
oral and catechctics and hotniletics, in which is treated the
application of theology. Still, from the very fact that we can-
not do all things at once, that our training must be taken
piecemeal, that our professors must be specialists in their re-
spective subjects, and that paramount importance is given to
dogmatic theology, a tendency may creep in to treat this sub-
Iject from a purely intellectual point of view. The infusion of
the spirit of Newman has done much to counteract this ten-
dency. The strictly logical consideration ol theology has its
advantages. But these advantages are largely augmented when
'he moral and emotional faculties of man are taken into con-
sideration also. It is from the living, concrete man, expressing
himself by the aid of his illative sense, that we get an all-
round workable philosophy.
* n the light of these remarks, then, I venture to approach
■ rofessor James' indictmentf against scholastic analogies. It is
the strictly metaphysical attributes of God, as distinct
hi* moral attributes, even though they be forced on our
t by a coercive logic, are nevertheless destitute of all intel-
gtble significance. The attributes of ascity, necessariness, im-
suttriality, simplicity, indeed all those attributes known as nega-
tive, would appear, according to him, to have no definite con-
nection with our life. " Pray what specific act enn I perform
™ order to adapt myself the better to God's simplicity? Or
'tiiiliti t/Kttigitiu Eiftritmi, Pp. 439-141. 1 £«. tit., p. 445, untl «w.
T0L. LXXXV.— 33
354 The ^Enigmatic Vision [June,
how does it assist me to plan my behavior, to know that his
happiness is anyhow absolutely complete ? " And again : " Did
such a conglomeration of abstract terms give really the gist of
our knowledge of the Deity, schools of theology might, indeed,
continue to flourish, but religion, vital religion, would have
taken its flight from the world. What keeps religion going is
something else than abstract definitions and systems of con-
catenated adjectives, and something different from faculties of
theology and their professors." • These are plain questions
whifch demand careful answers.
I begin with an illustration* I go into the garden and I see
the gardener cleaving a fallen tree. He hammers in a wedge.
Then he hammers in another. And so on, until the tree is
split. If I ask him how it is that the wedge splits the log,
his answer will be: "Because one end of the wedge is thin
and the other is thick, and the force of the beetle drives it
in." He has been educated before the age of technical schools,
and so he has never studied the properties of the inclined
plane. But the science of the inclined plane is supposed in
every stroke of his mallet. The immutable laws of physics are
realized at every movement of the wedge. He volunteers to
tell me, indeed, that if the wedge were thin all the way it
would go through the tree without splitting it. But if I vol-
unteer the information that the reason why the tree splits is
because the wedge is a mechanical power consisting of two in-
clined planes placed base to base; that this power depends on
the proportions of the length and height of the planes; that
the longer the length and the less the height of the planes so
much less number of foot-pounds will be needed in order to
overcome the resistance of the fibres, he will wonder what I
am talking about. He has a practical knowledge of wedges; I
have a theoretical knowledge of wedges. If he had a theo-
retical knowledge in addition to his practical knowledge, be
might frequently find short cuts to a more extensive knowledge
of them, which with only a practical knowledge must demand
an experience including many failures.
Thefe is a similar relationship between the prie-dieu con-
ception of God and the study-desk conception of God. Neither
is an adequate expression of the Reality. The prie-dieu con-
ception, however, is more real than the study-desk conception.
* Loc. cit., p. 446.
.
907.] THE ENIGMATIC VISION 355
But the study-desk conception serves the purpose of accentu-
ating the inadequacies of the prie-dieu conception. I say, for
instance: "There is One who sticketh closer than a brother."
"' Brother " is a metaphorical term, intelligible alike to the
simplest child and the most learned philosopher. Behind the
metaphor, however, there is a scientific analogy represented by
the term "omnipresence." The scientific analogy corrects the
limitations that are implied in the humanistic metaphor. There
is, therefore, a certain danger in using these scientific analogies,
in so far as functions are attributed to them which they are
not supposed to fulfil. They are not supposed to give us
either adequate or realistic representations of the eternal truths
which they signify. The information they convey is, in a way,
positive, but needs to be supplemented by concrete counter-
parts.
Now, I would beg to suggest that Professor James has quite
mistaken this function of analogy when he dismisses so sum-
marily the value of the scholastic conceptions. No scholastic
ever maintained the value of which the learned professor disap-
proves. If our ecclesiastical students are taught to conceive
the eternal truths in scientific categories, they are also taught
to express them in popular categories. We read our philo-
sophic manuals in order to correct our bible-reading, and we
read our bibles in order to correct our philosophic reading.
Both the Old and the New Testament existed before scho-
lastic philosophy. The divine revelation was given in vulgar
thought- forms. This revelation has been translated into scholas-
tic thought-forms, not for the purpose of giving it in that way
to the people, but in order that the preacher may first have a
clear idea of the Church's interpretation, and then translate his
idea into thought forms suitable to his audience. To seek for
rules of conduct, therefore, directly in the attributes of aseity,
necessariness, immateriality, simplicity, and the other negative
attributes, is to entirely misunderstand the function of these
abstractions. They are not intended to be direct norms of
ethics. They are only intended to correct our anthropomor-
phical metaphors, to enable us to compare notes with those
who use different metaphors, to remind us constantly that our
metaphors are but metaphors. When God wished to lay down
direct rules of conduct he spoke in language which ail classes
of people could understand.: "Thou shall not have strange
356 The ^Enigmatic Vision [June,
gods before me." "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt not
steal." The divine revelation is a concrete life. Theological
science is an. abstraction from that life. Just as literary critU
cism takes its rules from classical writers, so theology takes its
rules from the life of the Church. A young writer buys a
manual of English composition. By studying the rules and
practising them he is able eventually to write correctly. But
then those rules are nothing but abstractions from the works
of geniuses, who knew no rules but invented them. The genius
invents them, the grammarian finds and arranges them, and the
young writer follows them.
So is it with theological terms. They all exist, veiled in
the language of the Bible or in the lives of men. The theo-
logian finds, abstracts, and classifies them. The preacher clothes
them in the thought-forms of his congregation, and thus the
congregation uses them. When, therefore, I come to answer
the question: "Pray what specific act can I perform in order
to adapt myself the better to God's simplicity?" I must first
ask myself what is the popular thought- form of which the
scientific analogy is the abstraction ; what is the precise anthro-
pomorphic idea which the idea of " simplicity " is supposed to
correct? I find it in John, iv. 24, which gives me not only
the popular conception corresponding to " simplicity," but also
tells me the specific act which I must perform in order to adapt
myself the better to that simplicity. " God is a spirit, and
they that adore him must adore him in spirit and in truth."
The attribute of simplicity is the very key to all the moral
science which saves us from superstition and .idolatry. Man,
being a composition of body and soul, must of necessity think
of God humanwise. But he may never forget that his way of
thinking of God is a human way. Here is the difference be-
tween a Catholic who prays before an image of Mary and a
pagan who prays to an image of Artemis. So also with the
pictures we make of God. We do not pray to them, but, as
it were, in front of them to God. The attribute of simplicity
accentuates this. The human mind, since it is human, has an
innate tendency to anthropomorphism, and it is one of the
most important functions of scholastic theology to check this
tendency.
There is, however, a danger attending the scientific repre-
sentation ; namely, of forgetting that that very representation
1907.] The .-enigmatic Vision 357
is in itself but a more inteilectualized form of anthropomor-
phism. Pure analogies pertain more to God than to creatures;
ixed or metaphorical analogies pertain to creatures rather
than to God. Nevertheless there is something human about the
pure analogies. Compared with the ultimate Reality there is
practically no difference between the conception of the peasant,
who regards God as a kind old man of fatherly aspect, and
that of the theologian, who regards him as a simple, infinite,
and immutable being. II anything, the peasant is nearer the
truth. The Gnostics and Stoics maintained that the divine
substance was indefinite, vague, empty, and formless, like the
TertulJian and Lactantius, in their zeal against this doc-
trine, maintained that God had a body, lorm, and figure. Both
parties had mistaken the nature of their analogies. Had they
known the function of the analogy of simplicity, neither parly
need have fallen into its error.
The next question is less excusable: "Or how does it assist
me to plan my behavior to know that God's happiness is any-
how complete ? " The knowledge of this truth has been the
staple spiritual food of millions. It is the neglect of this truth
hicb is the cause of so much of the spiritual destitution of
the present day. By knowing that God's happiness is anyhow
complete, I know that he is quite independent of me. I know,
consequently, that whatever action he does outside himself, that
is, whatever he does for creatures, is a perfectly gratuitous act
ol love towards them. This knowledge shows me the greatness
of the divine condescension in deigning to pay such attention
to poor me. Realizing this condescension, I have a strong
motive for appreciating his gifts. In order to show my appre-
ciation I do my best to conform to his law. The knowledge
of God's intrinsic happiness, therefore, helps me to keep the
ten commandments. And I would here pause to make a re-
mark in parentheses. It is to notice that the rejection of Papal
supremacy in the sixteenth century has found its logical issue
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the rejection of
the supremacy of God. But the knowledge of God's intrinsic
happiness not only helps me to recognize my position as a crea-
ture, but also enables me to correct a number of concrete con-
ceptions which might otherwise lead me to imagine imperfec-
tions in God. For instance, I know that Christ in suflerirg
death upon the cross was but translating into human terms the
358 The ^Enigmatic Vision [June,
compassion which the Eternal Father felt at the thought of his
creatures crushing themselves by their wilful sins. " The ccro-
passion of the Eternal Father " is a mixed analogy by which
1 endeavor to express God's intense desire for the good of his
creatures. Since desire and love connote suffering in men, I
apply suffering in an eminent way to the Eternal Father, and
to prevent my being misunderstood I call it " compassion. 19
The passion which is known in men as " suffering love/ 9 is pos-
sessed transcendentally by God. God is the source and root
of that wondrous phase of man's life in which he shows his love
by suffering. But, lest the application of the term "suffering"
to God should lead me to imagine imperfection in God, I fall
back on my theological proposition that, anyhow, God is happy
in himself. In so far as God is xavcjvu^oq, he may be conceived
as suffering. In so far as he is dv<ivu^o<;, he may be conceived
as free from suffering. In so far as he is uxeptovu^o^, he may
be conceived as transcending suffering, whilst at the same time
being the author and source of it. Other metaphors used of
God, such as anger, sorrow, and pity, may be treated similarly.
I come next to discuss what Professor James calls the moral
attributes of God. Here he will grant that the analogies holiness
and justice, for instance, do enter into definite relations with
practical life. But he maintains that theology cannot prove
these attributes of God, and so cannot take the credit of sup*
plying a solid basis to religious sentiment. " How stands it
with her arguments ? It stands with them as ill as with the
arguments for his existence. Not only do post-Kantian ideal-
ists reject them root and branch, but it is a plain historic
fact that they never have converted any one who has found im.
the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it, rea-
sons for doubting that a good God can have framed it. T<»
prove God's goodness by the scholastic argument that there is
no non-being in his essence, would sound to such a witness
simply silly." # Here a new aspect is brought into the ques —
tion of analogy. Hitherto I have contented myself with show —
ing that use of analogy which consists in correcting metaphors.
It has a further use. It enables Christian philosophers to con-
verse with non- Christian philosophers. The concrete forms of
revelation being translated into abstract forms, the scholastic
apologist is enabled to meet the rationalist on his own ground.
• Loc. cit. t pp. 448-9.
The ^enigmatic Vision 359
The function of the scholastic arguments is to convince the
reason in the case of truths available to reason and to meet
objections brought from reason in the case of the truths above
reason. It is only when they have functions assigned to them
which they are not supposed to perform that they appear silly.
No one but an idiot would attempt to console a bereaved and
despairing mother with the proposition that God must be good
to her since he had no non-being in his essence; though that
answer would certainly be adequate to the connoisseur in opin-
ions, who endeavored to show from his limited outlook on the
universe that God was not good. If I must label the fallacy
which Professor James commits so often in this matter, it is
Lthat known as the illicit transit from the logical to the onto-
logical order.
So far I have occupied myself in considering the limitations
of analogy. Indeed, the writer who passes as Dionysius the
Areopagite says that the highest peaks of our knowledge of
God "are unfolded rather in the bright cloud of silence teach-
ing hidden things, which shine most clearly rather in the dark-
est obscurity, and, in an all-pervading intangibility and indi-
visibility, fill our eyeless minds with the most beautious splen-
dors." But the Areopagite was more fitted for conversation
with angels than with men. The exigencies of modern England
and America demand a more every-day language. So, whilst
keeping the Areopagite in view, as a reminder of the inade-
quacy of the most systematic and intellect ualized of forms, I
will lay down a plan of God's attributes:
First, God may be considered simply as a being. In this
respect he has both negative and positive attributes. The neg-
ative attributes are: simplicity, infinity, and immutability; in-
confusibility, immensity, and eternity; invisibility, incompre-
hensibility, and ineffability. The positive attributes are either
internal or external. The internal ones prescind from God's
relationship to things outside himself; and are unity, truth,
goodness, and beauty. The external ones regard God's rela-
tionship to things outside himself; and are omnipotence and
omnipresence. Secondly, God may be considered not merely
as a being, but also as a living, spiritual being. In this re-
spect his attributes are intelligence and will.
This is what Professor James would call a shuffling and
matching of pedantic dictionary adjectives. I prefer to call it
360 The Enigmatic Vision [June,
a scientific arrangement of "notions" of the divinity which, in
the language of Newman, compel my " notional" assent. But
they must be visualized before they can enter into serious re-
lations with my conduct. They must be " realized " before they
can compel my "real" assent. Before stating my concrete con-
ception, however, I would like to state what Professor James
thinks our conception should be. " First," he says, " it is es-
sential that God be conceived as the deepest power in the uni-
verse ; and, second, he must be conceived under the form of
a mental personality. The personality need not be determined
intrinsically any further than is involved in the holding of cer-
tain things dear, and in the recognition of our dispositions
toward those things, the things themselves being all good and
righteous things. But, extrinsically considered, so to speak,
God's personality is to be regarded, like any other personality,
as something lying outside of my own and other than me, and
whose existence I simply come upon and find. A power not
of ourselves, then, which not only makes for righteousness, but
means it, and which recognizes us — such is the definition which
I think nobody will be inclined to dispute. Various are the
attempts to shadow forth the other lineaments of so supreme
a personality to our human imagination; various the ways of
conceiving in what mode the recognition, the hearkening to our
cry, can come. Some are gross and idolatrous ; some are the
most sustained efforts man's intellect has ever made to keep
still living on that subtile edge of things where speech and
thought expire. But, with all these differences, the essence re-
mains unchanged. In whatever other respect the divine person-
ality may differ from ours, or may resemble it, the two are
consanguineous at least in this — that both have purposes for
which we care, and each can hear the other's call." I quote this
passage at length to show that even. with the most determined
of intentions one cannot very well dispense with the string of
dictionary adjectives. And if this is demanded by the expe-
rience of one man's lifetime, how much more must it be de-
manded by the experience of the two thousand years of th^
life of the Church ? Did the limits of this article allow, it miglxi
be shown, just as I have already shown in regard to GoclT :
simplicity and intrinsic happiness, that all the attributes of G
have a bearing on human conduct. Perhaps they might
bear directly on life in its political or economic aspect.
K>7-] THE .ENIGMATIC VISION 361
an has a deeper and richer life to lead than that which is
anifest in his commercial and civic capacities. He has to
id an unseen life of the spirit, the fruitfulness of which is en-
oced by a more extended knowledge of God and his attri-
:es. But it is time now to suggest the concrete expression
the conception of which I have given the abstract cquiva-
t. a " realization " of the scientific arrangement of " notions"
;be Godhead. In plain words, I come back to my corre-
odent to tell him what I mean by those three letters:
O-D.
The most perfect and the most pregnant piece of visualization
t I know is that revealed to me by him who said: "Thus,
f efore, shall you pray : Our Father who art in heaven."
th the letter and the spirit of this prayer of Christ enable me
conceive God as kind and gentle and good beyond all thought.
id if I call him " Our Father who art in heaven," I must,
o, go further and say: "hallowed be thy name." I must
;ognize that if his name signifies all that is good and beauti-
in the perfections of an earthly father, it also excludes all
; imperfections of an earthly father; nay, that it transcends
the kindness and gentleness of an earthly father, and reaches
t into regions of kindness and gentleness, so that the mind
ich would attempt to gaze thereon is lost in delirium. With
> conception before me, I have no difficulty in facing truths
his revelation, which to my limited mental outlook may seem
cind or unjust. I know there are those who essay to work
the doctrine of hell fire by pure logic. I prefer to accept
Jn the authority of the word of Christ and his Church, and
/ on the goodness of our Father who is in heaven that, even
all will be right and fair after all.
On the other hand, retributive justice on the part of God
I its connotation, reverential fear on the part of man, may not
excluded from the general truth shadowed by the analogy of
aerhood. There maybe theologians who " tend to substitute
iventional ideas of criminal law for a priori principles of
.son."* It may be granted to Professor James that "the
~y notion that this glorious universe, with planets and winds
:3 laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and
z3 its beams and rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is
: redible to our modern imagination. It weakens a religion to
• Variititi of Riligtoui Erpcritiut. P. 448.
362 THE ^ENIGMATIC VISION [June,
bear it argued on such a basis." * Indeed, the predominant fea-
ture of the mission of Christ was that the law of talion hid
been superseded by the law of love. " You have heard that it
hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you not to resist fcvil ; but if one -strike thee on
the right cheek, turn to him also the other." f Nevertheless,
although I deny that fear is the basis of Christian morals, I must
maintain that it has its place and function therein. One of the
primary dictates of conscience is that of retributive justice. It
is an abuse of analogy, however, to fix our attention on that
attribute alone and suppose it to be the foundation of morality.
If, as theology shows, the attributes of God are identical with
his essence, and identical with each other, then his retributive
justice is but another aspect of his all- pervading, all-embracing
love. In the realm of analogy, therefore, fear, reverential fear,
on the part of a creature, must be considered as the minister
to a creature's love, whilst retributive justice, on the part of
God, must be considered as the obverse side of God's love.
There is a natural tendency in the new century man to look at
the lower and more primitive races and feel himself something
very superior. He ought not to overlook the fact, however,
that there is still much of the brute nature in himself to be
eliminated. Even Professor Huxley can tell us that "men are
very queer animals, a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stub-
bornness, and camel malice — with an angel bobbing about un-
expectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do
exactly as they please they are very hard to drive." % There
is, therefore, still plenty of room in (he world for such ideas as
salutary fear and retributive justice. It is not only now and
then that the angel must appear. The life of the Christian on
earth must be a gradual approximation to the life of the angels
in heaven. The life in heaven is set before him as the ideal at
which he is to aim in his life on earth. "Thy kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The function,
then, of those analogies which tell of the severer attributes of
God is to bring about this happy consummation. In the sense
that God is all- names his justice can imply nothing but supreme
kindness. In the sense that God is nameless his justice must
exclude all unkindness. In the sense that God is above all
* Ibid, f Matth. v. 38-39. %Life and Letters. II. P. 428.
tgO-p.) THE .'ENIGMATIC VISION 363
oairx *s all seeming unkindness must have its full explanation in
the * act that God's kindness transcends all our conceptions.
T*Jext come the two great problems which have perplexed
thr; anind of man ever since man began to think, the problem
{ j^ood and the problem of evil. God placed the tree of
yno -v^'ledge of good and evil in the midst of paradise, and under
p 3 ir» of death commanded man not to eat of it. But then, even
a s r* ow, curiosity prevailed, and in prevailing followed the trail
f tfrie serpent. Here again the true function of analogy is
l\at>lc to be lost sight of. The problem ol evil is exploited be-
yofid all reason, whilst the problem of good is scarcely deemed
worthy of notice. Christ sets the two in theii right juxtaposi-
tion, the good first and the evil afterwards. The visible bene-
ftdeat effects of God's omnipotence and omnipresence, ol his
intelligence and will are visualized in the next petition of the
prayer. As God is everywhere by his essence and power and
presence (per essentiam et potentiam et prcsentiam), upholding
all things by the word of his power, so he is actively caus-
ing and providing all things good for me; and, being likewise
present in me, he is causing and enabling me to avail myself
of ail these good things. This I acknowledge and pray for
when I say: " Give us this day our daily bread."
He is in my spirit too, moving it by his grace according to
its own nature. He moves all things sweetly; and when he
illumines my intelligence, inflames my affections, and excites
my will, he does so in a way as not to injure the laws which
he has ordained. My mind normally follows the eternal laws
of logic, although I may be unable to notice it explicitly ; and
my will normally follows its law of freedom. But the allure-
ments of passion interrupt these laws from time to time. So
God must step in again to put things right. All this is visual-
|i«d by the expressions evil, temptation, sin, and forgiveness.
Once more I must remind myself that these words represent
•nalogies only. " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
that trespass against us." This is not, as captious minds are
inclined to suggest, a setting up of man's standard of forgive-
ness as a measure for God, Christ, knowing what is in man,
knowing how man will be able to appreciate sin and the for-
giveness of sin as between man and man, takes this psycholog-
ical fact and uses it to form an analogy of sin and the forgive-
ness of sin as between man and God. I must first feel my
I
364 The ^enigmatic Vision [June,
own willingness to forgive offences against me before I am in
a disposition to ask God to forgive my offences against him.
"For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly
Father will forgive you also your offences. But if you will not
forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your of-
fences."
So also with the petition : " Lead us not into temptation."
They are hardly worth taking seriously who would quarrel with
the supposed' implication that God does lead us into tempta-
tion. Evidently the analogy is first an acknowledgment that
the external circumstances of our lives, as arranged by God,
are the best for us; and, secondly, a petition to God to main-
tain our wills in a right attitude towards those circumstances.
It is, therefore, from its transcendental nature, suitable to ill
sorts and conditions of men. The untutored mind may regard
the cataclysms of nature, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and
volcanoes, as the special visitations of God, rendered necessary
on account of unforeseen developments of nature or unexpected
vagaries of men's actions; the scientific mind may regard them
as the necessary result of the working out of ruthless eternal
laws. The untutored mind m^y look upon the lesser incidents
of life which determine our plans as almost miraculous inter-
ventions for the special benefit of the individual ; the scientific
mind may regard them as mere coincidences, yet not exclude
the belief that they are part of a great plan as yet incompre-
hensible to man. But in all cases the same eternal truth is
acknowledged, namely, that somehow God is behind all things,
arranging them for the good of the suppliant ; whilst the same
simple expression serves the purpose of all : " Lead us not into
temptation."
Finally the twin problem of evil is faced in all its naked*
ness. Christ has shown me that God is supreme wisdom and
goodness. He has shown me too that God does permit evil in
the world. But he has not explained the mystery. Endless
attempts have been made at this explanation, though all, even*
tually, have to fall back on faith in God's goodness. Apolo-
gists disagree only as to the precise point where this act of
faith must come in. Christ does not explain the problem ; he
shows how to transcend it : " But deliver us from evil. Amen."
He ends in the same spirit as he began. I must put forth my
will in prayer to my Father who is in heaven. I must re*
1907.] Requiescat 365
member that all the fairest things that I can dream about him
are but faint suggestions of the Reality. If I seem to realize
in him a kindness which is sweeter and gentler than that of a
father, mother, brother, sister, friend, or spouse, yet such reali-
zation in my breast falls infinitely short of the kindness which
is eternal in heaven. I find it difficult, nay, physically im-
possible, to put even a short portion of my life into syllogisms
satisfactory to my mental vision. How much more impossible
then must it be to do this with the complex life of God's uni-
verse. What I can do, however, is to trust and wait until the
great Syllogism is made manifest, praying meanwhile, with the
prayer of Christ, to be delivered from air evil. Then shall I
see that all things, even the permission of final impenitence
and the infliction of everlasting punishment, work together for
the good of those who love God.
REQUIESCAT.
BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD.
Be still and rest, O time-distracted Heart!
From Life's slow-emptying glass,
That rains a requiem for all sorrows as they pass,
The immeasurable sands are run ;
And thou, thy work being done,
Dost, like a noise-affrighted infant, fare apart
By paths oi me untrod,
To ease thy griefs with Silence, which is God.
Sleep, then, and rest ;
For Death, which is God in Christ, is best ;
Though mine be still the task of waiting and the smart.
CINDERELLA'S SISTER.
BY JEAN IE DRAKE.
riOR those who like a vacation spent in the far lor.
est, by rushing stream or undulant lake, with ill
the camping- out, canoeing, hunting, and fishing
heart can desire, together with relief from the
frills of civilization and their hampering and hin.
dering feminine concomitants, Matapunk is the place. But u
Adam expecting there to enjoy an Eveless Paradise is not ab-
solutely safe; for there be women also who fly the monotony
of the conventional resort, with its ten vapid maids to one va-
pid man in a treadmill of bridge and gossip, that they may re-
fresh their souls in Nature's fastnesses. Incidentally, the pota-
ble adventurous Adam, of virile pursuits and athletic and manly
presence and converse, is not without interest to such wander-
ing Eve. Should she be rich enough to have her own motorcar,
distance from a railroad need be no check to her explorations,
" Was that an infernal machine I saw over at Todd's Cross-
ing on our way back?" grunted one of the happily-tired hunt-
ers, smoking around the camp-fire after supper.
"Out in this wilderness? No, Masterton ; it was the ap-
parition of a red devil haunting you for your sins in begging
a lift back, instead of walking like a man and a member of the
Alpine."
" You did your shooting from around the lake. I've
tramped fifty miles easily since day- break for mine. But even
avenging ghosts don't honk. They leave that to wild geese
and wilder autos." He went on maliciously : " There were fe-
males in it. I knew by the voices and the floating veils."
"The near neighborhood of Moose Lodge is a danger," ad-
mitted Chesney; "but" — with serene confidence born of nico-
tine — " they won't get past the Crossing. This end of the road's
impossible for gasoline."
"Thank God!" chimed several in pious chorus. Then they
fell to talking of the weight of the buck hanging outside, arxd
of incidental doubts, mishaps, and thrills in getting him. Wh^n
this subject was well threshed out, Masterton rose to ries«ssrt
them for the night, in favor of Moose Lodge.
] Cinderella's Sister 367
"What's that for?" growled the chorus.
" Hot bath — to limber up. Lake's all right for early morn-
g plunge. Too icy under the stars."
" He pines for Mother Todd's petting. He has gone back
t his hunter's couch of balsam boughs," scoffed Chesney.
He is a Sybarite — an effeminate whiffet."
"A gilded youth ; a spoiled darling; a pampered weakling;
Nancy ! " agreed the chorus.
But Masterton was already whistling to his dog and strid-
■\% along the foot-trail which led to nearby Moose Lodge. A
aw, wide bungalow this, built of rough logs, in sylvan har-
aony with forest surroundings, and kept by a trapper's widow,
remally ready to make others as stout and comfortable as her-
clf, and thus favorably known for many seasons to campers
.nd sportsmen. Chinks in her log walls and open fireplaces
nsured fresh air to Masterton, who slept in any case dream-
essly, and awoke with the dawn to go down to the lake and
eturn, glowing with health and exercise, for his landlady's
amous flap-jacks and venison — the latter supplied by himself.
"Well, Mother," he began cheerily, entering the dining-
00m; but stopped abruptly, for the only feminine form there
lore no likeness to Mother Todd's rotundity. A girl, tall and
lender, turned from the window to regard him with a quiet
ourtesy of well-poised and impersonal quality. " I beg your
ardon," he amended, " I thought Mother Todd — "
" She is in the kitchen. My sister and I are, I am afraid,
: cause of breakfast not being on time. We walked over from
1 Crossing rather late last night, and we are now waiting for
companion, who will drive here this morning. Perhaps I
hurry your breakfast. Mrs. Todd, I am sure — "
*'It is of no consequence, if you will kindly tell her that I
expected to breakfast at the camp. " He was conscious of
a.king ungraciously in the shock of finding strangers — ladies
rxvading this hitherto perfect hostel in the woods. " Con-
rid it!" he thought, as the door closed behind him, "why
" t they stay where they can enjoy their fripperies and their
sbands? Perhaps" — hopefully — "we might persuade them
too rough here; or else, me to the woods strictly,"
He turned for a look, in the nature of anathema, at the
feminized Lodge, when out on the side porch stepped a
end girl, framed delightfully by its rustic pillars and crim-
368 Cinderella's Sister [June,
son-leaved ampelopsus. She was small and slight, with a quan-
tity of blond hair, carelessly pinned up, and big, dark eyes,
still sleepy. Unconscious of observation, she stretched her lis-
some form in pale-green silk negligee, and yawned daintily, be-
fore apostrophizing the landscape. " This is certainly the jump,
ing-off place," she complained, " a howling wilderness ! It's hard
on me, who detest the beauties of Nature, to suffer for them—
and I won't long!" She shook a small, doubled- up fist at the
awakening forest and water- courses, shivered in the chill morn-
ing air, and went within.
Masterton chuckled as the woods swallowed himself and
Hector. " She's honest— at least to herself," he reflected, " and,
ye gods ! What eyes ! Is it possible these girls — not over
twenty, I should say — came by the roughest kind of trail late
last night, 9 with feminine misgivings as to snakes and wild ani-
mals for company ? It's a wonder they didn't insist on lugging
the elderly companion ; and I'm glad she had sense enough to
resist, in favor of driving this morning. Upon my word, the
present-day American girl ! " He began to find humor in the
unwelcome news to be sprung on the camp.
But Chesney was the only one utterly dismayed. " It's tco
rotten bad," he protested; "a measly shame! It'll just com-
pletely ruin our free, good time having prinky — or, worse,
athletic — girls cropping up in our paths when we least want
them. Some day the masses will arise in their wrath and smash
every automobile in the land ! "
" ' I' faith, captain, these be very bitter words ! ' " said
Masterton, his own serenity restored.
" It's only you two bachelors — Mother Todd's pets— who
need mind," said the others, married philosophers mostly.
" We seldom go under a roof, even hers, unless the supplies
run low, and Andr£ takes care that rarely happens."
It happened that very evening, however, and, as hungry
hunters cannot live by venison alone, it was unanimously voted
— and with malice prepense — that, to make the scanty store of
bread go round, the bachelors should sup at the Lodge.
" Well, I'm sure glad you've come up to help amuse the
gals," exclaimed Mother Todd. *' One of 'em is moping, least*
wise. The other likes it here first-rate. Mrs. Smith, Miss Fen-
wick, Miss Hartwell, these here be Mr. Masterton and Mr.
Chesney. They been apologizin' for their huntin' clothes; bat
I guess you ladies'il find 'em all right."
Cinderella's Sister 369
Under cover of conventional greetings between the others,
the dark-eyed blonde, at whose side Masterton found himself
seated at table, murmured: "When a man's dress is the most
becoming possible, it's a pity when occasion demands any
other." She gave a swiftly approving glance at both young
men's athletic figures in tweeds and knickerbockers. " I don't
know why I wear this silly, flowery, frilly gown in the even-
ing out here, instead of a simple, white cloth suit like my sis-
ter's. That is Paris simplicity, by the way, which costs. But
she is enormously sensible — always does the suitable thing and
puts to shame my frivolous self. She is — oh I masculinely equal
to every situation.'"
She knew by his responsive glance that he also thought the
diaphanous, fluffy gown admirable setting to blond hair and
big brown eyes. He found himself dropping into just the
:ful undertone, the complimentary inflection, the delicately
admiring gaze, of which he might have been guilty at a fash-
ionable resort. If spur to this had been needed, it would have
:en supplied by certain consciousness of Chesney's envy, who,
on the other side of the great fire, devoted himself perforce to
Mrs. Smith's amusement. Miss Fenwick, easily poised in man-
ner, quietly attentive in look, sat a little apart, her face shaded
from the fire and observation by a hand-screen.
They like it pretty well here — may stay some time," an-
nounced Chesney, in the young men's room.
You don't seem as prostrated by the prospect as you
were," commented Masterton. " I see what it is ! You hope
ake an impression on Mrs. Smith. Fie upon you ! Moost
and lady-killer ! "
No answer being deigned to this, he went on: "You say
'they' like it. In this case, 'they' means Miss Fenwick. I
gather from pretty little Miss Hartwell's confidences, that her
sister is the autocrat. The car is hers, and she whisks them as
inexorably as a cruel fairy from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
ocean to mountain, from pillar to post. The little one sighed —
she was looking at you, Chesney — ' I should love it here,' she
said, ' but next week we may be hurrying to catch the steamer
for the Mediterranean. It is all so unpeaceful — so unrestful;
but what can a poor, little nobody do but obey orders? I
am just a Cinderella, myself, helpless as she was and content
enough if I were let sit quietly beside the hearth somewhere.'
VOL. LXXXV, — J 4
3/o Cinderella's Sister [June,
"The sister bullies that lovely child!" exclaimed Chesney,
with indignation.
"It seems so. They are only half- sisters; and the income
is, probably. Miss Fen wick's, from her father. This is mere
conjecture, understand."
" You seem to have learned a good deal in a short time,"
commented Chesney resentfully. " And, Masterton, I warn you,
that way you have of being all eyes and ears for the woman
you happen to be talking with is highly misleading."
" My dear boy " — mildly — " you surprise me. Southern wo-
men, I find, expect it. Others are not displeased by it. Try
it yourself ! "
Next evening came Chesney's innings, when Miss Hartwell,.
looking forth into the night, murmured : " How I should love
to go a little way on that trail by starlight ! "
" We have been all day out doors," said Miss Fenwick dig.
couragingly.
But he was quick to profit by their chaperon's easy-going
indulgence; and had the felicity of holding a soft white hand
in his descending from the porch, and having it laid confidingly
on his arm at the shadowy entrance to the woods.
" This is the way to your camp, is it not ? " she asked.
" How bright the starlight is! I wish — I wish we dared go as
far as the camp."
" Why not ? "
Her soft voice grew a little tremulous : " Martia will not
hear of it, I know — just because I want it! Oh, no, no; I
didn't mean to say that — it sounds unkind. But she is so se-
verely proper — and — and hardly ever wants to do anything I
wish ; she is a little — well — repressive."
" I'll ask her," in valiant championship.
Miss Fenwick — following, perforce, with Masterton — had
scarcely spoken ; for, indeed, the vibrant mystery of woods and
stars held both in thrall. " No, thank you ; I do not need your
arm, since you were so thoughtful as to bring the lantern.
What is it, Grace ? Oh, I think not. They might not like it."
" They'd be delighted," averred Chesney, with cordial un-
truth.
A fleeting smile lighted Miss Fenwick's clear eyes, played
an instant about her sensitive mouth, and was as quickly gone.
Masterton was suddenly aware, by lantern light, that eyes and
907-]
CINDERELLA'S SISTER 371
louth were fine and sweet. All the more pity that wealth
nd power should have hardened her. A bat, attracted by the
ght, swooped near her face. She stepped back hastily, but
ithout noise, and the flying creature's next dash was close to
liss Hartwell.
"My hair! My hair!" she cried musically, and tried
over its shining waves with her hands.
"Too tiny," laughed Chesney ; and Masterton hiding t
ght, the bat flew away.
" I am a dreadful coward," admitted the girl, in pretty
eprecation. " But that horrid thing in one's hair ! " she shud-
ered. " Martia thinks me a perfect goose! Am I to be pun-
shed, dear, for general idiocy by having to gp back without
eeing the camp ? "
"As you like," said her sister; and no effort could keep i
ote of constraint from her tone.
" Ungracious ! " decided Chesney ; and presently they came
pon the smoking, chatting campers. Rallying hospitably from
urprise, these furnished stools, offered refreshment, even brought
dilapidated guitar for the ladies' manipulation. To a man they
rere delighted when the pretty visitor, her charming head on
ne side, touched the strings and, in a rather thin voice, led this
r that ballad, to which they supplied volume. Masterton looked
uriously, once or twice, at the other reluctant guest, easy enough
ow in desultory talk ; and when a restrained contralto enriched
he chorus, he was again aware of her. It was, inevitably, she
fho resisted general protest at early leave-taking.
"What a picture the little girl made in the group among
lie tents and the camp-fire!" said Chesney afterwards, "and
.'hat an appealing little look at the masterful sister's dragging
er off. Even a fortune need not make one selfish and severe
/ith a charming child like that."
"It was late enough," said his friend indifferently, "and all
f us strangers, with no chaperon along."
"Ye gods! Masterton as Mrs. Grundy!" jeered Chesney,
What miracle is this?"
Miss Fenwick maintained her character for unkind domina-
ion by resisting any further visits to camp ; but Miss Hartwell,
>eing now- made free of it, seemed to divine when Chesney, for
istance, would be returning thither — his bag laden with poor
ttle feathered things and his sportman's conscience unpricked.
372 Cinderella's Sister [June,
" By Jove ! " he would exclaim, " this is good ! It's the
crown to the successful day to see you coming against these
gorgeous woods." He would call Andrl to take the bag while he
strolled on beside her, and when she laid slim, hesitating hand
on his " murderous weapon, 1 ' it incited such target practice as
brought him back earlier of afternoons and necessitated bewitch-
ing tremors and appeals on her part, protecting superiority and
manly encouragement and tenderness on his — thus completing
his enslavement.
" Martia would call me stupid," she would say, pouting like
an ill-used child. " She has no patience with timidity."
" She must be a perfect dragon," said the infatuated young
man.
Indeed, one less admiring might have appreciated her glid-
ing grace, her softly- tinted draperies, her eyes and hair and
form framed in glowing crimson and gold autumnal leafage.
Masterton thought so evidently, when he spent unconsidered
hours canoeing with her on the lake. She looked the nymph
of Matapunk waters seated in the shallow bark, with pretty
head uncovered and white arms bare, and she paddled with
skill. This made it the stranger that once, when they met her
sister crossing the lake with swift, strong stroke, she should
grow nervous apparently, and upset the canoe. It was fortu-
nately in a place not deep, and he found himself on the bank
holding a laughing, trembling, dripping creature, who presently
bit a quivering lip, and said to her sister: "I couldn't help it,
Martia. Don't scold; me yet, please. I — I can't bear it just
now. Let me get home first and change my wet things."
He was wonderingly conscious of a wave of crimson across
Miss Fenwick's face and neck ; of the quick, impetuous word,
instantly controlled into a quiet: "Yes; the sooner the better 1
You may take cold. I will have a change ready," and left them.
While he wrapped his coat about the water-nymph, she raised
soft eyes — moist with hurt feeling or the lake — to whisper ap-
pealingly : "She — she is sometimes hard on poor me. Because
she is so strong in mind and body — she cannot understand — "
He thought he did, though not entirely certain. On one
pretext or other, the young men now spent most of their even-
ings at the Lodge, to the disgust of their fellow- campers.
" Two more good fellows gone wrong," growled one of the
chorus.
Cinderella's Sister 373
"They still shoot straight enough," urged another in ex-
tenuation.
Bets, indeed, were freely made as to which of the young
men would win out ; for, whereas this hunter could describe a
smile observed on its way to Chcsney, another would relate an
incident patently in favor of Masterton. The harvest moon, now
in full glory, induced certain gay, impromptu flit tin gs to the
porch or thereabouts, while landlady and chaperon played cards
beside the crackling logs. Masterton, hearing hum of voices
one evening in front, unobtrusively skirted the porch, not to be
an obnoxious third, and came upon Miss Fenwick pacing the
other veranda alone.
" With permission," he said, and fell into step beside her.
"Those silvery glimpses of the moonlit iake," she observed,
" through the trees — "
"If you begin that way with me, after nine weeks' acquaint-
ance," he interrupted, "I shall think two things and do one."
" And those ? "
" First, I will withdraw, being evidently unwelcome. Then I
shall know that you still consider me a stranger and a platitu-
dinous one at that."
She smiled in openly sincere friendliness. The hood of her
long white cloak, shading the upper part of her face, threw into
relief the firm chin and sensitive mouth he had before remarked.
"It was I who 'spoke platitudes,' though not 'in stained-glass
attitudes.'"
" Yes, like most of us, as a shield. Because you cared not —
or dared not — to speak of what was really in mind or heart."
"Cared not, perhaps; but — 'dared not!'" She reared her
slender height, not much less than his own.
"Come, then! I offer the proverbial penny!"
She turned toward him, and, the hood falling back, revealed
a clear and perfectly direct glance: "Well, then, 1 was think-
ing of my sister, of your friend, and — and of you, also. I am
young myself; but the fact of our being orphaned, and that I
am in some unimportant matters more favored, confers respon-
sibility. If I oppose her — she is sometimes a little wilful; yet
I have tried — I should wish to make her life safe — " She stopped.
"I see what you mean," Masterton assured her. "Such
intimacy as springs up in a place like this requires credentials.
Especially when — a greater intimacy seems to be aimed
Our elderly friend in camp, Mr. Shepherd, lAts. Sm'uV Ywa*w*
374 Cinderella's Sister [June,
at home, his standing and reputation. He will answer for Mr.
Chesney as I do. He is a fine fellow, of excellent record.
His material prospects — "
She checked him here. " Those we need not discuss/ 9 she
said, " until his chance is more certain."
Even by moonlight a blush is sometimes divined. He was
impelled to answer this one. "That, of course, is still on the
knees of the gods. When I know what my own chance is,
my full credentials shall be at your service."
Later, Chesney said to him : " I begrudge you unspeakably
saving Miss Hartwell — as she reports — from drowning. Her plu-
tocrat of a sister was more interested in the spoiling of her gowa
— for which, I judge, she pays. I'd give — yes, the contract for-
the Easton Bridge, to know how you stand with her since."
" Heavens, man!" said Masterton impatiently, "why don't
you ask her? Here's the September moon up every evening;
shining in the most obliging manner possible. You have first
asking — at least, while I stand aside."
" Awfully white of you, old fellow," declared Chesney grate-
fully. Had he known it, he owed far more to so humble an
instrument as Andi£, their cook and guide, in conjunction with
Miss Fenwick's chauffeur. The latter, amenable as his superiors
to Miss Hartwell's beauty and diplomatic wiles, had imparted
to her careless and condescending probing many things he
learned at camp. Flattered by her interest, he now divulged,
respectfully but with conviction which convinced : " It is Andrl
who have told me, mademoiselle — a compatriot, as you know,
of the tongue at least Thees Monsieur Chaisney — they call
heem in the encampment Jean J., he scatter the money so—
he is reech — reech to the millions ! Oh, many ! They joke
about the reechness, and call him Croesus, also."
Thus rumor, founded upon Chesney's habit of indiscriminate
tipping, and a slight confusion of names, lent its aid to Ches-
ney's eloquence, poured into a pretty, calculating ear under the
September moon.
" I judge from that gladsome whistle and that fatuous ex-
pression of countenance that I may congratulate you," said Mas-
terton in the night. And while they shook hands: "No, no;
don't sympathize with me. I shall probably survive it, and give
unswerving allegiance to Mother Todd after this." He seemed,
indeed, philosophically unruffled ; and grinned shamelessly when,
in camp, bets were ostentatious^ paA Vn \*\* ^release.
1907.] Cinderella's Sister 375
"It's just a bluff, we know," they taunted him.
However this might be, he seemed comfortably content to
chat with Mrs. Smith when his friend and fiancee next disap-
peared together, after a sweetly-searching Parthian glance from
the latter. The loquacious old lady, with whom he was a fa-
vorite, overflowed in indiscreet contentment.
" He is an excellent young man, Mr, Shepherd tells me ;
socially and in every way all right. I hope they may be happy.
It will be so much more .comfortable for dear Martia and me!
We could never stay at home — she was so discontented. And
Martia has a fine old country place, which she loves and wants
to improve. Nothing would do Grace but going about inces-
santly, from one resort to another — Italy, Egypt, Bermuda,
Florida — everywhere there was noise and a crowd. Martia
denied her nothing, and I've often told her that it was a mis-
take. But she felt that Fate had been unjust to her sister,
and she must make it up to her. She has only opposed her
once or twice abroad, when she nearly married some barons and
counts who thought she was the heiress; and Martia stood be-
tween her and the scamps, with the greatest coolness and dig-
nity, I will say, for such a girl. Grace was indignant because
I fell ill at the Springs, and Martia would have me come here
for the quiet and rest; but Grace grew reconciled when she
found some m — people here ; and then she made her sister
break an engagement we had at a friend's house, to stay on
here. As for the bills her sister pays t And she's not a bit
grateful for Mania's constant thought — " She ceased here, in
consternation at her own disclosures.
He went after a while to where Miss Fenwick walked, and
paced beside her, until she turned as silently in question. "I
didn't want to begin with platitudes; and was arranging howl
might venture what I desired," he said. " Chesney's chance has
proved good. Mine is still to be tried. My chance, unworthy as
I am — my chance with you, dearest of women ! No other has
ever concerned me. From the first few days, when I courted your
clear, candid gaze, when I marked your instinctive appreciation
of noble issues, your fine and delicate sense of truth and honor,
your careful and generous forbearance when much tried — "
"Oh!" — breathlessly — "that need not be mentioned."
" I do so for love of justice — and you."
"I thought that you — that she — "
Not for a moment. Only, at first, it seemed presumptu-
376 Cinderella's Sister [June.
ous -as to woo Diana's self, to offer small banalities to one
finer, freer, more apart and intrenched in girlish pride than
most. Even now, I lack words to tell how you have come to
fill my heart. If I dared hope — "
"It is so strange," she said, still withdrawn, "but I will not
deny that I have sometimes thought she could hardly appre-
ciate — If this was unsisterly — "
" Oh, ' unsisterly,' " he laughed in tender flouting. " Eyes
and ears might have been deluded, but love gave intuition
from the first. If he could but teach me to woo— and win—*
The hum of their voices may have reached the other side.
for Miss Hartwell floated toward them, Chesney in attendance,
She looked quickly from one to the other, and there was, per-
haps, a hint of sharpness in her silvery tones: " Is the moon sof-
tening you to romance at last, Martia? I find it chilly, myself."
" Go in then, dear, it is warm and cosy by the fire."
Miss Hartwell shrugged her graceful shoulders : " I suppose
Cinderella would best obey her eldets and betters before twelve
o'clock ; or she may be reduced to her native rags." The sharp-
ness in her voice was well accentuated now.
When she had gone Masterton said, with seeming . irrele-
vance: "She, perhaps, knows that Chesney, though talented, is
rather a poor man, yet — "
" She may know it — now," said Martia, raising troubled
eyes. Then — firmly — " I shall be twenty- one next month. Part
of mine shall be hers "
"She is a confirmed egotist" — he laughed — "and will al-
ways abuse your kindness. But you may give her all, for me
— if I may have Cinderella's sister. It would be an unworthy
plea to tell you that I am owner of the fortune I have heard
credited to him. This hand, love, outweighs it richly — "
" His coolness, then, was not a bluff," the camp chorussed,
upon receipt of a second piece or news.
" He is getting a fine — an exceptional girl," pronounced Mr*
Shepherd, "Chesney's pretty little flirt is just a — a cuddlesome
cat."
" Why, Shepherd ! haven't we heard that she's an ill-treated
little Cinderella ? And everybody knows how haughty and proud
and selfish and cruel the step-sisters were!"
" Yes, everybody knows," chimed the others — "everybody
except Masterton."
ELIGIOUS SPIRIT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT.
BY JOHN F. FENLON, D.D.
F thinking Christians should endeavor to agree
upon the definition of the true religious spirit,
their failure, most probably, would be as strik-
ing as it usually has been in attempted agree-
ments; yet there are, perhaps, certain character -
bis spirit which the great majority would regard as
o its correct description. It would first be necessary
wever, to distinguish between the true religious spirit
rue religion ; assuming, of course, as is allowable here,
i is on earth a religion rightly regarded as the true
e doctrine, peculiar spirit, cult, and organization real-
/inely revealed idea of religion. One may belong, as
ss it, to this true religion and believe in it, yet have
>irit, nor have, in any right sense, a true religious
i one may, on the other hand, have a true religious
yet adhere to a form of religion very different from
•ne. Still, there can be, as we shall see, but one true
spirit. When, therefore, it is found in imperfect and
e forms of religion, it is then derived from the ele-
true religion which they contain. This spirit, always
the same, has not precisely the same tone and em-
ail religions, much less in all religious men ; its per-
>o, varies with individuals, while, as the animating
cult, it is possessed only by the one true religion in
and fullness.
I.
we come to examine that condition and attitude of
and will of man which we call the religious spirit,
st of all that it grows out of certain beliefs or dog-
>resupposes a belief in a personal God, the Creator of
; in his greatness, too vast for human comprehension ;
vidence, preserving and ruling the world and guiding
378 The Religious Spirit [June, '
the affairs of men ; in his influence over the soul, and the soul's
ability, through prayer, to have access to him and intercourse
with him ; in his holiness and justice, which demand a just and
holy manner of life in his rational creatures, and are the source
of the approval or disapproval with which he regards then.,.
These conceptions of the mind regarding the First Source ol
all things produce, in a true soul, a sense of dependence upo*^
that Supreme Being; a sense of humility before his incompre^
hensible greatness ; a sense of trust in his kind providence aa^j
of gratitude upon the experience of it; a sense of reverenc^
for his goodness and holiness, of the soul's own need of hol|^
ness and goodness, and, when it has failed, of sinfulness in t^ fe
sight of that holiness and of sorrow upon incurring the disap^
proval of that goodness. Mingled with these feelings, or re^
suiting from them, would be that sentiment of the soul whici*^
we call love of God, varying almost infinitely, according tc^»
the soul, in purity and intensity.
All these elements, fusing together, produce that spirit i
the soul which is the correct attitude, and the only correct a
titude, to be taken by the creature towards his Creator. Eaci
and all flow necessarily from that relationship ; remove one, an
immediately the soul places itself in a false position. It is
course impossible, within the limits of this article and consistent
with its purpose, to develop the proof of this assertion; but 9
fuller statement of it will throw light on the main idea we seelc
to convey.
Atheism and agnosticism, then, are the denial of religion and
the death of the religious spirit. Pantheism, too, by all who
believe in a personal God, will be regarded as powerless in it-
self to put the soul in its true position towards the real power
behind the universe. Sentiments of dependence, like those we
feel towards sun and air and earth ; of awe and wonder, as a
thunder storm or a vast mountain peak rising above the clouds
might inspire ; of admiration and delight, such as a beautiful
scene or picture might evoke ; of communion, like a poet's
feelings towards nature ; these, and other sentiments akin to
them, may flow from a pantheistic creed, as we find them, to
take a familiar instance, in Carlyle's attitude towards the im-
mensities and the eternities; or, to take a more humble one,
in the Scotch peasant who every morning, gazing on his na-
tive hills, bared his head to the beauty of the universe. But
the Old Testament 379
this, to Christians at least, is merely poetry, not religion;
all pervading soul of the world has neither intelligence nor
to help, and, if we endow it with these powers, we have
personal and no longer a pantheistic God. Man must feel
*t his prayers can be heard and granted, that there is some
e behind the veil of nature to reverence and love, before he
n attain the true religious spirit.
The Deist, though believing in a personal God, is even fur-
ier removed from the true spirit than the Pantheist, whose
Htiments, at least, are partly correct though not referred to
teir rightful Object. True it is, the Deist may adore him whom
I prefeis to speak of as the Supreme Being, or the Divine
chitcct of the world; but his adoration, cold and pale as
.■nbeams, can scarcely be distinguished from the contempla-
Lof an abstract idea that gives unity and symmetry to one's
ghts. He believes in a God that creates the universe and
-V_ abdicates his sovereignty in favor of inexorable laws, phy-
II and moral ; that hears but heeds not his children, and
■ws them neither care nor love. Purely intellectual, Deism
morally and spiritually powerless, ihe mere ghost of a re-
Von.
The belief in Providence, then, which the Deist rejects, is
isential to any worthy conception of the Deity, and to the
ultivation of the religious spirit in man. When the belief ger-
linates, then the religious spirit begins in its root feeling, the
tnse of dependence. Fostered in primitive man, ignorant of
hystcal laws, by the apparent caprices of nature, or of the
ower working through it, this feeling is smiled at by the over-
ise philosopher ; it is experienced, however, and purified by
ic enlightened religious mind, which sees the will of God su-
reme in all the laws of nature, however unchanging they may
:em or be. In itself, nevertheless, the sense of dependence,
lough religious inasmuch as it recognizes dependence on a
eing above nature, has not a truly ethical character till the soul
>nceives that Being as the realization of its highest ethical
ieals, and at the same time recognizes something, at least, of
s own moral needs. The religious spirit begins to be its true
:lf when it admits the necessity of loyalty to the Voice within
ljoining, with the accent of authority, the choice of the good
id the rejection of the evil. It develops along religious and
ot merely ethical lines, according as it recognizes and follows
380 THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT [June,
as its standard the will of God. It does not allow the ethical
spirit to separate and form an independent life, like those phi.
losophers who acknowledge the sovereignty of God as the sprinj
of morality but, taking no further account of it, proceed to con.
struct their moral systems. The religious spirit is ethical, be
cause God is just and holy ; and its ethics, even if adopted 01
merely natural grounds, always remains religious, because mora
conduct consists, for it, simply in realizing in act the will o
God.
The soul, then, that is informed by the religious spirit find
its moral exemplar in the holiness of God. In the soul of ma
self- contemplation is disturbed by the sight of so much offensiv
to that holiness and by the sense, even in its purest moment!
of the infinite distance between it and transcendent purity
This twin feeling of humility and sinfulness is the special char
acteristic of the true religious spirit of man. The philosophy
indeed, recognizes the sublimity of the moral law and hi^oir
failure to reach the ideal; but failure is universal and his oir
instance does not disturb him. The religious man, on the con
trary, feels his degradation before the eye of all- seeing holi
ness, a sense of disquiet and apprehension upon the commissio
of a sinful act, of the loss or diminution, at least, of divin
favor, which is followed, if he be heedful of religious prompl
ings, by grief, regret, change of heart, and the regaining of divir
favor. This sense of accountability to God, of sin, of grief, ai
the true signs of the working of the religious spirit in man.
This analysis of the soul's attitude towards God, the natur
result of its realizing, on the one hand, God's sovereignty an
holiness, and, on the other, its own dependence and the mor
facts of its nature, will be accepted, we believe, by nearly a
earnest Christians as substantially correct. Indeed, it may t
blamed as giving no more than the rudiments of Christii
knowledge. Yet, ordinary and elementary as the idea may see;
to the devout mind, it gained a hold on the souls of men on]
gradually and with great difficulty, and maintains it with eqnj
difficulty. What is more pitiful in history than the panorama o
man's religions, with their mixture of good and bad, of loft;
and degraded, advancing to a certain perfection and then retro-
grading or assuming a death-like rigidity, and issuing in no
higher movement that leads to the pure worship of God. Leav-
ing Judaism aside, we may say that nowhere in the pre-Chris*
l9 0j,] THE OLD TESTAMENT 381
tian world did this simple idea of religion which we have been
exhibiting prevail as the spirit of a religion. Fitful gleams of
it appear in the religions of India, Persia, and Egypt, in the
teligion, or at least the poetry, of Greece, and in the reli-
gions of the Semites surrounding Israel; but in general we
nnd with them either that religion has small concern with
morality and is little more than a cult; or that when the soul
is conscious of guilt it seeks deliverance, not through sorrow
and repentance, but simply through ceremonies. Guilt, too,
as often as not, is involuntarily contracted, and so differs from
our conception of sin as a deliberate infraction of God's law.
However natural and elementary, to a Christian, the true reli-
gious spirit may appear, it is unfortunately impossible to regard
it as the natural product of the great ethnic religions; we may
possibly believe one or other of them, in regard to some few
points of morals to have reached a higher development than
Judaism; we cannot believe, so lar as history warrants a judg-
ment, that their natural tendency was to create that type of
character which we regard as the only truly religious type, the
necessary foundation of Christian character.
As this religious ideal, this type of character, had such
meagre success among ancient peoples, so too, after its truth
and excellence became widely appreciated, it has had to struggle
against strong opposition. To ihe thoughtless many we hardly
look for the careful preservation of a religious ideal; this one
they rebel against, yet we may say it rules over the minds of
multitudes whose wills it cannot reach. But many of the more
cultivated classes, who do not deny outright the truth of the
ideal and the need of acquiring the religious spirit it tends to
form, contrive to shut it up in a corner of their soul; they erect
between the mind and its Maker moral laws, or the sentiment
of honor and personal dignity, or social and political ideals,
which arc like a great wall keeping the conscience from access
to God. It can contemplate them, but they say nothing to it
of God and responsibility to him. Men of this type' practically
banish God from the moral world ; some still maintain a severe,
stoical code of ethics; but usually theii moral ideals are very
uneven, in some respects lofty and noble, concerning, for in-
stance, social and political duties, and in others surprisingly
low;; sin they cannot understand, but they maintain towards
certain forms, an attitude of good-natured tolerance, and
382 The Religious Spirit [June,
imagine God likewise to be very mild and benign, looking
down upon the failings of men with good humor and tven
amusement. Religion and duty, in fact, have both something
of severity in their aspect, and soon are banished, by their in.
ner opposition, from these pleasant, enervating surroundings.
Those, then, who accept our idea of the. religious spirit as
the true one, will conclude that, simple, perfectly consistent,
and indivisible as this spirit is — the natural sentiment, one would
be inclined to think, of the soul towards God — nevertheless it
has encountered the greatest difficulty in finding a home in the
soul, especially in purity and strength ; and even after it has
gained a position, the natural heart of man seems not to be a
congenial home.
II.
As a matter of history, that spirit which we regard as the
true and only right attitude of the soul towards God came into
the world through Israel and through it ialone, and from Israel
was taken over by the Christian religion. We do not mean to
say that the true and pure religious spirit, as we have described
it, animated the Hebrew religion from the start; but that, at
any rate, in the course of its history, that spirit was developed,
and came to distinguish it as truly as a national spirit peculiar-
ly marks a nation. The beginning is of little importance; the
capital thing is the degree of perfection reached. We do not
say, moreover, that the Hebrew Scriptures, even though inspired,
always bear witness to the true spirit. Traces maybe found in
it of a more primitive and imperfect religion ; but they are
only traces, while the true spirit breathes from almost every
page. The ethics of the Old Testament must at times be cor-
rected by the New ; * but for the inculcation of the religious
spirit in itself, of the primary duties of the soul towards God,
the Old Testament alone, I think, clearly and abundantly suf-
fices.
A statement of this kind, covering the whole literature of
the Old Testament, can, of course, be proven only by an ex-
amination, chapter by chapter, of that literature. Here it vrili
only be possible to show, in a fragmentary way, by outline and
extract, how the religious spirit of the Hebrews found cxprcs-
* See The Catholic World, April, 1907, pp. 57-58.
THE OLD TESTAMENT 383
sion, and to invite the reader to verify or refute our contention
himself by a perusal of the Old Testament.
It is considered by unbelievers a happy accident, and by the
devout a token of inspiration, that the very opening words of
the Bible should strike the distinctive note that gives unity to
the whole volume. From the truth of God's unity and trans-
cendence above nature, which is implied in his creation of the
universe, may in fact be deduced nearly all that we have said
above concerning the religious spirit; and even if we should
grant, as many modern writers contend, that these truths were
not among the earliest known in Israel, they are at least placed
at the head of the Bible, and were intended to guide the reader
in his understanding of the book. These first chapters of Genesis
bring out the idea, which the reader cannot later ignore, that
the God of Israel is the Creator of the world; whether or not
the details of the Creation account were ultimately derived from
Babylonia, is of little moment, in view of the undoubted fact
that the idea of creation itself and the conception of the one
supreme Creator,, which characterize the account, are Israel's
own, and the necessary foundation of true religion, They are
ideas that the other ancient religions seemed struggling towards,
but were unable to reach; and though they seem at length to
have been attained by Greek philosophy, yet not firmly grasped,
they remained inert and powerless till vivified by contact with
Judaism and Christianity.
In Israel these ideas were never mere abstractions or sterile
conclusions ; they were living beliefs, ever fruitful in religious
sentiment and making for righteousness. A characteristic ex-
pression of them, combining religious sentiment with abstract
truth, is found in the plain, succinct statement of Jonas to the
mariners: "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord the God of
heaven, who made both the sea and the dry land." Here we
have, in its simplicity, the consciousness that this belief was dis-
tinctive of the Hebrews and lay at the root of their religion
andl their motives of conduct.
If any one, however, would know the meaning and force of
a living idea of the Creator, let him turn to Isaias xl. There,
and in the succeeding chapters, he will find that idea made the
root of adoration, reverence, awe, love, gratitude, obedience, con-
fidence, and all the duties that man can owe to his Maker.
" Say to the cities of Juda: JBehold your God! Behold the
384 The Religious Spirit [June,
Lord God shall come with strength, and his arm shall rule,
. . . He shall feed his flock like a shepherd ; he shall gather
the lambs in his arm, and shall take them up in his bosom,
and he himself shall carry them that are with young. Who
hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted
out heaven with the span, and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance ? . . . Behold the nations are as
a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the smallest grain of a
balance; behold the islands are as a little dust. ... To
whom then have you likened me and made me equal ? saith the
Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created
these ; who bringeth out their host by number, and calleth them
all by their names ; by the greatness of bis might and strength
and power, not one is missing. . . . The Lord is the ever-
lasting God, who hath created the ends of the earth. He faint-
eth not, neither is he weary. . . • Who hath wrought and
done these things, calling the generations from the beginning?
I the Lord, I am the first and the last." And so, throughout
many chapters, unequalled for sublimity in literature, the pro-
phet rouses the religious spirit of hia people by unfolding the
greatness of God and enforcing the thought that their God is
the Maker and Lord of the world.
In the book of Job, more clearly even than in these chap-
ters of Isaias, where the thought of the Redeemer of Israel is
mingled with that of the Creator, is religion almost constantly
inspired by the thought of the Creator. His conception of the
greatness of God, though finding perhaps a less sublime ex-
pression than Isaias', is no less lofty and worthy in itself; he
surpasses that great prophet in giving a fuller and deeper ex-
pression to personal religion. Isaias' message concerns rather
the fidelity of the nation to the God of Israel, who is the
Creator of the world ; Job's whole thought is of the individual
soul in the presence of its Maker. He habitually regards God
not only as the Creator of the world, but, in particular, as his
own Creator. " Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast
made me as the clay, and thou wilt bring me into dust again.
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, thou hast put me
together with bones and sinews ; thou hast granted me life and
mercy, and thy visitation has preserved my spirit." This truth
he makes the motive of his dealings not only with God but
with men as well. " Doth he not consider my ways and num-
1907.] THE OLD TESTAMENT 3S5
ber all my steps?" And if Job offends one of his own ser-
vants, he thinks: "What shall I do when God shall rise to
judge? . . . Did not he that made me in the womb make
him also?" Here, clearly enough, is the fatherhood of God
and brotherhood of man ; and throughout the book, despite
the dark problems with which Job wrestles, the idea of God
as Creator, Judge, and Source of morality is the dominant idea
of his mind.
Whilst I=aias * and Job seem to have had a special devo-
tion, so to speak, to God the Creator, it would be easy to
show the influence of the same idea on most books of the Old
Testament ; but we shall make room here only for one instance
in a deutero-canonical writing, the Wisdom of Solomon, God's
very omnipotence and creative power lead the writer, not, as
one might expect, to the thought of something dreadful and
awe-inspiring, but to the consideration of his mercy and love.
The whole earth before thee . . is as a drop of the
morning dew that falleth down upon the earth. But thou hast
mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things; and over-
lookest the sins of men that they may repeDt. For thou lov-
est all things that are, and hatest none of the things which
thou hast made. . But thou sparest all; because they
are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls."
So vividly realized was this one idea of the Creator that it
alone awakened all the sentiments which we recognized as con-
stituting the true religious spirit; yet, in the order of history,
it was above all the idea of Providence, of Jehovah's special
care of his people, that fostered the religious spirit in Israel.
The fact stands forth too prominently in the Old Testament to
require insistence. In Abraham, their father, the Hebrew peo-
ple venerated one who was remarkable for his faith and confi-
dence in Jehovah, and became a pattern for his descendants ;
they believed that Jehovah had chosen them and pledged his
continual guidance and protection, but on condition of their
fidelity to his law. Their entire history is written to show how
Jehovah never failed them when they were faithful, while all
their misfortunes were the punishment of their sins. Even the
severe shocks which the nation experienced — repeated defeat,
subjection, tyranny, diminished numbers, exile — were not suffi-
cient to conquer the faith of "the remnant"; on the contrary,
* Or second Isaias, as most critics a! present call [lie author of chapters
VOL. LXXXV,— 25
386 The Religious Spirit [June,
they recognized, what history now so clearly demonstrates,
that their national misfortunes purified and ennobled their reli-
gion, and, in their exile and restoration, they learned to take a
wider view of God's Providence as extending to all the nations
of the world. The feelings with which they came to look back
upon their chastisements, and upon God who sent them, are ex*
pressed as touchingly perhaps in Psalm 102 as elsewhere.
Jehovah is full of compassion and pity,
long-suffering and plenteous in loving kindness:
He will not contend perpetually,
nor keep his anger forever.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins,
nor requited us according to our iniquities. . . .
As a father has compassion upon his sons,
Jehovah has compassion on those that fear him. #
Their view of Providence is often censured as narrow; but
we can hardly fail to notice, in reading their history, that their
belief in a special calling — a fact which is assuredly borne out by
their history — contributed greatly to intensify their love of God
and their trust in him. Israel delighted to recount God's special
favors and to see in them the pledge of his continued love.
" But thou Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen,
the seed of Abraham my friend; thou whom I have fetched
from the ends of the earth and called from the remotest parts;
to whom I said: My servant art thou, I have chosen and
have not rejected thee; fear not, for I am with thee; cast no
look of terror, for I am thy God " (Is. xli.) It is easy to see
how such a loving attitude on the part of Jehovah would pro-
voke Israel to a return of love and a spirit of trustfulness. One
has only to open the Psalter to find, in almost every psalm, the
deepest faith in Providence, and to see this faith give rise to
all that is truest in religious feeling; it is never a vain confi-
dence, being always based on God's goodness and justice:
"How good is God to Israel," says the Psalmist, "to them
that are of a right heart." In this wonderful collection may be
found every sentiment that the religious soul can experience,
from the depths of sin and almost despair, to the heights of
spiritual joy ; and each is linked in some way to the thought
• Hebrew, Psalm 103. See Cheyne's translation, The Book of Psalms.
1907.] The Old Testament 387
that God is the God of Israel, who dwells on Mount Sion, who
has delivered his people from their enemies, and watches over
them as a shepherd watches his sheep.
If Jehovah exercises a special Providence over Israel, as
Creator of the world, his Providence is extolled as extending
to universal nature. It would be pleasant, but is here impos-
sible, to show the delight felt by the Hebrew prophets and
poets in thinking of God as sustaining all things by his will;
as ruling the heavenly bodies in their courses; as guiding the
winds and the clouds; as loving all living creatures, granting
or withdrawing the breath of life, and giving in due season to
each its nourishment — a view of nature which science does not
eliminate when it brings secondary causes to the forefront.
So strongly was God felt to rule over the destinies of the
whole world, that for centuries it was believed his favor or dis-
favor towards a man could be known by the degree of pros-
perity or adversity which came to one in this life. This belief
reposed on a true idea — the perfect justice of God; but it
broke down under the stress of experience, which frequently
"Saw the welfare of the ungodly:
For nothing have they to torment them;
Sound and stalwart is their strength.
They partake not of the travail of mortals,
neither are they plagued like other men " • —
while the good seem often to be the target of God's thunder-
bolts. The anguish which this problem brings to religious souls
in all ages was keenly felt in Israel, as the Psalms, Job, and
Ecclesiastes, in particular, witness; Israel's solutions of the diffi-
culty we cannot now touch ; but this is worth noting, that
once the problem was fairly raised, Israel neither shut its eyes
to the facts of life, nor did it cease to believe in the goodness
and justice of God. The Psalmist just quoted seems to have
been for a time tempted to this — my feet had almost swerved,
my steps had almost slipped, he says — but, like an Israelite
without guile, he settled down, after the experience of his own
sins and God's goodness towards him, to an attitude of love
and confidence.
• Ps. 72 (Heb. 73), Cheyne's translation.
388 The Religious Spirit [June.
" And yet I am continually with Thee ;
Thou hast taken hold of my right hand.
According to Thy purpose wilt Thou lead me;
And afterward receive me with honor.
Whom have I in heaven but Thee ?
Whom beside Thee do I desire upon earth ? "
The race that loved and treasured and sung such sentiments
bad something of the love of God and some sense of sin as
offensive to him, it will probably be allowed ; foregoing any
proof of this, let us remark, however, that Israel's profoundly
religious spirit never degenerated into sentimentality, but was
ethically sound and sensible to the very centre.
This view of the religious spirit of Israel, which we have
been outlining, will be found, if we mistake not, to tally pretty
accurately with that which reason teaches us is the only true
attitude the soul can take towards its Maker; it is one which
criticism cannot touch, for it depends on no questions of au-
thorship, date, or matters of fact which are in serious controversy; \
it is one which is admitted by all scholars as correctly inter-
preting the Hebrew Scriptures, for it is so plainly evident that
the simplest reader of the Bible cannot here mistake its meaning ;
and it is one, finally, which answers to the sentiments of ^
soul that believes it has an all-holy Creator and is responsible
to him. Men give to Israel the glory of originating this spirit
of true religion and spreading it abroad ; but if we ask Israel
itself, the answer comes : " Not to us, O Lord, but to thy nanc* c
give the glory."
ECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE.
BY MAX TURMANN. LL.D.
JE are in the midst of incoherence!" declared M.
Clemenceau, in the course of a recent sitting of
the Chamber of Deputies.* Never, perhaps, has
the President of the Council given utterance to
a greater truth. The religious situation in France
leed, strangely and unhappily involved; for the last six
is ministerial circulars, laws, and legislative discussions have
so numerous, following so closely one upon the other,
ag such a tangled web, that it is somewhat difficult to
a clear statement of the events which have succeeded
nther in our country since the accession, in October, 1906,
e Clemenceau Ministry. We will try, however, to throw
light on the subject in this study of facts and of the text
's, often obscure, incomplete, and contradictory.
order to be more readily understood, we will divide our
into four parts:
t The eve of application of the Law of Separation — De-
;r 10, 1906.
. Expiration of delay for the application of the Law —
nber n, 1906.
. The morrow of December ir, 1906 — Ministerial circulars
ew laws.
i. Present state of affairs.
I.
ir many weeks French Catholics had been awaiting the
an of the Pope. Would the Holy See allow the Church
ince to be organized in accordance with the Law of De-
:r 9, 1905 ; and, more especially, would it authorize the
ishment of Associations Cuttuelles, in harmony with canon
.s proposed by the assembly of the bishops ? Such was
jestion. discussed more or less on all sides, even in ncn-
lic circles. Among the faithful two opinions possessed
ates, both equally full of confidence. On the one hand,
* January 30, 1907.
390 Recent Developments in France [June,
MM. de Mun, Piou, Francois Copple, and in general all the
directors of the Action Liberate Populaire, ardently hoped that
Pius X. would order all Catholics to look on the Law as non-
existent. On the other hand, MM. Bruneti£re, d'Haussonville,
Denys Cochin, and many other eminent Catholics, had ex-
pressed, in a petition addressed to the bishops (the famous
" petition of the 23 "), the desire that the Church should con*
form to the Law, whilst protesting against the spoliations and
injustices of which she was the victim.
It was not only amongst the laity that opinion was divided.
The same diversity prevailed among the clergy. It was well
known that the bishops were far from being unanimous as to
the course to be adopted. The religious press was also divided,
though not all oi the articles published were inspired by zeal
for the welfare of the Church, nor were political interests en*
tirely wanting in many a violent campaign. Thus there was
strife on all sides, often the more bitter because certain news-
papers, whose ordinary weapon is calumny, did not scruple to
insinuate that amongst the "subroissionist " bishops and priests
— 1. e , the advocates of a trial of the Law — there were some
ready for schism.
The decision of the Sovereign Pontiff was awaited with the
greatest anxiety. France heard it August 19; all the papers
published and all the Catholic pulpits proclaimed the Encyclical
Letter, in which Pius X., condemning once more the Law of
Separation, forbade Catholics to organize Associations Cultvcllcs.
The Pope had spoken. The case was settled for all French Cath-
lics, and immediately all those whose extreme and sometimes
violent differences of opinion had prevailed up to the last mo-
ment, gave unanimous and sincere obedience to the decision of
the Sovereign Pontiff. Personal preferences were discarded t<
give heed to the command of the common Father of the Faith-
ful.
This unanimity in filial obedience does honor to the Catho-
lics of France. Above all does it bring credit to those who
without the faintest token of regret, saw their desire for concil
iation forbidden by the Pope. In the first rank of these d<
voted Catholics we must, in justice, place Brunetiere, one of thrzz
signers of the "letter of the 23," and the one who had be<
most violently attacked by certain opponents of the "loy—
trial. 1 ' In an eloquent article published in Le Correspondent tl
1907.] Recent Developments in France 391
-day following the death of the illustrious writer/ M. La my re-
called these attacks, and compared them with the dignified at-
titude which the editor of the Revu$ des Deux-Mondes had main-
Gained since the publication of the Encyclical. It is well to
Tecall these lines, which will enable us to appreciate the ex-
.Ample givan by French Catholics, and which have all the more
eight because their author differed in opinion from Bruneti&re
nd had refused his signature to the famous " letter of the 23."
his, among other things, is what M. Lamy writes:
Not having signed that letter, and holding the resolutions
taken by the Head of the Church to be those most in conform-
ity with wisdom — even human wisdom — I have, perhaps, tbe
right to say that in an affair in which the mass of conflicting
difficulties left no loophole for an absolutely good solution of
the question, at the time when the choice to be made was as
yet undecided and the Pope was still silent, at that moment,
M. Bruneti&re and his colleagues acted as true Christians in
advising the course which, according to their views, was
the wisest to be adopted. And again, as soon as the Pope
had spoken, they renounced that course, and thereby proved
themselves to be loyal sons of the Church.
This loyal action, however, raised a perfect storm of in-
sults, written and spoken, public and private, against all, but
more especially against Brunetiere, whose initiative and in-
fluence were recognized in the collective action of the group.
But these self-appointed censors of both sexes, who arraigned
with such arrogance a man so great — can it be said that they
acted like Christians ? Is their idea of religious obedience
such that it does away among the iaithful with the obligation
to serve the Church to the best of one's capacity and with all
one's energy ; that it abolishes the liberty of judging, by the
light of reason, religious interests on which Authority has not
as yet spoken ; and that in place of the right to think and the
duty to act is substituted a stolid, blind, mute expectancy for
the divine oracles to speak ? Had they proved themselves so
submissive to this discipline, those who had assumed the
right of imposing it on others ; and had they made any
mystery ol their hostility to the Law ? . . . Suppose the
Pope had pronounced against their opinion, would they, in
order to be in union with the Holy See, have abandoned their
opinion with the same promptitude and in a manner as simple
as Brunetiere ?
* Li Correspondant, December 25, 1906, page 1x67.
392 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [June,
We will close this citation with the expression of our re-
gret that when, in former days, Leo XIII. addressed his ad-
monitions to French Catholics, so many Christians opposed
openly or covertly the Pontifical instructions. Had Leo XIII.
been heeded as Pius X..is to-day, France would not liow be in
her present religious situation. But let us not recriminate;
rather let us rejoice to note among the clergy and the faithful
of the Church of France this perfect union of heart and mind,
instead of the schisms which some did not hesitate to predict.
On the eve of the expiration of the delay, December n^
bishops, priests, and the laity steadfastly grouped themselves
around the Sovereign Pontiff., resolved to ignore the Law of
December 9, 1905, and to continue public worship in their
churches as in the past; to the action of the Government they
would oppose the power of inertia.
But what would the French Government do ? The decision
of the Pope had taken it somewhat by surprise. M. Briand,
minister of Public Instruction and of Worship, had always hoped
that the Holy See would practically put up with the Law of
Separation, and be content with simply doctrinal protestations.
Great, therefore, was the astonishment of M. Briand and his
colleagues, including M. Clemenceau. For several days the
ministerial press showed plainly the discomfiture into which
they had been thrown by the unexpected resolution of the
Sovereign Pontiff. Those journals, whose anti- Christian spirit
is the most pronounced, like La Lanterne or VAction % demanded
severe measures against the Church of France. They already
rejoiced in the expectation of a violent persecution of the
" Roman Clergy." Other organs of the Government, animated
by an equally hostile spirit, but clothing their sentiments with
greater diplomacy, recommended a little more patience.
Among the ministers as among the deputies and senators
of the Blocarde majority, two tendencies were observed. One
side declared that the time was ripe to get rid of Roman
Catholicism once and for all. This opinion found its spokes-
man in M. Viviani, the new Minister of Labor, who, in a de-
clamatory speech before the Chamber of Deputies, gave vent to
his hatred of all that was religious, and formulated in virulent
terms the anti- Christian programme of ' his political friends.*
He said:
•November 8, 1906.
oj.] Recent Developments in France 393
All of us, by our fathers, by our predecessors, by our-
selves, have in the past devoted our energies to the work of
anti-clericalism, to the spread of irreligion. We have torn
human consciences away from belief. When a poor wretch,
worn out by the weight of the day's work, had bent his knee,
we have raised him up, we told him that behind the clouds
there was nothing but chimeras. Working together, and
with force magnificent in its onward course, we have extin-
guished lights in the heavens which will never be rekindled !
This is our work, our revolutionary programme.
M. Viviani gave full scope to his vanity, but in thus boasting
was expressing the state of mind and the aims of his group.
It is quite possible that M. Viviani was not the only mem-
r of the Cle'menceau Cabinet who held such opinions, but
»t November he was, at any rate, the only one to express
aiself so openly. Certainly, the Prime Minister wishes to
extinguish the lights in the heavens"; but he is too clever
believe that he has already succeeded in his anti-religious
ientions. The best proof of this is that on the day following
: publication of the Encyclical Letter, M. Clemenceau de-
red, in the course of various Interviews, that, -whatever might
$ptn t he would not close the churches, and that Catholics
ild continue to practice their religion publicly. And in the
binet M. Briand went still further, stating that the Pope and
Catholics, in refusing to constitute Associations Cultuelles,
1 in no way placed themselves in rebellion against the Law;
y had simply taken advantage of their right to reject the
rivileges " which the Law of Separation conceded to them,
i no more.
Difference of opinion between the colleagues of M. Clemen-
lu was thus plainly marked. They, however, soon agreed as
the necessity of avoiding anything which might bring about
: closing of the churches, and left M. Briand at liberty to
d a modus vivendi acceptable to the Church. This modus
vendi the Minister of Worship could not think of finding in
e Law of 1905. The Pope had rejected the Associations Cul-
illes, and he had been obeyed unanimously by French Catho-
s, clergy and laity. One could cite scarcely a dozen com-
unes — out of 36,000 — in which an attempt had been made to
ganize one of the associations condemned by the Holy See.
f these Associations Cultuelles, that which was established in
Commune of Culey obtained the most notoriety. The ec-
394 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [June, Xw
clesiastical property of the parish was illegally made over to
it, in flagrant violation of Article 4 of the Law of 1905. In
order to give proof of the intention to enforce the observance
of this Law, which professed to respect the rights of the Catho-
lic hierarchy, the Government might have — indeed, should have
— prosecuted the offenders in the courts, so as to secure the
annulment of this illegal holding of property. Some of the
friends of religious peace thought they could hope for this;
but once again they were disappointed.
I will make but passing mention of the absurd pretentions
of a great Parisian daily paper, which believed itself powerful
enough to make a success of the Associations Cultuelles con-
demned by Rome. The large circulation of this paper has=^
served to make the failure of the attempt the more complet
and more widely known, although the scheme was entrust
to a man of resource and experience, formerly connected wit
the Roman Press. Lc Matin and M. Henri des Houx wer
unable to get people to take their Associations seriously. The
had summoned to their aid a schismatic bishop, Mgr. Vilatte, bu
he, notwithstanding all his zeal, could not succeed in keepin
alive his so-called " French Catholic Church," which he ha'
established in Paris, in the chapel of a former convent. Ha
not some noisy individuals drawn for the moment public after*
tion to the acts and the words of this prelate — unknown t5j
then — no one would have dreamed that a religion had jas
been founded. Within a short time .every one will certain/
have forgotten all about it.
It remains to note the final and most significant attempt t
establish the Associations Cultuelles among Catholics. Durio
the last elections, in May, 1906, the candidates of the Bloc ha
declared emphatically that no law would ever be passed whic
could be prejudicial to the free exercise of the Catholic reli
gion. But, as the Pope refused to authorize the Association—
Cultuelles, they feared that, in the absence of all associations
of this character, the Government would be forced to close th<
churches. From this moment one witnessed the amusing spec-
tacle of municipalities, composed of rabid anti-clericals, organ-
izing Associations Cultuelles, in order to secure possession of
the churches and to offer them to the Catholic clergy, when-
ever the latter would be willing to accept them. This was
done at Auch, the capital of the department of Gers, whose
mayor, M. Decker-David — atv active member of the Bloc— tried
to
-i^
*-4-C
i^o7.] Recent Developments in France 395
to organize an Association Cultuelle, in order to obtain posses-
sion of the churches of the four parishes of the town. He even
pa.id a visit to Mgr. Enard, Archbishop of Auch, to gain him
over to his views. It is needless to say that, after the papal
intwdict, such a proposition could not be entertained. The
promoters of this arrangement met with no success whatever.
M. Briand had too much political sagacity to hope to get
out of the difficulty by expedients of this nature; Rome re-
fused to authorize the Associations Cultuelles, therefore the Gov-
ernment must seek elsewhere an admissible solution to the re-
ligious difficulty. This solution they believed could be found
in the common law regarding public meetings, as interpreted
by the law of 1881.
It was at the session of November 9, 1906, in the Chamber
of Deputies, that M. Briand declared the intentions of the Gov-
ernment when, on December 11, 1906, the time allowed for the
formation of Associations Cultuelles, empowered to hold ecclesi-
astical property, would have expired. His speech, which the
Chamber of Deputies ordered to be placarded throughout all
the communes of France, was widely discussed. It merits our
attention. We will not question the sincerity of M. Briand in
pronouncing it. We are of those who, until positive proof of
the contrary is afforded, make it their duty to believe in the
loyalty of their adversaries. Personally we are convinced that
the former reporter of the Law of 1905, now minister, desired
religious peace. It was then and is still his interest to do so.
If he should succeed in inducing Catholics to accept the Sep-
aration of Church and State, it would mean a great triumph
'or M. Briand. In his endeavor to achieve this result, the
Minister of Public Worship is, naturally, disposed to make every
possible concession, especially those permitted by his radical
and socialist colleagues. These men are, perhaps, less personally
•
mterested than himself in the success of the Separation of the
Church from the State. If we wish to understand many recent
events, otherwise inexplicable, we must not forget this duality
°f interests and tendencies, so manifest in the Clemenceau
Cabinet. We shall see presently that the failure of the last
attempt at an understanding (that which was concerned with the
leasing of the churches) was due to this two- fold tendency.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
flew Books.
If the world does not by this time
CHURCH AND STATE IN possess a thorough grasp of the
FRANCE. nature of the religious struggle
going on in France, it is not be-
cause the printing press has not poured forth an unstinted tor-
rent of information on the subject. But it is the very abun-
dance of the instruction that, above all else, drives almost every-
body, except those who have made up their minds beforehand,
to despair of getting a clear, impartial view of the situation.
In the multitude of counsellors, here at least, there is not wis-
dom, but confusion. An English Protestant clergyman, the Rev.*
A. Galton, aware of the fact that, when a foreigner attempts to
write a book upon some internal question of another country m
he must show that he possesses some special qualification for-
th e task, in the preface of his work, Church and State itm
France* claims the attention due to an exceptionally well-in —
formed writer, on the grounds that, from childhood, he has been*,
familiar with the French language, and, for fifty years, he h
been an enthusiastic student of French history, literature, an
journalism. Besides, he says, his ten years' experience, as an
ecclesiastic, of Roman Catholicism, has given him " an under-
standing of the game, so that it is generally possible to antici-
pate the course of it some way in advance of the actual moves.* 1
Mr. Galton, we believe, once belonged to the English Oratorians.
The scope of this work indicates that the author knows that
no study of the present conflict is worth the paper on which it
is written unless the factors of the problem are traced back,
not merely to the Revolution, but to the period when the first
acute conflict between Rome and the French State, that is, the
monarchy, arose. Accordingly, Mr. Galton, with commendable
thoroughness, begins his exposition with the struggle between
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII., where he finds the seeds of
Gallicanism. He traces their development through the sixteenth,
century, till the growth reached its full expansion in the eigh-
teenth. When he enters on the Revolutionary period he devotes
* Church and State in France. 1300-1907. By Arthur Galton, Vicar of Edenham and
Chaplain to the Earl of Ancaster. London : Arnold. New York Agents : Longmans, Green
* Co.
I907-] A^iw Books 3g?
a great deal oE attention to the Constitution Civile, because he
believes that its character has been grossly slandered and mis-
UI1 derstood, not only by Englishmen such as Mr. W. S. Lilly, but
a [S° by Burke, and even by Mr. John Morley. He treats, with
ar x» plitude, the genesis, character, and scope of the Concordat,
aI -»d, very properly, with more brevity, the course of events
tr»*" ou 6 n tae Restoration, the Second Republic, and the Second
jrnipire. The last chapter, about eighty-five pages, relates the
campaign during the Third Republic down to the Law of Separa-
tion.
The work evinces an extensive knowledge of French his-
tory, and wide reading, confined, however, very largely, to
authors of an anti-Catholic bias. In all probability the Rev.
Mr. Galton fancies that he has approached his subject without
prepossession, and treated it with judicial impartiality. Honest
self-delusion of this sort is too common to provoke more than
a smile. The reader will not have gone very far before he
perceives quite clearly that the author has assumed as his first
axiom that Rome — the Vatican, the Curia, the Pope — must be
always in the wrong; and that, consequently, their opponents
or enemies, are necessarily, in the right; the Pope and his re-
presentatives live only for duplicity and double dealing — to op-
pose them is, of itself, a mark of lofty patriotism, and devotion
t o noble ideals. When a writer enters upon the complicated
question of Church and State in France in this frame of mind,
we may expect some remarkable interpretations of facts. Mr.
Galton does not disappoint that expectation.
A.ny man of the world, indifferent to religion, but with an
ordinary knowledge of human nature, will very likely think that
the fact of Mr. Galton having had " ten years' experience, as
an ecclesiastic, of the Roman Catholic Church," has done less
towards sharpening his understanding than it has towards in-
spiring him with the proverbial enmity of the man who has
changed sides to his former party. Everywhere he is ready to
go out of his way to note failings of churchmen and the abuses
ol ecclesiastical systems, even when these faults have nothing
to do with the question at issue. He finds that Gallicanism is
a historic proof that the Pope, during monarchical times, never
had any acknowledged jurisdiction in France. For him the
Constitution Civile was an admirably just settlement of the
Church's rights. In the Concordat the Curia outwitted Napoleon,
398 NEW BOOKS [June,
and the Pope at length obtained an entry into France, for
which he had vainly struggled from the days of Boniface. The
suppression of religious orders by the Third Republic was a
measure necessary to safeguard liberty and paternity ; the con-
fiscation of Church property was merely a resumption by the
Government of what always belonged to it. And, of course,
the Briand Law is a measure splendid with serene justice, lofty
patriotism, and tender regard for the rights of the Catholic
Church. Why docs the Vatican reject the Law ? Mr. Galton's
reply to this query characterizes his mentality : " The Pope/'
he says, "has tried to answer this question by appealing to the
'organic laws' of the Church, which he says are violated by
the project of Separation. But there are no ' organic laws of
the Church.' " Ten years' acquaintance with Catholicism has
failed to reveal to Mr. Galton the hierarchical constitution of
the Church and the position which the Pope occupies in its
organization! How far he has profited by his close study of
contemporary French politics and journalism may be judged
from his assertion that though " in the early nineteenth century
masonic and other societies were utalized by the liberals for
political purposes/' yet, "as political tyranny relaxed, these
uses of the secret societies declined. But no doubt they have
been used to some extent as centres of liberalism in the battle
against clericalism. The Lodges, as far as I know, are advocates
chiefly of liberty and toleration/' Mr. Galton has heard nothin
of the exposure of the system of espionage over army officers,
which made even the most radical anti-clericals hang their
heads. He seems to know nothing about that expurgation of
schoolbooks, by which every reference to the name of God
was suppressed. " That they (the Lodges) are deliberately and
fundamentally anti-Christian I do not believe/' Even English
Freemasons would inform him that several years ago their
order severed its connections with the French Freemasons when
the Grand Orient of France made its open avowal of atheism.
Mr. Galton's book is of considerable value, as far as it is an
exposition of historic fact. Nor is it valueless, as far as it is
an interpretation of these facts, for it provides a good subject
for any one who would study the influence of prejudice in the
writing of history. To appreciate the character of Mr. Galton's
work one may compare it with & Anti-Clericalisme by £mile
Faquet.
907.] New Books 399
In two large, closely packed vol-
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF umes* the Abbe Picard establishes
CHRIST. the divinity of our Lord from the
By Picard. history of his life and the charac-
ter of his doctrine. An extensive
ntroduction is devoted to the defence of the historical value of
;he Gospels. Then follows an analytical life of Christ, adjusted
to ihe apologetic purpose. A noteworthy psychological study of
:he character of our Lord, under the several aspects of miracle-
worker, prophet, doctor, revealer first, and afterwards founder,
of the kingdom. This mere sketch of outlines cannot convey
my idea of the breadth of treatment which every division of
the subject receives. For example, in the exposition of the re-
velation of Christ concerning the invisible kingdom the charac-
ter of paganism is set in contrast with it. Christ's teaching con-
cerning himself involves a brief review of the Messianic pro-
phecies, the uniqueness of his character is brought out by a
romparison with Buddha, Mahomet, and Luther, and thereby the
minor finds occasion for some comment upon these men and their
eligions. Besides the dogma relating immediately to Christ, the
Schatology of the New Testament is unfolded with almost as
uch detail as in the ordinary theological text-book. One of
e best sections of the work is that on Christian morality,
special characteristics are saliently set forth. The author
ttier emphasizes its transcendence by compaiing it successively,
el general way, with that of ancient nations. Afterwards he
molishes the ethical systems of the pagan world and of mo-
rn philosophy. Finally he treats of the constitution of the
Lurch, the means of grace with which she is endowed — prayer,
es sacraments, devotion to the Blessed Virgin — the realization
the evangelical counsels in the religious orders, and the nature
sin as an obstacle to participation in the kingdom.
For logical method and lucidity of exposition, as well as for
e great erudition and industry of its author, this work chal-
nges high admiration. Many sections are able presentations
t effective argument. If, in others, the author is ' obliged to
ispose of matters in a rather summary fashion, his apology
lay be that to execute adequately the immense plan sketched
.bove would require the production of half a dozen volumes of
*Lt TraJOtmdtnct di J/iui-Ckrhl, Par l'Abbi? Louis Picard. Paiis : PIon-Nourrii tt
400 NEW BOOKS [June,
the size of these. For example, in these days of specialization,
thirteen pages is an exceeding small space in which to offer a
critical examination of the morals of the ancient world, China,
India, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Israel. Nor can the
ethics of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Stoicism, Kantianism, Posi-
tivism, be efficiently dealt with in a score of pages. iOur con-
stant marvel, however, is not that the learned author has not
included more, but that he has contrived to pack so much ex.
.position, criticism, and argument into two volumes.
The work is prefaced by a highly commendatory letter of
Cardinal Coullil, Archbishop of Lyons, and an equally lauda-
tory introduction from the late M. Brunetiere. In both of these
documents the author is congratulated upon having adhered
rigidly to the old traditional method, and of having avoided
" cette methode, dite d* Immanence " Yet M. Brunetiere expresses
Special appreciation of the chapter in which the superiority of
Christian morality over all others is demonstrated, and the
transcendent excellence of Christian dogma and of the character
of Christ is frequently supported by appeals which presume
that the adequacy of a doctrine to the spiritual nature of man
is a proof of its truth. Had the author so far strayed from
traditional methods as to look boldly in the face some of the
difficulties and perplexities that trouble the student and apolo-
gist to-day — which are not to be got rid of by the simple plan
of ignoring them or brushing them aside with a rhetorical sweep
of the arm — the practical value of this meritorious work would
have been greatly enhanced.
These two volumes * are a worthy
LIFE OF ST. ALPHONSUS fruit of the years spent by the
IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH. French author and English editor
in zealous labor and study. In
fact, it is difficult to imagine that Fathers Berthe and Castle, in
their efforts to portray in truest colors their saintly father, have
allowed any document concerning him to remain hidden or un-
touched. Not only have they given us with precision and care
the personal traits and experiences of St. Alphonsus, but they
have traced his influence up to the present day in the field of
theology, in the religious world, and especially in the lives and
• The Life of St. Alphonsus de" Ligouti. Written in French by Austin Berthe and edited in
English by Harold Castle. St. Louis : B. Herder.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 401
labors of his spiritual children ; so that we have here, as a suit-
able complement to the life of St. Alphonsus, a consummate
history of the congregation which cherishes him as its founder.
In consideration of the extent of this work, which will not
allow us to review it at length, nothing remains for us but to
congratulate these two disciples of St. Alphonsus on the spirit
in which they have accomplished their task. Historical ques-
tions they have viewed and treated as true historians should,
hardly ever allowing prejudice to influence their statement. In
estimating the worth of contentions in the controversies in which
their saint or his successors have been prominent, they have
tried to be discreet. With few exceptions they have excluded
from these volumes unverified, amazing narratives so common in
a certain class of saintly biography, which now, even to the
most earnest and devout Catholic, seem to be without sufficient
foundation to be accepted as accounts of real historical value.
Perhaps the condition of the world is not so grewsome as
the conclusion of this work would have us believe. Be it as
terrible as it may, if we have representative men of the type
of St. Alphonsus, filled with a passion to make Christ known
and loved, then we need not fear. For those who may be dis-
heartened at occasional glimpses of a dark future, these volumes
will be a most welcome solace. And may they serve, as Father
Castle prays, to broaden the minds and elevate the ideals of all
ro read them.
What are the advantages and dis-
GREAT RICHES. advantages attending great for-
By Eliot. tunes, of the kind that exists in
America to-day — fortunes which,
because of the kind of the possessions which constitute them,
generally speaking, city rents, stocks and bonds of corporations,
bring upon their possessors no public or semi-public functions?
This is the question which President Eliot sets himself to an-
swer in a short dissertation." He finds that, as far as luxuries,
comforts, pleasures, objects of beauty, and heaith are concerned,
the very rich man, though in some respects he has great ad-
vantages, yet on the whole is, after all, no better off than those
in possession of a competence. The law of compensation ad-
justs the balance; and unlimited opportunities result in dissat-
• Gnat Ricka. By Charles W. Eliot, LL.D. President of Harvard University. New
York: Thomas P. Crowell & Co.
VOL. LXXXV. — 26
402 New Books [June,
isf action, or a blunting of fhe powers of enjoyment. In many
kinds of enjoyment, too, there must be subjective dispositions
and qualifications which cannot be purchased by money. The
most serious disadvantage under which the rich live President
Eliot shows to be the difficulty of preventing their children from
growing up lazy, self-indulgent, and selfish; though, he says,
this difficulty is less in the case of girls than of boys. As to
the attitude of the world towards the very rich, he observes
that the possessors of great wealth are, in the long run, esti-
mated according to the use they make of it, and in a less de-
gree according to the way in which they have acquired their
fortune. "It is/' he concludes, "quite unnecessary in this
country to feel alarm about the rise of a permanent class of
very rich people. To transmit great estates is hard. They get
divided or dispersed. The heirs are often unable to keep their
inherited treasures, or if, by the help of lawyers and other
hired agents, they manage to keep them, they cease to accu-
mulate, and only spend. This is one of the natural effects on
his children of the rich man's mode of life. With rarest excep-
tions the very rich men of to-day are not the sons of the very
rich men of thirty years ago, but are new men. It will be the
same thirty years hence. The wise rich father will try to put
his sons into those beneficent professions and occupations which
have strong intellectual and moral interest, and in which pecu-
niary independence is a distinct advantage." The gist of Presi-
dent Eliot's views is an amplification of the wise man's prayer:
"Give me neither poverty nor riches"; and if Providence were
to swerve from the exact mathematical medium, he would pre-
fer that the tendency should be to the side of riches.
Here is a thoughtful little book 9
HAPPINESS. on the subject of happiness. The
By T. R. Slicer. writer briefly discusses, from the
practical point of view, the Stoic
and the Epicurean solution ; and he rejects them both because
they are one-sided, and, therefore, inadequate. Altruistic con-
duct, religion, domestic love, liberty, the author sets down as
contributory to happiness. This enumeration indicates that the
treatment of the question is unsystematic. And with the pos-
tulate that the proper, complete purpose of life is to endeavor
* The Way to Happiness. By Thomas R. Slicer. New York : The Macmillan Company.
HYPNOTISM AND SPIRIT-
ISM
By Dr. Lapponi.
1907.] NEW BOOKS
to be as happy as we can underlying his argument, Mr. Slicer
seems not to have grasped the truth revealed in Professor Hilty's
book, The Steps of Life.
The discussion of hypnotism and
of spiritism is of so much impor-
tance nowadays that almost every
one realizes the necessity of know-
ing something about it." Thus the
late Dr. Lapponi, formerly the trusted physician of Leo XIII,,
introduces his book * on these subjects which, in view of the
position of the author and the favorable reception that it met
with in ecclesiastical circles in Rome, may be considered to en-
joy a sort of quasi official approbation. The doctor carefully
distinguishes hypnotism from spiritism; and he points out the
two considerations that have led some writers to confound ihem.
The first is that hypnotic subjects, as well as spiritistic media,
belong to the neurotic class; the second is that from hypnotic
to spiritistic phenomena the distance is not great, and very fre-
quently they are found side by side, alternately, or even to-
gether. The author treats his subject in a simple, popular fash-
ion, and does not profess to have any personal experience of
spiritistic manifestations, and no expert acquaintance with hyp-
notism. His conclusions regarding the character of hypnotic
and spiritistic practice, from the moral standpoint, coincide with
the verdict of theologians. He holds that, in practical life, hyp-
notism and spiritism present grave dangers, both physical and
moral, social and individual; that these dangers are much greater
in spiritism than in hypnotism. "Hypnotism," he says, "is
absolutely reprehensible, immoral, and therefore to be severely
condemned, if used from motives of curiosity or amusement,
without proper safeguards. But sometimes it may be admitted
and applied in public courts in order to establish certain liuths,
and in medicine as a means of cure. Even then it should only
be used under fixed conditions, and with previously defined
limits. Spiritism is always dangerous, harmful, immcral, repre-
hensible, to be condemned and' most severely prohibited with-
out reserve, in all its grades, forms, and possible manifestations;
with the rare exception, perhaps, of the study of certain mani-
festations, either spontaneous or induced in certain cases only,
* Hypnoliim and Spiritiim. By Dr. Joseph Lapponi. New York: Longmans, Green
;404 NEW BOOKS [June,
with the necessary circumspection and by persons authorized
and recognized as competent, who do not themselves participate
directly in the provocation of the spiritistic phenomena to be
studied."
Mr. Oppenheim's latest venture 1
THE MALEFACTOR. will bring no discredit upon his
By Oppenheim. reputation as a story, tellar. The
Malefactor is undeniably — and, in
parts, absorbingly — interesting. It is a tale of modern London
— even to-day "the city of tragedies"; and its hero, Sir Win-
grave Seton, is introduced to the reader as he emerges from a
long imprisonment for murder. Freedom, youth, the power of
immense wealth, and the possibility of an overwhelming ven-
geance lie before him. We are inevitably reminded of the im-
mortal Count of Monte Cristo ; and Sir Wingrave's own words
confirm the comparison. "I am a man," he declares to a cer-
tain amorous Marchioness, " who spent ten years in prison, the
ten best years of my life. A woman sent me there — a woman
swore my liberty away to save her reputation. I was never of
a forgiving disposition. I was never an amiably disposed per-
son. I want you to understand this. Any of the ordinary
good qualities with which the average man may be endowed,
and which I may have possessed, are as dead in me as hell
fire could burn them. You have spoken of me as of a man
who failed to find a sufficient object in life. You were wrong.
I have an object and I do my best to live up to it. I hate the
whole world of men and women, who laughed their way through
life whilst I suffered — tortures. I hate the woman who sent me
there. I have no heart, nor any sense of pity. Now, perhaps,
you can understand my life and the manner of it." There is
a ring of melodrama about these words, but the story as it un-
folds is more vital and less sinister than the quotation might
indicate. Sir Wingrave, after all, is not so black as he paints
himself. It is unfortunate that there should be such a strong
suggestion of wire-pulling about some of the incidents. How
Lady Ruth Barrington, a lady with excellent reason to be cir-
cumspect, happened to frequent an Islington dance-hall under
the pseudonym of Mademoiselle Violet, is not quite clear; and
the final denouement of the story is itself a bit precipitate.
Such vagaries remove The Malefactor from the field of the serious
* The Malefactor. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Boston : Little, Brown & Co.
m 907.] New Books 405
ovel (which it almost promised to be), into that of latter-day
romance — a change, however, which will scarcely detract from 1
itfl popularity with the summer reader.
Few books which have long en-
.LAW'S" SERIOUS CALL." joyed an acknowledged place in,
high ranks of English literature
ve more to give in repayment for their perusal than the
rious Call to a Devout Life. • Its very title sounds forbidding
tc» most people, who, like old Dr. Johnson, would expect to
find it a very dull book. Yet, even from the purely literary,
p«>int of view it is anything' but dull. There are pages in it
tbm«t may be placed side by side with the best of La Bruy&re.
Its strong, direct, simple style is a model for the preacher, as
is the earnestness with which it inculcates, and the vigor with
which it expounds the fundamental duties of the Christian life.
Lav is unexcelled in his ability to drive home his truths, and
to open the eyes of the man whp fancies he is religious be-
cause he professes religion, though he gives no service of the
heart, and does not know the meaning of self denial. This
little volume consists of a collection of well- chosen extracts
suitable for private reading, in which the most rigorous censor
d*J>*tatus would find scarcely a phrase to erase, and a great deal
that would remind him of Scaramelli or Rodriguez, on prayer,
conformity to God's will, living by rule, carrying our religion
into our daily business, the necessity of definite self-examina-
tiozi, the spiritual benefit of early rising, and many other lessons
*& practical asceticism.
It contains some of the best of Law's character sketches —
Muxidanus the worldly-minded man, Flavia the selfish woman,
C^lia the melancholy, Flautus the pleasure seeker, Succur the
idl^r w ho seeks nothing but easy comfort, Fulvius the man who
conscientiously refuses to accept any responsibility, and "is
therefore content with the most idle and impertinent life," and
Susurrus! — "Susurrus is a pious, temperate, good man, remark-
ably fo r an abundance of excellent qualities. No one more
constant at the service of the Church, or whose heart is more
effected by it. His charity is so great that he almost starve*
himself, to be able to give greater alms to the poor. Yet Su-
surrus had a prodigious failing along with thea*
• Htdinit /ram "Low's Serious C«//. M With an Utffodatfl
***«*oii. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
406 NEW BOOKS [June,
" He had a mighty inclination to htar and discover all the
defects and infirmities of all about him. You were welcome to
tell him anything of anybody, provided that you did not do it
in the style of an enemy. He never disliked an evil speaker
but when his language was rough and passionate. If you would
but whisper anything gently, though it were ever so bad in it-
self, Susurrus was ready to receive it.
" When he visits, you generally hear him relating how sorry
he is for the defects and failings of such a neighbor ; how loth
to say what he is forced to say ; and how gladly he would con-
ceal it if it could be concealed.
" Susurrus once whispered to a particular friend, in great
secrecy, something too bad to be spoken of publicly. He
ended with saying how glad he was that it had not yet taken
wind, and that he had some hopes it might not be true, though
the suspicions were very strong. His friend made him this re-
ply:
" 'You say, Susurrus, that you are glad it has not yet taken
wind, and that you have some hopes it may not prove true.
Go home, therefore, to your closet, and pray to God for this
man, in such a manner, and with such earnestness, as you would
pray for yourself on a like occasion. Beseech God to interpose
in his favor, to save him from false accusers, and bring all those
to shame who, by uncharitable whispers and secret stories wound
him, like those that stab in the dark. And when you have
made this prayer then you may, if you please, go tell the same
secret to some other friend that you have told to me.'" An
excellent little sermon, with an equally good ^sequel, which
would require too much space to quote.
Professor Briggs* study and com
COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK mentary on the Psalms • is one of
OF PSALMS. the most notable books of the year
By Briggs. in the field of Scripture-study.
Dr. Briggs' scholarship, in itself,
would make this volume invaluable, but the fact that he has
been more or less constantly studying the Psalter for forty
years, gives a guarantee that as much care and erudition have
gone to the making of the book as it is humanly possible to
• A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, on the Dock of Psalms. By Charles A. Briggs and
Emilic Grace Briggs. New York: Charles Scribncr's Sons.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 407
contribute. This volume comprises an introductory portion on
the textual and higher criticism of the psalms, and a transla-
tion, with commentary, of the first fifty of the great Davidic
Songs. A second volume will complete the work.
We were very gJad to notice that Dr. Briggs pays high tri-
bute to the translation made from the Hebrew by St. Jerome.
Jerome had so many more textual resources than we can now
command, that his version must ever remain one of the most
valuable documents that a student of the Psalter can consult-
Unfortunately, very unfortunately, this translation of Jerome is
not the one now read in our Vulgate, which has retained an
earlier and vastly inferior version which Jerome did not make
from the Hebrew, but as a revision of the Old Latin.
Like all other students of the present cay, Dr. Briggs re-
duces the role of David in the composition of the Psalter to
very low proportions. Hardly any of the psalms can be of
Davidic authorship. In Dr. Briggs' judgment not more than
seven can be carried back to the early Hebrew monarchy.
Thirteen he assigns to the late monarchy ; thirteen to the ex-
ile-period; sixty to the time of the Persian domination; the
rest to the Greek and Maccabean epochs. Our author also
readily admits the composite character of some of the psalms,
finds many evidences of liturgical glosses, and of course ac-
knowledges the manifold textual corruptions that have come
from the hands of correctors and editors. Of Dr. Briggs' trans-
iation and commentary we will not speak ; their excellence is
their own best testimony. Let us add one final word suggested
by this fine piece ot biblical work, and that is, to express the
wish that some English-writing Catholic may soon supply us
with a new translation and a modern critical study of the
Psalter. This portion of the Bible, perhaps above all others, it
is wherein we are most in need of a new scientific version and
criticism.
This new edition of Coventry Pat-
PATMORE'S POEMS. more's poems,* complete in one
volume, should be welcomed by all
booklovers. There is more than mere convenience to be urged
in thus placing the " Angel in the House," the " Victories of
Love," and those remarkable odes " To the Unknown Eros "
by Cavtxtry Palmare, London : George Bell & Sons.
408 NEW BOOKS [June,
side by side. So best of all can the artistic development and
the temperamental unity of the poet's genius be rightly gauged.
For the master- passion of Patmore's life and the abiding in-
spiration of his poetry were identical : his works are one long
" Praise of Love." At first, of course, it was human love, the
ideal domesticity of his " Angel " — a creature of smiles and
tears, of sly coquetry and inviolate truth, not withal too etherial
for " human nature's daily food ! " This graceful if rather
obvious romance is by no means an allegory ; but, as poem fol-
lows poem, we trace a growing union of faith and love — some-
what more of the Angel and less of the House. Patmore's
sense of the symbolism of' human ties is stated boldly in the
wedding sermon which closes the poem, where marriage is de-
clared to be
"all else utterly beyond
In power of love to actualize
The soul's bond which it signifies."
In the " Unknown Eros " the poet climbs, by the ladder o*
this same allegory, to mystic visions of Christ as the Love, tt*^
Bridegroom of the soul. He finds this all but unspeakable trucl*
foreshadowed in the old myth of Eros and Psyche; and \k%^
theme is played upon in ode after ode of marvelous beauty asm **
tenderness.
Mr. Basil Champneys' introduction to the volume gives a** 1
interesting sketch of the poet's life and an appreciative criticise
of his work. It is encouraging to see recognition of this origi-
nal and exquisite Catholic poet taking permanent form. '* I
have written little, but it is all my best," he wrote in the Pre-
face of 1886. . . . "I have respected posterity ; and, should
there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare hope that i*
will respect me."
Since Ruskin no more charming
THE OPAL SEA. guide to the beauties of nature
By Van Dyke. has put himself at our disposition
than Professor Van Dyke. He doc*
not, to be sure, emulate Ruskin in his didactic mood; nor i*
this volume on the sea # does he attempt to awake any echo* 5
* The Opal Sea. Continued Studies in Impressions and Appearances. By John £ V«*
Dyke. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 409
ol the Byronic "rapture on the lonely shore." He caters to
:he senses and the intellect rather than to the emotions. With
:he scientists' accuracy in minute observation, he combines the
irtist's eye for beauty, especially the beauty of color, and his
bovver over words enables him to turn his pages into so much
flowing canvas. There is just enough scientific information in-
fused into his description to satisfy even the Philistine who
prefers an ounce of fact to an ample banquet of aesthetic de-
scription. The first chapters are an interesting treatment of
topics belonging to geology and physical geography. In one
entitled " Gardens of the Sea," some of the wonders of marine
botany are described. Then the Professor teils of some of the
more curious or striking creatures among the dwellers of the
deep; and, finally, he pictures the characteristics and peculiar-
ties of a number of the sea-birds. In a concluding chapter he
tveJls on the pictorial contrast between sail and steam; and
s moralizes a little — who can help doing so? — on the mirror
the Almighty, over which pass a thousand moods, some of
lich Professor Van Dyke has cleverly reproduced. In the fol-
vi*ig passage we have a typical blending of the artist and the
e ntific observer which is the watermark of the volume: "The
a.i white light of the polar regions favors sharp colors, which,
; t «ad of blending together, hold aloof and keep their individu-
ty, Then the aerial envelope does not bind all hues in a
I «z3en thrall, but allows the blues and reds and greens to glow
^^ nse. In the morning and evening, when the sun's rays
£ "fee the sea obliquely, there are long trailing tracks of sun-
lr»t — sometimes yellow and sometimes red — twisting and writh-
^ on the uneasy waters. And for the twilight reflections on
= water, they are vivid in reds that are all scarlet, as the
^»«nlights and midnights which are weird in blues that are all
l ^ple. But the thin polar air, with its consequent white light,
not favorable to the most perfect color harmony. It is too
' vjde, too limited in its scale. On the contrary, sunlight fall-
* g through a heated atmosphere seems to be shivered into
etiy delicate colors that blend again, at different intensities, into
'renounced tones."
An extended notice of the Catholic Encyclopedia will be
given in our next number.
foreign periobicals*
The Tablet (20 April) : A critic of the " New Theology " con.
siders a basic point of the system — the nature of Divine
Revelation. The question is asked whether Divine Rev*
elation is internal or external. For Catholics this ques-
tion cannot be said to exist, and it is here discussed as
a notable feature of the new religious movement outside
the Church's pale. Abbot Gasquet's pamphlet on
Anglican Orders is referred to in Literary Notes. It is
hoped that the work will remove some popular miscon-
ceptions, as the author is able to speak with special au-
thority and accurate knowledge.
{4 May) : A re-statement of the Galileo conflict, provoked
by letters to the editor of Literary Notes. The writer
censures the ''confident apologist" who maintains that
there was no interference with purely scientific teaching,
and that the scientist was " simply censured " for med-
dling with Scripture, great stress being laid on the point
that Copernicanism was at the time freely recognized by
the authorities. He endeavors to say a word of regret
that the august authorities should have come to a de-
cision which is now known to be false in fact. The real
mode of apology is seen to be in insisting that the men
of the seventeenth century cannot fairly be judged by
the present standard of scientific knowledge, that the
ecclesiastical court, as any other court, can decide only
on the evidence brought before it. <4 It may be allowed
that the truth' here in question has no direct connection
with Catholic doctrine. But, in spite of Kingsley's as-
sertion, we had hoped that truth for its own sake was a
virtue with the Catholic clergy." On the 17th of
April the Pope delivered in public consistory an allocu-
tion on Liberal Catholicism which some think the most
important pronouncement of his pontificate. His Holiness
said that a school of writers exists within the Church,
whose works, ranging in scope from asceticism to fiction,
are a covert denial of Catholicism. These men, though
concealing their meaning beneath cloudy words, are dis-
37-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 41 1
sem mating not only one heresy, but the poison and
venom of all heresy. They will end in annihilating Chris-
tianity. The Pope ended with calling upon the cardinals
to crush this new Catholicism with severe ecclesiastical
censures.
f Month (May): Father Sydney F. Smith maintains that Mr.
Campbell, in his "New Theology," while professing not
to reject the ancient creeds of the Christian Church, but
rather to interpret them to the modern world, does, in
fact, repudiate, not only the form but likewise the essen-
tial principles of nearly every Christian dogma. Mr.
Marcus K. Ambrose writes a sketch of the life of Ferdi-
nand Brunetiere and reviews The Utilization of Positiv-
ism, the only portion that has yet been published of
the apologetical work on which Brunetiere was engaged
at the time of his death. Under the title of " A
Royal Recluse " the Countess de Courson relates the story
of the life at court, and later in a Carmelite convent,
of Princess Louise, the youngest daughter of Louis XV.
An article of especial interest to students of history
is, " Further Light on Oates' Plot," being a review, by
Mr. Alfred Marks, of documents published in January by
the Historical Manuscript Society.
'. Church Quarterly Review (April) : This number contains
a brief history of the Review from the time of its found-
ing (1875) down to the present An article entitled
"Ecclesiastical Courts" is devoted to an examination of
the findings of the Royal Commission.- A paper on
"New College and Kings" shows how those two insti-
tutions have for almost half a century successfully met
the emergencies they were called upon to face, and
adapted themselves to new conditions and new needs
while preserving what was good in their traditions.
Some idea of the history of Westminster Abbey, and of
the materials at hand for a fuller and more up-to-date
history of that old institution, is given by J. Armitage
Robinson. C. E Floystrup points out some points of
similarity and contact between the Church of Denmark
and the Church of England, but thinks that the doctrine
of Apostolic succession is an insurmountable barrier to
the full intercommunion of the two national churches.
I
2 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jun<
E. W. Watson believes that attempts to discred
the traditional history of monasticism have been trium
phantly refuted by the patient work of exact scholar
most notable of whom is Abbot Butler. An interes
ing article on " London Home Industries " gives son
notion of some practical attempts that are being mac
to better the condition of London women engaged i
the sweated trades.
The Dublin Review (April): The Bishop. of Limerick discussi
the various proposals for the solution of the Irish Un
versity question. The alternatives in Catholic favor an
(i) ''The University of Dublin, which now contains butoi
college, Trinity College, to be made a national Univc
versity, embracing Trinity College, the Queen's Collcg
of Belfast and Cork, perhaps also Galway, and the (Cath
lie) University College in Dublin. This plan is favor
by Fr. Delany, S.J. The bishop considers that 1
Delany's opinion may be treated as merely personal; I
The other plan, which is strongly urged by the bish<
is that, instead of the present University College, unc
Jesuit management, a new College for Catholics sho
be established and included, with Trinity and the Que*
Colleges, in the national University Father Vin<
McNabb, "The Future of the Free Church," expr<
his satisfaction with the present movement of feden
among the Nonconformist churches, as a manifestatit
their devotion to dogmatic Christianity. An uns
article, whose paternity is not doubtful, answers
criticisms passed on a former article — " For Truth
Life." The writer of it, touching upon Baron
Hugel's recent strictures on the pronouncement
Biblical Commission concerning the Mosaic author
the Pentateuch, says: u From our own knowledge
not think that what is practically taught in the
ries on the subject of the Mosaic authorship of t
tateuch would greatly distress Baron Von Hiigel.
A Professor at one of our leading seminaries
country said to the present writer : ' If you wan
Ac conclusions, you must go to the Universities
crees of a Roman Congregation, ratified by the
from the nature of the case, largely diplomatic.' '
907.] Foreign Periodicals 413
Adam Hamilton revives some interesting items concern-
ing Buckfast Abbey, disinterred from a mediaeval chroni-
cle. An interesting paper from -" St. Cyres" presents
the Precituses in a very favorable light, " whatever else
they did the precieuses taught their young countrywomen
to respect themselves, as a first step towards exacting
some measure of respect from the men. And that was
no small service to France — and, indeed, to the world
at large." Professor Windle discusses De Vries and
his biological theory of mutations. The eminent physi-
cian. Dr. Collingwood, defends vivisection, and does not
spare the anti-vivisectionist's. An English Protestant
lady, long resident in France, writes with knowledge on
the Anti- clerical campaign, and severely arraigns the
Government. The recent triumph of the Central party,
its antecedents and its probable results, are the subject
of a brief but well-considered paper.
CZorrespondant (10 April): Apropos of the present reign of
Atheism in France, Eugene Tavernier writes a lengthy
article. Scientists, when they refuse to acknowledge God,
are obliged to bow before a deified nature. They talk
of ideals, conscience, nature, but these words can have
no meaning for them. The great defect in atheistic
morals lies, he writes, in the fact that they have not a
sufficient sanction. George Grosjean contributes an
article on " The Right of Married Women to the Product
of Their Labor." Statistics taken in 1S96 in France
show that there were 6,672,506 women at work, whose
salaries amounted to 3,120 francs. To this money the
married women had no rights, but must on demand turn
it over to their husbands. Is this iniquity to go on for-
ever ? Other countries have solved the problem, why
should not France do so ? A remedy must be had, but
it is not in absolute and complete economical indepen-
dence. It is evident that whatever reform there will be
must be actuated more by the welfare of society than by
the notion of exalting feminine personality.
(25 April): The Reign of Charles III. of Spain, a new
historical work of Francois Rousseau, receives a lengthy
notice. This work fills a long-felt want. It is a scholar-
ly production, showing signs of patient research amongst
4H FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jut* e
books, and in the archives of Paris, London, and Madrid^
There is something new on such worn-out subjects as th^
Jesuit question, the election of Clement XIV., and th^
relations of Spain and England.
Annates de Philosophic Chretienne (April) : M. J. Segond exam
ines the last posthumous work of OlM-Laprune, Reaso^m-
and Rationalism, and incidentally touches on the role o 4
OH£-Laprune as one of the founders of the new apolo -
getic. P. Godet gives a critical estimate of John Kuhim a
one of the early glories of the Catholic school at Tubim. —
gen. The Abbe Marien sums up the rise and progrcs. ^
of biblical criticism, and summons Catholics to their bc^ '
efforts in this great science. Ch. Huit continues hL s
historical account of Platonism in France during th^
seventeenth century.
Civilta Cattolica (20 April) : The writer who in previous num —
bers published certain notes on the procedure of the In-
quisition, here takes up and criticizes Mr. Lea's History
of the Inquisition. He leaves out of the question Mr.
Lea's sincerity, but names as three characteristics of his
work: An inadequate comprehension of the mentality of
the times he wrote about ; A tendency to judge mediae-
val institutions under the influence of a subconscious at-
tention to modern institutions ; A method of avoiding
quotations and substituting mere references to books hard
to obtain and difficult to interpret. Not ten per cent
of Mr. Lea's readers will be capable first of questioning
and then of examining his assertions ; ninety in every
hundred will swallow the books whole.
(4 May) : The criticism of Lea's History of the Inquisi-
tion is continued. A favorable review is given to a
volume by P. Cavallanti which undertakes to show how
real and grave a danger to Italy is " Modernism." The
Testem Benevolentice is cited by the author to show the
affiliations of " Modernism " to "Americanism"; and the
"extreme follies" of II Santo and of Murri are confuted.
As to biblical criticism, the author is said "to have cor-
rectly noted that the way of speaking of one modernist
is the way of all, scornful and disdainful. Indeed, this
disdain of scholasticism and contempt of the syllogism is
the chief sense of the unreasonableness and lightness
37-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS
which make the modernists mistake the blunders of Prot-
estants and rationalists for the wonderful triumphs of
modern science." Cavallanti is quoted as saying: "The
men who best know how to resist the assaults of our
adversaries are those who know how to handle that ter-
rible sword called the syllogism, those who have learned
and attained science at the perennial sources of Aquinas."
issegna Nasionale (16 April): Under the heading "Decent
Burial " Sibilla writes that the Temporal Power, the great
question which long troubled theologians and ecclesias-
tical politicians, has now faded into history. Many would
have put it into the catechism and made it a dogma;
but now time and Pius X. have given it quiet and de-
cent burial and the Jesuit Fathers have assisted as good
grave-diggers at the interment. Were the present Pope
to do no more than this, his name already ranks higher
than Leo's. The great aim of the reign of Pius is not
to restore the Temporal Power but instaurare omnia in
Christo. Syr, writing on the Religious Crisis, draws
attention to the difficulties raised nowadays concerning
the notion of inspiration, miracle, tradition, and dogma;
and mentions three recent books as useful to Catholics,
though they are written from an independent standpoint
and do not pretend to give any definitive solution of the
problems they touch upon : L'Autoritc des Evangiles, par
Loriaux ; Le Miracle el la Critique Historique, par Saint-
yves; Le Dogine de la Trinitc dans le Trot's Premiers Sie-
cles, par Dupin, all published by Emile Nourry of Paris.
$** y Fe (MayJ : V. Minteguiaga, writing on legislation and
public immorality, calls for a stricter enforcement of the
existing Spanish laws concerning the social evil, and
points out how well these laws answer to the needs of
the time.
ties (5 April): In an able article M. Xavier Moisant weaves
a clear, forcible proof for the existence of a personal
God. He tells us that the " one universal substance" of
Spinoza, the overdrawn logical idealism of Hegel, and
"the category of the ideal" of Renan, who denies the
divinity of Christ and real being in God, are the chief
fountain-heads of present-day impersonal theism. But,
he continues, modern scientific minds base their " reli-
416 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
gious atheism " principally on another authority, that
of experimental science. The history of human govern-
ment, according to them, has dethroned God. Physics
and sociology know but one sovereign — Law. Psychol.
ogy venerates one God, and that the Unconscious. M.
Moisant then clearly lays before us the creeds of the
modern adversaries of a personal God from their com-
mon viewpoint of experience. He concludes by showing
how the notion of a personal God should logically find
place in a mind shaped by experimental science, be it
historical, physical, or psychological. The Religious
Question in Spain is discussed by Antony Boissel. In
Spain as in France the secret societies have been the
evil genii behind the political turmoil into which the
Church has been dragged.
(20 April): Paul Albert fails to find in the philosophy o
Berthelot anything that will be long remembered. T^i
refute the opinion that Christianity and freedom to thin 1
are contradictory, Louis Bailie discusses the question a
Christian thought. He looks at it from two sides, ttu
positive and the a priori, and concludes with an indica
tion of the advantage to be derived from the combinai
tion of these two methods. Some documents ha
been found which seem to lessen the condemnation of Be
larmine's Controversies by Sixtus V. X.-M. Le Bacheh
comments upon the force of these and interprets thei
in the Cardinal's favor.
Revue Pratique d' Apologetique (1 April): The dogma of prete
natural gifts is a much mooted question. According
L. Labauche shows its conformity with the official teac
ing of the Church, with Scripture and Tradition ai
its relation to the late discoveries in the natural science
This and the following number contain two m
instalments of the eulogy on Brunetiere dealing spe
fically with the work Sur les Chemins de la Croyan
V. Ermoni finds in Romans v. 10 and viii. 3 pro
for the divinity of Christ. J. Guibert considers tl
subject of atheism. The existence of atheists, their nun
ber and character and the intellectual reasons for th*«
position, form the chief points of discussion.
(15 April): The Kingdom of God, appearing often j
07.] Foreign Periodicals 4 1 7
the New Testament, means, says A. de Boysson, "the
whole of the Christian religion, the complete, new life
brought by Christ, such as is manifested in this world
and will appear in the next.'- This also admits of de-
velopments, in order to suit the needs and demands of
all ages. F. Cimetier gives a resume of the introduc-
tion to Father Choupin's new work on the doctrinal and
disciplinary decisions of the Holy See.
*3de du Clerge Franpais (15 April): G. de Pascal concludes a
series of articles on "The Interior Organization of the
Church in France." A sketch of the life and works
of Marcellin Berthelot, the French chemist — the greatest
since Pasteur — is given by L. Wintrebert. In reply to
a query as to the Decalogue being the fundamental
moral code, H. Lesetre writes that it is, in the sense
that, promulgated directly by God, it supposes the exist-
ence of the natural law, and also of a positive law.
(1 May): Rev. Jean Baptiste, O.F.M., writes that M.
Venard, who reviewed his book on the Pentateuch, was
not exactly correct in some of the criticisms. Corrected,
the thesis that the Rev. Franciscan defended was to the
effect that fundamentally the Pentateuch is Mosaic, but
that the books as we have them are the work of inspired
writers at the time of the captivity. M. Venard replies
that this opinion is unsatisfactory, and from a historical
viewpoint open to discussion. He adds, moreover, that
if the Rev. Jean Baptiste had examined closely the docu-
mentary analysis of the Pentateuch, he would perceive
that the hypothesis of Mosaic composition is insufficient
to explain its formation. M. Venard congratulates the
Rev. Jean Baptiste, in that he has recognized the diffi-
culties to be met with in the first, books of the Old
Testament, and instead of waiving them aside, has done
his best to solve them. In his Social Chronicle, Rev.
Ch. Calippe, Professor in the Seminary at Amiens, speaks
of the agrarian troubles in Italy. The farmers of that
country for some time past have had a union, whose ob-
ject is to obtain better conditions. For many reasons
the clergy do not look with favor on the union, and this
is taken advantage of by the anti-clericals to spread
vol. lxxxv.— 27 ...
4t8 Foreign Periodicals [June,
irreligion. Last January, however, the Bishop of Cesena,
Mgr. Cazzani, issued a public letter, which has caused a
great sensation . He told the laborers that they had
rights, and that in union they would find their strength.
The proprietors were asked to treat their servants with
deference and consideration. Particularly did the bishop
call upon the priests to do their duty. They are not
to take sides with one class against another. He urges
them to follow the example of Christ, whose preference
was always for the humble. This letter has had a great
influence, and "The Catholic Union of Italy' 9 is giving
it large circulation.
U Action Sociale de la Femme (20 April) : George Troblemaire
has an extended conference on the conspiracy against
the family. He arraigns individualism and V Etatistne as
the arch enemies of the family. The employment o£
married wom;n as wage -earners is touched upon as detri —
mental to the best interests of the home, and as havin
a bad effect upon the standard of wages. Paucity
divorce cases is assigned to years of religious sentiment
with religion at an ebb, in 1906, there were 10,000 di —
vorces, as against 7,000 in 1900 and 3,000 in 1886. Con
fidence, healthy and optimistic, is expressed in the futur*
of the French family. The same number takes up th-
hue and cry against immoral publications and obscen
pictorial advertisements displayed in public places, to th
destruction of the morals of the young. Many organi J
zations are waging war against the pernicious custoncr:
and it is regretted that so few Catholics have taken u^
the slogan. The opinion is urged that all reforms res
on the initiative of the individual.
// Renovamento : A new magazine calculated for many reasoir"
to arouse interest and comment, both Catholic and no
Catholic, native as well as foreign, made its appearam
in Italy in the early part of 1907. Its title is certain
a significant one — 77 Renovamento, The Renewing, It r
veals its scope and purpose. For it is planned to rene
the Old, to introduce the New, the reinvigorating of t
Ancient by the infusion of the Modern spirit. Not 1«
significant are the names of some among its leading cg
tributors : Antonio Fogazzaro, Gallarati-Scotti, and I>
37.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 419
Romolo Murri, while good translations of Professor Caird's
Evolution of Religion and of the correspondence which
recently passed between Dr. Briggs, of Union Theologi-
cal Seminary, and Baron von Hiigel concerning the find-
ings of the Biblical Commission, induce the belief that
"the new magazine will hold no insignificant place in
Italian periodical literature, or be a negligible force
among those which influence modern Italian thought. II
Renovatnento boldly announces its mission as that of "a
critic of ideas and of facts" — rivista critica di idee e
di fatti. The management defines its spirit as religious
and progressive, and its aim, as avowed by those who are
concerned with and responsible for its publication, is to
inculcate religious belief in combination with a love of
truth and freedom of research in such wise that, while
keeping intact dogmatic Christianity, there will be a
general tendency to elevate the standard of Christian life.
The leading article of the first issue is entitled " Per la
Verita," " For the Truth." It is from the pen of Fogaz-
2aro, and is a powerful plea for the aim of the new
magazine as defined above.
Current Events.
The Duma has not been dissolved,
Russia. and the latest reports indicate that
its permanence is better assured
than ever before. Some of the worst of the reactionaries are wt~
now publicly declaring that its existence is necessary for the
welfare of Russia. The only thing which would now lead to I «°
the dissolution would be the passage of bills which the govern- l** 5
ment consider revolutionary in character. This is less likely *
to take place than ever before, for the lesson of the first Duma
seems to have been learned, and the spirit of moderation has
gained strength — a natural result of freedom of discussion. The
methods of arbitrary rule, whether from above or from below,
cannot stand the light; they have only to be exposed to it to
be condemned. An example of these methods occurred during
the discussion of the Bill for raising recruits for the Army.
Some disparaging remarks on this, the main support of auto-
cratic power, roused the indignation of the Minister for War. _-x
He rushed incontinently to the telephone and demanded instant*-^
punishment for the affront. Nothing less would satisfy the irate^^^ e
official than the immediate dissolution of the Duma. Such im —
petuous impertinence might justly have exasperated the newly—
elected representatives of the people ; but, with a self- con tro^^j
which augurs well for their success, the member who had use* ^
the language of which complaint was made was called upon
apologize and the incident closed. The demands of the goi
ernment were granted by a majority of 193 to 129.
The continued existence of the Duma is an evidence thi
public opinion is rallying to its support. It has many enemies
and not all of them are in the ranks of those who have pn
fited by the long-existing abuses. It would be wrong to rai
M. de Martens among enemies of this kind ; the letter, hoi
ever, which this distinguished jurist published in the Tit
was calculated to support their cause. M. de Martens is
supporter of absolutism. As a student, for nearly half a ce
tury, of the political development of his own country, and t
political institutions of the nations of the civilized world,
declared that this second Duma was absolutely unfit even
discuss the projects laid before it by the government. It co
1907.] . Current Events 421
not advance Russia on the way to a constitutional form of
government. It had done (when he wrote) absolutely nothing
but listen to and make rhetorical speeches full of hate for the
existing order. Not only had it done nothing, but it had no
wish to do anything. Its members were intellectually' unfit
even to examine the Budget, only 120 having been to a Uni-
versity. Moreover, party-spirit was so dominant, that no single
member had the well-being of the Empire as a whole at heart,
only that of his party. There was no leader, everybody was
his own leader. For these reasons the dissolution of the Duma
must be only a question of time. And what then ? The
third Duma must be at once summoned, but the suffrage must
be altered. To alter it, however, would be a violation of the
constitution; but necessity knows no law. A Duma' is now
absolutely a necessity. There can be no return to the Ter-
ror, Red or White. But it must be a Duma made up of the
intellectually competent, and this can only be secured by a
new electoral law, which shall exclude the illiterate.
Such is the view taken of the situation by one not unfitted
to judge. The prognostications have, however, not yet been
realized. Perhaps the members of the Duma have not been un-
-%willing to learn from their critic. In one respect they showed
t;hat they were not absolutely ignorant. Such are unwilling to
fe taught. The Committee on the Budget wished to have the
.dvice of experts to assist them in coming to a conclusion,
itrange to say, the government would not for a time allow
iris course to be taken, on the ground that they were out-
iders, forbidden by the regulations of the House, although the
ordinary means used by autocratic governments — spies and po-
lice agents — were allowed to infest the lobbies. A satisfactory
arrangement has, however, been made.
As to party spirit, we cannot, of course, contest M. de
jHzirtens' characterization of the members of the Duma. It can-
not, however, be said that all are deeply attached to any par-
ticular party, for the parties themselves are in a continual state
of flux, some dying, others being born, and all frequently chang-
ing their membership. A list has been already given, but is
»ow quite out of date. The following is the latest, doubtless
t, too, will soon have to be superseded: Social Democrats, 64;
Socialist Revolutionaries, 34 ; Populist Socialists, 14; Toil Group,
; Mussulmans, 30; Cossacks, 17; Poles, 46; Constitutional
422 Current Events [June,
Democrats, 94; Independents, 50; Octobrists and Moderates,
32; Right, 22.
The progress made by Russia towards the reign of law is
indicated not merely by a decrease in the number of outrages,
but also by the fact that the government has issued a warning
to the governors to be on the alert to prevent impending /<?.
groms. The Union of the Russian People, an organization in
support of autocracy, which is as lawless as the revolutionaries
themselves, have been forbidden to hold unauthorized meetings
and violently to denounce the government ; the editor of its
paper in Moscow has been banished and the paper suppressed.
Before separating for the Easter vacation, both the agrarian
legislative proposals and the Budget had been referred to Com-
mittees large enough to be small Parliaments. The audience
granted by the Tsar to the President, M. Golovin, showed that
the Emperor was in full sympathy with the Duma, provided it
did not adopt revolutionary proposals. The vacation was the
quietest fortnight which Russia has had for years. Poland, ow-
ing to the violence of the Revolutionary Socialists, has been
suffering from a series of outrages. Finland has been allowed
to possess her autonomy in peace. The Diet elected under
the new franchise not only allows women to vote, but to be
voted for, and so Finland has the distinction of being the first
Parliament in the world to have women among its members.
The discovery of a plot to take the life of the Tsar is an evi-
dence that he is becoming a power to be reckoned with, and
that his unwonted firmness in support of the Duma has made
him obnoxious to the revolutionaries, who are as much the ene-
mies of a constitutional regime as of the autocratic.
No account of Russian affairs would be complete which con-
tained no reference to the famine which is causing untold
sufferings in so many provinces of the Empire. The account
given by M. Shiskoff, in his appeal for the famine- stricken, is
one of the most pathetic records of human woe that has ever
been written, and shows that, whatever virtues a despotism
may have, the providing for the well-being of those for whose
good it is supposed to exist cannot be reckoned. Hundreds of
thousands of people have been brought to the verge of starva-
tion, and the diseases which follow upon it have broken out;
and yet — so simple is the life which is led by the peasants—
a whole family of eight persons, M. Shiskoff assures us, five of
Current Events 423
them grown up, can live on rather less than twenly-five cents
a day. The appeal made by M. Sbiskcff in this country and
in England has met with a fairly generous response.
The visits of the King of England
Germany. to the Kings of Spain and Italy
have made a part of the German
press very nervous. They think that England is entering into
an entente with the whole world, and forming a syndicate of
Powers hostile to Germany and for the express purpose of pen-
ning her in. Not alone the Press, but leading politicians, such
as Herr Bassermann, the leader of the National Liberals, and
Herr Semler, a Deputy to the Reichstag, have given public
utterance to the same apprehensions. The former declared that
in every quarter oi the world England was pursuing a policy
unfavorable to Germany, and as England was everywhere, and
England's King too, the present situation was dominated by
England. The Triple Alliance he declared to be in its dotage,
■while France had become so arrogant, through the entente
cordiale with England, that the maintenance of peace with her
had become a matter of anxiety. Herr Semler, even more
clearly, expressed the opinion lhat peace was being imperilled.
England was attempting, he said, to isolate Germany by sur-
rounding her with alliances; and those alliances might at any
oment lead to an explosion. In the event of a war between
ngland and Germany, France could not remain neutral — she
ould have to declare herself on one side or the other within
venty-four hours of its breaking out.
How many of the German people share in these sentiments
it is impossible to say. The Chancellor of the Empire, Prince
iilow, in his speech in the debate in the Reichstag on For-
eign Policy, made little of King Edward's visits — they were
nothing but natural and commonplace civilities. The Triple
Alliance, the Chancellor declared, was unaffected. He well knew
that Germany was surrounded by many difficulties and dan-
gers, but calmness and self-confidence would render her safe.
Germans could not live upon the enmities of other nations,
nor could they deny to others the freedom of movement which
they claimed for themselves. German foreign policy should be
calm, steady, matter-of-fact, with a determination to preserve
424 CURREN T E VENTS [June,
and, if necessary, to defend the peace and position in the world
of the German fatherland.
There, is without doubt, a widespread feeling of uneasiness as
to the future in the minds of many Germans, and a dissatisfaction
at the results of recent diplomatic action. There is some un-
certainty as well as to the degree of confidence reposed by the
Kaiser in his Chancellor, and a doubt exists whether the Kaiser's
mind is faithfully reflected by his Minister. But, on the whole,
there seems no grave reason to fear any resort to hostile action.
The situation is by no means so strained as it was last year
during the Conference at Algeciras.
The Government bloc, made up of Conservatives, Liberals
and Radicals, has secured the acceptance by the Reichstag of
colonial proposals, substantial identical with those rejected in
December 'last. The proposal to establish a distinct Colonial
Department separate from the Foreign Office has also been
carried. In some smaller matters, however, the parties have
not worked well together. Germans are too prone to decide
matters on their merits to submit to be passive voters, at least
the Germans who attain parliamentary station. Two delinquent
Colonial Governors have been tried and convicted. Now that
there is a separate Colonial department, a more vigilant watch
can be kept upon the doings of the officials.
The proceedings in this country with reference to the Hague
Conference do not seem to have produced a great impression
upon the German Emperor. The most important question was
whether the limitation of armaments should be discussed. As
the decisions of the Conference derive all the force which they
possess from absolute unanimity, any one of the Powers can
render them, to a large degree, nugatory. The German govern-
ment has decided that its representatives at the Conference shall
take no part in the discussion of this question, that they shall
leave those Powers who think the discussion will be profitable
to conduct it alone. In its opinion the proposal is not only
unpractical, but dangerous. German armaments are too sacred.
Other Powers may discuss the question, Germany will not with-
draw if they do. Nay more; if the discussion should produce
any practical result, conscientious consideration will be given to
it, and, so far as it may be compatible with Germany's peace
and national interests and particular position, such result will
be accepted. This decision of the German government, although
07.] CURRENT EVENTS 425
it limits the scope of the Conference, and deprives it of much
of the importance which it would otherwise have had, will by
neans deprive it of all prospect of usefulness. The im-
provement or the development of the provisions contained in
he three previous Hague Conventions with regard to arbitra-
tion warfare on land, and the application of the Geneva Con-
vention to naval warfare, together with the preparation of a
set of regulations dealing with warfare at sea, offer an ample
field for beneficial work with a good prospect of general agree-
ment.
The necessity for practical and positive legislation in the
interests of the working classes was brought before the Reich-
stag in an effective speech by one of the leading Catholic mem-
bers — Herr Trimborn. This gave to Count Posadowsky, the
Secretary of State for the Interior, an opportunity of making
a comparison between Germany on the one hand and France
and England on the other, with reference to their respective
achievements. In Germany a progressive income tax was quite
an understood thing. In France endeavors had been made in
the same direction fur years and had led to the fall of a series
of Cabinets. In Germany workmen's pensions and assistance
to establish small proprietors on the soil by public funds had
been accomplished; in England they were still mere proposals.
The Minister then went on to give a long list of the govern-
ment's plans for the future, which included insurance against
widowhood and orphanage, the protection of workmen in indoor
work, night rest, female labor in factories, together with the
revision of the present regulations for insurance against acci-
dents and disablement. The moral to be drawn from this enu-
meration of past and intended legislation was that greater bene-
fits had been conferred upon the working classes in Germany,
where the system of government was in a great degree auto-
cratic, than had been bestowed upon them in England and
France, where the sphere of self-government is wider.
The financial position of Germany is stronger than it seemed.
The weakness was such that the new loan just issued bore four
per cent interest, the attempt a short time ago to issue a loan
at three per cent having been a comparative failure. The new
issue, however, was subscribed for about forty- five times over,
showing thereby the confidence felt in the resources of the
426 Current Events [June,
The elections for the first Parlia-
Austria-Hungary. ment under the recent legislation,
establishing universal suffrage, have
been proceeding, but only the first ballots have been taken, so
far at least as news has reached this country. These first re-
turns indicate large accessions to the ranks of the Socialists, of
whom there are two kinds widely different in character — Social
Democrats and Democratic Catholics, or Christian Socialists.
The clergy, it is said, used their influence throughout the coun-
try on behalf of the Christian Socialists, and in Vienna public
prayers were offered for a happy issue of the elections.
The Emperor hopes that the introduction of universal suf-
frage will be the means of diminishing the rancor felt towards
one another by the various races of his Empire. In a rescript
recently issued on his departure from Prague, he declares that
by this new electoral law a start has been made in the adjust-
ment of national antagonism. " I should consider it as the
greatest happiness/' the Emperor concludes, "if I, who have
shared all the sorrows of the struggle, should now also be able
to share the joys of universal peace."
The twelve- year, more or less continuous negotiations be-
tween Austria and Hungary, for a renewal of the economic
agreement between them, have not yet been finished, although
hopes are not extinguished of a definite conclusion being
reached. The Austrian Premier assured a deputation a short
time ago that Austria would be guided only by her own inter-
ests. Perhaps a more generous spirit would lead to better re-
sults in this and in other cases. Too great a devotion to her
own interests has often made Austria obnoxious to her neigh-
bors and a hindrance to progress.
The Pan- German movement, so strong in Austria,* has ex-
tended its operations into Hungary. A member of the Diet
called the attention of the Premier to the part which highly-
placed German dignitaries and officers of the General Staff
were taking in it. Dr. Wekerle replied that he did not attach
much importance to the proceedings of the agitators, but that
the authorities were keeping a watchful eye upon them. The
efforts of the Pan- Germans are not confined to adjoining coun-
tries. Teachers in Cape Colony, South Africa, are subsidized
for the purpose of keeping alive, even in those remote districts,
German sentiment and thought, German speech and culture,
1907.] Current Events 427
• •
»id are urged by representatives, even of the German Govern-
ment, to devote faithful and strenuous labor to uphold Ger-
manism (Deutschthum).
The Church question has not of
France. late caused much anxiety to the
Clemenceau ministry. A section of
the working people, however, whom it has been the boast of
M. Viviani to have freed from all anxiety about the future
world, has endangered the existence of the ministry in this life.
The trial of the Abbl Jouin, for inciting to resistance to
the Separation Law, resulted in the infliction of a small fine,
and the reasons given by the Court for making the penalty so
slight involved an indirect condemnation of that Law. The
fact of incitement the Court held to be established, but the in-
timate and honorable feelings of the accused were wounded by
certain consequences of the Law. The injustice of the Law
was pointed out, inasmuch as while under it priests had become
simple citizens, yet it created for them special offences for which
they exclusively were to be punished.
The hostility to religion, with which the present ministry
u animated, is shown by M. Clemenceau's action in the matter
of the celebration of the fetes which are held in Orleans in
May every year. The Premier would not allow the Prefect to
authorize the civil, judicial, and military authorities to take
part in a ceremony to which the presence of the clergy, clad
in their sacerdotal robes, gave a religious character. M. Cle-
fflcxiceau persisted in his refusal, even against the wishes of the
Mayor, although the latter was supported by the representations
°f the Socialist Radical Deputy for Orleans, M. Rabier, a well-
known anti- Catholic. The Municipal Council of the city pre-
sented a humble petition that the fetes might be celebrated in
the usual way, giving expression, it said, to the feelings of all
the inhabitants. But M. Clemenceau was obdurate. The most
he Would concede was that the clergy should take part in civil
ttfctume. The result was that the clergy withdrew altogether.
The people of Orleans are beginning to experience the tender
mercies of Liberals.
The people of France, as a whole, are also experiencing the
faults of the Liberal regime of the past thirty years, especially
°< the exile of religious instruction from the schools. Paris,
Marseilles, and several other great centres, are terrorized by
428 Current Events [June,
organized bands of hooligans called Apaches. There has been
a regular epidemic of crime. Homicides and murders are nu-
merous, and are increasing while convictions are diminishing.
The Minister of Justice has been compelled to issue a circular
urging the public prosecutors to proceed promptly and energet-
ically in the repression of a long list of offences. The Army it-
self and the Navy are being invaded by lawlessness and in-
subordination. Leaflets are being circulated among the soldiers;
one of these declares that it is better to shoot French generals
than foreign soldiers ; another that the fatherland is only a
capitalist's safe. Workingmen, in support of their claims, are
advocating recourse to violent and illegal methods. The Con-
federation of Labor, established in Paris, lends its support to
these methods. The Civil Servants of the State demand the
right to form Trade Unions and to enter the Confederation.
There is, of course, nothing immoral ih the former demand at
all events. It is granted in other countries. To this demand,
however, M. Clemenceau has offered a determined opposition,
and by so doing the existence of his ministry was imperilled.
The Socialists bitterly opposed him and found a supporter, it
is said, in the Minister of Social Providence, M. Viviani. M.
Clemenceau has, however, for the time being proved the stronger.
Whether it is the beginning or the end remains to be seen.
In the first days of the meeting of the Chambers after the
recess, the advanced Socialists, of whom M. Jaures is the leader,
made an attack upon M. Clemenceau on account of the action
taken by him with reference to trade unions and the demands
of the civil servants. The present session in fact promises to
be the opening of a campaign between, those Socialists who
wish to transform France by a gradual, not violent, evolu-
tion into a Collectivist Republic, and the supporters of the
present individualistic organization, with such modifications as
the well-being of all classes may demand. It may, some think,
witness the parting of the ways. The present government
seems to hold a middle position, for, while M. Jaures assailed
it on account of its opposition to the Socialist demands, M.
Deschanel attacked it on account of the weak resistance it had
offered to the proceedings of revolutionary Socialism and its re-
luctance to enforce the law against the Confederation of Labor.
The government succeeded in beating back the attack, but in
this also the end is not yet.
It is improbable, however, that Collectivism, although it may
1907.] Current Events 429
drive out of office the present government, will succeed in
destroying private property; the peasants of France are too
powerful and too much attached to their little farms. While
there have been strikes in every part of France o( electricians,
of bakers, of waiters, even of sailors, and while other strikes have
been threatened, the results have not been such as the strikers
wished. On the contrary, they have only shown that working-
men, when they have the power, may be as selfish and tyrannical
as the most despotic of rulers; and as a consequence the nation,
as a whole, is less disposed than before to make themselves the
subjects of such a system. May Day was looked forward to
with grave* apprehensions, but the precautions taken by the
government disheartened any would-be disturbers of the peace.
The birth of a son to the King of
Spain, Spain has caused great rejoicing
throughout the whole of the king-
dom, and congratulatory messages were sent from every part of
the world. If the infant Prince lives to ascend the throne, the
sovereign of Spain will, through his great-grandmother, Queen
Victoria, be more or less closely related to the majority of the
European monarchs. The Imperial and Royal Families of Ger-
many, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Rumania, Italy, Portugal,
to say nothing of several German Grand-Ducal Families, are all
more or less closely related to Queen Victoria of England.
The isolation of the Spanish reigning house will thus become
a. thing of the past.
After having held office for a long
Belgium. time, the Ministry of Count de
Smet de Naeyer has resigned. It
was defeated on the question of the length of the working-day
in mines. A new ministry has been formed, of which the Min-
ister of the Interior and Public Instruction in the former Cabi-
net, M. de Trooz, is the Premier. It has begun its career in a
storm. Its withdrawal of the Mines Bill, after it had passed
the second reading, was looked upon by many members as an
insult to Parliament. The new Ministry intends to propose that
Belgium still take over the Congo. This is a matter of inter-
national importance. The methods of government in the Free
State adopted by King Leopold seem to show that no single
individual can be trusted with irresponsible rule.
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.
POPE PIUS X. sent a golden message of encouragement to Catholic writers
and journalists, which was printed in a recent special edition of the Cnt*
of Naples: In presence of the unrestrained license of the anti-Catholic Press,
which impugns or denies the eternal laws of truth and justice, which stirs up
hatred against the Church, which insinuates into the hearts of the people the
most pernicious doctrines, corrupting the mind, fostering evil appetites, flat-
tering the sense, and perverting the heart, all ought to recognize the great
importance of the union of all good people in turning to the advantage of the
Church and of society a weapon which the enemy is using for the injury of
both. We have, therefore, only the highest praise for Catholic writers who
strive to oppose the antidote of the good Press to the poison of the bad Press,
and that they may not lose courage amid the labors, trials, and difficulties in-
separable from all good works we bestow upon all of them our blessing, that
the Lord may support them in the good right and pour out on them an abun-
dance of heavenly assistance.
• • •
Dr. William Henry Drummond, the Canadian poet, whose death was an-
nounced recently, wrote for the love of writing and of the subjects be wrote
about. His work was never consigned, in the language of the old shipping
reports, to " Cowes and a market." His name had been before the publicas
a writer only ten years, and in that time his first volume of collected poems*
called The Habitant^ had been printed and reprinted twenty-six times. He
was an Irishman by birth, a practising physician, and a copper mine owner.
He Was about fifty-three years old. A* resident of Montreal, the romance
and humor and picturesqueness of French Canadian life charmed him, and
he wrote his little poems in the patois of Quebec Province, for his own satis-
faction and the edification of his friends. He had accumulated enough of the
verses to make a book before he consented to look for a publisher. Beside*
The Habitant, he published Johnny Courteau and The Voyageur. Itisproo*
of the verity of Dr. Drummond's studies of the habitant that his little book*
were most popular in Canada, and among Canadians the world over, who
know the French habitant well.
• • •
An editorial writer in the Catholic Union and Timer, of Buffalo, N. V»*
presents a very optimistic view of present conditions among Catholics in tl* e
United States as follows:
Professor. Maurice Francis Egan, in introducing a lecturer at Trinity C^**
lege, Washington, D. C, recently, called attention to the fact that we
in the midst of a Catholic educational renascence in this country. Cathol*
themselves may not realize this quite as well as they should. There is
old expression which says that sometimes it is impossible for those in a fo:
to see the forest itself, because of the leaves. Catholics, in the midst of
7.] The Columbian Reading union 431
Catholic interests of many kinds, do not appreciate certain significant
»s that are at work in American life, and that make for the increase of
.cnce of the Catholic Church among us, and that have attracted profound
-widespread attention from those outside of the Church. During the past
■.de and a half the Catholic University has come prominently before the
srican public; Trinity College for the higher education of Calholic wo-
b. has come into existence as a sister institute to the Catholic University;
Catholic Summer-School on Lake Champlain has developed into an insti-
on which had over 7,000 in attendance at its last sessions, and the attend-
c is increasing by about one-sixth every year. At this rate, at the end of
years there will be nearly 15,000 people who will visit the shores of Lake
»m plain to get into a Catholic atmosphere.
Nor is this all. During the past five years, in spite of the opening of a
nber of new Catholic schools and colleges, the attendance at practically
of the old Catholic educational institutions has increased much more than •
* Catholic population during the same time, and some of the colleges have
ibled their attendance, one or two actually trebling the number of stu-
lts who come for Catholic education. Catholic booksellers report that at
t our Catholic people are awakening to the necessity for religious reading,
i that they are buying Catholic books and periodicals more freely. The
ural result is the issuance of a better class of books and magazines. The
cess of the Catholic Encyclopedia is beyond all doubt, and its first hand-
le volume, with its store of precious information with regard to the Church
1 her children, has come as a distinct surprise to many educated Protest-
s and has made them realize as never before how young and vigorous is
t old Church that they have sometimes been accustomed to thirk of as a
e-worn survival of a medieval institution. Other publications promise
ch. During the past year a new Catholic university at Fordham, hav-
schools of medicine and law as well as of arts and sciences, has come
> existence, with the approval of the regents of the University of the State
Mew York, and the first volume has been issued by the Fordham Univer-
f Press. The Catholic Summer-School is also to invade the publishing
d and the first volume, The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, is to
>ear shortly before the opening of the school for the present year at the
d of June.
All these represent a marvelous new movement in the American Church
it Catholics should try to keep in touch with, or to get into if they are not
eady in its course. There are nearly fifteen millions of Catholics in this
in try now, and if they were only united in these efforts for education there
scarcely any limit that might be set to their accomplishment. Let us hope
it the enthusiasm of this new movement will draw Catholics together
tter than ever bsfore.
M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
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Freedom Through the Truth. An Examination of the Rev. Dr. A. V. G. Allen's Freed**
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and State in France. 1300-1907. By Arthur Gal ton, Vicar of Edenham and Chaplain
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By Beresford-Cooke. Price 50 cents. Conttasts in Social Progress, By Edward Payl
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Robert Appleton Company, New York:
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LL.D. ; Thomas J. Shahan, D.D. ; John J. Wynne, S.J. Assisted by numerous Col-
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The Macmillan Company, New York :
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An Explanation of the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin. By a Religious of the Society of
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CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. lxxxv.
JULY, 1907.
No. 508.
MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE.
(With Some Letters Hitherto Unpublished.)
BY WILFRID WILBERFORCE.
fcjOON after Manning's appointment to the see of
Westminster, London was amused by a mot of
Bishop Ullathorne, He was seen to be shivering
one day, and a friend asked him if he had caught
a chill. "Oh.no"; replied the Bishop, " I have
only been shaking hands with Manning!" Indeed, Manning was
always looked upon as the living type of all that is cold and
ungenial and lacking in sympathy. "The Marble Arch" was
his playful sobriquet when the Archiepiscopal burden had been
placed upon him. And when he appeared in the sanctuary at
Moorfields on the day of his consecration, his natural paleness
and diaphanous thinness, increased and emphasized by the long
fast of the previous day, made one of the spectators declare
that he looked exactly as did Lazarus on his resurrection from
the tomb. This corpse-like appearance prompted an old Irish-
woman in the crowded church to ejaculate, loud enough for
the new Archbishop to hear: "What a pity to go through
such a deal of trouble for the sake of three weeks ! " "I think
1 have more in me than that," remarked Manning afterwards,
xpect to last some fifteen years yet." As a fact his epis-
copate, filled to the brim and pressed down with hard work,
covered considerably more than a quarter of a century.
The old Irishwoman's calculation as to Manning's vitality
.
Copyright.
The Missionary Society c
in the State of New 1
vol, lxxxv. — 28
St. Paul the Apostle
434 MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE [July,
was not one bit more flagrantly wide of the mark than was
the opinion held almost universally during his lifetime, and still
held as strongly as ever by many since his death, that the sec-
ond Archbishop of Westminster was at heart cold and devoid
of those natural affections and sympathies which cause a man
to be loved by bis friends and kindred. In saying that this
judgment is false, I shall probably be instantly disagreed with
by nine out of every ten of my readers. But before I hav^
done I hope to be able to supply undeniable and authentic
proofs that Henry Edward Manning was a man of large an^d
wide, as well as warm, sympathies — nay, that he possessed mor <
than the average of domestic affections, as husband and brothe :»,
while there was no one whose heart was more wrung with sok~-
row at witnessing or bearing of the griefs of others.
How was it, then, that a judgment exactly contrary to this
was almost universally pronounced by his contemporaries ? To
this question the answer is twofold. First of all there was 5.2*
Manning, from the earliest period of his life, a certain innate
feature which can, perhaps, be best described by the word dem^—
nishness. When he actually became a don at* Balliol and Me^~~"
ton this feature was, probably, not by that fact diminished. H »^
manner was apt to be cold, and this alone never shows a pe
son at his best. Again, strange as it may sound, he was esse
tially a shy man. It needed a certain fearlessness on the pa
of an interlocutor to enable Manning to break through his s
ness, and, as step by step his position became more and mo
exalted, the number of those who were likely to break through
the barriers of distance, restraint, and therefore of shyness,
came fewer and fewer.
He never forgot that he was a leader of men, and, though
possessed of the saving sense of humor, he never allowed other"""*
to forget it either. But, after all, the ice was very thin.
beneath the " marble " of the Archbishop beat a big,
human heart — a heart absorbed, in youth and early manhood »
by home affections, the love of a devoted husband and brothel*
and by the sympathy with which the minister of a parish
in the joys, sorrows, struggles, and temptations of his
In the later years of his life the great outside public, that
known nothing at all of Manning in his home life, began
realize that his heart could feel deeply and act strongly
behalf of his fellow-men. Indeed, it is only a truism to
1907.] Manning's domestic Side 435
that philanthropy was the ruling passion of bis life. Nor was
it any mere arm-chair philanthropy, but hard and constant labor,
intellectual and physical.
First his object was the poor, untaught children for whom
there were no schools — those destitute infants of the streets,
who lacked the good things of the present life, and were run-
ning an imminent risk of losing those of the life eternal. " Not
a stone of my cathedral shall be laid/' was his noble resolve,
" until there is school accommodation for every child in my
diocese." Then the housing of the poor engaged his thoughts;
then the protection of innocent girls ; and just before the sha-
dows of life's evening clouded around him, his large, fatherly
heart went out in sympathy towards the dock-labortrs and their
families.
For* eleven whole days of a sultry summer the old Cardinal,
notwithstanding his burden of eighty years, toiled in the close,
airless streets of the East End, hour after hour, never for a
moment losing patience, arguing, pleading, explaining, and using
tbe great authority of his name, and office. "If you do not
listen," said the Cardinal, addressing the employers, " I will go
into the streets and speak face to face with the men. Twenty -
five thousand of them are my spiritual children. They will lis-
texa to me." His auditors, spell-bound by the eloquence of his
presence and office no less than by that of his words, recog-
niz«d that he spoke the truth, and the labors of the aged prel-
ate were crowned at last by the " Cardinal's Peace." Not a
s ***gle movement of any importance could be set on foot for
th^ benefit of the human race and the alleviation of suffering
without its attracting the active co-operation, or at least the
"leasing and approval, of the hard-worked Cardinal. Some, in-
**^d, thought that he carried this policy too far. " Take care,
your Eminence, 11 said one of his iriends, "this is Socialism. 1 '
' To you," he replied, " it may be Socialism. To me it is sim-
ple Christianity."
And yet, by a strange paradox, at the very time at which
^turning's reputation as a warm-hearted philanthropist was gain-
1Q 8 ground, and almost in proportion to that gain, his private
' r i ends, especially those few survivors of the old Lavington
***ys, were contrasting the affectionate terms of the past with
t^e aloofness of the present. His sister-in-law, Mary Wilber-
'° r ce, than whom none knew or understood I
5 Manning's Domestic siu*
m
say : " As he grows holier he becomes more and more de-
iched. Detachment of course is a great virtue, but it is not
feasant for those upon whom it is exercised."
Here we have the key to nearly all of what people looked
upon as Manning's coldness and want of sympathy. That his
heart was, brimful of the purest affection was never doubted by
those who really knew him in the old days — nay, it was never
doubted by any who ever made appeal to his heart in any
sorrow. But as years went on there was undoubtedly less that
was spontaneous. The waters of sympathy were there, as they
had ever been, but the rock had to be struck before they would
flow. That they flowed in abundance then, let those testify
who had recourse to their healing powers. In saying this I
purposely speak of Manning's intercourse with his private friends
and kindred. To his own priests he was always accessible and
always open, as becomes the true bishop.
It is interesting to look upon Manning as he once was t
his nearest and dearest, and this we are happily able to do. I
ever a man reveals himself and the inner thoughts of his souIT
it is when he is writing to those whom he loves, to those wh
understand him and appreciate him. Thus, in a letter dat
February, 1839, written from Rome during his first visit to t
Eternal City, he says to his brother-in-law, Samuel Wilb
force :
Somehow when men have the hold of each other's aff<
tions, as we have, correspondence loses of its necessity w^^ _
it gains in enjoyment. We can trust each other longer wi t: i,.
out reassurances oi affection, and enjoy them all the nxox*
when they come. Whenever I begin to write, instead ^y
writing of Rome, I feel drawn to think of England and all j
have left behind me. Sometimes I can hardly overcome &n
impatient desire to be at work.
The same letter gives us Manning's impressions of Rome,
where he was destined thirty years later to play so important a
role as one of the Fathers of the Vatican Council. He writes :
We are now in the thick of the carnival — such a scene «ol
mad riot you never saw, with a strange, imperturbable go(
humor. Conceive the whole Corso, nearly a mile long, hui
with all colors from windows and balconies, thronged wit
M AAA'/ AG'S DOMESTIC SIDE 437
people, and two lines of carriages moving side by side, one
up, tbe other down the streets — hundreds, I might say thou-
sands, of maskers, in all' kinds of grotesque gear — and the
whole mass above and below in a frenzy of pelting, and clouds
and drifts of sugar-plums and flour and chalk flying every
way. This lasts every day, except Friday and Sunday, from
2 p. M. to s, at which time the horses run, and- all breaks up
as if nothing had happened. . . We had a beautiful
sight on Thursday. St. Peter's was illuminated. I saw it
from the opposite hill. At dusk the church looked as if it
were built of light, every line and feature of the architecture
being exactly expressed by illumination, and it looked as if it
were lull of a light which broke through at all its characteris-
tic points. There was something more mildly splendid and
unearthly than I ever saw iu any other form. At hall-past
six an intense light burst from the cross, and in an instant the
whole building blazed up into a sheet of bright flames. The
architectural features were drowned in the light, but the out-
line was perfect. This afternoon I saw another beautiful
sight. I went up to tbe Monte Pincio' to see the sun set.
When it was on the horizon I got to a place where the dome
of St. Peter's exactly hid the sun, and cast a broad shade
right across tbe city of Rome, upon the Pincian Hill. One
ray of light came right through the dome, by the central
windows, but in its passage seemed to catch a deep golden
color — on each side of the dome were the rays of the sun di-
verging along the lines of. the shadow. These two effects of
light were of the kind iar the most beautiful I ever saw.
These were far too early days for the young rector of Laving-
l to recognize any possible symbolism in a scene wherein
s depicted the type of the Eternal Sun which was only to
reached through the Church of Christ as typified by the great
iilica of St. Peter. The next letter, to his sister-in-law, Mary
lberforce, is still more intimate in tone, dealing as it does,
part at least, with a family matter. On the 14th of March,
59, was born Arthur Henry Wilberforce, who was destined to
;ome a distinguished missioner and member of the Order of
Dominic. He was, of course, a nephew of Manning (his
jther being one of the four Miss Sargents, of Lavington), and
5 parents had written a joint letter to Manning, asking him
become godfather to their child. Manning replies to this
quest, under date "Palermo, April 3, 1839," as 1 follows:
438 MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE [July,
My dearest Mary : You will know how glad your joint
letter has made me. And when I tell^you how I got it, and
how nearly I missed it, you will easily think how much more
happy it made me. I was at the port at Naples to embark for
Sicily, having given up all hopes of my letters, the post not
being open, and had ordered them to be returned to Florence,
where I cannot be for a month, when I determined to make
one more attempt, and got yours and was on board just as
they were starting. Otherwise I should have been waiting
and longing to hear for weeks. And now what can I say but
that I rejoice with you, and that many times a day I have
thought of you lately.' I do not think of you less often now,
but with another feeling. What you ask, dearest Mary, you
know I should with the greatest delight undertake, and I al-
ready regard your boy among those who belong to me direct-
ly or indirectly in that way. As to the time of my being with
you — for a man to write from Palermo, after such a gale as I
got here in, and to fix times, is amusing — but if all things fall
out as I trust, I shall hope to be in England at the end of
June. This I fear will delay it longer than any of us could
wish, but let me know if possible when it is to take place. I
shall hope to hear the same good accounts of you and of him,
and you must make Henry write to me as soon as you get
this, and direct to Florence, and put in something of your own.
You must give my most affectionate love to your dear mother,
and kiss her for me. I have been thinking very much of her
this afternoon, but that I will tell you presently — for I am go-
ing to send you a good full letter after the fashion of a travel-
ler. We (C. Carey and I) started from Naples Monday at 10.
The day beautiful and sea smooth. In the afternoon the wind
freshened, and at evening it blew. At 10 p. m. I went to bed
and to sleep, and got up next morning between 5 and 6, went
on deck, and found a most immense swell. The men told me
it had blown hard all night. ... At Palermo they told
me that the wind had done in the town and among the ship-
ping of the port 40,000 ducats damage (about ,£5,000) . And
now for Palermo. I have seen nothing since I left England
that has given me the sort of pleasure I have here. Of course
Rome has its own interest ; and I do not compare it with
Palermo, nor some parts of the country near Naples, which
are splendid. But this place has a beauty and interest alto-
gether distinct. Palermo is built on a plain entirely sur-
rounded by the most precipitous mountains, which have an
outline far more irregular than any I remember to have seen,
1907.1
1907. ] Manning's domestic Side 439
except on the side towards the sea where the mountains open
and run out, forming a beautiful bay and harbor. The foun-
dation of the town is extremely ancient. Since the decline
of the Roman power in Sicily it has been inhabited by Greeks,
Saracens, and Northmen (?) and the architecture is a mass of
all three. The cathedral, a splendid Gothic mixed with rich
Saracenic ornament. The Royal Palace, of which part is said
to have been built in the eleventh or twelfth century, a mix-
ture of the same kind, All the churches have something
Gothic — a tower, or windows, or a doorway. The arches and
gates are a sort of Norman, the convents and palaces and even
common houses are in some sort of keeping, so that as a
whole it is more like a city of four or five centuries ago than
any I ever saw.
The plain is actually rank with fertility. Every sort of
tree, olives, pines, palms, and every sort of plant and flower,
growing luxuriantly, and even now all green, and oranges
beginning to blossom ; and the ring of the mountains with
every sort oi light and shade and color, with villages scat-
tered under them and on their sides ; and on the other side
of the town the Mediterranean deep blue. Altogether it is a
scene unlike any city I have been in, on which modern im-
provements have as yet committed no ravages. I went and
walked about in the Botanical Gardens, close to the sea, and
found all kinds of flowers in bloom. Many I knew, and many
I could not remember the names of, and I longed for your
mother, and thought how she would enjoy it.* The garden
is all laid in formal beds with box edges, and the walks
overhung with orange trees and willows, cypresses, pines,
and most beautiful palm trees. It has been to-day a
thorough April day, heavy showers and bright gleams, and I
almost thought I could hear and smell things growing. I
thought of some lines of Coleridge's, the first of a set about
the Nightingale, where he describes an April night, which
were just such as would suit the sunset. I always long lor
you when I see these beautiful sights, and think how much
more I should delight in them if I could bring you by some
uncanny spell to look at them with me. ... I must come
and spend another week at Bransgore. I cannot say how
often I have thought of my visit and our drives to Christ-
church and Wimborne, and I am wearing the very hat I
• He refers to Mrs. John Sargent, the mother of his late wife, who kept house for bim in
the early dap of his widowhood. His wife's last words to her mother had been : " Take
■e of Henr)'."
440 Manning's Domestic Side [July,
bought at Salisbury, which is now as white as a deposit of
dried salt can make it. But you must save some of your time
to spend at Lavington when I come home, for I shall not be
able to move again till Henry is Bishop of Chester. And
now, dearest Mary, I must fill the rest of my letter with love
to all, from Grandmother downwards, and pray give it for me
most affectionately, to your mother especially, and believe me
. always, Your affectionate brother, H. E. M.
Those who only knew Manning in later years would have
scarcely credited him with the possession of so much home feel-
ing as this letter displays. It may as well be explained that
Bransgore was the name of Henry Wilberforce's first living-
It stood on the borders of the New Forest. In the auUurm*
of the very year in which Manning wrote the letter quote d
above, Newman was a guest of Henry Wilberforce's, kt his pa. ~m-
sonage, and it was during a walk through the New Forest th ^aX
Newman imparted to his friend the " astounding confidences "
which "pierced the very soul of his hearer with grief and te t-
ror," for it implied that doubts had crossed his mind as to tBS» c
right of the Church of England to be called Catholic*
Notwithstanding Manning's prophecy, Henry Wilberforce,
God's mercy, was never Bishop of Chester or of any other s
At the sacrifice of all his earthly prospects, he resigned a v
uable living, in 1850, and was received into the Catholic Churc
and lived to see Manning Archbishop of Westminster.
In a letter written five years later, Manning refers to t
subject of church singing on which he often expressed stroc— ^i
opinions. The " Motu Proprio " would have filled his hea— - rt
with joy, and we may be sure that it would have been rigid^Vy
enforced in the Westminster churches, if he had still been ther jr
spiritual ruler. Speaking of his Lavington church, he writ^^ 5
in July, 1844:
We are in a poorish way. Chanting needs to be carefulC- ?
kept up, and it is really frightful work. I really feel still &*^
a loss about the manner of dividing. And hardly know wh^^^ 1
to say. I have a feeling that we are all wrong hitherto, an -^
that confirms a feeling I never can get rid of about the m
real and almost irreverent effect of making the Psalms ligk^*
*<*
♦The visitations of this " ghost," as Newman called it, and this early announcement c^*
its existence, were related in The Catholic World for August, 1906, pp. 590-590.
MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE 441
and musical, which I always have when they are sung in
harmony, and somewhat fast. The genuine Roman chants
are extremely slow and monotonous, as we hear them abroad,
and certainly they are more like worship.
Give my most kind and brotherly love to dearest Mary. I
know you have thought of me. God is great, and all his
ways are above, out of our sight ; and they are very awful
and severe to walk in.
he next letter was written at a time of thick darkness and
ation for those who had been for years leaning upon New-
with the comtortable feeling that they were safe in the
ch of England so long as he himself remained in it. But
ctober 9, 1845, this great leader left them and was received
the Catholic Church. Manning, writing ten days later to
t Wilberforce, says :
You do not know what I felt in reading your letter this
morniDg. Neither do you know how I love you. Such
words as yours are now almost more than I can understand ;
they seem to wake up something which I have dreamt and
cannot remember. The other night I was full of all sad
thoughts of things past and to come ; and the past and the
future jarred harshly together, and I could not talk of what
I felt most. But it was a heartfelt pleasure to see you, my
most dear sister. I trust you do love me, for I feel that I
should grow worse ii people left off loving me as I deserve
they should. May God bless you ; and will you always be-
lieve me to be your loving brother, H. E. M.
is the years go on, and his anchorage in the Church of
land grows weaker, Manning's letters become more pathetic
passionate. Sometimes they seem to be the cry of one
feels the ground sinking beneath him and knows not where
10k for support and foothold. He writes to Henry Wilber-
Your letter was very soothing to me. It found me under
great sadness, arising chiefly from sorrows of others, not my
own. . When I think of you both, I feel that I have
a brother and sister who would love and console me till I need
solace no more. And it is most deeply soothing to me.
. . . And, now, what shall I say to your letter? I feel
that in the end nothing will ever part us three. Either we
442 Manning's Domestic Side [July,
shall all die where we are, or, through much heartbreaking,
we shall all meet elsewhere. I should much desire to see and
talk with you, but how and when I do not know. I cannot
come to you, nor leave home at present. It would indeed be
a great delight if we were nearer ; but I always feel rebuked
in myself by the thought that if I were what I might be God
would be enough for me. . . . Pray for me as needing
tenfold more prayers than yourself, both for my sins and my
perils.
The conversion of Mrs. George Ryder, sister of his wife and
of Mary Wilberforce, was at that early date a subject of trouble
and anxiety to Manning. She and her husband were in Rome
and doubtless the rumor of their reception had just reached
England. Manning wrote:
I am indeed very anxious and shall be about our dearest
Sophia. It is a great sorrow and fear for you, dear Mary.
All your love seems to descend upon her and yet not to lose
its hold of the others. Yesterday at the altar I thought of
her. I now think I did write to you after all, but I had
rather write twice than seem unloving to you, my dearest
sister.
And four days later comes another brotherly letter, written
for Mary Wilberforce's birthday.
Is not to-morrow your birthday ? All good and all happi-
ness be with you. This has been a time of many thoughts,
some bright and fair, some sad and heavy ; a day * * neither
light nor dark, but in the evening time there shall be light ! "
We are all going on to that time, the first Vespers of an All
Saints' Day which is eternal.
And the letter goes on to deal with his feelings and views
about devotion to our Blessed Lady (Protestant enough, of
course), but noticeable in that he calls her the " Mother of
God," showing that he was free, even in those days, from the
not uncommon heresy which " divides Christ," by saying that
our Lady is Mother of the Sacred Humanity, but not of God.
What you ask about the prayers of the Mother of God I
feel it hard to answer. Certainly she is an object of our love
and veneration. I know of no affection of heart which is not
due to her. " Son, behold thy Mother! " is enough to make
MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE 443
us her children in spirit. But when I see that neither St.
Augustine in the west, nor St. Athanasius in the east in-
voiced her, I feel that it cannot be a duty and that true
prayers lose nothing. Also I seem to have a fear, believing
that these invocations have diverted trust and intention of
heart which are due to God.
At least I cannot think that they will lose her prayers who
do oot Invoke her out of a loving fear of doing amiss. May
we all be guided and may he accept us and our prayers
through the intercession of all saints.
When Henry Wilberforce's son Arthur was ten years of
age, the question as to his spiritual training arose, and we
gather from a letter written at this time by Manning that he
had been asked to become his confessor. It is touching to see
a mind such as Manning's trying to content himself with the
poor husks of Protestantism, while his whole soul revolted
against their barren dryness. But he was, in this spring of 1849,
on the eve of his glorious and happy entrance into the one
true Church with her life- giving sacraments. He writes to
Mary Wilberforce:
I have been too slow to answer your letter about Arthur.
In truth, I did not kuow what to say. If it were possible, I
would most gladly try what I could do for him, dear boy, but
the seldom meeting is so great a difficulty and so great a
danger. With children I feel that a confessor should have
his eye upon them ; otherwise he must be in their hands, not
they in his. This was the reason why I told H [enryj that
I thought he had better get some one on the spot to take him.
Then, referring to those who in life had served God in the
iim light of Evangelicalism, he adds :
Yes I do believe if they were still among us they would,
some altogether, some in great measure, believe and desire as
we do and be our examples to better things. For surely if
anything ever brought us to the foot of the Cross it is con-
fession, the altar, and the sacrifice. I grow very sick, sad,
and weary and but for my sins long to lie down, that all these
strivings and contradictions may be over. But we must be
patient and content, for even these are too good for us. May
God greatly bless and cheer you, my dearly loved sister, this
Easter season. Ever yours, H. E. M.
444 Manning's Domestic Side [July,
That year and the two succeeding ones were weary periods
for Manning. It was during this time that his. faith in Anglican-
ism grew fainter and fainter, until it altogether expired; that
his confidence, strong as it had once been, in the Church- of
England as part of Christ's institution, gradually weakened
and fell away.. It was Manning's death-bed as an Anglican, as
Newman in his own case had described the long agony that
preceded conversion. No wonder he wrote that he was "sad»
sick, and weary," and willing, but for the thought of his un-
worthiness, to lie down and die. The next letter breathes sl
like spirit of despondency. It is dated July, 1849, and ad—
dressed to Henry and Mary Wilberforce, whom he calls his
"very dear brother and sister":
I knew you did not forget me, but I do not know what t«
write. All I would say outgrows what I can say, and IseeiM
to find nothing $0 good as to hold my peace. May yo«
neither know what it is to tarry long, and yet if it be best ft>x
you I would not wish you to lose it. Certainly but for oar
weakness God would be enough. And is, as I know; ancl
yet in saying it, I know it to be a hard saying. These twehre
years seem to be a dream, or rather the three which went
before [which were those of his manied life]. And it is hard
to believe that anything was ever otherwise than it is now.
Sometimes I have thought all would be lighter if the Church
and its altars in this land were more plainly divine. But
then I know that unless I have more faith the Upper-
Chamber itself would be an upper- chamber and no more.
But we grievously need religious brotherhood, and religious
homes. When the earthy are dissolved what remains to us?
Much, as I know, thank God, and yet we need something
above ourselves which, when we " fail, may receive us into
everlasting habitations.' ' But our system is of earth and
time, social and down-pressing. I did not mean to write all
this. And if I lived more by faith in the Heavenly Court 1
should not. . . .
All blessings with you both, my very dear Mary, yourm° st
loving brother, H. E. M»
A letter written somewhere about this date, to Sidney H* r * '
bert, describes an incident which could not have failed *
deepen Manning's conviction that the system to which he **
belonged was indeed one "of earth and time/ 9 He writes;
;
Manning's Domestic Side
445
jo, with
t mfinpv
I had a strange conversation, about a month ago,
Goulburn about Church matters. He contended that money
and a peerage are the chief social importance of a bishop ;
that it is his social not his spiritual character which impresses
the people and serves the Church. I bad thought the last
specimen of this race had been some time in the British
Museum. For some j'ears I have never seen a live one.
'n 1849 East Farleigh, the little town in which Manning's
her-in-iaw, Henry Wilberforce, was Protestant vicar, was
ed by a terrible outbreak of cholera. The victims were the
■ Irish who came year by year to work in the Kentish hop-
s. Of course they were all of tbem Catholics, and Mr.
»erforce accordingly sent to town for spiritual aid. Two of
London Oratorians came at once to East Farleigh to min-
■ to the sick and dying. One of them was Father Faber,
he and his companion were Mr. Wilberforce's guests in
parsonage.* To quote Cardinal Newman's beautiful words:
Every good deed done for our Lord's sake has its reward
from him, and Mr. Wilberforce used to call to mind with in-
finite gratitude that on the day of the year on which he had
received our Lord's servants into his house, he aDd his were,
by our Lord's mercy, received into the everlasting home of
the Catholic Church.
Among those that came to comfort and help the poor
zkca hop-pickers, who could not of course accept spiritual
istration except from priests of the Catholic Church, was
shdeacon Manning.
Returning to Lavington after this visit he wrote thus to
nry Wilberforce:
I cannot tell you what that night and morning were to me.
I trust I have learned what I shall never forget, which has
given me an unspeakable peace. And I would have come all
the way if only to give that poor hoy a cup of water. I can-
not tell you what came into my thoughts when he asked for
it just as I was going. t How happy are you to be able to do
so much and for so many. May God be with you and around
At a time, be it noted, when any intimacy between a priest and a parson was sure lo cast
(he latter the dreaded stigma of " Popery."
N'o doubt he remembered our Lords promise to ftiose who should give even a cup of
water to a disciple.
446 MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE [Jul]
you both that no harm may touch you ; or rather that
good may rest upon you.
The agony of Manning's Anglican death- bed was drawin
near, and as his hold upon what he had once believed to be
part of the True Church gradually weakened, his heart seemfccJ
more and more to warm towards those whom he had ever
loved with a real brotherly affection.
A little more than a year before his conversion he writes
thus in answer to a letter from Mary Wilberforce :
Neither do you know what your love is to me ; and how all
my love and memory hang round about it. And this season
of the year puts me back into a time of vision, " in months
past," when all was beautiful and as firm under foot as it was
clear overhead. Is all this illusion or a deceit of the devil?
Do you remember riding in the wood between Calloways and
Rd. Hill's cottage? I am afraid these things hold me in a
weak and foolish way . . . How many there are now all
gathered in : and do they not know all truth ? How I long
for one word to say : " You are right, or, wrong."
In little more than a twelvemonth that word came to him—
not, indeed, from the lips of dead friends, but from the mouth
of God himself, whispering to his soul. But as late even as
the autumn of this year, 1850, we find Manning writing in fear
to Henry Wilberforce lest he should take the great step pre-
cipitately. Mr. Wilberforce was then in Malines, having just
resigned his living, and with it all prospect of advancement and
prosperity in this world. From Malines he went to make a
Retreat and to receive instructions from the Jesuit Fathers to
Brussels, and Manning, hearing of this, writes :
What shall I say to you, my most dear brother? I feel all
you write, and wish I could see and speak with you, and,
God willing, soon will. Meanwhile, try to do as you say, g ct
time, quiet, recollection, and a clearer sight. Make a resolve
with yourself not to act in the Jesuit house. I do not m***
oppose your will to any Truth ; but resist impulse of preset
ieeling.
But Mr. Wilberforce's reception that soon followed, atr
cost of nearly all his dearest friends as well as of his
was the result of no impulse, and it only preceded
„
Manning's domestic Side
i submission by half a year. In April, 1851, "with the
ist conviction, both of reason and of conscience," he wag re-
ed by Father Brownbill into the Catholic Church.
A letter dated the following September, when he had been
months a Catholic, details the incidents of his final visit to
beloved Lavington. He writes :
It was a strange time. I had shrunk from it as if I could
not go there ; but when the time came I longed for it. And
when I got there I had the sort of happiness and sadness
which I suppose I should have if I had died and come back
again. ... It was so wonderful to walk about through
the woods and garden as a stranger. Nothing ever brought
back 1833* so vividly. But would I have it back ? As Hen-
ry says: "Track home" is best, and we shall go no more
out.
One of the most loved and venerated members of that
med circle at Lavington was Mrs. John Sargent, the mother
Manning's wife and of Mrs. Henry Wilberforce. She it was
lived in the Rectory of Lavington in the early years of
Rector's widowhood ; she it was who became in later days
companion of her other widowed son-in-law, Samuel Wil-
orce. No mother was ever more dearly loved than she.
none was such love more worthily earned. Manning's filial
rtion towards her found expression during her last illness
861, at which date he was a priest of several years' stand-
aod Superior of the Oblates at Bayswater. Several mem-
; of the family were assembled round Mrs. Sargent's dying
at Cuddesdon. To one of her daughters, Mary Wilber-
;e, Manning wrote, on June 6, 1861 :
I have indeed been saying Mass for our most dear mother.
This morning I said the Mass of the 5. Heart, and com*
mended her to the infinite love of our Divine Lord. It seems
strange to me to think of all that is passing where you are,
and not to be with you. But in truth I feel it to be a relief
that I am not there. For I could do nothing, and I could
not look on. And dearly as I should desire to see her once
again, I feel that I should have more pain than consolation.
And to her I feel I could minister nothing. It brings back on
me many times in these twenty years, and the many last days
•The dale of his marriage.
448 MANNING'S DOMESTIC SIDE [July,
we have watched over. They are nearly ended now. For
few of us remain of the full house at Laving ton. It was a
beautiful world, and if there were no world to come, I do not
know that I would wish for anything more. I know nothing
more sweet and peaceful than Lavington in the old days
which we remember. And they look so beautiful that they
seem more like a dream than anything in the hard world in
which I have had to live these many years.
You have done the best thing you could do in making with
her the act of contrition; and she would certainly say: "I
believe in all that God has revealed, and if there be anything
I do not know, I believe it in my heart." Give her my fond-
est filial love and tell her I am praying for her to our dear
Lord.
Sutely no Catholic ministering to a Protestant death-bed
could do better than adopt the advice given by Manning on
this occasion. And how many of those who have heard of
Manning as cold and lacking in sympathy, would have ex-
pected him to use words overflowing with tenderness, such as
were evoked by this and other occasions of family sorrow ?
Though it is more than forty years since Pius IX. chose
him as Wiseman's successor in the see of Westminster, it may
still be of interest to read what Manning said to his sister-in-
law, on his appointment. He wrote on May 24, 1865 :
I have waited only for a moment till I could write quietly
to you. These last days have been a hard time. I thank
you with all my heart for your loving letter, and you know
how truly and unchangeably I have loved you as my sister.
It seems to me as if I were in a dream. I could hardly feel
for days secure from waking up and finding it was just day-
light. But now the reality has grown upon me. Though as
yet the burden is not sensible, as it soon will be.
Two things console and strengthen me ; the one that this
comes to me from the Holy Father alone, despite all human
influence could do against it. The other that the whole dio-
cese has come to me, even those who were most opposed in
time past, in a way I never could have believed. Moreover
the laity, and above all the old Catholics of England, ha\>
shown me a charity which shows how little the Times kncrw^
us. So much for myself. Now, I trust I may see you
dearest Henry even more tham before, for I am less tied t^^
1907.] Manning's domestic Stde 449
I was by rule. And among the few surviving memories, you
and he are chief. Give my love to him, and pray, both of
you, for me, and may God ever bless you and your children.
Believe ine always your loving brother, H. E. M.
It is notorious that Manning was averse to speaking of his
marriage, and this reticence has been hastily attributed by many
to a supposed feeling that in embracing the married state he
had for that time at least swerved from the highest ideal. Mr.
Purcell in his Life state? the matter thus:
In his Anglican days the death of his wife produced
in his heart and whole nature a grief so profound and abid-
ing, as to forbid even the mention of her name. As a priest
and cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, he never alluded to
his marriage, either because the fact of his having once been
a married man was personally painful ; or because he feared
that the common knowledge of his early marriage, strange as
it may seem, might produce, somehow or other, among his
Catholic flock, especially priests, monks, and nuns, an un-
pleasant impression derogatory to his high ecclesiastical dig-
nity and position.
Allowing for some truth in this quotation, I personally be-
lieve that Manning shrank from the mention of his marriage
because he knew that it would reopen a wound which had
pierced him to the very heart. The grief when it came had
been so intense and crushing as to be beyond all words. He
says in a letter to Newman :
The great thought is before me night and day, but I have
long since become unable either to speak or write of it.
. . . All I can do now is to keep at work. There is a sort
of rush into my mind when unoccupied, I can hardly bear."
To another correspondent he describes his sorrow as " a sort
of grapple with what was crushing me." t Add to this the
testimony of George Richmond, R.A., who said, speaking of
Manning:
Yes ; his grief was great and abiding — too great for words ;
he never spoke of her. I was a frequent visitor at Lavington
•Quoted in Pnicell's Lift. Vol. I., p. 123. Mhid.
VOL. LXXXV. — 29
450 Manning's domestic Side [July,
*
in those days of sorrow, and often found Manning seated by
the grave-side of his wife, composing his sermons. *
His extreme reticence on the subject of the blow which
shattered the happiness of his home adds greatly to the inter-
est of any words which he wrote to those who were nearest
both to his lost one and to himself. The memories of his mar-
ried life and of the crushing sorrow which ended it, were much
too sacred to be recalled in words. Except to the very few
intimate survivors of his Lavington days, he never broke the
silence which fell upon him in July, 1837, while even to them
he never mentioned his wife's name. We find nothing in the
most intimate letters to his wife's sister, beyond allusions, rare
and guarded, to that love and that sorrow which transcended
words. This reticence makes such letters doubly precious.
Two of them I am happily able to quote. The first was writ-
ten nine months before his reception into the Church, when the
lonely and still sorrowing widower was remembering the an-
niversary of his wife's death. He had come upon three letters
of hers, the last he ever received from her, and he sends them
to Mary Wilberfotce for her perusal. He writes:
God only knows what we were to each other ; and she is
with him. I would not bring her back for all worlds. We
shall meet soon ; and go out no more. . . . God be ever
with you who, after her, are to me most what she was.
Again, in a letter of September 7, 1852, there is another
equally touching reference to her who had made him so happy
a home during four brief years. This time, too, it is to Mary
Wilberforce that he writes :
You are to me what nothing else on earth can be — a part of
the past — and the only part still altogether surviving. And
even in the past you were always the nearest to me, because
she and I were one. And now your love is for both. It does,
indeed, seem a vision too bright and too fleeting to be true.
It is wonderful how of late it has returned upon me. But
how blessed. I would not recall it for worlds. I would not
go back fifteen — nineteen years for all its happiness sevenfold.
All I desire is grace and work till we meet in the kingdom of
God
* Ibid.
1907.] Manning's Domestic Side 451
These last sentences are worthy of note, particularly by
those who believe that converts repine at the step they have
taken. Writing as a Catholic and a priest, he was able to look
back upon the unclouded happiness of the past without a
flicker of regret for the home that used to be. He wrote in
words that are nothing short of poetry in prose:
I loved . . • the little church under a green hillside,
where the morning and evening prayer, and the music of
the English Bible, for seventeen years, became a part of my
soul. Nothing is more beautiful in the natural order ; and if
there were no eternal world, I could have made it my home.
But all this he cast aside "for the excellent knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ."
"All I want is grace and work," he wrote. Little did he
foresee what that work was to be — what a glorious pontificate it
was to include. But all toil and labor were light and easy to
him, for he looked on to the end — to the home that knows no
sorrow, to the rest that knows no alloy. "The tender mem-
ories of the past " were dear to him, inexpressibly dear, and
yet, as he contemplated the glory that was to be revealed in
him, he was able to write : " The thought that my Home is not
past, but to come, is beyond all words." For the Home which
was to come, the Home where he now rests, is everlasting, and
from it " he shall go no more out."
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.'
BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN. D.D.,
Author tf" My Nra Curatt" ; " Luki Dtlmigi" ; " GUnanaar," tit.
Chapter X.
AT BRANDON HALL.
; jf~~ jf [K " F many another poor mortal, Ned Galv»>>
trusting too much to bis little learning, and re-
fusing to be taught by experience, felt and tez^
sadly. The conviction forced itself on his imafiS'
ination until it became a monomania, that goX«
was here, here in their own townland, where they were boC n
and reared, and where now this black stranger coolly comes * »
and, by aid of superior knowledge, which was uncanny ar*«
criminal, was piling up an enormous fortune secretly and covertly
from the world. The thought was maddening. Ned had res*- 4 '
all about Nevada and the mines of Kimberley, and the rive * i
rolling down their golden sand in far India. And here, clear *■ 1
and unmistakably, was this prospector, luckily for himself, &i*3"
ging and mining and pocketing the precious metal that t**>-d
lain so long within a few feet of their own labors.
The nights were cold; Ned Galway heeded it not, but ^*"
tablished a kind of detective system of his own, by whi^* 1,
sooner or later, he sought to catch Hamberton, as the w***
men of old caught the Leprechaun and compelled him to s****"
render his ill-gotten wealth. Night after night he wander* 5 **
around the lonely hills that frowned down on the marble qu» r "
ries, expecting to see the glint of the lantern that would nu***
the Englishman at work; but he saw nothing, except, now a* 1 **
again, a hare that he might start from her form, or some w*l**
thing creeping in the darkness from covert to covert. Tl**
good wife came to the conclusion that Ned's head was " turned " »
and she communicated her fears to others; until at length t* 1 *
report reached Hamberton of Ned's nocturnal vigils, and ***
* Copyright. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.
r swore he would teach the fellow a lesson, and then dismiss
him back to his farm and his fishing.
In one of the limestone caves in his quarries he had a tall
figure dressed completely in white, the head covered except to
reveal a grinning skull. He placed a lantern to hang as it
^ere from the hands of the dead, and secreted two confidential
>men in the cave on a certain very dark night in January.
Then, when his whole household were stilled in sleep, he came
out at midnight, and slowly and cautiously entered the rough
path to his quarries. As he went along, he threw the power-
ful light of an acetylene lamp before him ; and he often paused
and looked down, and picked up worthless pebbles and threw
them away. He was quite conscious that his every movement
was watched from above, and he strove by every gesture and
pause to increase Ned Galway's suspicions. At last he put
oat the light and entered the cave, and instantly Ned de-
scended and followed him.
*"I have him at lasht," said Ned. "An" he's the divil if
he escapes me now. Here he has his gold heaped up in bags
0/- fc^oxes, I suppose. I wondher will I be able for him ! "
TSed's idea was to come behind Hamberton, when the latter
Mrs* f=t counting his treasures, and seize him and them, using only
tfi ^^ violence that might be necessary to carry out his project.
I-f j— calculated that Hamberton might not know him in the
d».x~ l-cness ; or that, if he were detected, it would be Hamberton's
itxt^ rest, as well as his own, to keep the matter secret. For
h^s liad some dim idea that Hamberton's supposed mining was
not strictly legal; and that the government or the landlord had
clstims on mines and minerals.
He stumbled over broken limestone and marble, as he de-
sc ended from his post of observation; and, once or twice, when
t»e caused some larger boulder to tumble down the declivity,
with a noise as he imagined like thunder, his guilty conscience
made him pause in terror. As he proceeded further, his ter-
ror became greater, until the bark of a sleepless dog, or even
the wash of the sea, made him tremble. He would have turned
baclc, but that the demon of cupidity was too strong within
him, and the glint of the imaginary gold blinded his eyes to
guilti and danger.
-At length, after many pauses, he reached the opening of
the cave. There was the dim reflection of some light cast from
1 90 7 . ] LISHEEN 453
4S4 LISHEEN [July,
behind a mighty shelf of rock that screened the entrance of
the cavern, and Ned thought : " He's now at his work, the
divil ; and won't he be surprised ! "
Cautiously he crept forward, and then, after a moment's
pause, he flew swiftly around the boulder, and came face to
face, not with Hamberton, but with the awful sheeted, silent
figure, with the skull grinning from beneath the white hood.
A lantern hung down before the ghost and lit the walls of the
cave.
For an instant Ned Galway was paralyzed with terror, and
could only stare. There was a sudden bending forward of the
awful figure, and then the unhappy fellow, with an awful shriek,
turned to flee. As he did the figure fell on him and threw
him to the earth. The lantern was extinguished, and in the
darkness and dread and cold terror, as of death, his conscious-
ness staggered and fled.
In the gray dawn of the morning, when the men assembled
for work in the quarries, they thought they heard stifled moans^
proceeding from a certain cave, where sometimes they left tbci^-
picks and hammers after the day's work. After some hesita — .
tion, for the Irish peasant is rather fearful of "finding somfc^
thin'" that would implicate him with the law, they entered tk«
cave and saw but a white sheet, from beneath which the moans
came, sad and fitful enough, a broken lantern, and a skull.
They raised the sheet and discovered the prostrate figure of
Ned Galway, more dead than alive. To every query, tb^* c
was but one feeble answer:
" Oh ! the ghosht ! the ghosht ! "
"What the divil brought you here, Ned, man alive?"
" Oh ! the ghosht ! the ghosht ! "
" How long are you here ? "
"Oh! the ghosht! the ghosht!"
" Rouse up, man alive, and tell us what happened."
" Oh ! the ghosht ! the ghosht ! "
"Thunder and turf, man! What ghosht? What did ^ ou
see ? "
"Oh! the ghosht! the ghosht!"
" This bangs Banagher. This must be the banshee that
hard last night late. But what brought Ned Galway here?
the middle of the night ? "
" Oh ! the ghosht ! the ghosht ! "
1907-] LISHEEN 455
They took him home and told his wife the circumstances.
.Even to her queries he had but one answer-: "The. ghost! the
ghosht ! " And for many years after, whenever Ned was com-
ing home from a fair or market, and was " unco fu'" it was a
sMual sight to behold Ned swaying to and fro within the prison
oi his crate and cart, and to hear him cry with outstretched
ftaands : "Oh! the ghosht ! the ghosht ! " At last he became
lenown all around the countryside as "The Haunted Man."
Hamberton, however, was not disposed to let him off so
easily. He had a good deal of contempt for such a character;
siisd he needed an example to prove that the popular fancy
about hidden treasure was ill-founded, and also to show the
discontented moiety of his laborers that he was not a man to
be trifled with.
When time and thought brought back something like reason
to Ned Galway, Hamberton calmly but firmly demanded an
authentic account of the event that was now the talk of two
parishes. The one point that he desired particularly to clear
up -was, what brought Ned to the cave that winter night. He
knew right well what it was; but he demanded the admission
from Ned's own lips. This was no easy task. Ned had several
theories about his presence in the cave, and these varied as
their probabilities. He said he was bewitched ; that he was a
8 °n[inambulist ; that he had dreamt three times running that
there was a "crock of goold" hidden in the cave, and that it
*N&s whilst (J reaming he sought it. Finally, he declared that
! * *Vras " thim moonlighters, who wor agin the government an'
ev ^ry dacent, hard-working man, and who would think no more
°* shooting an Englishman than of shooting a rabbit, who took
****) by force out of his warm bed by night, and thranshported
****} to the cave, where they held their nocturnal and rebel-
l °**s meetings."
Hamberton took each story as it came from Ned's lips,
lx *d told it to the men; and each new invention was a source
** intense amusement day by day ; whilst Hamberton saw that
iv ^ry additional falsehood was wearing softly away every trace
** discontent and every lingering idea that he was secretly
****a.ssing wealth. Then, one day, he determined to call them
to gether and talk to them of their infidelity and perfidy. But
*** abandoned the idea under the influence of some cynical
45 6 LISHEEN [July,
"Tis all the same/' he argued, "and will be so to the end
of time. All men are liars. I must tolerate them until I can
leave them forever."
This was the idea — not passion, nor fear, nor monomania —
but the calm, well-formed idea that was haunting the mind o{
this singular man. The idea of getting out of life, when he ha.d
accomplished certain things, as softly and as voluptuously a^
possible. The old Roman mode of life, sybaritic, cynical, phi\_
osophical, appealed strongly to him. And the Roman method
of leaving life appealed to him still more strongly. He had c*<>
idea of drifting on to old age, a prey to every wretched infirnc*^
ity, until he became an object of contempt even to those fc
who loved him. He had seen old age and shuddered at it — :
imbecility, its multiform diseases, its impotence; and he det^x-^.
mined that when certain things had been done he would lea/\r^
of his own free will this most disastrous world. Once or twi
he had hinted this to Father Cosgrove in their occasional co
ferences on the immortality of the soul and the future lif* ^
Then, he had broadly stated his intention to the horrified pri^^ t
to leave this wretched life as soon as he had placed Cla.i^» e
Moulton under the protection of some man, in whose honor £^ e
could confide. And he added, in mitigation of the horror fc> c
had raised in the mind of the simple priest:
" You see it is a far-off event, Father. I think the cond J.
tion is hardly realizable at all; or, at least, only so after the
lapse of many years. But when you meet that Sir Galahad, yo n
will tell me, will you not ? "
" You must allow Miss Moulton some choice/' the priest
answered. " From the little I know of them, young ladies'
fancies cannot be forced, cannot be forced."
" Quite so. Quite so. I shall allow Claire the most abs» -
lute freedom. But this puts my design further back. Bc^ -
cause, you know, like all girls, she is sure to marry a knar ^
or a fool."
" I'm not so sure of that," said the priest. " But I pray
may be so ; or that God will change your heart. And he will
he will. I am but a poor prophet ; but I foresee the day whi
Miss Moulton will be the happy mistress of Brandon Hall, ai
you her honored and respected friend and father."
" Oh, man of mighty faith, how little dost thou know ! H<
little dost thou know ! " said Hamberton.
%\
I 907. J LISHEEN 45 7
Chapter XI.
A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.
The discovery that was now to throw dread and consterna-
tion, at least amongst some of the family at Lisheen, was made
by Pierry, and communicated with great caution to Debbie
alone. Maxwell's action and demeanor in the field before the
hunt began, and afterwards at Reynard's death, gave, as we
have seen, some food for reflection to Pierry McAuliffe. No
peasant, no matter how brave and independent, would act as
Maxwell had done; and surely no deserter, hiding from the
police, would tempt Providence in that way. Pierry, loth enough
to act the spy, was yet so disquieted about their visitor, that
be determined to set a watch on his movements; and, although
these were manifest and unconcealed, he thought he should catch
Maxwell in some moment when he was off his guard, and in
which he might reveal something that would betray his identity.
Strange to say, the thought of the agent, Netterville, of his
anger at the insult offered him by Pierry before the entire hunt,
and of the possible revenge he might take, did not occupy the
mind of the young peasant these winter days so much as the
question : Who was their unknown guest, whence had he come,
and what was his object in selecting Lisheen, above all other
places, for a retreat?
He questioned his father closely about the chance of their
having rich relatives in England or America, some far-out
cousins, who might, after the lapse of many years, be anxious
to resume the rights of family relations, and perhaps bring back
8 ome little resources to help their meagre means. The good
father shook his head. There were, of course, relatives in
America; but all were doing for themselves, and not likely to
ko troubled with home emergencies. There were none, so far
*s he knew, in England. He bade Pierry abandon all hope of
*Uccor from abroad. He thought that this was Pierry's idea.
*he latter then cast about for some other solution of the prob-
' e Oi, but in vain. He consulted Debbie more than once. She
Persisted in maintaining that Maxwell was a gentleman ; and
*l*c instanced his demeanor towards Miss Moulton when they
***d visited Lisheen. She spoke rather scornfully of " that
t**ing," as she called Miss Moulton, and in great laudation of
45 8 LIS HE EN [July,
Maxwell's attitude towards people who should have minded
their own business.
Clearly, then, Maxwell was a gentleman — but in disguise
and hiding away in this remote place for some obscure and
suspicious cause. He cast up every possible cause in his mind
— domestic trouble, reduced means, gambling, even Debbie's
attractions ; but rejected them all. The revelation then bunt
unexpectedly upon him.
Every soft moonlight night in the early spring he noticed
that Maxwell, after supper, used to throw on a heavy frieze coat,
and, under pretence of having a quiet smoke, was in the habit
of going to a lonely plantation or screen of firs higher up on
the hill, but not very far from the cottage. One night, when
a heavy fog rose up from the valleys beneath and almost hid
everything, Pierry, under its friendly cover, followed Maxwell
up along the hill, and hid in ambush under a wet and drip-
ping hawthorn hedge, on which a few withered leaves and a
few red berries were still lingering. The plantation, composed
of heavy timber with light young fir-trees springing up between,
looked ghostly enough in the pale moonlight, that was now
struggling with the heavy fog ; and through a path cut between
the tender young saplings, on which the beads of vapor were
glistening, Maxwell was walking to and fro, apparently buried
in deep thought. Suddenly, and with a kind of stifled cry, he
stopped ; and, turning around, he appeared to be engaged in
angry altercation with some unseen person. His voice at first
was pleading and pitiful, then it rose shrill and piercing, as if
arguing against the suggestion of some terrible deed. Then it
seemed to die away, as if remonstrance were unavailing, and
Pierry heard him mutter: "When we have marked with blood
these sleepy two, 19 as Maxwell turned away into the recesses of
the plantation again.
The boy was badly frightened ; but he had nerve enough to
wait and see what further developments would take place.
After a pause Maxwell emerged from the shadow of the
firs, and stood in the open moonlit space again.
Suddenly he turned, as if taken red-handed in his guilt, and
shouted :
" Who's there? What, ho!"
Pierry, now believing that he was discovered by this madman
or murderer, was about to run, when Maxwell, after a pause, cried:
Q07-] LlSHEEN 459
"What hands are here? ha! they pluck out my eyes."
And then, as he rubbed his hands violently together, Pierry
eard him ask if all the waters in the ocean could wash the
ilthy blood from his hands.
He needed no more; but crept along the hawthorn hedge
nd, once again wrapped in the fog, sped down with throbbing
leart and bursting eyes towards home. But as it would never
lo to reveal prematurely all things before they were ripe, and
,s Pierry, consummate actor as he was, was now determined to
ee other and more tangible proofs of this man's guilt, he went
□to the cowhouse, and remained there until he saw Maxwell,
lalf an hour later, lift the latch of the cottage door and go in.
Then Pierry, with a half-lighted pipe in his hand, also entered,
rsat down as calm as he could by the smoldering fire.
" A cowld night outside?" said the old man.
'"Tis cold," said Maxwell, so calmly that Pierry was shocked
y the contrast of the man's demeanor with what he had wit-
essed an hour ago. " There is a thick fog and a heavy dew is
ailing."
"I fear the ground is too wet to turn up a-yet?" said the
ild man interrogatively.
"Yes"; said Maxwell. "It would be heavy under the
)lough just now."
"I suppose we musht wait, though the spring is running
m," said the old man.
And Maxwell pursued the conversation as calmly as if noth-
ing was on his mind more terrible than the fencing of a ditch
or the planting of a ridge of potatoes.
"He's the divil's own play-acthor intirely," Pierry thought,
as he beckoned Debbie to follow him.
Not till they had gone around the house, and were safely
insconced in the cow -byre did Pierry open his mind to the
Iondering sister.
"I've found out all," he whispered at first.
"All what?" said Debbie.
"All about the bonchal inside," said Pierry.
Then Debbie's curiosity, and more than curiosity, was
iroused.
" No wondher he was hidin'," said Pierry. " If I had what
ie has on my mind I'd drownd meself in the say."
"Wha — what is it?" said Debbie, now thoroughly terrified,
460 LISHEEN (Mj,
as she looked out into the square of moonlight before the door,
11 You'd never guess " ; said Pierry.
" No ; what in the Name of God is it ? " said Debbie. '* \ %
it anything very bad intirely ? "
"Couldn't be worse," said Pierry. "He has blood on his
sowl, as sure as we're talkin' here to-night. He has done
away wid somebody."
" Great God in Heaven to-night ! " almost shrieked the girl,
" what did we do to punish us in this way ? To think of hair -
in' a murderer in the house, an' undher our roof! But areyo
sure, Pierry?" she asked, as the gleam of an old affectio
shone up under such a dark cloud of gloom. . " How do yo ma
know ? How did you find it out ? "
" Aisy enough," said Pierry. " I had it from his own lips- ;
an' if you can hould yer tongue for wan twenty-four hour^ss,
you can hear it, too, or I'm mistaken." Then he told her al A\.
They then decided to hold a deep, unbroken silence aboc=-Jit
the matter, until Debbie could verify her brother's suspicions -s.
And then they would consult further on the matter.
The next night was equally favorable for observation; an^^cd
when Maxwell, again donning the heavy frieze coat, strolle^^sd
out into the moonlight, Pierry soon followed. But he immedr Ji-
ately returned, and said aloud:
" I'm thinkin', Debbie, that some wan is paying a polil^HRe
visit to your fowl. At laste, they're makin' the h of a ro w
outside."
" Wisha, bad luck to that fox ! " said Debbie, hustlins g
around and assuming a heavy shawl. "There's the second vis- it
this year; and not a pinny compinsation from thim huntsmin . "
Brother and sister separated in the yard ; and made the ir
way, by different routes, towards the plantation, the theatre of
Maxwell's appalling confessions. But they met and crouched
beneath the hawthorn where Pierry was ambushed the nig tit:
before. The night was cold and the grass was wet ; but th<
heeded not these things under the spell of the night's adve:
tures.
"Now, Debbie," whispered Pierry, "for your sowl's sal^^s,
don't let a screech out o' you, nor wan worrd, no matther whm. ^at
you see, or you'll spile all."
" I'll try," said Debbie with chattering teeth and shiverL ~mrmg
all over, rather from fright than cold.
LlSHEEN
461
igain they had not long to wait. For again Maxwell, his
c looming up larger in the mist, emerged from the plan-
n where the trees were thickest, and stood in the glade,
e the young saplings could not conceal him. After paus-
;ome time, and making some wild gesticulations, he struck
orehead violently with his right hand and strode back into
shadows.
Did ye see that?" whispered Pierry.
I did," chattered Debbie. "God help us! he has some-
[ weighty on his sowl."
Weighty enough," answered Pierry. " Wondher we never
Dected anything. Whisht! here he comes again!"
1 gain, witn slow and solemn tread, Maxwell strode out into
Tioonlight; and after a pause, and looking around solemnly
ic heavens, he suddenly gave a violent start, as if he had
an apparition, and shouted at it to depart: "A vaunt! and
my sight! Thou canst not say I did it; never shake thy
locks at me! "
*hese were the appalling cries that came to the frightened
:hers.
' He sees something," whispered Debbie, half dead with ter-
" Can you see anything, Pierry ? "
'I do," said Pierry. "There's somethin' white between the
i"
'Is it a man or a woman?" said Debbie.
"Tis nayther. 'Tis a sperrit," whispered Pierry. " 'Tis
thing he kilt."
'God save us !" said Debbie, making the sign of the cross.
uld we get home without his seein' us?"
No, no"; said Pierry. "Listen! he's at it agin!"
daxwell was still apparently arguing with the ghost, when
enly the latter must have disappeared ; for he turned around,
pulled up his coat-collar and muttered :
Why, so; being gone, I am a man again."
muttering:
'It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood," he
t back into the shades again.
'Come home, in God's Name !" said Debbie to her brother.
'No, no"; said Pierry. "We must see it out now. We
't get a chance agin!"
'But maybe he's gone home," said Debbie.
462 LISHEEN [}^r
" No " ; said Pierry. " You'll see him lightin' his pip*
first."
" He's the cool divil out an' out/' said Debbie. " To thinfc
of shmokin' after what he's seen ! But I wondher who was it 1
Was it a man or a 'uman?"
" Wait, and maybe he'll let on ! " said Pierry.
This time the interval was longer; but at last Maxwell cam«
out into the glade again. After a few minutes, he began an
imaginary dialogue with some person or persons, but in a low,
determined tone. Then he walked backwards and forwards as
if waiting. Again he addressed his victim, who appeared to
be pleading with him for mercy. He answered sharply and
walked to and fro again. The only words they could catd*
were :
" Well, quick, be brief ; I would not kill thy soul."
The dialogue now became more impassioned, Maxwell utter-
ing quick, jerky expressions, as of one impatient and not going
to be trifled with. At last he stopped short, and, stooping
down, made as if he would kneel on his victim's breast to suf-
focate or destroy him. He was apparently interrupted in bit
murderous effort, for he stood up suddenly, and, looking
around, shouted :
11 What noise is that ? Who's there ? "
"He's found us out," said Debbie. "What'll we do?"
11 No " ; said Pierry. " 'Tis the divil's conscience that's
troubling him. Whisht ! "
But they heard no more. For Maxwell, after one long, lin-
gering look at the dead body, passed into the shrubbery again*
In a few seconds he came back, and stood over the dead
body, his hands clasped and hanging down before him. Then
he broke out into an awful lamentation, swinging his bands
wildly, like women that are keening over a corpse ; and, in *
voice broken by his tears and moans, they could hear him
saying :
" Cold, cold, my girl ! Whip me, ye devils ! Blow me
about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-
down gulfs of liquid fire! Oh! dead, dead, dead! Oh! oh^
oh ! ! ! "
These last words he almost screamed, his arms held wildly
over his head ; and his whole frame contorted in agony. Tbc
lonely hour, the otherwise silent scene, the ghostly moonlight
-
LISHEEN
463
1 heavy drapery of mist and fog, and this man, alone with
terrible remorse, made a picture of horror and desolation
,t would have paralyzed any soul with dread. The girl near-
fainted, while her tears fell fast; and it needed every effort
her brother to keep her from shrieking out with the horror
t confronted her. At last Maxwell went away ; and Debbie
: free to speak amid her tears.
"Oh, Mother of Heaven to-night!" she cried, whilst her
thcr held her in his strong arms, " what are we to do, at
at all ? To think of our having a murderer in our house
over six months, an' we thratin' him like a gintleman.
c I knew there was somethin' quare about him all along;
"we couldn't sind him away. An' it 'was a girl! Sure I
;ht to know it, What's that he said: ' Cowld, cowld; me
!' Oh I the ruffian! To desthroy some poor, innicent cra-
re. that never did nobody harrum — "
"Well, he seems sorry enough for what he done!" said
rry. "Did ye hear him callin' on all the divils in hell to ,
.v and blasht him ? An' sure, bad as he is, it made me
iost cry to hear him say : ' Oh ! oh ! oh ! ' in the ind ! "
"What good is all that, if he done the deed?" said Deb-
. who was jealous that another had preceded her in Max-
l's affections. " Will all that moanin' and groanin' bring the
ar thing back to life? Well, I suppose he'll have to swing
fa for it now. Sure, he can't escape much longer!"
" But what in God's Holy Name are we to do ? " she con-
jed. "Sure, we can't give him up to the pelice. We'd be
led thraitors and informers forever I"
"We'll lave it alone till to-morrow, however," said Pierry,
nd maybe I'll run over and tell the priesht ! "
"The very thing," said Debbie, trying to dry her eyes.
lut how am I to meet htm again, or set at table with him,
make his bed ? "
"Well, do your besht," said Pierry. "It will never do to
on that we know anythin'. Why, he might murdher us all
our beds! "
"May God and his Blessed Mother save us ! " said Debbie.
fhat a pickle we got ourselves into by too much good na-
;. 'Twill be a lesson to us, I warrant you."
They passed down the hillside together, and then separated
the yard, Pierry going into the cabin first. After a long
464 LISHEEN [July,
time Debbie entered ; but kept turning her face away from the
place where Maxwell was calmly smoking and chatting with the
old people.
"Come over and take a hate of the fire/' said her mother;
and when Debbie demurred, the mother looked at her keenly
and saw she had been crying.
" Why, surely, 'tisn't cryin' about a couple of chickens you
are?" she said.
" Tis enough to make any girl mad/' interposed Pierry,
" to see wan fine fowl afther another desthroyed by that rogue
of a fox."
"Yerra, no matther," said the mother, "there's as good to
be got where thim kem from."
This commenced a pretty little debate, after Maxwell had
inquired what were the rules regulating compensation to farm-
ers and laborers for the destruction of poultry by the foxes
kept for the gentry's amusement. He was very indignant at
the revelations — the refusal in nine cases out of ten to repay
anything, the incredulity of the gentleman who was Grand
Almoner, the proofs that were required of the peasantry, the
pittance that was reluctantly given. He expressed himself free-
ly about the iniquitous custom. It was another sidelight on
Irish history. But no matter how indignant and sympathetic
he was, especially with Debbie, she kept her face averted from
him. She only heard:
"Cold, cold, my girl! Oh, dead, dead, dead! Oh! oh!!
oh ! ! ! "
Chapter XII.
HOMELESS.
At dawn next morning the whole household was startled
from slumber by the sudden appearance of police in the yard.
They had heard the rumbling of cars in a kind of half dream,
and the swift orders of officers ; but the half-dream became a
dread reality when, on looking out through the half pane which
served as a window, they saw the rough frieze coats and the
glazed caps of the officers of the law. Debbie was the first to
realize the situation ; and Maxwell, 1 in his settle bed, awoke
from heavy slumber to see her half-dressed form in the kitch-
en, and hear her shout to Pierry in the loft :
907.] USHEEN 465
'" Picrry, Pierry, get up ; get up ! the place is full of police ! "
And in an instant there was a furious knocking at the door
and the stern order:
" Open in the Queen's name ! "
The girl was so full of her adventure the night before, she
at once associated the presence of the police with the crime of
Maxwell ; and it was with a look of some pity and remorse
she said to the latter:
"The police are lookin' for some wan!"
She was swiftly undeceived when, on opening the kitchen
door, two brutal fellows, clearly bailiffs, rushed in and began
at once to take possession of the place. Utterly heedless of
protestations and appeals, they commenced flinging out into
the yard everything they could lay hands on, utterly regardless
to whether it was broken or not. Chairs, tables, the settle,
the ware, tins, dishes, pictures, the wheel- bellows at the fire,
the dried meat over the fireplace, the irons that held the heavy
pots — all were flung out, whilst Pierry and Maxwell and Deb-
bie looked on as if paralyzed. Then the latter rushed into the
room where her parents were. The bailiffs were following,
when Pierry rushed forward and planted himself before them:
' My father and mother aren't up yet," he said. " Give
them time to dress theirselves."
Jut with an oath the fellows tried to get past. Pierry
pushed them back, and cried out to his sister.
She instantly came forward and placed a heavy pike in her
brother's hands. Thus armed, he beat the bailiffs back into
the kitchen, and held the pike at rest to guard his father's
privacy. The fellows shouted for help; the police rushed in,
made some feint to throw the boy off his guard, and in an in-
stant had him and his sister handcuffed and led out, but not
before one of the policemen was seriously stabbed in the thigh.
As Debbie passed out she threw a look of withering scorn at
Maxwell, and said :
' I know what you are; but I didn't know you wor a cow-
Lrd. But your time is near."
He flushed up and said nothing, but looked like one para-
lyzed. Then he was rudely hustled out of the room into the
yard, where brother and sister were guarded by the police.
In a few moments the old couple, sorrowful but resigned, were
driven out from their home, and the work of demolition pro-
vol. lxxxv. — 30
466 LISHEEN [July,
ceeded. It took them many hours; for they were now in no
hurry, but went on calmly with their dreadful work; and a
huge collie dog, who took a family revenge by biting one of
the bailiffs severely, had to be evicted and evicted again and
again. Then the barns had to be visited, the turkeys, geese,
and hens ejected ; and the whole round of the farm examined,
lest any living thing should be left on the place.
It was near three o'clock, and the orders were given to the
officers to close in, when Hamberton and Miss Moulton rode
in from the main road, through a dense mass of spectators, and
into the yard. They had come by accident on the terrible
scene. They had been out for an afternoon ride, when their
attention was attracted by the presence of the vast, black
crowd that filled the fields and lined the ditches at Lisheen.
They were respectfully saluted by the police; and Hamberton
entered into a close conversation with the District Inspector,
whilst Claire Moulton rode over and inquired solicitously of
Debbie h?>w the whole unfortunate affair could have arisen.
She was dreadfully shocked at seeing the steel handcuffs on the
poor girl, and she said with some feeling to the officers:
" Surely these manacles are not necessary ? "
The officer said nothing, but pointed across the yard where,
in a butt, reclining on coarse straw, the wounded policeman
lay. But Debbie, tortured by the revelations of last night, fu-
rious at their eviction and the perfidy of Maxwell, and tired
after the long day's trial, hung down her head and was sul-
lenly silent. She wanted no sympathy from that quarter.
Claire Moulton turned her horse's head aside; and Debbie
looking up saw Mr. Hamberton arguing with the sheriff, and
apparently proposing a settlement that would allow them to re-
take possession of their home. The latter apparently was on
the point of. yielding, for Debbie could hear the police discuss*
ing the whole question, and just then Hamberton had taken out
a notebook and was rapidly writing in it, when Maxwell was
seen to go over and remonstrate with him. The result was
that Hamberton replaced the notebook in his pocket and shoo 1
his head, as if the matter were impracticable.
Debbie had witnessed the whole thing with blazing ejr «
and she muttered between her teeth :
" Thraitor and murdherer ! But you'll swing for this a-yetz-
The bailiffs, having walked the farm, and flung outside ""
:
] LISHEEN 467
sundaries every living thing, had come back into the yard ;
id, after some deliberation, they proceeded to demolish the
welling house. It was at this crisis the old people, who had
itherto looked on in calm resignation at their fate, raised a
ild cry of lamentation. It looked as if the final hope had
:en cut from beneath their feet; for so long as the dwelling
as there, there was a chance of resuming possession. Now,
ic decree seemed to be irrevocable that the family should not
iter on their land again. The dense crowd outside began to
iow symptoms of excitement, when the wild cries of the old
;ople reached them ; and a stray stone was dropped on the
iatch where the bailiffs were at the work of destruction. The
. grit-shades, too, were falling, and the officer looked anxious.
c had a long journey before him; and how could he con-
cture what might happen under the cover of night, and pass-
ig through a hostile country. He looked anxiously at his
atch ; and again Hamberton approached the sheriff, apparent-
l to remonstrate with him on the altogether unnecessary de-
lolition of the little home. He appeared to be prevailing, and
le sheriff had put up his hand to stop the dismantling of the
3of, when again Maxwell interfered ; and said something that
pparently induced the officer to decide otherwise. It was such
ross, uncalled-for treachery that even the patient old man said
loud :
"Dom your blood, you scoundrel! Isn't this a nice return
or takin' you aff the road and makin' a dacent man av you?"
But the old woman interfered :
" Lave him to God, Owen ! Lave him to God ! Shure.
whin we mint well, 'twill be all the same bye-'m-bye!"
And Pierry said, and he threw his voice out from the midst
)/ the fosse of police that surrounded him:
"Yes; lave the ruffian to God, and the hangman's rope,
lat's swinging for him this many a day! "
Maxwell flushed up as he saw public attention thus drawn
ward him, and then he grew suddenly pale, as he saw Ham-
rton's and Miss Moulton's eyes bent on him in surprise.
it there was no longer time for sentiment. The night was
ling; the bare rafters of the little home at Lisheen were now
ting in the fading light on wreck and ruin; the window had
s n long since smashed ; the door hung on its hinges. The
A work was done. The Inspector looked again at his watch,
468 LISHEEN [Juljr,
shook hands with Hamberton, raised his hand in salute to Miss
Moulton, pulled up his scabbard, and ordered his men to fall
in.
Maxwell, looking wistfully at the two prisoners, seemed un-
decided what to do. Then, under a sudden impulse, he strode
over to where Debbie, who had been sitting on a cart sur-
rounded by police, was standing up to accompany her captors
to gaol. She looked him straight between the .eyes in her fear—
less way ; and his face fell before her gaze. But he had to sajr
something.
" Don't judge me too hard, now," he pleaded. " I cannot
explain. Some day you will understand and forgive."
The old, smothered affection rose up in the girl's heart, a9
she saw his worn and woe- begone face. There was nothing of
the self assurance of a traitor there. Only a pitiful, pleading"
•look for mercy and compassion. But the remembrance of last
night came up, and steeled her to every kinder feeling.
" There's One that will judge you and condemn you — yotm
know for what ! "
*' I don't know what you mean," he said. " I tell you, as
God is my Judge, that I have done no wrong to your family
or yourself. You will understand this soon ; and all will be
clear."
" I only understand," she said, " that wan day, not so long
ago, I called you back when you were facin' the world. Hay
the Lord forgive me for it ! Now, go your own ways, and may
the divil, your father, guide you."
And jerking her shawl over her head with heV shoulders,
as the policemen helped her, she strode forward to join her
brother. The old people came forward to say good-bye.
" God save you, and God keep you, alanna ! " said the
weeping mother. " Sure, never mother reared a betther son
nor daughter than ye. God save you and keep you ; and come
back soon ! Sure, God is above us all ! "
And she kissed the weeping boy and girl again and again*
The old man kissed them both in silence, and passionately wrung
their manacled hands. Then turned away weeping.
Maxwell had sat down on a broken cart far over in a cor*
ner of the yard. He had touched the nadir of human misery,
and sat in the growing darkness, his head bent forward and
supported by his hands. He was wondering if on earth there
LlSHEEN
469
jre then a more unhappy man than himself. He had made a
agnificent attempt and had utterly and hopelessly failed. Fate
is against him ; and worse than Fate, circumstances over which
! had no control. The idea that he had previously entertained,
lifting up these people, socially and intellectually, appeared
>w so ludicrous that he actually laughed sardonically at him-
If. To think of dining with the sword of Damocles raising
>ur scalp was considered absurd, he thought; but to think of
ttng up this race with that frightful incubus of landlordism
cighing on it, night and day, was preposterous. There is no
>om in an Irish peasant's cabin .for books. No room for any-
itng but the mattock and the spade to make gold for strangers.
And yet under this awful cloud of depression he saw a
;leam of light — the change in his own circumstances, the pos-
■ ibility of his doing better in another sphere of action. But
II this belonged to the higher and more speculative part of his
ndertaking. But Maxwell, too, was emotional. He was so far
otn being a mere doctrinaire and enthusiast, that even his dis-
al failure would have been supportable, but that he felt so
cply for the troubles that had fallen so swiftly on this be-
rcd household, where, looking back, he saw that he had
en comparatively happy. He knew well it was Netterville's
unded pride and vanity that had precipitated this awful crisis,
the anguish of which he had deeply shared. The sorrows of
s little family were his. He felt for the aged father and
ther ; he felt sorely for the manacled boy and girl, who had
'.t\ to him brother and sister. He felt for the desolation and
n ; but most of all he felt that he, in some mysterious man-
", had come to be regarded as a deadly and treacherous
:roy. He knew that the few words he had spoken to Ham-
'ton and the sheriff were wrongly interpreted; but this did
t account for the sudden change in the whole tone and lem-
r of the family towards him. The words addressed to him
Pierry and Debbie hinted at something strange and myster-
is. Yes; he parted with them now full of kindness and
ititude to them; but with their minds poisoned against him.
aitor ! Ingrate ! Houseless! Homeless! Surely the night-
i<3es never gathered around a more miserable man.
(TO BE CONTINUED-)
FAITH AND SCIENCE.
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D.
PERHAPS there is no intellectual difficulty more
distressing to the earnest -minded religious man
than the apparent contradiction, so often and so
persistently urged, between the results of scien-
tific investigation and the teachings of Christian-
ity. Other difficulties he has encountered — many of them diffi-
culties thrust upon him by his very nature and the environ-
ment in which he is placed. Most of us have had to face tbe
moral difficulties, none the less real because generally known
as temptations, in which one part of our human nature seems
to be set in direct opposition to the other. When the flesh
rebels agamst the spirit, and, drawing reason in the wake of
its vehemence, raises problems and suggests difficulties, no matter
how we may be enslaved or ensnared, we know at least where
to look for their solution. But when it is a case of calm,
judicial science opposing, not so much the practice as the vciy
grounds of religion, the case is far otherwise. There is no
reason why the two should be in conflict, so we think, unless
one or the other is in the wrong. There may be prejudice—
at times there is prejudice — but there seems to be no place lor
passion, no place lor the desires and aversions, no real cause
for magnifying objections. Yet, as we know, there is a strong
feeling abroad that the teachings of science are incompaiible
with the truths of faith.
It is not so much the chemist in his laboratory, or the
biologist in his dissecting room, or the physician at the bed of
sickness and pain, who is responsible for it. These men my
be incredulous. There is no reason why they should be so; and,
as a matter of fact, the faith and lives of very many men of
science are a standing protest against the calumny that science
is opposed to religion. If there is a Haeckel to sneer and rant,
there is also a Lord Kelvin to bow his head in a reverent
confession of a belief which his wide and profound acquaintance
with science has not only not destroyed but strengthened. If
1907.] Faith and science 471
Darwin or Huxley is quoted as giving color to the popular
view, if ponderous lumps of the writings of Spencer or Grant
Allen (save the mark!) are urged in its confirmation, there are
Dot wanting eminent names to set against them, eminent men
of science who were and are theists, Christians, Churchmen,
Catholics. We are apt to forget what a wealth of greatness
weighs down the one side of the balance while we are count-
ing up the number and appraising the scientific worth- of the
contents of the other. A few men with louder voices can
out-shout many whose accents are less strident. It is often the
exiguous discord that distracts our attention from the full and
balanced harmony.
Still, let it be granted that the preponderance of scientific
thought is ranged against the faith. This by way of an illus-
tration. Let the case for religion be painted as black as would
please the bitterest of its enemies. Let its upholders be mis-
represented, its teachings garbled and misquoted, its very na-
ture misunderstood. What then? On the one hand, we have
the spectacle of an effete and powerless faith — under the cir-
cumstances it is remarkable that it should still contrive to have
such a hold over the hearts and intelligences of mankind ! — a
faith belonging to the childhood of the human race, that must
ere long be flung aside with other childish toys and illusions
as the world grows older. And, on the other hand, there are
ranged the science and the progress of the world. Here are the
men — self-constituted "ministers and interpreters" of nature —
who have discovered that they have suddenly grown out of
their long swaddling clothes and are able to stand alone. It
is with them that we have to do. These constitute science.
They are the high-priests, the judges, the arbiters of scientific
truth. And "science" — science far more blessed than that
blessed word " Mesopotamia " — is a word to conjure with.
Only whisper it, and you have convinced your hearers of the
profundity of your thought. Advance a "fact of science," and
you win whatever case you happen to be upholding. It is a
new version o( an old saying: " Scientia locuta, causa finita est."
And yet, and yet — for it is not all so simple as it looks
here — there are fewer " facts of science " put forward against
faith (if, indeed, any) than one might be led to suppose. Vo-
ciferation is not final. We have still to ask — always supposing
that the world of thought has but lately come to the maturity
I
472 Faith and Science [July,
of its manhood, and that it is not slipping downhill into the
mumblings of its dotage instead — if " science " has, indeed,
spoken at all. It may be that the voice belonged only to a
scientist or, what is even less respectable, to a hanger-on at
the fringe of science's skirts. We have to inquire if, indeed,
the voice heralds a fact, a truth, a certainty. It may be, as it
has often been, guesswork that it proclaims so triumphantly/
It may be hypothesis that it screams so loudly, or theory, or
that blind alley of truth — far-fetched opinion.
It is the authority of science that is at stake, no less than
the reputation of religion. For, as before that of revelation, it
is before the authority of science that the common run of men
bow. Only — there is this difference, which is apt to be lost
sight of. Science comes to us with the boast upon her lips
that all can test and try her teaching for themselves. Revela-
tion offers no such inducement — at any rate, not in the same
sense. The motto of science is: "Touch and see; investigate;
interrogate nature and she will answer you." The blazon of
faith reads otherwise: "Believe and you will be saved." It is
for this reason that the authority of science has only so much
value, and no more, as can be touched and seen, or legitimately
inferred from the observed facts of nature. Authority, in such
a case, can obviously be no more than belief and trust in the
veracity of those who speak in the name of science. And here
we are struck by two considerations. In the questions of mo-
ment, the real things that matter, men of science and ordinary
men alike find themselves not upon scientific ground, but upon
philosophical. And even scientists do not speak with that ac-
cordant voice that one might be led to expect from such *
quarter.
There is all the difference in the world between stating *
fact, an event, or an occurrence, and explaining it. We may
safely trust the men of science, as we would trust any sane and
truthful man, in the statement. But there is no reason why
we should take their explanation as the only one, or even as
the only satisfactory one, simply because they happen to make
it. Professor Adamson's words are true : " Great portions of
our so-called scientific knowledge are nothing but rational be*
lief — hypotheses unverified, perhaps even un verifiable— and the
settlement of the conditions or legitimacy of such presomp*
tion? forms the principal part of inductive logic"
Faith and Science
A case in point. A very large section of the scientific
'Id was — a considerable section is — frankly materialistic.
w materialism, it is obvious, is neither a science nor the
cssary result of science. It, no less than the contrasted
itualism, is a system of philosophy. Had we some years
tnisguidedly accepted the materialistic interpretation of the
verse as the final statement of science, and stood by it, we
uld be surprised to find that we were now being left stranded,
h and dry, by the receding waves of current thought. For
nee — that is to say, the somewhat crude philosophical specu-
on that passes often for science — changes. Not only does
change ; it frequently contradicts itself. It has no more
m to stability or finality than any other of those ephemeral
losophies filtering through the mind of man. Where we
-e had the succession of the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, and
Eleatics ; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the Encyclopse-
ts, Scotch Sceptics, and Cambridge Platonisls ; we need not
surprised to find a certain flux and lack of finality even in
philosophizings of science.
But, it may be urged, it is precisely that same lack of co-
;nce and unity among Christians that tells against religion,
s all very well to taunt speculative science with its short-
ings. But look to yourselves 1 For every scientific doc-
e, with regard to which dissentient voices may possibly be
■d, the churches have a thousand. Rather, they agree in
»ing at all. They are all clamor and contradiction — a city
onfusion — ubi tiullus ordo sed stmpitertws horror.
The retort is a telling one; but it does not tell against us
holies. We, at least, are guiltless in this respect. And,
le we have no reason to attack or to defend other religions
i our own, it may be remarked in passing that it is precise-
aecause the unaided human reason — whether " theological "
'scientific" — let loose upon these problems is inadequate,
; we find the chaos we do in. non-Catholic bodies. Nor can
reasonably be surprised that such is the case, when we re-
Ttber those luminous words of that prince of thinkers, St.
jmas Aquinas, in which he tells us that even the truths of
ely natural religion may fittingly be revealed to man, since
erwise the knowledge of God would be confined to few, on
>unt of the studious inquiry necessary for the discovery of
h ; since those who did ultimately reach that knowledge
474 Faith and Science [July,
would take a long time over it, on account of its profundity
and the prerequisites necessary to its study ; since error is al-
ways apt to creep into our judgment, owing to its infirmities
and the perturbing force of imagination.
The whole chapter on the advantage and fitness of a revelation
of even natural truth might well be taken to heart by those before
whose minds "science" looms so large as an objection to Faith.
Some of us, however, notwithstanding what may be urged
against the authority of science and scientists — or for it— are
accustomed to be silenced by a word. " Ernst Haeckel, the
great professor of Jena, says so-and-so; therefore." It is i
fair sample of an argument one often hears. If we should re*
tort, as we might very well do, on the principle that our au-
thority is in all probability as good as our opponent's: "The
Rev. John Smith says so- and so; therefore"; we should be
laughed at. And why ? Because the Rev. John Smith is i
clergyman, and consequently, in the opinion of our scientific ar-
guer, has irons in the fire, fish to fry, bread to butter; and
he cannot heat his irons, or fry his fish, or spread butter on
his bread unless he uses a set form of words, a theological
slang, as it were, with which more or less literally he may hap-
pen to agree.
Ernst Haeckel, of Jena — I apologize to my readers for rais-
ing this ancient absurdity of. so-called science as a type for a
comparison — the author of those wonderful " scientific night-
mares " that the Rationalist Press Association dishes up in Eng.
lish for sixpence ! Does he speak as the official representative
of science? Are his absurd flounderings in the quagmire of
bad metaphysics a sample of scientific rigor or accuracy? He
has been so roughly handled — Father John Gerard has left his
mark upon him — that there is little but the scarecrow effigy of
a "scientist" left of him now. We respect the Germans and
we respect science. Somehow or other, we cannot bring our-
selves to respect the intelligence of Professor Ernst Haeckel.
Still, though I am bound, in deference to my readers, to apolo-
gize for introducing him in this paper, he is a type with which
science, no less than ourselves, has to reckon.
It may be that the Rev. John Smith — a "Seventh Day Ad-
ventist," let us suppose — is deficient in his training as to things
scientific. It may be that he has spent his time in the theo-
logical college mastering — were he an Anglican — Pearson on
the Creed,
Faith and Science 475
the Creed, probably, and Browne on the Articles — a chapter
or so of the New Testament in Greek, a bit of the Old Testa-
ment in Hebrew, a Utile ecclesiastical history — Luther writ large
and Calvin, Zwingli, Wesley, with the particular worthies of his
own sect and choice — copious commentaries on the Scriptures,
a sermon book or two. He is ill-equipped for dealing with
! scientists on their own ground. And yet — he has what all men
have without exception. He has all the necessary natural data,
provided he has all his faculties and is not a born idiot, for
recognizing the divinity that hedges us about and detecting the
flaws in a reasoning that is not legitimate.
For the Rev. John Smith substitute a Catholic priest. Where
has he studied ? I know not ; neither do I much care. What
are his antecedents ? A priest is like Melchisedech, King of
Salem. He has neither father nor mother nor genealogy. One
thing I warrant: he knows his moral theology; and, perchance,
a whisper from the world of science has penetrated into his
theological and philosophical classrooms. He may not be able
to pen two consecutive sentences in good, classical English;
but he knows the value and meaning of " Human Acts." He
— it is conceivable — cannot trace the ancestry of the horse,
American or otherwise, but he can tell when a premiss will not
bear the strain of its conclusion. Moreover, he has the advan-
tage of knowing, what every Catholic child knows, that God,
if he has revealed himself, has not done so to the detriment,
but to the perfecting, of reason.
And if — though, perhaps, type cases should not be so mul-
tiplied — we were to suppose the Rev. John Smith to be an
Aquinas, there would be no question as to where the weight of
authority lay. The "scientific" professor of Jena, who wraps
himself in the toga of the philosopher and mouths his sesquipe-
dalian words — or the Angel- of the Schools? Who shall adju-
dicate?
But, fortunately for that respect that we pay to science,
Haeckel and those of his kidney cannot by the greatest stretch
of the imagination be taken for representative men. We may
minimize, as much as we please, the contradictory opinions of
scientists, and enlarge and emphasize to the same extent those
of religionists. Such men as Haeckel will not fail within the
former class. After all, as I have pointed out, the true diffi-
culties lie beyond science. They trench upon philosophy.
476 FAITH AND SCIENCE [July,
While the Christian apologist may keep within his sphere with-
out overmuch trouble, the apologist of "science/' as pitted
against Christianity, must leave his science for the — to him
too often hopeless — speculations of philosophy. But enough of
Haeckel ! Science is not all hopeless ; nor do all men who, to
use the Baconian phrase, " interpret Nature " take refuge in the
spiritless cul-de-sac of materialism.* There is another, and a
far more important, side to the question: for, as far as can be
seen, the real men of science, dissatisfied with the old mated-
alism, are turning towards a new — or, rather, towards a very
old — interpretation of the world that gives a place to God and
to his operation in the nature they investigate. It is a hopeful
sign; for the ordinary individual, now as before, is likely to be
influenced by the men of science in their change of front.
Surely the fact that most men who think at all — and that
means all those for whom the objections have any real weight
as the few who attempt to find an answer to them — are avid
for the dogmas of science, ought to inspire a hope that funda-
mental reasoning will not prove too stiff for them. It may be,
indeed, that the philosophical investigations of " scientists/' as
dished up for the non-scientific palate, can be more highly
seasoned and spiced than a more sober presentation of con-
structive philosophy dares to be. It may be that science can
be watered down to suit weak intellectual digestions. But that
" scientific " productions of the type of which I speak find a
ready sale, argues in favor of, rather than against, the reading
public.
The public — that is to say, those of them before whose
minds the diffculties and objections against religious truth pre-
sent themselves in strange, warped, and distorted forms— will
always be ready to listen to the utterances of men of science,
if they speak at all, for or against, on these subjects. And if
the utterances be in support of, instead of aimed at, religion,
they will still be quite ready to listen to them respectfully. It
is not the Rev. John Smith who speaks !
Now a very remarkable book has lately seen the light. It
is a little book. There are only 135 pages of it, including the
•As to the materialism of science, Lord Rayleigh has taken pains to draw the distinction
I make very clearly. He says: " Many excellent people are afraid of science, as tending
towards materialism. That such apprehension should exist is not surprising, for, unfortu-
nately, there are writers, speaking in the name of science, who have set themselves to foster it.
It is true that, amongst scientific men, as in other classes, crude views are to be met with as to
the deeper things of Nature." — Brit. Assn. Presidential Address,
907.]
FAITH AND SCIENCE 477
introduction ; and on some of those pages there are not more
han eight or ten lines of printed matter. It was published in
■"ebruary. The third edition appeared in March. It is written
iy a man of science, a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Prin-
ipal of the University of Birmingham. Sir Oliver Lodge prints
lis motto, or apothegm, or text, on the first page: " Gloriam
•ueusivit scientiarmn, invenit Dei." He sought the glory of the
ciences ; he found the glory of God! If such is to be ihe
ast word of the men of science, we have indeed entered upon
. new era with the new century ! Science is whole and in her
ight mind once more !
The little book — it is named The Substance of Faith Allied
vith Science, and is intended to be a " Catechism for Parents
md Teachers " — takes up, one after another, twenty points.
Twenty questions are asked and twenty answers, forming the
)ody of the scientific creed of Sir Oliver Lodge, are given.
r-'rom the nature and ascent of man to God, and His immanence
n things created; sin, evil, conscience, grace; intelligence, will,
:haracter ; all find their place in his creed. It is an attempt
;o state, in scientific terms and harmoniously with scientific
opinion as it at present exists, propositions bearing on that
mysterious part of man that yearns and craves towards a higher
ind completer nature than any he can find within the world
)f his ordinary experience.
It would be unfair to criticise captiously where " so much
s excellent": unfair to complain that the net result of The
Substance of Faith is little more than a somewhat meagre natu-
ral theology ; and that little more consisting, to say the least,
of somewhat questionable speculation. We should be far astray
did we look to science for revealed truth, or expect to find all
the real questions answered, the real difficulties solved, on nat-
ural principles alone. But what we can do, and that with much
gratification, is to point out the fact that science, in the per-
son of one of her most eminent teachers, is thrusting out grop-
ing hands towards a higher truth than those of nature. She is
"making straight the paths" by which, through nature, we
reach God. " Qtt&sivit scicntiarum gloriam, invenit Dei."
I take this book, from the pen of Sir Oliver Lodge, as a
:ype of what not a few men of science are aiming at. I have
i right to do so. He is not the first who has spoken in sci-
:nce's name, though his Substance of Faith is, perhaps, the com-
478 FAITH AND SCIENCE [July,
pletest attempt on the part of a man of science to reconcile
science and religion. As a statement of what is already well
known, in substance, to Catholic philosophers and theologians,
it is highly significant and interesting. Not, indeed, that it
carries us very far. A student in any one of our seminaries,
plodding over the beaten paths of the field of reason, would
recognize that there are lacuna in The Substance of Faith that
a more liberal philosophic insight might have filled up. Yet it
must not be forgotten that the modern scientist approaches
these and similar problems in a highly tentative spirit. He is
chary, perhaps, of trusting too much to a philosophy that dares
to loosen the tether binding it to science in its stricter form.
And yet, chary as he is, when he approaches the problems of
religion, even upon the natural plane, he must, perforce, leave
the dry bones of observed fact and tread the airy bridges of
pure reason spanning the void • between empiricism and intel-
lectual truth.
Such is the path — though he speaks with no hesitating or
tentative accent — that Sir Oliver Lodge has. trod in formulating
his creed — a creed that most of us will welcome as an attempt,
at least, to state some of the truths of natural theology from a
scientific point of view. And so far, so good. It is consoling
and encouraging to find that men of science, whose philosophi-
cal researches we have been led by a succession of materialists
to mistrust and suspect, are actually feeling the need of a some-
thing higher and more satisfying than mere material hypothe-
ses, and are endeavoring to meet the need by straining aching
eyes through the vast twilight towards a more perfect light.
Of course it is not to be expected that a scientist, trained
as he may be in the niceties and accuracies of his particular
profession, is, therefore, equipped for dealing with questions
and problems belonging to a higher plane than that with which
a truly modest science contents itself.
We must not be surprised if we find, as we generally do in
attempts to reconcile religion with modern science, that certain
points are viewed in an unfamiliar light, certain questions slurred
over, or treated emotionally rather than rationally. No mat-
ter how cold-blooded he may be, no matter how anaemically
logical, even the man of science has his feelings and emotions.
We must not, in other words, expect too much. We must
be content to find that science can bring a reverent mind to
1907.] Faith and Science 479
the contemplation of the mysteries of faith. Or, rather, we
must be prepared to forego the pleasure of finding the true
mysteries of faith touched upon at all, and rest satisfied with
the fact that the common and natural verities underlying the
claims of supernatural revelation are envisaged with tolerance —
nay, with a spirit of reverence and respect.
Certainly, to say the least, we should bring a large measure
of the same respect to the work of the men of science. We
are told, and told truly, that "there are still people who en-
deavor to deny or disbelieve the discoveries of science. They
are setting themselves athwart the stream, and trying to stop
its advance; and they only succeed in stopping their own.
They are good people, but unwise and, moreover, untrustful.
If they will let go their anchorage, and sail on in a spirit of
fearless faith, they will find an abundant reward, by attaining
jt deeper insight into the Divine Nature, and a wider and
brighter outlook over the destiny of man." #
A Catholic might have worded it differently. To let go the
anchorage is an unwise venture if the anchor be fixed in cer-
tain truth. But we must not forget that here is no question
of revelation. It is natural religion towards which Sir Oliver
exhorts his readers to sail on. No sensible man — no Catholic
certainly— would be at pains to try to make himself disbelieve
the discoveries of science. No discovery, so far, has proved
inimical to the fa\th. It would have been strange that it should
have been so, since the Author and Revealer of the faith is the
Creator of the reason that does the discovering as well as of
the order in which the discoveries are made. It is not the dis-
coveries but the — sometimes grotesquely absurd — hypotheses
ffeised upon them that are disbelieved ; hypotheses as grotesque
ted as absurd as some of those weird and sombre doctrines
thfct are put forward from time to time in the name of religion.
No; we should be reverent in the presence of science; for
here science spells nature and our own God- given reason. We
should be prepared to trust science — and that without neces-
sarily cutting the cables of faith by which we ride at anchor.
For the true simile is rather that of a written book. As science
turns the pages, inscribing as she turns, writing toilfully, eraa-
tag, underlining, filling in, we look on gratefully and confident
°f the result. This is no revelation. It is the ascent of reason.
• The Substance •/ Faith, Preface, p. ix.
1
i
480 Faith and Science [July,
through the reation to the Creator. St. Thomas said as much
nearly seven hundred years ago.
And if we find, or think we find, errors creeping into the
text, we have only to wait We can afford to be patient. The
scoring and the erasing process is not yet finished. We have
only to remember the teaching of that fourth chapter of the
Contra Gentiles.
In a former number of this magazine I had the honor of
printing an article on Mr. Campbell and his New Theology,
pointing out the dangerous shoals to which the principles of
reformation had already driven a no inconsiderable section of
non- Catholics. In a sense the cases of Mr. Campbell and Sir
Oliver Lodge are analogous. The one goes to science for his
data, the other to the Scriptures, a small stock of tradition, and
the vast storehouse of his own personal feeling. Both, natural-
ly, draw largely upon the popular philosophy of the day.
There is much, consequently, that is common in their teaching.
But — and here is the point to be observed — neither the one nor
the other is, strictly speaking, what he claims to be. Mr. Camp-
bell does not give us a " theology." Sir Oliver Lodge has not
restrained himself to " science " pure and simple.
Indeed, from the very circumstances of the case, neither
minister nor man of science could have been expected to do
so. They say what they have to say from different points of
view, of course; but their platform is in the main the same.
They meet on the common ground where the debatable ques-
tions at issue lie ; and their methods, each working in his own
sphere, are similar. In the last resort, neither can be truly said
to satisfy. Mere human knowledge — science, philosophy, call it
what you will — is inadequate. In the light of a God-given re-
velation alone do the mists vanish and the shadows flee away.
Notwithstanding this, a most instructive lesson may be learned
from the work of these two men. They are doing their best
to work upwards by human endeavor through the clouds and
darkness beneath the feet of God to the inaccessible light in
which he dwells. Deficiencies, mistakes, some small confusion,
we make allowance for. The effort, none the less, rings true;
and the end is not a vain one. Of the two, perhaps, the work
of the man of science is the more valuable. It is more than a
mere indication of the religious spirit making itself felt in the
heart of a man. It is a proof that science is not so tolerant as
907.] Faith and Science 481
ome would have us believe, that she is less self-confident and
rbitrary, that her children can rise above the mere material
rith which she deals. She is justified in them. There is com-
aratively little in The Substance of Faith to which a Catholic
ould not heartily subscribe. If he finds fault or carps, it will
e not so much as a Catholic as one holding definitely clear
hilosophical views.
If, then, science can do this for her votaries; if she can
sad them on, as it were, from strength to strength, until they
ome almost within sight of the portals of Sion ; if she can
each a philosophy that, while lifting man's intelligence to its
ighest height, bows it at last before the footstool of the Crea-
or; then what of the difficulties that are urged, in her name,
.gainst the faith ?
Science takes her place with philosophy as an Ancilla The-
logice. She cannot reveal mysteries above nature. But neither
an she urge sincere objections against revealed truth. She
:an, and does, when rightly understood, make straight and
mooth the paths, upon which we advance to a knowledge of
ourselves, of nature, and of nature's God. She has done so
ouch for Sir Oliver Lodge ; and he has paid her the tribute
f a written confession of the faith of a man of science.
A little more of mutual understanding would do us all good ;
little sharper definition of boundaries ; a firmer grasp upon
be truths of nature as well as those of faith. We have noth-
lg to fear and all to hope from the greater progress and ad-
ance of science. Only, we must remember that revelation is
ot reason ; and that, great as may be the light kindled by such
rorkers as Sir Oliver Lodge, Lord Kelvin, Sir J. W. Dawson,
r Lord Rayleigh, it can never — no, not were all the wisdom
A the whole human race brought together into one focus — it
an never be more than a pale and feeble glimmer in the full
adiance and splendor of that true light that lighteneth every
nan that cometh into the world.
In a future number of The Catholic World I hope to
examine this confession of a man of science in greater detail,
compare it with the natural theology of the schools, and, in
be comparison, to show how nearly the current of modern
bought is setting in the direction of our own most cherished
ystem of philosophy.
vol. lxxxv.— 31
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P.
VI.— SPIRITISM (CONTINUED*.
■HE experiences of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses,
and the experiments of Sir William Crookes on
the phenomena in the case of D. D. Home, have
been given somewhat at length in our last num-
ber, not so much because the facts in these cue*
are in themselves specially extraordinary or interesting, but
rather because they have been recorded in a more authoritative
way than most of those connected with mediums, and may
probably have a special weight as evidence. But, really,' wheo
we examine the subject with any approach to thoroughness, we
find that abnormal occurrences of a similar character, and which
cannot be ascribed to any fraud, trickery, or ingenuity, are go-
ing on continually; and that some of them are still more re-
markable and unaccountable than any which we have hitherto
described.
In the seances of Mr. Moses, for instance, the distinct ap-
parition of spirit forms was not so very frequent ; usually tbey
seem to have been rather vague or ill-defined. But at the pres-
ent day they are, we may say, often seen very clearly and
sharply, having a fullness of detail and color equal to that of
any of the ghosts or spontaneous apparitions which are re-
corded from time to time. As we have previously remarked,
the genuine ghost, as distinguished from the merely imaginary
or conventional one, has usually this character of appearing in
normal colors, and in what seem to be ordinary clothes of a
style prevailing at the time it is seen, or of the time in which
the person represented by it lived. And the seance ghost seems
also to be assuming this character. It looks like a real living
person, not like a mere ball or column of light, with perhaps
an indefinite human shape.
Take, for instance, this case, which we have in writing from
an absolutely trustworthy witness of the highest respectability
1907.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 483
for truth and honor, and who made great sacrifices to be re-
ceived into the Church. His name, did we feel at liberty to
give it, would 01 itself be sufficient to set aside any question
as to the fact of what he saw ; and the precautions he took
were such as to make it absolutely impossible that he could
have been imposed on. We say " the fact of what he saw " ;
but we might say also felt as well as saw. For the modern
seance ghost, or " materialization," is palpable or tangible as
well as visible, as Sir William Crookes himself most emphati-
cally testifies.
The gentleman of whom we speak attended some time ago,
before his reception into the Church, a seance, which, though
that of a professional medium, was held in an ordinary room,
which he, with a friend, examined carefully before the seance
began, and in which the so-called cabinet consisted merely of
a curtain on an extemporized pole. Moreover, he himself, dur-
ing part of the performance, took the place of the medium in
this cabinet; that is, behind this curtain.
The " spirit forms " at first appeared as mere balls of light,
about the size and shape of an egg, at the bottom of the cur-
tain behind which the medium sat. They grew into the like-
ness of three persons, who were seen by all in the room. One
came quite near to him, having the appearance of a woman
with olive complexion, piercing black eyes, and long hair, which
had a distinct odor, as of the grave. 'It sank out of sight close
by him, some five minutes later. Of course some suspicious
critic, hearing this much, will at once jump to the "trapdoor"
theory, commonly brought in by the amateur to account for
the ordinary magician's perlormances. Of course he will say:
"This person came up through a trapdoor behind the curtain,
and went down through another in front of your friend." But
he should understand that, though there was no blaze of light
in the room, it was sufficiently lighted by a lamp hanging in the
transom; and, moreover, how a person can come up through
a trapdoor, in the shape of a luminous . egg, and gradually
form herself into the likeness of a human being, is hard to
understand. And that one should see her go down through a
trapdoor at his very feet, and yet fail to see the trapdoor,
is certainly very remarkable.
But this is not all. Later, two persons, one of them appar-
ently a child of four or five years of age, appeared in the same
484 Recent Results of Psychical Research [July,
way, and came close to our friend. At the invitation of a lady,
sitting next to him in the circle, this ghostly child kissed him
on the mouth. " Such a kiss as it was! " he writes. "The lips
of the child were stiff, almost wooden/ yet clammy, and the face
smelt musty or mildewy."
Notice here there is not only the sense of sight which testi-
fies, but also that of touch ; as well as that of smell, as in the
previous experience.
Lastly, as has been stated, the visitor was called into the
cabinet, being told by the medium that he himself had strong
mediumistic powers. He was left there, sitting on a chair, with.
a cushion for his feet, the medium taking his place in the cir-
cle. As he sat there, the light formed at his feet, and gre
into the likeness of a human figure, transparent from shoulder
to feet, but with an opaque head. It spoke to him. The othc
materializations which had appeared had also spoken, as di
others which appeared later. (The sceptic will account for thi
by ventriloquism; so we will not lay so much stress on thi
point.) Finally the figure suddenly vanished.
It appears from the testimony of credible witnesses tbat
materialized form can pass through ordinary solid matter. Dfl
Hartmann, for instance, testifies to having seen a tall figure
apparently that of a Hindoo, passing through a doorway of le&
than his own height, without stooping, the head passing throug
the wall above. It does not seem, however, that much car
has been taken in testing this phenomenon, and indeed it woul
be difficult to investigate it thoroughly. A figure may be pal - "
pable before and after such an act, but its being so during th
act seems impossible to verify, if the substance so passe
through is of a rigid character.
The fact that some materialized figures make an impressio
on the sense of touch as well as of sight is well enough estal> —
lished to convince any one who is not absolutely persuade »
that such a thing is impossible, and that all evidence in proo*
of it must be regarded as a lie.
Of course it may be urged that an impression on the sens^
of touch does not prove the objective reality of a phantasfl*#
any more than one on that of sight. And this is quite true*
There may be a real sensation of touch, as well as of sight,
which may be called merely subjective, like those which we
have supposed to exist in discussing the telepathic theory*
o7.] Recent Results of Psychical Research 485
ie senses testify to something which acts on them ; but this
mething is not necessarily the particular objective reality
lich it seems to be, or indeed any material reality at all.
lere is no reason why a spiritual (i.e., an immaterial) force
ay not act directly on them, as indeed in our own ordinary
tions our own spiritual force acts somewhere in the process
rectly on the matter composing our bodies.
It would, however, be difficult to fit this theory to the very
markable case testified to by Sir William Crookes, to which
lusion has been made above. To show how far the phenome-
>n of materialization can go, it may be well to quote the ac-
>unt of this case, as given by Dr. Lapponi, who was, as is
•11 known, physician to Pope Leo XIII., and also to our
esent Holy Father. He says:
Amongst the most complete and tangible materializations
on record, the one related by the celebrated scientist Crookes
most deserves mention. For. two or three consecutive years,
by means of a very powerful .medium, Miss Cook, he enjoyed
the daily apparition of a charming young lady, who said she
was from India. She wore the whitest clothes and always
had a turban. She also came from the centre of a cloudlet,
which first formed in the middle of the room destined for the
experiment. In the centre of this cloud lines and contours
developed, took shape, and became animated and colored,
until the face smiled, the eyes brightened, the lungs breathed,
and the heart beat. Crookes, in order to assure himself that
this singular being had nothing to do with the medium, took
especial note of the difference in stature, the manner of dress-
ing the hair, of difference in coloring, in the shape and size
of the hands, of the texture of the skin, and finally, of a scar
in the neck of the medium, which was not to be found in the
other. Also to ascertain if the apparition had a real per-
sonality, Crookes took several photographs, listened to the
chest, tested the respiration and the pulse, and took the tem-
perature with a thermometer. With her permission; he em-
braced her, and assured himself that her body was indeed
flesh and blood. During the day the apparition conversed
with Mrs. Crookes, was familiar with the servants, and played
with the children of the house. But as evening approached,
or whenever she pleased, the mysterious girl disappeared
from the sight of all, and no one could tell' where or how she
had gone.
486 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [July,
The idea of fraud or imposture on the part of the medium
or any living human agent concerned seems absolutely unten-
able in a case like this. What we may call the "telepathic"
explanation would account for the mere feeling of solidity to
the touch, as has been said ; but hardly to the thermometry
test, or to the photographs, if they represented the form or
phantasm precisely as it was seen ; and with a careful observer
like Sir William, we may assume this to have been the case.
It is also very difficult to adjust it to the apparition being seen
by so many people and so frequently and for such a length
of time.
At any rate, the other theory of an objective and localized
reality seems to fit such a case much better; and indeed it is
the one generally adopted by those who have paid the most
attention to the subject of apparitions evoked by mediums;
and probably they would say the same with regard to that of
apparitions which are spontaneous, whether of the living or of
the dead. The telepathic one may explain more easily those
in which the apparition is only seen by one or a few of those
present; but in cases where it becomes visible to all, and, as it
would seem naturally — that is by the ordinary functions of the
eye — this theory seems to break down altogether, or have to
be unduly strained.
The theory of objective reality is also strongly supported by
photographic evidence. This kind of evidence, at any rate in
cases where nothing is visible to those present in general— or
when no one has been present except the photographer him-
self — is not very convincing to most people, as has been said
in a previous article, and least of all to expert photographers,
who know how easily a "ghost" photograph can be made;
but, after all, if the one who claims to have taken such a
negative is a man whose testimony would not be rejected in
other matters, and if he seriously assures us that it is genuine,
his assurance cannot be lightly dismissed. And this is specially
the case, if he has no reason for any special bias in the matter,
pecuniarily or otherwise; if he has no special theory to sup-
port, but simply is acting, to all appearance, with a desire to
ascertain the truth, not with a conviction that he has already
attained it. Evidently, a photograph of an invisible material-
ization, asserted to be taken by one who is a thorough conceit
to spiritualism as a religion, must be looked on with more sus-
[907.] Recent results of psychical Research 487
aicion than one taken by a man who believes the whole busi-
iess to be a fraud. And the same, in due measure, may be
said in the case of those whose judgment is in suspense about
:he matter in general, and even of those who, though admitting
some facts in it as well established, are slow in recognizing
more ; who are, in short, like Sir William Crookes, thoroughly
scientific in their tone and temper of mind. If persons of either
if these classes claim to have taken photographs of spirit
manifestations, their claim may by no means be so lightly treated
is might be that of one who makes spiritualism his religion.
What', then, does the camera show, unless we are to treat
ihe reputable gentlemen who have used it in this matter as
merely charlatans and frauds ?
It shows, in pictures of a seance, at first a formless white
substance, principally hanging round the medium, but afterward
irobably spreading and enveloping the sitters generally. In
hese earlier stages it might be taken for what photographers
:all a " fog " or light streak, such as is often caused by some
ittle leakage of light from outside into the camera or the plate
lolder. But in pictures taken later in the proceedings, this
ubstance may take a more definite form, more or less resem-
>ling a human figure; and still later the face may come out
juite clearly, and some details of the dress or drapery. Fur-
hermore, this developed face may bear a resemblance to that
nf the person supposed to be communicating, as he or she ap-
peared when in the body.
Of course it may be said that, even granting that these pho-
tographs, as also those obtained outside a seance, are really
made by spiritual agency, the way of making them may be by
direct action on the plate, not by rays proceeding from any
real material object; somewhat after the manner of what is
:alled "direct writing" on paper, of which we shall have to
reat later. We cannot deny that such may be the case. But
is the real or objective process of formation of the phantasm,
i'hich they indicate, seems a reasonable one, and as actually
isible phantasms have been photographed, as in the case of
iir William Crookes just given, the theory that there is some-
hing really there, which can be photographed by ultra-violet
>r other invisible rays, is generally believed to be correct by
hose who have investigated the matter.
This theory is that an actual substance is produced by psy-
488 Recent Results of Psychical Research [July, 1 5<
chical action from the body of the medium, which is afterwards
formed by the agents producing it into the form which the |^*
camera testifies to. The others present at a seance may con-
tribute to this substance ; and this would seem, on the theory,
probable from the photographs, and also from the fact that
more remarkable results are produced when those present are
in thorough sympathy with the medium, and cultivate a pas-
sive mental attitude similiar to his; thus developing what are
called " favorable conditions."
It is also thought probable that the raps and other physical
phenomena attending a seance are obtained, at least partly, by
means of this substance. It serves, it would seem, as a me-
dium between spirit and ordinary matter, and it may possibly
be that it is this substance which answers this purpose in our
own bodies, and enables our own spirit to move them at will.
In confirmation of this theory, it may be stated that a
marked exhaustion of the ordinary mental and physical pow-
ers of the medium is likely to follow a seance, especially where
remarkable results have been obtained. And also, that the most
extraordinary phenomena are usually produced when the me-
dium is thrown into a deep trance, suspending for the time his
or her mental and bodily activity, and thus making it easier to
withdraw this substance, the existence of which seems probable.
We have so far, in this matter of spiritism, principally
treated of the physical phenomena, such as levitation, material-
ization, etc., which are the most extraordinary and perplexi
features of it. But they are hardly the most interesting
people in general. What attracts most people to concern, the
selves with it, is undoubtedly the hope of attaining some ce x" -
tainty of continued life after death. Human Personality a^zd
its Survival of Bodily Death % the title of Mr. Myers' great wor le ;
this it is, as we have said, that makes this subject one of sucrli
general and intense interest to the public. Though people., no
doubt, sometimes go to seances with the hope of seeing mate-
rializations or other marvels, the usual motive is probably the
hope of obtaining some news about their deceased friends.
And such news is, apparently, always obtainable. It appes
to them, when the seance is a marked success, that the roo
is full of the spirits of these deceased relatives or friends of
the members of the circle, and that these spirits are ready and
willing to communicate a good deal of intelligence as to their
>o7.] Recent Results of Psychical Research 489
esent state; and, moreover, that they are able to prove that
ey are really what they pretend to be, by being in possession
r facts regarding their earthly life which could not naturally
5 known to the medium; through whom these communications
>me. And though it may be more or less unpleasant to' have
ese communications made in the presence of strangers who
ay be present at the seance, they are willing to undergo this
>r the sake of the result which they are so anxious to ob-
lin.
But still most of them would probably prefer to obtain these
>mmunications privately, or at any rate only with the assist-
ice of those who are personal friends of their own, and of
le spirits supposed to be communicating. The desire, there-
re, naturally arises to become mediums themselves ; not that
tey hope or expect to produce the more extraordinary phe-
omena, such as levitation or materialization, but to go as far
> to get messages by raps or automatic writing, or by an in-
:rument like planchette. And it does not seem very difficult
go as far as this. All that has to be done is to put the
lind in a passive attitude and to abstain from active and dis-
'acting occupations, either mental or bodily ; it would seem
lat even keeping the hands perfectly still for a considerable
ojc is sufficient to bring on the first stages of what is called
itomatic writing; that is to say, the writing of words which
e writer does not consciously intend to put on the paper, and
lich even may not occur to his mind till he sees them writ-
1. This practice, if persevered in, may result in the produc-
er of what seem to be .communications from some source
!£e outside of the writer's own personality. And finally, these
nmunications may become as satisfactory as those which could
obtained by the assistance of a fully developed medium ;
automatic writer has, it would appear, really become a good
ugh medium for the purpose most desired.
If success is obtained in this way, this practice or occupa-
1 will certainly become a most fascinating one; involving
« trouble and no expense, and moreover being free from
urrences, more or less unpleasant or even terrifying, which
y attend a regular seance. Most people, whether professing
believe in the possibility of ghosts or not, have an ine-
i cable fear of seeing one, and are more or less reluctant to
alone at night in a house reported as being haunted, or per-
490 Recent Results of Psychical Research [July,
haps in any deserted one. But it is a very different thing to
sit down at one's own table, and try to evoke a ghost who is
not expected to appear visibly, but only to move one to write
something on paper. And if one can, in this way, seem to ob-
tain news about the dead whom he has known and loved when
they were in this world, a very great attraction is added to
what the practice would have in itself.
The danger of it, however, ought to be apparent to every
one, even without any settled views as to religion. To subject
oneself blindly, by a state of mental passivity, to the operation
of some outside influence, which has at least a partial control
of one's bodily powers, and probably of the mental faculties
also, is -evidently taking a great risk. One ought to be unwill-
ing to submit to it, even if sure that the influence or "con-
trol" is a good one; for it is a surrender for the time being
of his freewill, which Almighty God has given him, and with
which even He Himself very seldom interferes. He may do so
in those whom he inspires to speak his words; but inspiration
is his prerogative, and we should not surrender it to some spirit
which gives no evidence of being commissioned by him.
The danger still remains, even in the case where the knowl-
edge of the words to be written comes to the writer's mind
before the actual writing, as is likely to be the case in the
earlier stages of this practice; for he is not at liberty to write
them or not, the movement of his hand not being directed,
consciously at any rate, by his own will.
But this danger seems too far away and too abstract to be
seriously apprehended by those tempted to indulge in this
most interesting inquiry. It seems to them that there is at
least a great probability that their dear departed can com-
municate with them, and that without employing a stranger as
a medium. "What harm can there be, then, in trying if this
indeed be so ? " they would say. " If there is any, we can leave
off at any time." So they do try, and probably meet with
some degree of success.
They obtain, very soon it may be, what seem to them
satisfactory " proofs of identity " ; that is, they not only obtain
communications which seem to come from some other spirit
than their own, but there appears to them to be sufficient
proof that they really come from the identical deceased person
with whom they wish to communicate.
recent Results of psychical research
Before discussing these apparent proofs, however, let us see
what various forms these communications come ; though the
[her and more remarkable forms are seldom attained except
er long practice, and with a medium of extraordinary power.
The most common form of the communication is probably
it by raps, A sound like a rap on the table or other article of
niture in the room is made in answer, for instance, to a ques-
rj. If the question is one which can be answered by "Yes"
"No"; of course one rap may be taken as meaning "Yes,"
a " No." {It would appear that the spirit communicating
i hear and understand the conversation by which these or
ler signs are agreed on, though it is only seldom that it can
slf speak audibly.) Then, if a message is to be given, it
,y be spelled out by calling the letters of the alphabet, a
> being given when the desired one is reached.
The form of communication is, of course, slow and cum-
)us; that of automatic writing, which has been described, is
:ch quicker and more convenient.
The next higher and more convincing form is that of
irect " writing. In the automatic form, all except the medium
ve to trust to his honesty, except so far as the matter or the
nner of the communication may vouch for him. The matter
the first place ; for it may contain facts which the medium
aid not in any ordinary way know, relating, for instance, to
; earthly life and experience of the spirit supposed to be
tnmunicating. Or the manner; as, for instance, if the writing
3uld be in some language with which the medium is not
ely to be acquainted.
But in the "direct" form, the writing appears on the
per without the use by the medium or any one else of any
iting implement, and even without any contact on his part
th the paper or slate on which the writing appears. Some-
les the paper is taken up from the table by some invisible
ency, and returned with the writing upon it; and it may be
such a fine hand that a magnifying glass is required to
)d it.
But the most common form of this " direct " writing is what
called " slate-writing." In this process a small piece of slate-
ncil is usually placed between two slates, which are held by
; medium and his visitor, or arranged in some way to make
impossible for the medium or any one else to write on them
492 Recent Results of Psychical Research [juiy f
in the ordinary way. The writing, however, appears on them,
and while it is being done the piece of pencil is heard moving
between the slates. These have frames, of course, so that there
is room for the pencil to move between the surfaces. The
writing is probably in answer to questions which are written
on paper, and which the medium has no chance to examine, as
the paper is folded, though he may hold it in his hand. This
performance is sometimes carried through without all these pre-
cautions, when the visitor is convinced of its genuineness, and
if they are omitted, there is of course an opportunity for trick-
ery; but there is no doubt that the phenomenon does on some
occasions occur when they are taken, and even under still more
extraordinary conditions than those just described.
For instance, the present Writer has been very credibly in-
formed of the following experience. A gentleman desiring to
obtain on the slates answers to questions which he had pre-
pared, purchased a package of slates at a shop, where they
were, 6i course, done up for him in the usual way. The ques-
tions were on papers, which he carried in his pocket.
On arriving at the residence of the medium, the latter met
him and told him that he was sorry that they could have no
experiment on that occasion, as he had arranged to go with his
wife to the theatre that evening. But as she was not quite
ready, he asked him to remain till she appeared, and have a
chat. The package of slates was not opened, and the questions
still remained in the visitor's pocket. After a short while, the
lady came in. The medium then asked, of course, to be ex-
cused till some more convenient opportunity ; but said that per-
haps there might be something on the slates after all. On ar-
riving at his home, the visitor found that they were well covered
with writing, which was in appropriate answer to the questions
which he had prepared.
Even more " direct " than this method of writing is the com-
munication which is often made by spoken words. This, how —
ever, may not be very evidential to those who only hear or
read of it, and who are not disposed by other facts to believe
in the genuineness of the phenomena. For, as has been re-
marked, it is easy to dispose of evidence on this point by at-
tributing it to ventriloquism, especially as this phenomenon if
not one which can be called usual, or likely to occur at ama.
teur seances. Still, if the evidence is carefully examined,
7.] Recent Results of Psychical Research 493
k that it will be rather hard to retain the notion that it can
accounted for in this way.
The very remarkable physical character of the occurrences,
e of which have been briefly described in these articles, are
aably the principal cause of the increasing conviction among
ntific men that we have in them a sufficient proof of the
on of some forces which we have no power to exert,
intarily at any rate, and which it is hardly reasonable to
ibe altogether to any latent or involuntary energy residing
mrselves. It seems impossible to explain them away, unless
one of the two following hypotheses. First, that the evi-
ce for them is simply false ; that those who claim to have
lessed them are simply lying. But this, of course, will not
ice for scientists who have personally witnessed them. The
>nd way of disposing of them would be on the theory that
r are mere delusions ; that by hypnotism or telepathy, those
> testify to seeing them, and even we ourselves, if we have
that experience, have been made to see things that do not
ly exist, or not to see things that do. In a slate-writing
\ like that just described, it might be urged that the medium
ly did open the package, and take the questions out of his
tor's pocket, and write the answers to them in the ordinary
r, replacing the questions afterward in his pocket, and doing
the package; meanwhile putting some charm or spell on his
tor to make him unaware of these proceedings. And it is
:ged in support of this theory that certain Indian fakirs
r e in this way imposed on those who testify to having seen
rvels worked by them; the proof of this being that the
lera shows no trace of what was apparently being done. It
►ossible that such an effect on the spectators might be pro-
ed by hypnotic or telepathic action ; but it must be remem-
d that in their case the circumstances would be favorable
such action, as the spectator's mind and gaze would be
nated as it were by the expected performance. But in the
—writing case just mentioned, no performance was expected;
mental attitude of the visitor was simply nonchalant, and
conversation of an indifferent character ; there was no strain
xis mind in any way ; his attention was not occupied by
one thing; he was in condition to notice all that might
ir, and had a perfect and unbroken memory of the whole
Tview.
494 Recent Results of Psychical Research [July.
*
Also, this theory is much weakened by the fact that, re-
cently, flash light photographs have been taken of levitations
and materializations, at regular seances in Italy, and also, as
has been noted, by Sir William Crookes in his own celebrated
case. It may, of course, still be urged that in some way, un-
known to us, an impression may be made by some occult force
on a sensitive plate without the existence of anything to pro*
duce it in the regular optical way. But, considering that the
evidence of the plate agrees with that of the eyes, this explana-
tion certainly comes near the vanishing point. And so of coune
does the " fake " photograph theory, in presence of the evidence
of scientific men, among the most eminent in the world.
We hardly need to say any more on this subject of the
evidence given by the character of the phenomena, to their be-
ing largely due to forces, not at the command of human be-
ings, at any rate while in this life. That is to say, that no
one can produce all the phenomena simply by his own will, or
at his own choice; we have no force inherent in ourselves
which we can consciously or intentionally exert to produce them
except in the cases of fraud, which are usually discoverable
without much difficulty.
We must, then, either adopt the view that they are pro-
duced either by some unconscious action of our own minds,
which we cannot as yet thoroughly understand, or that they
proceed from some energy outside of ourselves. The former
hypothesis is called the " subliminal," the latter the " spiritis-
tic/ 1 theory. The latter again may be subdivided; the spirits
acting may be believed to be departed human ones, or spirits
of a nature entirely separate from our own. Here we have
really the whole field open to discussion as the matter now
stands; for the question as to the genuineness of the phenomena
is practically closed in the affirmative. We must now, there-
fore, proceed to discuss these theories just named.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
BY MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY.
[E is a gentleman from the ground up, and as ten-
j der-bearted as he is brave," said Maguire, the
[ old sergeant, as, from the guardhouse steps, he
looked after the handsome officer with admiring
i eyes.
nt Robert Barton, unconscious of this favorable
us passed upon him, continued his way across the
ort Sentry. The smallest and poorest of the houses
; Row " had recently been assigned to him, but
was more than content. For hither, a few weeks
had brought his young wife, Marian, and this, the
of their married life, was as a paradise to both of
iless, the lieutenant was out of lavor with the War
i and, consequently, at the post. For he had im-
larried without the required permission of the mili-
ities, and only his previous good record, and the in-
rominent friends, had saved him from court-martial.
)anions-in-arms, the subalterns, indeed, covertly sym-
:h him, but the older officers looked at him askance,
>ression gained ground that his advancement in the
Id be slow.
was keenly understood by pretty little Mrs.' Barton,
ed courageously against the sadness of isolation that
r, when she thought how many hundred miles dis-
e home of her girlhood. Robert always found her
, when he was off duty, she sang about the house,
bird,
n, when alone, she grieved over the knowledge that,
g Robert's wife, she had unwittingly injured his
promotion; and, being devout, she daily prayed that
y her gallant husband might soon regain the popu-
is superior officers which he had recklessly cast away
e of her.
)
496 LOVE A-SOLDIERING [July,
" There may be a brush with the Indians before long, and
any officer who distinguishes himself will be honorably mentioned
in the report sent to Washington," the colonel's wife remarked
one day, speaking generally, but for her benefit.
Marian was too newly " married into the Army," however,
to think thus calmly of a skirmish between the troops and
the " Wards of the Nation." She knew she would be miserably
frightened were the call of " Boots and Saddle " sounded, and
the women of the post left to the protection of only a small
garrison.
Of late the red men had threatened trouble. They would
not stay on the reservation, which was within a few miles of
the post.
" We will force them back," declared the colonel, and there-
with ordered that any members of the tribe found wandering in
the neighborhood should be brought to the post.
One April day a reconnoitering party brought in a prisoner,
not a chief, a young warrior, nor yet an Indian maiden; the
captive was only a little papoose, who had been found astray
on the up-land.
The dark-skinned squaw-baby had not seen more than three
of the bright, hot, Arizona summers, but she had the self-pos-
session of a royal princess. During the long afternoon she sat
on the step of the guardhouse, silent, stoical, resisting all at-
tempts of the ladies of the post to make friends with her, yet
nothing that went on escaped her black, bead-like eyes.
Evening came, the shadows shut out the parade from her
view, the lights gleamed forth from the barracks and the officers 1
quarters, the tired papoose was alone and forgotten. She was
hungry and frightened at last, and there was no soft-voiced
Indian mother to give her a bit of the maize bread baked in
the embers of the fire before the tepee, to soothe her with
totem tales of the frog who was a little man, the blue-jay, the
chief of the fairies, the raven who is keeper of the fire.
" Shining Eyes," as the soldiers called her, broke down and
sobbed as any white child would have done.
But she was not deserted by all the world, as seemed to
her lonely little heart. Some one remembered her. In fact, the
thought of the squaw-baby had been in the mind of Mrs. Bar-
ton all the afternoon.
The sight of the tiny, pathetic figure on the guardhouse
907.] Love A-'Soldiebing 497
teps had so appealed to her, that she put aside all other work
nd began to make a wonderful doll, such as she had been wont
o fashion for her small sisters at home. It was only a pup-
et of cloth, but she painted the face with some skill, sacrificed
lock from her own brown hair for its braided tresses, and ar»
ayed it in a gorgeous frock of crimson silk.
At dusk it was finished, and the young wife set off to com-
ort the papoose.
"You poor baby," she exclaimed, as she thrust her kind
;ift into the arms of the small waif.
The papoose paused in her disconsolate wail ; she could
.carcely see the Paleface doll, but she knew it was something
be crooned over, as the Apache mothers in secret croon to
heir children. She forgot how lonely it was to be a little
ndian girl, far away from her tribe, and did not shrink back
/hen, presently, an officer coming along picked her up and
arried her into his house, the lady who had sought her out
,■ ilking by his side. Moreover, she was content to eat a supper
f white bread with milk, and to be put to sleep on an im-
provised cot, with the doll still clasped in her embrace.
Several days passed, but the tribe sent no messengers to the
>ost to treat for the return of the hostage. The colonel was per-
ilexed. He had kept the squaw-baby only to teach the Apaches
salutary lesson. They, manifestly, refused to learn it, al-
hough they were reported to love their children unemotionally
mt with intensity.
" Lieutenant Barton, you may carry the papoose back to her
«ople," said the commander at last. "Take four or five men
ritfa you and a white flag."
Tricked out in a gay-colored print frock, made by Marian's
left fingers, and with the doll in her arms. " Shining Eyes " im-
>erturbably submitted to be swung up before the lieutenant on
lis spirited broncho.
Marian kissed the child, of whom she had grown fond. Then,
is a sudden fear beset her, she cried out :
" Oh, Robert, if the Apaches should kill you ! "
The lieutenant laughed.
"The papoose is a better protection to me than a regiment
>f soldiers would be," he said gaily.
A few minutes later he and his men were galloping across
:he mesa.
vol. txxxv,— 32
498 LOVE A-SOLDIERING [July,
The Apaches were known to have established themselves in
a canyon south of the post. As the lieutenant, riding ahead,
entered the ravine an arrow whizzed past him.
With a brave man's instinct to protect the weak and help-
less, as he drew his revolver from his belt, he, at the same
time, folded his left arm about the papoose in a manner to
shield her little body as much as possible. Perhaps,, after all,
she was not of much account to the tribe, being only a squaw-
baby. But, dark-skinned savage though she was, he knew that,
if a fight came, he would protect her life with his own.
His endeavors to guard her from the winged missiles of
death, that continued for some moments to follow him as he
rode on, were soon observed by the keen eyes of the painted
warriors lurking in ambush. They scorned the white flag, but
the spectacle of a Paleface folding an Indian child to his breast
awakened a new emotion in their passionate hearts.
Springing out upon the trail, they broke into a wild yell
that aroused the echoes of the canyon, and waved their arms
in fierce gesticulation.
At this moment the lieutenant's men rode up. Every one
of them had his revolver ready and glanced, eagerly at the offi-
cer for the signal to fire.
The lieutenant did not give it. On the contrary, he dis-
charged his own weapon in the air, and rode boldly forward
into the midst of the Apaches. For he had divined that their
demonstration, ominous as it appeared, was in reality friendly.
When he reached them, they greeted the papoose with an-
other yell, which, however, did not disturb the Sphinx-like
calm of the tiny creature. "Shining Eyes" surveyed them
with the same infantile dignity she had displayed when con-
fronted with the strangeness of a civilized home.
" The great chief at the fort is good ; he has sent back the
papoose that his soldiers found wandering on the plain," called
Lieutenant Barton, addressing the party.
They did not understand him, but one of the braves came
up ; the officer lifted the papoose frcpm the horse and gave her
into the Indian's care. Then he and his men returned to the
post.
No more would have been thought of the incident, were it
not that a few days later a half-breed scout came in bringing
wonderful news. When the squaw-baby was taken back to the
1907.] LOVE A-SOLDIERING 499
tribe the cloth doll and the gay calico frock created a sensa-
tion, not only among the squaws but in the deliberations of
the braves.
"The great chief at the fort is not our enemy, since his
soldiers have cared for a papoose, and a white woman has
clothed it as with the plumage on the breast of 'the little
brother of the sunshine,' " * said the sachem, glancing around
the circle of his warriors. "Shall we not live in peace. with
these strangers?"
And so it was decided at the council fire.
Thus it happened that, in consoling the sad little papoose
and arraying the child in the bright pink frock, Marian had
rendered an important service to the United States Govern-
ment.
When it became known at the post that the tribe had re-
turned to the reservation, the colonel said to happy Mrs. Barton :
" Madame, your husband fulfilled his mission to the Apaches
with discretion and courage. You may tell him I shall recom-
mend him for promotion. As for yourself, if we could bestow
decorations of honor upon our army ladies, and many indeed
deserve them, you should have one of the first rank. By your
kindness to the squaw- baby you undoubtedly averted an Indian
up-rising, and saved the lives of many of our troops."
Marian's eyes glistened with tears that were like a sun-
shower, for a smile shone through them.
" If that is so, colonel," she said archly, " then don't you
think the Commanding General of the Army can afford to
pardon me for having, without leave, married an obscure sec-
ond lieutenant, who, nevertheless, has proved himself a good
soldier ? "
* The bumming bird.
AIMS IN SOCIALISM.*
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, Ph.D.
UMAN nature is always baffling, yet in a sense
monotonous in its ways. The human nature that
is expressed in Socialism is hateful toward the
human nature that opposes Socialism. Some men
naturally in their circumstances favor Socialism,
and others naturally in their circumstances oppose it; and the
two classes, obeying identical instincts, dislike each other. The
dividing factors seem to be situation and self-interest. Many
curious things are to be found in studying the question from
this standpoint.
Socialists are hopelessly divided among themselves, but con*
servatives also are divided. It is claimed that Socialists can-
not tell us how their plan of social reconstruction will work out,
but we conservatives can scarcely foretell how the rate bill or
pure food law will develop. It is claimed that Socialist leaders
are dishonest, but how many candidates for canonization do the
conservative leaders furnish. It is said that Socialists do not
understand their own philosophy ; but one may ask if Ameri-
cans understand theirs any better. It is claimed that Socialism
is dogmatic and intolerant, yet a history of human intolerance
would mention conservative ten times as often as Socialist.
Hence it would appear that one should discriminate in speak*
ing against Socialism. One might make a list of common traits
of human nature ; note the inconsistencies, limitations, failings
common to men, classes, and parties, inevitable in social inter-
course, and strike out of one's indictment of Socialism every
trait which is found, as well, among conservatives of whatsoever
kind. Such qualities as are due to human nature generally
should be credited to it and not to Socialism. This one prin-
ciple alone, it honestly applied, would shrink considerably tfckc
* In this exposition of Socialism, no effort is made to express feeling against it. If
system advances by its attractive iather than by its unattractive features, it may sometin:*-*
serve a purpose to see it as it is favorably seen. The worst that is said against Socialism is
doubtcdly true to some degree, but it may be well to remember that that is not stating
whole case as the Socialist sees it.
W7-] AIMS IN SOCIALISM 501
erature of opposition to the movement, and, no doubt,
rengthen conservatism thereby.
Then, too, the conservative appears to be more patient of
ilure, as it exists in his favorite .social order, than of the faiJ-
e that he forcefully predicts for Socialism. He says that So-
alism threatens personal liberty, without having inquired how
r liberty is now enjoyed. The conservative claims that So-
alism threatens the home, yet sixty years ago Marx claimed
at capitalism would do it, and to-day the Socialist press shows
")iv capitalism is doing it. Hence, we require a broad view
method if we would meet the situation wisely.
Socialism is what it is because conditions are as they are.
is a reaction as definite in proportions and fixed in its laws
i any other great movement that history has seen. That it
isunderstands itself, false!}' interprets relations to great tradi-
inal institutions, errs in analysis, blunders in emphasis, and
ses the sense of established facts, does not reduce its vitality,
ough it adds to its confusion; does not assure its downfall,
ough it increases opposition. We ought to look behind our
stitutions into conditions, beneath phenomena to forces, past
aims and phrases and illusory hopes to measured statements
carefully ascertained facts, before sitting in judgment. If we
udy the processes of mind and feeling, the contrasts from
hich men recoil and the instinct for self-realization that they
ley, we find mighty power back of Socialism and independ-
it of Socialists and their mistakes. If we look into our tradt-
jnal standards of moral judgment, and inspect the sanctions
hich we attach to transitory aspects of permanently true prin-
ples, we may soon learn to question the wisdom of some of
le attitudes taken in opposition to the movement and be led
> greater care.
The Church has entered the conflict as the avowed enemy
f Socialism. Our colleges teach against it; we lecture and
rite, preach and publish, against it. We have abundant offi-
al pronouncements against it, and an anxious, capitalistic
arid looks to the Church, nervous with gratitude for the an-
imated setback that Catholicism is to give to Socialism.
;antime, we hear complaint on every side that Christianity
losing vigor and Socialism is gaining it. Our tens of thou-
«is of Christian ministers, Catholic and non-Catholic, trained
3ers, specialists, writers, thinkers, should be able to protect
S02 Aims in Socialism [July,
the masses against the dangers of Socialism ; yet we are not
cheered by any reports of notable diminution in socialistic zeal
or numbers. The movement, in the hands of untrained leaders,
enjoying no prestige but that of social degradation, with no
equipment but experience and native feeling, makes headway
that should cause thoughtful people to reflect. Do we misun-
derstand the times or our message ? Is the natural constitu-
tion of society preparing for changes that we misunderstand?
Is the force in the whole Socialist movement making for pro-
gress or for danger ? No hasty answer can meet the questions,
yet our campaign toward Socialism should be guided by those
only who can make answer safely to them.
There is much in a reputation. Socialism has a bad name
and hence many have presumptions against it. One not a So-
cialist, if he speak tolerantly of it, is asked if he be a Social-
ist. Popular usage, speaking as it always does with but limited
vocabulary, has no middle term between Socialist and individ-
ualist. Yet the majority of thoughtful, fair-minded men actual-
ly stand in that unnamed zone. In order to assist the reader
to understand, objectively, the situation, an effort is made in
these pages to offer a brief description of Socialism without
using the term. The thoughts presented in preceding issues of
The Catholic World are employed to describe the condi-
tions out of which the movement arises, and the aims which,
by direct reaction in the circumstances, are found throughout
the movement and belong to its essential constitution.
I.
It is alleged with much warrant, if not complete proof, that
the economic motive is practically supreme in modern life; that
the aggressive, selfish desire to accumulate, hold, dispose of
property, is practically universal ; that in the competitive strug-
gle for it, the strong few succeed and the weak many fail;
that the nature, motives, and sanctions of property are very
much misunderstood, and society is threatened with disintegra-
tion. It is further believed that the strong few dominate in
society and that their interests, and not those of the people at
large, are supreme. That these views are merged into one im-
pression, and that that impression is very widespread, is not to
be denied. It is well to recall that the question is one of im-
pression, not ot statistics; of personal experience, not of ab-
■SO,.]
AIMS IN SOCIALISM 503
(tract truth ; of a process going on in minds and hearts, as
veil as of formal teaching.
The natural function of wealth, of goods or things, such as
;rain, leather, cotton, wool, or lumber, is to sustain man's
physical being and enable him to strive for higher development.
As his needs recur from day to day, the impulse to accumu-
ate appears natural where, at least, some uncertainty of supply
s found. A father may naturally desire to accumulate things
or his children, for his own old age, or to protect himself
tgainst illness. But, as was noted in a former article, many
latural obstacles effectively hinder accumulation when things
hemselves must be stored. Difficulties of space, of preserva-
ion, of watching, practically forbid storing in any great quan-
ities. But men changed all this when money was invented to
epresent things and made a revolution when credits replaced
noney. Wealth in the form of income-earning credits may be
leld with ease indefinitely. It increases of itself, allows leisure
>r idleness, confers distinction and power, and becomes su-
premely desirable for reasons nearly all of which are foreign
o the natural function of wealth itself. The intensity of this
lesire is not uniform among men, as is often erroneously sup-
posed. The social valuation of wealth, as a social fact and tra-
lition, acts selectively on the race and stimulates the strong,
iraws them together and places power in their hands. Where
be desire to accumulate is found to be intense in an individ-
ual, it is a curious blend of love of luxury, desire for power,
or action, family affection, love of struggle, social valuations,
nherited instinct. It is all possible, because of the evolution
n the forms of property, and it would be impossible if prop-
:rty were made to revert to natural form and function.
If now the strong few, mighty in desire for wealth and re-
iourceful in struggle, foreseeing, vigilant, secure it in great
[uantittes, and the weak many fail of success, it is quite natural
hat these latter, when entrusted with vote and enjoying free-
lom of speech, would think and feel about the contrast. What
s more logical, then, than that the weak many should find
eaders and thinkers who would advise changes in organization
)f property in order to satisfy each one's natural desire for it.
A.nd a very natural thing is to try to force property back to
.ts natural form. Thus one might propose that all credit foims
be abolished.
504 aims in Socialism [July,
In this way, all desirability of property due to its credit
forms ceases. When it is desired less intensely, its utility for
life is unaffected and the weaker ones may have better chance
of sharing in it. Again, it might be proposed to abolish money
symbols and drive wealth back to its natural forms, so that
one who wished to accumulate wealth would be compelled to
store things and guard them. By thus restoring all natural ob-
stacles to accumulation, one might reduce the desire for it, and
make possible to every one the possession of, such real wealth
as the average purposes of life make necessary. Wealth might
thus be restored to its natural function and fdrm, its desirabil-
ity being reduced and its diffusion secured. Under such con-
ditions, it might appear as ridiculous to store great quantities
of things as it now appears warranted and wise to own great
sums of credits.
If, by some such process, property were revolutionized, and
one might possess only things or claims to things, a number
of accessory measures might follow to round ,out the situation.
Society might own and control all production ; it might require
that there be no idlers, no waste of labor in uselessly multi-
plied forms of industry. It might make one's actual labor the
basis of one's property, and, by removing incentive to accumu-
late, make general the desire to earn. If this were brought
about, it seems reasonable to suppose that the economic motive
would drop to its proper place in life ; that property would
settle back to its natural function and, serving only natural
physical uses, take on a social valuation proportioned to them.
If property could not earn, persons would be compelled to do
so. If these aimed only to supply reasonable physical and so-
cial needs, the intense desire to accumulate could not endure.
If it were reduced, and individuals earned co-operatively in-
stead of competitively, it is scarcely probable that the strong
and the weak would be at war as we now see them.
It is believed, by those who advocate such changes in prop-
erty, that through them, individual and society might be re-
stored to orderly living. By reducing the intensity of desire
for wealth in the individual, one allows opportunity for nobler
aims and larger purpose. By hindering accumulation and the
hope and uses of it, one prevents wealth, selfishly owned, from
controlling law and court and public opinion.
It may be well to repeat that, in thus describing what
1907. 1 Aims in Socialism 505
might be done, the matter is one of impression, not of statistics;
of belief rather than of proof. There are many millions in the
world to-day, and among them men of highest powers, who
believe in and advocate just such a revolution in the forms of
property, with a view to affect life, both individual and social,
in the manner described.
It may not be wise to say, flippantly, that the plan is silly.
Surely the aim and struggle, through long years, of the Church
to suppress usury, and her constitutional dislike of interest,
were neither injudicious nor silly; on the contrary, they were
humane and Christian to an extraordinary degree. Nearly every
experience of earning and of property, met to-day by the mil-
lions and millions of wage and salary earners, is exactly what
they would experience if the changes described were to take
place. For they own no credits, they earn all that they have
and consume it in living, and property in their lives serves only
the natural functions of wealth in giving support and comfort
to life.
Whether or not industry would collapse, genius would sulk,
and mediocrity reign, is of course a question. Such changes are
advocated, believed in, and defended, and the deeper forces at
work in society appear to act favorably to them on the whole.
The present psychology of property is, in fact, unchristian, un-
brotherly, disorganizing. It is in conflict with ideals, beliefs,
self-estimate, shared by the masses. The facts of property have
associated the strong together and herded the weak together.
These latter, having in common their humanity and sins and
defeats, as well as their aspirations and class power, are in a
process of revolution of psychology. Out of their experience
of life they are constructing a new philosophy of property, a
new view of life, and promise of progress seems to be with
them.
In much that they say and do, they are rough. The surgeon
often finds many complications due to adhesions when he oper-
ates, and his skill and patience are needed to detach them, to
do his work carefully and do no harm. Thus property, as we
know it, has many adhesions to family, to Church, to law, to
justice, and hence it is not strange that the sociological surgeon,
who wishes to operate and remove it, too often lacerates other
tissues, and threatens the social order. But this danger is due
to the lack of skill. It does not show that an operation is ill-
I
5o6 Aims in Socialism [July,
advised, or that society can recover without one ; nor does it
show that poultices and bandages and tonics, like pure food
laws and rate bills and lectures on character, promise a cure.
II.
The situation may be studied from a different standpoint,
though one comes to the same conclusion.
Society is society through unity of fundamental purpose,
common acceptance of fundamental principles, and reverent be-
lief in recognized ideals. These moral foundations may not be
impaired without direct danger to the dearest interests of life.
Differences on the surface work no important harm, while they
undoubtedly contribute greatly to development and to enlight-
ened policies. Society can stand anything but disintegration.
A process of varied disintegration has actually set in in mod-
ern life, and it threatens the stability of our institutions. It is
a slow working process, if viewed at close range, but a cen-
tury is a short time in a nation's career. Many alarmists write
and speak; one meets men who believe that a revolution is
impending. Ignoring such accidents of exaggeration, one may
see the process at work without guessing whether great changes
will come in twenty or in seventy years. The disintegration
found is due, it is claimed in last analysis, to the psychology
and organization of property ; hence many hope that the revo-
lution in property already hinted at promises to restore unity
of purpose and principle and ideal to society. •
Given natural differences in human nature, high social valu-
ation of wealth, competitive struggle for it, the strong will ac-
quire property and the weak will fail. Society tends to split
into strong and weak classes. Though we find a great middle
class actually, the processes at work tend to break it up and
throw some of its members to the strong, many of them to the
weak. To-day this tendency of society to split is generally ob-
served. In parlors, clubs, pulpits, schools, the issues are dis-
cussed. Every day one is called upon to declare one's sym-
pathy with the one or the other class. One may scarcely re-
main indifferent to the conflict. Traces of it appear in politics,
in religion, in school and university, in social intercourse.
Now, out of this division, we tend to construct two distinct
societies, as much unlike each other as Turk and Chinaman,
and they attempt to live under common institutions. Disraeli,
AIMS IN SOCIALISM
writing in 1845, in Sybil: A Tale of Two Nations (the rich
and the poor in England), represents one of the characters
speaking in this manner of the two nations. Between them
" there is no intercourse and no sympathy ; who are as igno-
rant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they
were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different
planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a
different food, are ordered by different manners, and not gov-
erned by the same laws." Sixty years of materia! progress, the
most rapid and dazzling in the world's history, have left the
condition practically unchanged. A review of the results of
this division is instructive, since the strong and the weak tend
(to develop a morality and an immorality peculiar to each.
The strong uphold institutions because of what they have
accomplished; the weak condemn them because of what they
have failed to do. The strong assume that all may succeed,
and they condemn the weak as personally responsible for fail-
ure, or console them by claiming that they, the weak, have all
that they deserve. The weak blame the system for their fail-
ure, hold themselves blameless, and charge the strong with in-
iquity.
The strong appeal to the civil law as their social standard
of right and wrong; while the weak go behind actual laws to
ethical principles to justify discontent with law and desire to
change it. The strong refuse to trust the weak, and the weak
lose confidence in law, lawmaker, and court. The strong tend
tn accept supply and demand as the one standard of social
justice ; while the weak repudiate it with all possible energy,
and aim to establish a humanized standard proportioned to the
dignity of manhood.
The strong are individualistic in their philosophy of life and
institutions, believers in personal responsibility, in an aggres-
sive individualism, while the weak repudiate individualism, be-
lieve in individual weakness as a fact, class organization as a
necessity, collective thought, feeling, and action as a policy.
The psychology of the two classess shows irreconcilable dif-
ferences: antagonism of interest, refusal of confidence, different
standards, opposed social philosophy. The moral foundations
of society are threatened. The strong owe their strength to es-
tablishment, to the natural inertia of institutions, to personal abil-
ity, to property, but they are the relatively few in numbers.
/
So8 aims in Socialism [July,
The weak are the overwhelming majority on the whole, but as
a mass they are disorganized, unwieldy. Yet they are coming
to a consciousness of their strength.
" Our blindness is our strength,
And we are millions, millions, millions strong."
" We are the final conquerors. Hurl your bolts,
We are eternal and invincible.
The sharpest swords against our dullness turn,
And, by our dumbness, speech is overborne.' 9
By vocabulary, by mental and emotional attitudes, by in-
terests, by standards, by principles, by philosophy of life, the
strong and the weak are separated. The spirit of dislike is in-
tensified by the circumstances of life which throw strong and
weak together in daily contact. They are crowded into cities,
associated in industries, meeting many times daily ; and this con-
stant necessary association tends to reinforce opposition and
dislike.
Many agencies aim to foster the common point of view on
which strong and weak ought to be united. Our statesmen try
to cherish common love of political institutions, to draw strong
and weak together in reverent regard for law, authority, and
democracy ; our schools attempt to show us the equalities of
citizenship, the identity of interest in life that should unite us;
our Christian churches teach zealously the substantial brother*
hood of man beneath all differences of strength and weakness,
and appeal for patient toleration of accidental inequalities which
may not be righted except beyond ; our philanthropists, char-
ity workers, and public spirited men with social conscience, in-
fluenced by a universal point of view, work among the wreckage
of the weak, and attempt to alleviate suffering. But not all of
these agencies united can, it seems, hope to temper the stand-
ards of the strong to those of the weak, or lead the weak to
trust and love the strong. Not all among the strong agree in
their views; not all among the week agree in theirs. Sym-
pathy for the other camp is found here and there in each.
But the two systems, as systems, stand, and by them society
is threatened with disintegration. Where classes have not a
common standard of justice, confidence in law and leaders, deep
reverence for their institutions which remain strong and en-
1907.] Aims in Socialism 509
during amidst all of the secondary differences of life, but little
may be hoped for.
,„.
Those whose feeling and belief lead them to see the social
question as it has been outlined, tend to unite in their plan of
reform. They believe that the disintegration referred to is the
result of a few primary factors, and in their proposals they aim
to work directly against these. Mentioned unsystematically,
some of the aims of these reformers are the following : abolition
of all forms of interest-bearing credits, such as stocks, bonds,
mortgages, so that all, who now live by interest or profits alone,
are compelled to seek livelihood in some other manner ; aboli-
tion of money, by removing the need of it, substituting a stand.
of exchange and value which men may obtain by their
own labor; so that all, who now make their living in and by
finance, shall be compelled to do so by labor.
Thus, it is thought there would be no wealth but things, and
:alth could do nothing but support life ; there would be no in-
come except from personal labor, directly or indirectly related to
actual production. Although one might still accumulate, through
gift or inheritance or by saving, the difficulties in the way
would be deterrent and practically all motive to accumulate
would cease to exist.
It is believed, by those who favor this plan, that the pas-
sion for accumulation would die away; that the economic mo-
tive would be diminished to its true place in life ; that men
would be content with reasonable comfort, and the energy, time,
genius, now given to unnatural accumulation of riches, might be
turned to nobler uses. This result might be brought about, it
is thought, by having society take over the economic function
of production ; it might own, operate, and govern all industry.
All citizens would then work for society, receiving, in return
for labor, checks or symbols showing the value of their work.
With these checks, which would replace money, one might pur-
chase from society any and all kinds of things. There are no
competing producers, society alone is producer; there are no com-
peting merchants, society distributes things; there is no profit
motive anywhere, things are made to be used directly.
It is thought, by those who favor such reforms, that society
can be reunited into one moral and social harmony; that one
Sio Aims in Socialism [July,
standard of justice, of right and wrong, may be established; that
one all-embracing social philosophy may be accepted. It is
promised, with an assurance that is quite as attractive as it is
unconvincing, that there will be no strong, no weak in such
conditions ; that no difference of material interest can result in
class formation and no class antagonism can estrange men ; that
brotherhood and unity and co-operation may enable men to
understand one another; understanding, to trust one another;
and trusting, to love and serve one another.
These proposals of reform, simple enough in statement, in-
volve complications of a very far-reaching nature. They im-
ply a sweeping revolution in life and institutions; they involve
a complete transformation in human motives and views; they
confuse hopelessly any one who attempts to understand, in de-
tail, just what they mean; they who hope for success through
them, turn their backs on human experience and show a faith in
human nature that is scarcely warranted by its history. We call
the proposals dreams, futile hopes, impossibilities, and yet many
millions, and among the millions many of great capacity, and
among these, men of highest mental power and insight, believe
in them, work and sacrifice for them.
IV.
The proposals alluded to, combined into one system, belong
to what is called Socialism. It is to be expected that any
movement which disturb? the settled psychology and accepted
ethics of heretofore dominant civilization, will act confusedly,
will confound issues and misunderstand relations. But while it
does all this, and Socialists are guilty to the last degree, the
mistakes do not change the vital force of the movement, nor
diminish its actual prospects. There is a " fellowship of error/'
a "coherence of doubt," as there. is a fixed psychology of re-
volt. There are a dozen rebellious impulses in society; human
nature is always evading discipline. Some seek to escape be-
lief in God in a civilization which has believed in God ; some
seek to escape the discipline that family and monogamic mar-
riage impose ; some seek to escape the domination of govern-
ment ; some seek a radical change in property in a civilization
which is based on property. What wonder that atheist glances
slyly at Socialist and that they make up to each other; what
wonder that free love looks hopefully to Socialism and they
907.] Aims in Socialism 511
)in issues at times. Or again, once a mind is given to revolt,
: is apt to extend its rebellion, and quite naturally a Social-
it may drift to atheism and to free love.
But with all these complex relations, which are not by any
leans easy to explain, it remains simply true that the essential
leaning of Socialism is not found in them ; that a statement of
ocialism may be made accurately, leaving intact belief in God,
1 home, in marriage. And this is the seductive type; in it
es danger. To tjie economist and the psychologist we must
irn for their judgment of Socialism's analysis of social prob-
*ms and of its proposed remedies. To the theologian and the
hilosopher we must look for the principles of justice, which,
uiding all social change, ought to direct our judgment here,
iscriminatine always between the permanently true principle
nd the modifiable applications of it. If these trusted leaders
sll us that in the essential intention and plan of Socialism there
€ iniquity, disaster, and theft, then our opposition to it should
e increased tenfold. If, however, they tell us that, theoretical-
ly Socialism is merely one scheme of legal economic social or-
anization, consistent with the principle of private property, with
lome, church, government, and order, then we must be the first
o do justice to those who advocate it, and take care to make
o mistake in what we claim against it. A brief review of
ttitudes toward Socialism will be offered in an article to follow.
VACATION WITH THE MICMACS.
BY WILLIAM T. RUSSELL.
10 camp in a territory marked unexplored on the
map of Newfoundland — with Indians as guides-
such was our call from the wild ; and we heark-
ened to the call.
After arriving at North Sydney, Cape Breton
Island, we embarked on the trim little steamer Bruce, com'
manded by Captain Delaney, as genial and whole-souled a cap.
tain as ever walked a deck. We always look forward to meet-
ing Captain Delaney as one of the well-earned pleasures of the
long journey. He is a prince among seamen and is regarded
by them as such. He informed us on our first trip with him
that Newfoundland was "a land of cod, dogs, fogs, and Irish-
men."
Evidences of cod are to be found everywhere. One might
say, speaking at least of Western Newfoundland, that every
man, woman, and child is engaged in the cod fisheries. With-
out the cod this part of the island would be obliged to go out
of business.. Of dogs one sees but few. We were told that
the breed is almost extinct in Newfoundland, but our travels
took us only to the less populous western coast. Of fogs one
has but little experience after landing. They encircle the island,
but when one enters the little bays the heavy, impenetrable
curtain of fog is left behind and one goes into a land of sun-
shine, green hills, and beautiful lakes. Of Irishmen there are
many, both green and orange, and they seldom blend. There
are also Englishmen, Scotchmen (those we met were all Catho-
lics), Frenchmen, and Canadians.
I should describe Newfoundland as a land of rugged gran-
deur and of warmest hospitality. The word "stranger" seems
hardly to have a meaning among the great- hearted children of
Newfoundland.
After arriving at Port aux Basques, we found that our
steamer, the Glcncoe, would not sail before evening, so we got
out our rods and started off, hoping to get some trout. We
1907.] VACATION WITH THE MlCMACS 513
were disappointed. Our stream was evidently ill- chosen, for as
we wearily trudged homeward along the railroad track we heard
a rumbling behind us, and there loomed up the laughing, happy
face of Captain Delaney. He was pushing a hand. car, on
which we soon descried a well- filled basket of trout. We gladly
accepted his invitation to jump on, and were soon at Port aux
Basques again. The kind welcome at the home of Mr. Delaney
(a nephew of the Captain), whose good wife set out for us a
supper of fresh cod and homemade preserves, soon made us
forget our disappointment in fishing. After saying night-prayers
for the Catholics who gathered in their little chapel on the
hill, we took the steamer for Pushthrough.
Along the southern coast of Newfoundland from Port aux
Basques, the scenery is of wild magnificence; bare, perpendicu-
lar rocks rise sheer out of the water three hundred feet or
more, and tiny villages huddle for shelter under forbidding
cliffs in the little coves which indent the rock-bound coast,
For two days we steamed along the coast, stopping on the
way at these small hamlets ; the inhabitants, whose isolated
lives call forth the daily exercise of a courage truly heroic, al-
ways flocked to the wharf to witness the incoming of the steamer
— the fortnightly event in their uneventful existence.
At length we approached, about nine in the evening, the
place of our destination. After winding around shadowy islands,
where all is darkness save for the stars which shine so brilliant-
ly in the clear northern sky, through tortuous passages wherein
the steamer seems at times on the point of running her nose
against some rocky headland — its ebon mass dimly outlined
against the star- strewn sky — we at length sighted afar off a
faint light on the shore indicating our landing place, well-named
Pushthrough.
We had arranged to have two Indian guides meet us here
to conduct us to their village about thirty miles up the river,
but the wind had prevented them from keeping their engage-
ment. Whilst awaiting their arrival, there was little in Push-
through to make a night there particularly exciting or enter-
taining. No streets, no lamps, no open stores, not even a po-
liceman — which latter luxury is unknown in Western Newfound-
land. The houses in Pushthrough are scattered without any
regard for order, placed, in fact, wherever the rocks permit a
. LXXXY. — 33
Si4 Vacation with the Micmacs [July,
sufficient space for the laying of a foundation. But the inhos-
pitable rocks of Newfoundland have nurtured a people whose
kindly hospitality is not to be surpassed.
About midnight the wharfinger of the place informed us
that a young man was going up the river in his schooner, and
if we so desired we might accompany him. At I A. M. we
tumbled our baggage into the little two-master, and half an
hour later tumbled ourselves into the hold, and unrolling our
blankets on the cobble-stone ballast we were soon fast asleep.
The next day at noon, after a delightful sail up the river, we
arrived at Bay d'Espoir — pronounced by the " Hvyeres " (live
heres) Bay Despair.
The village of the Micmacs sighted, we sent a dory ashore
and the Indians who were expecting us gave us a salute with
their guns, and before the chapel, crowning the summit of a
little hill overlooking the village, they ran up the priest's flag,
a red cross on a white field. We were soon ashore greeting
the Chief and his family of ninety souls, and being paraded up
to their chapel, of which they are as proud as is a verger of
his great English cathedral. Their welcome was very simple,
yet one whose genuineness could not be doubted.
Naturally very reticent, they seldom spoke except to an-
swer questions, until we became on more intimate terms with
them. Their houses are small wooden ones, two rooms deep
with a garret. In winter they hunt the bear, caribou, fox, and
lynx — selling the skins to the traders who visit them in the
spring. Sometimes they are engaged in wood-cutting for the
mills. Saw mills are to be found along the shores of most of
the rivers of Newfoundland. The timber is not of large growth
generally, but it is ground into wood pulp for cheap paper and
other commercial purposes.
These Indians live as one large family under their chief,
who is elected for life, and who is also their judge, magis-
trate, and fatherly adviser. If a young couple contemplate
marriage, they hie them to the Chief to talk it over, following
whatever advice he may give them. In all his dealings with
those in his care he is guided by the pastor, Father Adams, a
fine type of the unselfish, discreet, and fatherly priest. There
is no jail or lock-up of any kind here, and none is needed.
These people of the wilderness are, in truth, children of a
larger growth — their simplicity being, in fact, almost oppressive.
1907.], VACATION WITH THE MlCMACS 5 IS
We had been warned not to say anything in jest, as they would
be likely to accept it in downright earnest. The yea and nay
01 the Gospel is a living principle with them. They speak and
write their own language and English.
During the Mass, led by the Chief, they chanted in plaintive
tones, suggestive of Gregorian music, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, in their own tongue, the characters of
■which resemble somewhat the hieroglyphics of Egyptian monu-
ments. Their books were printed at Leipzig. They have no
school teacher and I asked Nuel (William) how they learned
their language. He told me that at night, when all are gath-
ered around the fire at home, the fathers teach their children
by object lessons, giving them several words and pointing out
the things they represent. The following day, at home or a-
field, the young people repeat the words while they work, and
when night returns they are expected to know well the lesson
of the day before. Writing, both English and Indian, is taught
in the same manner.
Their English is very quaint — for instance, they do not use
the objective of the personal pronoun.
"William, shall we start now?"
"It's all the same to we, Fadder."
"Is this a difficult path?"
" It's easy to I, Fadder."
Among these good people the title "Skipper" corresponds
to that of " Colonel " in the Southern States. It is related of
Mgr. Sears that on one occasion he visited a village where a
priest had not been for some time, and one of the women go-
ing to him asked: "Skipper Sears, have you brought your tools
to baptize a baby for I ? "
Nothing will show their simplicity better than a custom re-
garding confession. The men speak English, but some of the
women do not, so to accommodate these latter there is an
official interpreter — an elderly woman of the tribe — who accom-
panies the women ignorant of English to the confessional or
altar-rail, where the priest awaits them. The confession is then
made to this interpreter, who repeats it to the priest. The
people are taught, of course, that this method is not obligatory,
but they prefer it; and the interpreter understands that she is
bound to the same law of secrecy as the priest. Let me as-
sure those who are shocked or horrified at this, that these con-
Si6 Vacation with the Micmacs [July,
fessions could be made before the whole congregation without
a blush. These are souls such as our Lord referred to when
he said : " Unless ye become as little children, ye shall not enter
the kingdom of heaven."
It is needless to say that the men are strong and sinewy,
their lives making them athletes, of which fact we had many
practical illustrations in the trips made with them. They, of
course, carried most of the baggage, such as cooking utensils,
tents, etc., and when we came to rivers too deep to wade,
they took us across on their backs. Father — — being a light
weight, our guides disdained to unload before shouldering him,
so he went over perched on top of their packs, but mine was
the mortification of seeing them discard all baggage before
tackling me.
An eight mile jaunt one day brought me to the painful
realization of my deficiencies as a traveler. For the first two
miles we went through a tangled forest up hill. One of the
Indians went ahead to blaze the trail — we following later; and
after our way through this tangled, obstinate undergrowth and
overgrowth, we emerged upon a plateau free from trees, but
which, for about four miles, was a marsh. At every step our
feet went down at least four inches, and every step was like
pulling at a sucker. How glad I was when we came to a halt
may be imagined, but our Indians, instead of resting, gambolled
around making balls of moss, with which they pelted one an-
other, or busied themselves gathering berries for us. The bake-
apple, a yellow berry resembling the raspberry, abounds on the
mountains.
" Do you never get tired?" I asked.
"Oh, Fadder," they answered, "this is nothing to we. In
winter we travel thirty- four miles, with 180 pounds of deer
meat on our backs."
During the last two miles downhill to the river, through
beautiful ferns and ugly firs, I had to lift first one leg and
then the other over the fallen trees along the way. But it was
glorious to strip off when we reached the river and plunge into
the cool, clear stream. Stretched out on one's back in the tent,
with a full pipe to puff, life seemed well worth living.
The priests of Western and Northern Newfoundland have
no easy life, as a sick call often means a week of roughing it.
When we arrived at Pushthrough a doctor got off with us, his
Vacation with the Micmacs
517
experience illustrating the labors of the priest. He was on a
sick call, and had come ten miles by steamer to Pushthrough,
to find there awaiting him a boat with two men. It was then
10 P. M. and he informed us that they would row up-stream
all night, arriving at his patient's house about ten the next
morning. This, however, is not considered unusual; it is, in
fact, what the priest must look for at any time.
One dark night, when traveling by train, we descried, about
a hundred feet from the track, ensconced in the thick under-
growth, a dimly lighted tent. On inquiry we found it was
the Mass tent of our good friend, Mgr. Sears. He carries his
tent from place to place, gathers his little flock around him,
hears their confessions, and offers the Holy Sacrifice. He has,
however, several mission chapels in different parts of his exten-
sive parish, and at Bay of Islands there is a commodious church
and his home. It was he who first taught us the meaning of
that expressive phrase " Newfoundland hospitality."
At Grand Codray lives Mgr. W. J. Browne, the Vicar Gen ■
eral of the diocese. Our introduction to him was brief — and
then his home was ours. For hours we delighted to listen to
the stories he told us of missionary life in Newfoundland. He
is now somewhat broken in health, but the invigorating life he
has led, together with his genial disposition, give him a ruddy
complexion and jaunty air which belie the opinions of his phy-
sicians.
While at Mgr. Browne's house we had the pleasure of meet-
ing Father McNeill, the bishop's nephew and chancellor. He
looks like a man born for the rough mission field of Newfound-
land. Full of apostolic zeal, his physical irame seems to have
been built to endure all that his energetic spirit constantly de-
mands of it. He told us of an interesting experience the
aishop had had shortly before our arrival.
Bishop McNeill, of St. George's Bay, received a call on
Wednesday of Holy Week, and as the priest on the mission
was away on another call, the bishop took the train which hap-
pened to pass that evening. The train always "happens" in
Newfoundland — the express being never more than forty- eight
hours late; you pitch your tent beside the track and wait; the
ou and stops.
after attending the sick man, found no train to
: to St. George's to bless the oils the next morn
Sl8 VACATION WITH THE MlCMACS [July,
ing — Holy Thursday — but finding a hand- car he pushed it all
night, arriving in the morning in time to pontificate. In New.
foundland no tortuous interpretation is needed to understand
the Apostle's words : " If a man desire the office of a bishop,
he desireth a good thing."
For one who wishes to rough it in vacation, Newfoundland
presents many unrivalled attractions. The scenery along the
Humber, for instance, would be difficult to surpass by any in
the Eastern part of North America. After leaving the Bay of
Islands, the train winds its way along the bank of this river
for about thirty miles through almost virgin forest. High, per-
pendicular cliffs rear their bold fronts from the very river banks,
as if to stay the desecrating advance of man at the very door of
nature's hallowed sanctuary. The clear, saffron- colored waters
of the Humber move on, now with a majestic, noiseless force,
now sweeping with an irresistible on- rush over shallow ledges,
now plunging in wantbn, unrestrained recklessness adown the
falls. No boat-houses, no sign of man, appear along its banks
to mar the scene. It is nature inviolate. However, evidences
offer at times of man's devastating progress, in long stretches
of mountain front over which the fires have swept ; the rocks
are denuded of the green- golden moss and feathery ferns; and
the gaunt, charred firs and beeches raise their scarred and
naked arms skyward, as if calling down vengeance upon the
reckless intruder.
This scene of desolation produces a sadness of spirit that
silence alone can express. Should the traveler pass that way
the year after the fire, he would find these same mountains
clothed with the royal mantle of the fire- plant, a weed tipped
with pale purple flowers. At a distance these slopes appear as
if robed with rich, softly glowing velvet. How delightful the
remembrance of those evenings, when sitting together in our
canoes, we watched the sun sink to repose in the downy bed
of the mountain fire- plant. How calming the unbroken silence
that follows, with no sound of bird or beast to disturb the
music of the waters, and the whisperings of the primeval pine
and hemlock.
"Magnificat Anitna Mea Dominum," chants one of our
priests, and in this we all join ; while from afar the mountain
voices echo again and again : " Magnificat Anitna Mea Domi-
num." Our hymn finished, we gather around the camp-fire for
1907.] Vacation with the micmacs 519
a last smoke, enjoying meanwhile the stories of Jim, our guide;
then to bed on our soft springy mattress of aromatic branches.
Up with the sun in the morning, we don as little clothing
as will .protect us in the cool, bracing air, and with rubber
boots wade out into the river for our morning ablutions. An
ax and a log of birch soon send the blood thrilling through
one's body. Ere the last Mass is finished (for we always carry
our vestments, etc., with us), the pot is boiling and the salmon
steaming for our breakfast. Then follows a careful examination
of lines, rods, and reels. There must be no faulty tackle when
one goes forth to match skill with the doughty salmon. No
fishing compares with salmon- fishing. In the first place all true
sportsmen use the artificial fly, and it requires no little prac-
tice to attain the skill necessary to cast a fly 60 or 70 feet in
such a way that it will gently fall on the water without a
splash, as does the "real thing."
The salmon does not gulp down the bait like a trout or
bass. He takes it daintily, and as his mouth is hard the hook
does not always take a good hold. Last year I hooked fifteen ;
but either because the fish did not take a good hold, or more
likely because I did not manage them properly, I lost thirteen.
My companion hooked the same number and lost only two.
To land a salmon means a victory after a battle royal. The
contest is one in which the pulling, leaping, sliding, and plung-
ing of the big fish are pitted against the care and patience of
the man and his delicate handling of a light rod and tackle.
What joy to see a big fifteen pounder safely lying on the rock
after a fight of twenty minutes. It is very easy in comparison
to land trout.
Two years ago I had a remarkable proof of this fact. When
I tell it, however, my hearers who have been trout fishers gen-
erally smile. One Sunday after Mass I was asked by a good
fellow, who had come from Ireland two years before, if I would
visit his sick wife. Besides himself we had that day at Mass a
woman and her two grandchildren. We all set off together.
A path had been hewn through the woods — that is to say, the
large timber had been cut down. It was a hop-skip-and-jump
process from log to rock, and from rock to log, and not infre-
quently I landed in a pool of dirty black mud. Once I went
so deep with one foot, that I was obliged to pull it up b)' the
S20 VACATION WITH THE MlCMACS [July,
boot straps. My companions seemed to enjoy the whole trip
They were used to it.
" Oh, Father/' said the good woman, "it is so good to hav
you so near us, and to be able to hear Mass so easily/'
" How do you generally manage ? " I asked.
"Why," she replied, "usually we walk to the church, ei
miles away, twice as far as this."
At length we arrived at the little settlement. The m<
whose wife was sick had been only two years in Newfoundlan
His home stood in a clearing surrounded by the burnt roots
the trees, from which he had hewn and sawed all the lumb
for the house and its furniture. Everything in the house b
the spinning wheel he had made with his own hands, and tlm <
clothes worn by himself, wife, and children had been spucm*
woven, dyed, cut, and made by the good woman herself. Wit.li
my whole heart I gave these good people all the Lord hm»d
empowered me to give. The poor, frail woman has since re-
covered, and believes it was the priest's blessing which cured
her.
But what about the fish story? Here it is. Walking around
the house I espied a rude rod made of birch. The man in-
formed me the rod belonged to his little boy. It had a heavy
line wound around a cotton spool, in imitation of the rods th*«
little fellow had seen sportsmen use on the river. Instead of
a silk leader there was a black shoe string, and the hook
about an inch long.
"What is that for?" I asked.
" My boy," said the man, " catches trout with it."
"Well, I should certainly like to have the novel experience
of catching trout with such tackle/' I remarked.
" Come along, then, Father," was the rejoinder, and I
taken to a little stream a short distance behind the house,
baited with worms, looked down into the pool, selected tb
trout I wanted, and yanked him out. In half an hour I ha
fifty -three. If you don't believe it, I'll show you the rod — f
I bought the whole outfit and brought it home. When I re
turned to camp, my companions turned up their noses at m;
catch. No one cares for trout where salmon can be caught.
To the priest who is tired of the enervating life at the se
shore, or whose vacation hangs heavy on the veranda of -
1907.] Vacation with the Micmacs 521
mountain resort, to the priest who would return to his work
witfe refreshed body and mind, I say go back to nature in camp
life. It may seem hard for the first few days, but at the end
of sl few weeks thus spent, one will look forward to future va-
cations with a healthful longing — returning afterward to work,
renewed in body and spirit. Such a vacation, rightly managed,
is not expensive, after the camping equipment — tents, cooking
utensils, etc. — have been procured. For boats, guides, and food,
our trip cost us each $2.75 a day. All our paraphernalia we
leave at the house of Mr. Doyle (Doyle Station). Kind, moth-
erly Mrs. Doyle looks after our clothes, and when we arrive
Mr. JDoyle and his obliging sons, Clement and John, have all
our belongings ready for packing in the boats. An hour after
our arrival at Doyle Station — with the assistance of Jim Cor-
mier, our indispensable, irrepressible guide, we are ready to take.
the water.
At one of our camping- grounds last year we were on the
edge of civilization. Within a radius of five miles we gathered
on Sundays for Mass, a congregation of thirty souls, French,
Scotch, and Irish. Whilst we distributed the salmon and trout
we did not need among these good people, they, in turn, sup-
plied us with milk, fruit, eggs, buttermilk, and butter. Though
our dining- table was the upturned bottom of a soap box, and
napkins and finger- bowls were conspicuously absent, who of our
friends, dining upon the cold storage supplies of a formidable
hotel menu, at five dollars a day, would not have had reason to
envy our table, garnished with our unpurchasable salmon and
trout, fresh eggs, butter, milk, and berries, and adorned with
flowers in an empty tin can ?
THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA.
BY JAMES J. FOX. D.D.
' CIIOING a question that has been heard very
frequently, of late, in the book-world, the pro-
ent writer asked one of our foremost seminary
presidents: "What do you think of the Catho-
lic Encyclopedia?" "I think," was the reply,
"that it is the grandest thing done by English-speaking Catho-
lics since the Reformation." In the deliberate tone of a man
who weighs his words, and is chary of his praise, the speaker
continued: "The first volume surpasses all expectation; and if,
as no doubt it will, the same standard is kept up till the close,
we shall all have good reason to be proud of the Encyclopedia,
and grateful to the men to whom we owe it" This opinion
may, we feel assured, be taken as expressing a general con-
sensus.
When the project of a Catholic Encyclopedia was first agi-
tated, everybody declared that it would be an extremely use-
ful, and very desirable, work. But a great number of people
believed that the difficulties in the way of such an enterprise
would prove insurmountable, or that, at best, the result of an
attempt to realize the idea would be a sorry affair. With
much impressive headshaking, timidity and cynicism exchanged
confidences. " Publish an Encyclopedia that is to provide the
world with accurate information on everything pertaining, di- ,
rectly or indirectly, to the Catholic Church ? Just think of
what it means ? Theology, Philosophy, Canon Law, Archeol-
ogy, the entire history of the Church, her doctrine, her dis-
cipline, her life, with its innumerable ramifications through Che
whole course of human action and thought, from China to
Peru, from Tiberius Caesar and t*he correspondence between
Pliny and Trajan down to Bismarck and the letters of Quirinus."
" It sounds like a repetition of Bacon's presumptuous announce-
ment that he took all knowledge for bis proper province."
" Where will they get the brains to conduct the work ? Where
1907O The Catholic Encyclopedia 523
will the writers be found? And where is the money to come
from ? " Well, the first volume is peremptory evidence that
"they" have got the brains, they have got the men, and, like
the British jingo, they've got the money too.
Misgivings of another kind have proved equally superfluous.
" Just notice," it was said, " where the dominant control is
lodged. To a certainty, the old policy of special pleading and
uncandor in matters of history and apologetics will prevail ;
writers on Scriptural questions will be pinned down to the
lines of Cornely or Delattre. A decade from now the Ency-
clopedia, if it is ever finished, will be a rich museum for some
future M. Houtin engaged in sketching the line followed by
oar beaten theologians in their retreat from the attacks of mod-
ern scholarship." But Alexander VI. has not been whitewashed;
and there are not three articles in the entire volume that can
be accused of ignoring the established results of modern re-
search and modern methods. The most delicate and crucial
problem which the editorial board had to face was that of
holding, in those days of transition, a safe middle course be-
tween the contending currents of pi ogress and conservatism, so
as to escape, on the one hand, the Scylla of intemperate inno-
vation, and, on the other, the Charybdis of disastrously blind
traditionalism. To have erred in the first direction would have
incurred the disapprobation of authority; to have erred in the
second would have resulted in a work worthless in the eyes of
scholars, and commanding no respect from the non-Catholic
world. It is, therefore, a pleasure for every well-wisher of the
Encyclopedia — that is, roundly speaking, for every Catholic
who uses the English language, and, especially, every Amer-
Ic *n Catholic — to find that this initial volume exhibits a happy
combination of sound conservatism and prudent progress.
Probably, complaints will be heard from the extremes of
both parties. From one quarter this or that article will be at
**cked for embalming some dead idea or obsolete opinion ;
w hile voices from another quarter will condemn something else
'°* conceding too much to the pernicious spirit of modernity.
**d, Again, exception will, perhaps, be taken against some for
n °t possessing all the exactness and amplitude of scholarship
w **ich the specialist would lavish on the subject. The first two
s £ts of critics may, fairly enough, be matched against each
524 The Catholic Encyclopedia [July,
other to the neutralization of both. As for strictures of the
last character, they overlook the scope of the Encyclopedia.
It does not pretend to record the very latest theory or opinion
broached concerning questions which are still subjudice; nor to
provide complete and exhaustive data for the special student.
It professes to furnish fairly complete accurate information in
a condensed form for those who have not the opportunity or
the inclination to study the topic on which they wish to have
some information. The bibliographies, which in almost every
case are carefully selected, will serve to indicate the right track
to those who seek wider or more thorough knowledge. It may
be said, at the same time, that an analysis of the volume will
show a large number of articles which reach the highwater
mark of finished scholarship.
Of course, as in every encyclopedia extant, one encounters
a contribution here and there that is open to criticism, on the
grounds of scholarship or of the temper which pervades it.
But it must be remembered that the selection of writers was,
for the first volume, largely an experiment. The editors seem,
in one or two instances, to have mistaken the calibre of their
man. The next volumes will, very likely, show the fruits of their
first experience. Again, it may be said, they were obliged to
be on their guard against slighting individual and corporate
susceptibilities, and to show deference to popular reputations,
which are not always a true index of merit. The brilliant suc-
cess of this volume, however, strengthens their position, and
relieves them henceforth from the necessity of consulting any-
thing but the excellence of the Encyclopedia, and the honor
of Catholic intelligence and culture which is in their hands.
To safeguard theif trust they must, without regard to personal
feelings, use the blue pencil vigorously wherever they find
mediocrity or incompetence.
In theological, philosophical, and biblical questions, it is no
easy matter to combine scientific accuracy with popular treat-
ment; to satisfy the exacting standards of the scholar and, at
the same time, not to rise above the level of the general reader
who possesses but little of the knowledge which is- presupposed
to a sound and intelligent exposition in such studies. With
these considerations kept in view the appreciation of the Ency-
clopedia on this point must be very favorable.
1907.] The Catholic Encyclopedia 525
Although Americans may reasonably take a special pride in
the Encyclopedia, inasmuch as it owes its existence to the na-
tional spirit of enterprise, and to the enthusiastic quality of
American Catholicism, we cannot look upon it as a purely na-
tional product. No less than twenty-seven different countries
are represented in the list of contributors. The international
character of the co-operation which has produced it may be in-
terpreted to indicate the geographically catholic welcome which
awaits it. And, just as its world is not national but interna-
tional, so its utility is not for one or two particular classes,
but for everybody who is in contact with the stream of intel-
lectual life. Where is the clergyman, the lawyer, the physician,
the public speaker, the writer for the press, even the novel
reader who does not, frequently, desire some light upon some
point connected with the institution which is almost as ubiqui-
tous as the atmosphere, and alone, to use a famous phrase,
joins together the two great ages of civilization ? The Catholic
Encyclopedia will be at hand to furnish complete instruction,
however recondite the matter may be. Now at last there will
no longer be any excuse for those grotesque blunders on Catho-
lic affairs, which so often disfigure the novel, the newspaper,
or periodical, and the statements of public speakers.
When completed, according to the scale of the first volume,
the Encyclopedia will provide the student of education with all
the data concerning the activity of the Church in the establish-
ment of universities, colleges, schools ; the various phases of her
own mental development; the scholars and scientists who have
flourished within her boundaries. The copious articles on Arabia
and Africa, replete with maps and statistical tables, promise a
valuable ecclesiastical geography, which will be the first of its
kind in any language. It may be hoped, too, that the Ency-
clopedia, with its vast range of instructive and curious knowl-
edge, and its ample bibliographical suggestion for courses of
systematic study, will prove a powerful stimulant towards the
promotion of a taste for reading among our people. And may
we not also trust that, collaboration in this work having enabled
a large number of Catholics to find themselves possessed of
hitherto untried literary ability, they will not allow their talents
again to lie fallow ?
When finished, what a magnificent Apologia will Catholicism
526 The Catholic Encyclopedia [July,
possess in the fifteen stately volumes that will set forth the
continuity of the Church, her enduring and omnipresent energy,
which is evangelizing Darkest Africa in the twentieth century
as it evangelized Carthage and Numidia in the third; which
built the majestic minster of Aachen a thousand years ago, and
to-day is raising the cross over little wooden chapels and school-
houses scattered through Alaskan wastes —
" Qua regio in terris nostri non plena /aborts t "
Sympathy with the Encyclopedia, and a keen desire to see
it approach as near to perfection as possible, prompt the
writer to offer, for what they are worth, one or two remarks' on
points where there seems to be room for improvement. We
shall not refer to the Hebrew orthography — if orthography is
the correct term ; for the shortcomings here are, plainly, the
result of some oversight which cannot, conceivably, happen a
second time. But we cannot help asking why are the cross*
references so few, and, seemingly, unsystematic ? A reader
often vainly 'Consults some particular title in an encyclopedia
for information which he would find under some cognate head-
ing. And it cannot be presumed that every reader is sufficient-
ly instructed to know where to look when his first essay has
proved fruitless. Besides, a careful editorial co-ordination and
a methodical plan of cross-references ought to prevent the waste
of space which occurs when two writers overlap, as happens, for
instance, in the case of Animism. The subject is treated in a
special article and also takes up considerable space in the article
on Africa. What seems to be too much space is given to many
biblical subjects. The article on Animals of the Bible, is full
enough for a special biblical encyclopedia. No critical, historical,
or polemical value attaches to the names Absalom and Amorr-
hites sufficient to justify the prominence given to them. The
scope of the Encyclopedia must be interpreted very broadly in-
deed to account for the lengthy treatment accorded to Arch,
Arbitration, and Anatomy. And, surely, the Catholic Church
has no peculiar interest, hygienic or moral, in Alcoholism or in
the Adulteration of Food.
The legitimate economies which could have been made in
the above-mentioned instances, and elsewhere, might have saved
some other subjects, of more actual importance, from having
1907.] The Catholic encyclopedia 527
had to submit to extreme condensation. Some writers, evidently,
have been compelled to work with too little elbow-room; and
a few matters have been almost slighted. An extreme example
of this is the Ascension and Articles of Faith, which, between
them, occupy scarcely more than a column, and present very
poor bibliographies. In fact, one is so surprised here that one
looks for some explanation. A clue lies, perhaps, in the fact
that both of them are signed by one of the editors. May we
not hazard the guess that some person to whom these subjects
were assigned failed to return his copy in time; so, at the last
moment, a self-sacrificing member of the management came to
the rescue. Similar emergencies and the difficulty of finding
writers for a host of brief assignments very likely account for
one particular willing friend having been burdened with quite
a variety of topics. This may be inevitable; but every means
should be taken to avoid a recurrence of this feature, as it gives
the impression of hackwork.
A final judgment, however, that would, at this stage, con-
demn the Encyclopedia for having inadequately treated any im-
portant question, might easily prove premature and incorrect.
The last volume will, of course, contain a synthetic index group-
ing related titles, which will complement one another, so that
each group, taken as a whole, will present a complete exposi-
tion of all the matters which will be contained in it. Here
again, however, we have to regret the absence of cross-
references, which would serve as a provisional substitute for the
general index.
One of the fine traits is that special attention is given to
such matters as have a particular interest for the English-
speaking world. This policy is not, however, conspicuously
illustrated where St. Anthony of Padua, thanks to a goodly
proportion of apochryphal stories, spreads over five columns,
while St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, around whom clings an im-
mense historical significance, is packed into twenty lines. The
name of St. Anthony prompts a suggestion. Since the Ency-
clopedia's primary purpose is not edification, a salutary rule for
the hagiological department would be that no miraculous mediae-
val histories should be admitted if they are so slenderly authen-
ticated that they would not survive the first scrutiny in a mod-
ern process of canonization.
528 The Catholic Encyclopedia [July,
This volume, as far as we have observed, can be taxed with
few, very few, omissions. One or two appear, as if to impress
the caution that eternal vigilance is tl^e price of perfection.
For instance, while many pontifical documents are noticed, the
Ad Extir panda, which will be frequently looked for, as long as
Lea's History of the Inquisition enjoys its present popularity, is
passed over.
In conclusion, we may remark that the mechanical execu-
tion of the work is in every respect of high quality. The list
of subscribers indicates that the Encyclopedia enjoys the good
wishes and active support of all ranks of Catholics at home and
abroad, and the appreciation of the educated world, regardless
of religious distinctions. A sense of the dignity of the Ency-
clopedia will prompt the editors to see to it that any biographi-
cal notices which may appear of its patrons or other living per-
sonages, shall consist strictly of facts, to the exclusion of every-
thing that would savor of adulation. A wicked world will have
one temptation the less to indulge its propensity of imputing
low motives to lofty deeds, if the Encyclopedia leaves to the
next generation the duty of celebrating the virtue and genius
of our contemporary churchmen.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE.
BY MAX TURMANN. LL.D.
II.
BBRIAND, therefore, in his speech on November 9,
1906, was careful not to show himself aggressive
against Catholics. He hastened to proclaim their
right not to constitute Associations Cultuelles :
"... the law imposes duties on citizens ; but
law does not impose on them the necessity to make use of
ght. Catholics, in saying : ' we will not form Associations
'utiles' are not in revolt against the law, and they may per-
in this attitude as long as they please. The government
no right to make war against them."
In contradistinction to the customary language of his political
ids, M. Briand did not reproach Catholics with obeying a
igner :
. . . I do not say that the Pope is to you a foreigner ; I
well know what he is to you. For us the Pope is not a sover-
eign ; he is not a power with whom we may negotiate ; but he
represents a great moral authority. With you, French Catho-
lics, he is a Pope, Catholic and French ; with the German
Catholics, German ; with the Austrians, Austrian. Such is
the truth. But when I look upon him in his dealings with
France, he becomes merged into the great mass of French
Catholics ; I do not see him apart from them.
in this same speech, M. Briand denied his intention to trans-
ecclesiastical property to those Associations Cultuelles, pre-
ledly Catholic, which in a few localities had been formed
■ugh the aid of some schismatic priest. He declared:
Do not believe that I shall take advantage of my power to
donate by decree to a Catholic Association, this property in
question, in such a manner that mere caricatures of Associa-
tions Cultuelles may profit by it. Such is not my intention. I
am addressing here those freethinkers, who know what free-
thought is, and who practise it for themselves and in their
vol. lxxxv. — 34
530 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [July,
own homes, but practise it in no tyrannical way. Such free-
thinkers may have wives and children, and to them I say : If
your wives and children go to church, it is better for them
and for you that they should not meet there false or un-
worthy priests. And I will add : If the Church is doomed to
disappear, let it to be so ; but this law was not made in order
to raise up another church within the Catholic Church.
These declarations were in striking contrast with the tone of
the radical press.
But at the time when it was delivered, the speech of M.
Briand had even greater interest for Catholics and for the entire
people. It forecasted in what manner the government intended
to allow, after the date of December u, 1906, the public ex-
ercise of the Catholic religion in the absence of Associations
Cultuelles. Here it will be well to give textually the words of
the Minister of Public Worship :
. . . It has been asked if priests would enjoy, as in the
past, liberty to exercise their religious functions. The ves-
tries will have disappeared after December 1 1 ; they will be
legally dead if no Associations Cultuelles have been formed.
There will then be no organization for worship. This is true;
but there will still be the church. And we are asked : "By
what right will you leave the churches open ? M We answer:
4 * Through duty . ' ' The church and the objects in it, by reason
of the law itself, belong to the exercise of worship ; and they
must continue, for an unlimited period, to be so used and
applied. By the very law of public worship and its directions
concerning the appropriation of churches and church property,
it is our duty to leave the edifice open, so that Catholics may
enter to pray, either separately or in common ; and it is also
the right of the Catholic citizen, who is a priest, to enter there
and to perform whatever acts his conscience as a Catholic and
as a priest imposes upon him. These meetings are permis-
sible ; you may hold them everywhere. The priest will be able
to live in direct communion with his faithful ; he will be able
to receive from them free gifts which no text of the law for-
bids. The Catholic hierarchy, possibly, about which we are
so much concerned, may have to suffer somewhat from this
state of affairs. For the faithful to live thus freely and casual-
ly with their priests, may, from the very nature of things, affect
the sources of the rector's income. It certainly will affect the
1907.] RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE 53 c
revenues of the bishop. But this matters little to us. We
are not obliged to give you advantages, we are only obliged
to give you your rights. These are your rights : the churches
remain open ; the faithful attend them.
Thus M. Briand invited the Catholic clergy and laity to make
use of the law of 1881 for their Associations Cultuelles, which
proclaims the liberty of meeting. But this liberty can be exer-
cised only under certain conditions; a board for maintaining
order must be established ; the assemblies must close at eleven
o'clock at night, and each public meeting must be the object
of a declaration previously made by two citizens at the town
hall. In order to adapt this law of 1881 to the need of the
religious assemblies, M. Briand declared that such assemblies
would not be required to form a board, and that, in conformity
with the stipulations of the law of 1905, no one would have the
right to disturb them. They might be held even after eleven
o'clock at night (in view of the midnight Masses) and that, in-
stead of making a declaration for each meeting — which would
have beeit practically impossible — it would suffice to make one
single declaration for all the services of the year.
As a result of this, it was believed that religious peace
would reign. In numerous dioceses, the bishops had actually
begun to give their priests the necessary instructions for mak-
ing their respective declarations. But such hopes were soon to
be shattered.
On December i, M. Briand addressed a circular to the Pre-
fects, dealing with the conditions necessary for the exercise of
public worship, in the absence of Associations Cultuelles. This
circular dwelt upon the privileges to be accorded to Catholics,
particularly to ecclesiastics, in order that they might take ad-
vantage of the law of 1881.
In the second part of this circular, however, the colleague of
M. Clemenceau indicated on what terms the cure might hence-
forth officiate in his church. We will quote the passage which
rekindled the fires of religious strife:
. . . But it must not be imagined, that because, by a
declaration made in virtue of the law of 188 1, a minister of re-
ligion (rector or parish priest) may exercise his ministry in
the church where he exercised it under the Concordat, that
this present legislation is to continue for his advantage and
532 Recent Developments in France [July,
J r -
that he will enjoy all rights of possession of the edifice, similar
u . to those belonging to the defunct vestry. Such an institution
would have been invested with the legal possession of the
church ; the rector or parish pfiest will no longer be more than
an occupant without any legal title. He will have no right
to any administrative power ; still less will he be capable of
disposing of, or appropriating, any of the church properties.
There is reason to conclude from this that he will not be en-
titled to receive from others any stipend for the use of the
church, nor of the objects contained therein, which belong to
the State or to the Communes, or may have belonged to the
suppressed vestry. He will merely have the right to collect
offerings made on the occasions when he exercises his minis-
try. If the rector or parish priest does not succeed to the
rights of the vestry, neither does he inherit the obligations
of that institution. He will only be obliged, as occupant, not
to injure, and not to allow others to injure, the church, or
objects ornamenting it.
This ministerial circular, which placed the priest in the po-
sition of an occupant of his church, without any- fegal title,
forced the Holy See to forbid the clergy of France to make
the necessary declarations.
This order of the Holy See was made known in France on
the morning of December 8. Immediately the bishops sent out
urgent instructions to their clergy, prohibiting any declarations.
The Papal decision came in some quarters as a surprise. Car-
dinal Lecot, Archbishop of Bordeaux, for example, had already
advised his priests to make the declaration required by the law
of 1 88 1. The Archbishop wrote in a communication to his
clergy :
This declaration is merely an administrative formality, arr*
involves no renunciation of any right, nor any undue inte»
vention with the exercise of worship. We §ee no reason c
any importance that prevents us from signing it.. All oi
rights are protected by the solemn protestations which accoi
panied the inventories, and by those which you will agaiB
make to the civil authority. Our conscience is clear on th —
point. Moreover, the declaration will be valid for one ye*
For this we have the word of the Minister.
On receipt of the pontifical note, Cardinal Lecot sent to
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE
priests of his diocese the following notice, which annulled
preceding instructions:
Bordeaux, December 8. Lhgent notice. The Sovereign
Pontiff having, in a note received this morning at the Arch-
bishop's palace, given orders for all the parish priests of
France to continue, without declaration, the exercise of pub-
lic worship in their churches, we transmit in haste this de-
cision to all whom it may concern. The clergy must look
upon as void the dispositions indicated in our letter of yester-
day with regard to the declarations ; they will await further
instructions, which will be given should events call for them.
All the bishops who, like Cardinal Lecot, had requested
ir clergy to make the declaration, hastened to recall their
Ttictions so as to conform to the order sent from Rome.
consequence, on the morning of December 1 1 » all the priests
France who officiated without previous declaration, in a pub-
church, would be infringing the regulations, and, according
the government, would be in rebellion against the law. In
face of this attitude of the clergy, the Clemtnceau Cabinet
lounced that energetic action would be taken. The reason
such action M. Briand stated in a note addressed to the
:f ects :
The government interprets the application of the laws
of 1881 and 1905 in the most liberal spirit. It demands
that laws thus liberally interpreted should be obeyed in all
their requirements, which are of an imperative character.
No French citizens, by any protest whatsoever, have the right
to place themselves above French laws and to rebel against
them. Hence it is of importance that if, on the expiration of
the above-mentioned delay, worship is publicly exercised
without any previous declaration, the infringements of the
law thus perpetrated by rectors and parish priests, and by any
other organizers of religious meetings, should be reported.
I request you, therefore, to give immediate notice of all
such infringements through an official report which you will
transmit to the courts. The Minister of Justice has, on his
part, given orders to the public prosecutors that judicial
action be taken, on presentation of the aforesaid official re-
ports. The government counts on your firmness and vigi-
lance in co-operating in the enforcement of the law.
534 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [July,
On the eve of December u, 1906, the attitude of both the
government and the Catholics was most decided: The Church
intended to ignore the law ; the government was resolved to en*
force it. A conflict was, therefore, inevitable.
11.
The conflict broke out on the very morning of December
11. The government provoked it by an act of violence, which
was illegal an<) a gross breach of international courtesy.
Towards eleven o'clock in the forenoon, a Commissary of
Police presented himself at the residence of the former Nuncio
of the Holy See in Paris. He inquired for Mgr. Montagnini
di Mirabello, formerly auditor of the nunciature, who had re-
mained in Paris as guardian of the archives, after the de-
parture of the Nuncio Lorenzelli, and who, naturally, had con-
tinued, since the rupture of relations between the Holy See
and the French Government, to keep in touch with the Vatican.
The Commissary of Police searched the nunciature, and ac-
cused the Italian prelate of having taken part in a plot di-
rected against the safety of the State. All papers and docu-
ments found at the nunciature were seized, and Mgr. Montag-
nini was ordered to leave France. The former secretary of the
nunciature was conducted to the railway station at Lyons, and
without being allowed to communicate with any one, despatched
to the Franco- Italian frontier. In the meanwhile, the papers
seized at the nunciature were examined, in order to discover
among them possible proofs of the interference of the Papacy
in French politics.
The seizure of the papers and the expulsion of Mgr. Mon-
tagnini aroused the indignation of all Frenchmen who respected
individual liberty and common justice. In the Chamber of
Deputies, M. Grousseau, Deputy for the Nord, challenged the
government to explain these odiously illegal acts; and M.
Ribot, leader of the Progressive Republicans, protested against
such proceedings.
M. Clemenceau, in an impassioned reply, declared his de-
termination to enter upon a relentless combat with the Roman
Church. In order to judge of his frame of mind, we will cite
a characteristic passage of his speech:
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE
. . . What was M. Montagnini doing? We were in
possession of documents from which it is evident that he was
in daily receipt of instructions from M. Merry del Val, and
which he transmitted to the French bishops. We knew this
a long time ago, and we might have put a stop sooner to this
little international correspondence. But we were all for peace,
all for conciliation, all for love.
. . " To this conciliatory policy, how have you replied ?
By a declaration of war. But do not imagine that you are
going to continue the war under the conditions in which you
habitually carry it on — always giving blows and never receiv-
ing any.
The Abbi" Gayraud ; After the application of the law of
1902, that is a rather daring assertion !
The President of Council : Circumstances have changed ; we
respect religion ; but we will give no quarter to Roman politi-
cal action.
The Abbe Gayraud : There is no Roman political action.
The President of Council : We are beginning. This is only
the first act ; I may tell you amicably, there will be others.
Ike AbbS Gayraud : You do not alarm us.
1 he President of Council : We are resolved to defend French
civil law, and the independence of French civil society, against
Roman influence. And when we see a man who receives cor-
respondence from the Pope, giving orders to the bishops to
violate a French law, it we tolerated such a state of things,
we should deserve to be prosecuted.
M. Clemenceau with reason called it war. The seizure of
the papers • and the expulsion of Mgr. Montagnini were only the
first act. It was followed by many others, which showed the
determination of the government to punish those French eccle-
siastics who should refuse to obey the law.
On all sides, in all the departments, police officials made re-
ports of the infringements of the law by priests who celebrated
Mass publicly without having previously made the necessary
* Through Ihe intervention of the Austrian Ambassador al Paris, the Holy See requested
the restitution of Ihe papers found in the nuncio's archives. The French government re-
lumed al! documents which bore a date previous to the rupture of friendly relations between
France and Ihe Holy See, but ll retained all papers, whatsoever their character, dated after
lhai rupture. It asserted that immunity for these later documents could not be claimed, since
Mgr. Montagnini had no longer, in the eyes of the French government, the character of diplo-
mat. On the motion of M. laurels, the Chamber of Deputies appointed a commission to ex-
amine these seiied documents. Portions of them have since been published in the French
536 Recent Developments in France [July,
declaration. Never before had so many members of the police
force been seen at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The num-
ber of ecclesiastics of all ranks, from archbishops and bishops,
to simple priests who were prosecuted for this new offence,
which is called the Offence of Mass, was soon enormous. But
in certain towns some politicians, who hitherto had not been
noted for their Catholic sympathies, were afraid that these
prosecutions, if they continued, would result in the closing of
the churches — a result they did not desire at any price. The
amusing spectacle was offered of citizens, known for their
anti-clericalism, suddenly interesting themselves sympathetically
in religious interests, and making, in place of the rector of their
parish, who had refused to do it, the necessary declaration.
As the law of 1881 does not stipulate who should make the
declaration, such action was sufficient from the legal point of
view. However, the government and the adversaries of Catho-
licism were quick to perceive the grotesque side of such a pro-
ceeding, and, henceforth, there were no more anti- clericals of
the commune to make declarations for the holding of religious
assemblies.
In order to compel the Holy See to give way, the Clemen-
ceau Cabinet resolved further to apply the Law of Separation
in all its rigor. The seminarists and young priests, who, by
virtue of the former legislative decrees, had only served in the
army for one year instead of three, were, to the number of
about five thousand, recalled into active service by order of
the Minister of War. To secure exemption from such service,
they would have been obliged to furnish the military authori-
ties with a certificate from a Catholic Association Cultuelle.
Thus, at any rate, General Picquart had decided. But a few
days later the Council of State, legislating on the appeals in-
troduced by several Catholics, settled the question in their favor,
thus forcing the Minister of War to liberate them. Another
hostile action of the government was to place in the hands of
a receiver all churches the possession of which had not been
claimed by a Catholic Association Cultuelle.
From that moment, the bishop in his cathedral and the rec-
tor in his church were no longer in their own edifices; they
had to deal with an agent of the State, appointed as seques-
trator, who took possession of all ecclesiastical property. The
bishops and priests were officially notified to leave immediately
1907.] Recent Developments in France 537
their episcopal residences and presbyteries. For the most part,
the prelates declared that, convinced of their rights, they would
yield only to force, and that they would allow themselves to
be expelled from their homes.
These expulsions gave rise to important manifestations. In
Paris several thousand Catholics escorted the venerable Cardi-
nal Richard, who, driven from the Archbishop's palace, had ac-
cepted the hospitality of M. Denys Cochin. The crowd took
the horses from the Cardinal's carriage and drew it in triumph
through the streets of Paris. At Bordeaux, at Rennes, and in
many other towns, manifestations of the same nature took place.
The government took stil lanother measure, destined to af-
fect most seriously the recruiting of the clergy. In the absence
of all Catholic Associations Cultueltes which might administer
the great seminaries, the closing of these establishments was
ordered and the buildings seized. In Paris the government
closed and occupied the great Seminary of St. Sulpice. How-
ever, it soon saw that such action contradicted too flagrantly
its declarations of liberalism ; and the seminaries were, there-
fore, authorized to be reopened, but under another name and
on different premises.
But the Clemenceau ministry, even with ali these, did not
think it had gone far enough. It would have to go still fur-
ther, under penalty of being accused of weakness with regard
to the Roman Church. Therefore the government, on Decem-
ber 15, 1906, introduced a new plan of campaign, which, in
many portions, aggravated the situation as regarded the Catho-
lic clergy. This plan involved, in the first place, the immedi-
ate taking over of ecclesiastical property, leaving the churches
open for public worship; in the second place.it suppressed the
grants, which, according to the law of 1905, were to be paid
for eight years to ecclesiastics finding themselves in certain
specified conditions ; • the grants of four years were to be sup-
pressed for those priests who refused to submit to the law.f
(TO BE CONCLUDED.)
• Ecclesiastics ministering in communes of less than i.ooo inhabitants, and in whose par-
ishes no Auttiatim Cmtttull* had been organised.
til is just (0 recognise the (act lhai the Minister, M. Briand. refused to go as far as cer-
tain of his friends urged him to go ; he maintained the pensions of those ecclesiastics whose
jears of service corresponded to the number demanded by the law of 1905.
"flew Books.
A novel that will picture life as it
THE FAR HORIZON. really is and really worth looking
By Lucas Malet. at ; that in its interpretations will
touch and solve, not by argument
but by practical illustration, the questions that come before
every one, and that every one thinks of whether he wishes to
or not; that will show the heights and depths possible to hu-
man existence, and ring true with the human note of hope
from beginning to end, is a book well worth the reading and
the study. Because it does all these things, and does them
exceptionally well, we enthusiastically commend Lucas Malet's
latest work, The Far Horizon.*
The very title of the work commits the author to a theme
high and comprehensive. She has written not a passing inci-
dent nor a summer-day's romance, but the story of life and
death ; of passion, of failure, of misery ; of insufficiency and of
striving; ot hope and of fulfillment. But let it not be thought
for a moment that this is any didactic or severely religious
tale. The art that conceals yet expresses is abundantly pres-
ent, and those who have read Sir Richard Calmady will feel
assured, beforehand, that they will not be tricked into listen-
ing to a sermon, and that, whatever Lucas Malet's moral is,
she will express it in the alphabet of genuine life. Dominic
Iglesias, a native of London, was born of an Irish mother and
a Spanish father who devoted his life to revolutionary propa
ganda, and died while Dominic was a boy. Though greedy of
distinction Dominic, tenderly devoted to his mother, flung away
ambition • for her sake, and became . a bank clerk. As the
story opens, at the age of over fifty years he has just re-
signed his place, to retire upon a competence, and make the
best of his freedom. But what shall he do with that freedom
and with what remains to him of life? His first step towards
settling that question is to investigate how the rich amuse
themselves. But his inquiries in that direction come to an
abrupt close outside the palings which screen the joys of the
polo grounds of Ranelagh from the vulgar eye. There too,
however, he meets with an interest that is to remain with him
till the end of his life. In extremely unconventional fashion, a
* The Far Horizon. By Lucas Malet. New York : Dodd Mead & Co.
i$°7-] new Books 539
young woman of bizarre dress, with a decided air of the green-
room in her make-up and behavior, impudently thrusts herself
on his notice, and introduces herself as Poppy — Mrs. Poppy St.
John. Poppy is undisgutsedly struck by Dominic's air of dis-
tinction, and, with feminine intuition, dimly perceives that, as
she tells him somewhere, "he belongs to another order of doc-
trine and practice to that current in contemporary society."
Poppy evidently has a past, and just as evidently there is doubt
as to whether her present would bear inspection. But Dominic,
who all his life has been preserved from the ways of the world,
first by his veneration for his mother, and afterwards " through
the inherent pieties of his Latin and Celtic blood," has no mis-
givings, and accepts the acquaintanceship thrust upon him. An
object is given to his yearning to employ freedom and the power
that, as a man, are his. Here his personal example, personal
ideals, have a field for effective play. Beneath Poppy's frivol-
ity and instability, despite her unrighteous knowledge of life and
of men, as they show themselves in the debatable land where the
world of fashion touches on Bohemia, Dominic sees in her
some sterling though sadly tarnished metal.
(Through her esteem for, and admiration of Dominic come
— far off and through many falls and difficulties — Poppy's re-
habilitation and redemption. It is all gradually and master-
fully brought out amid the play of this circumstance and that ;
of human weakness, and of human strength under the guiding
influence of a good man who calls but does not speak. In its
unfolding and its consummation this response of Poppy's to the
appeal of Dominic's nature is an exceptionally graceful and
(artistic piece of writing. ,
The story is filled with minor characters, some pleasant,
some repulsive, but all faithfully done. Ther« is the widow —
mistress of a London boarding house of the better class — who
timidly sets her cap for her most distinguished guest ; two
cads of " commercial gentlemen," abhorred by their fellow-lodg-
ers ; a broken-down playwright with a grudge against the age
which is in a conspiracy against his genius; a genteel spinster
who despises sour grapes, which in this case are represented
by Dominic ; and Dominic's old friend, former fellow- clerk,
and devout worshipper, the simple, kind-hearted, domestic George
Lovegrove and his worthy wife.
We would, if space permitted it, and with keen pleasure.
540 NEW BOOKS [July,
dwell upon the details of that portion of the story which deals
with the redemption of Poppy St. John. Here and there are
passages that we can scarce resist quoting. They are full of
the deeper wisdom of life, and are bright guiding stars to those
who really live and feel and think. For example, take these
sentences on friendship :
Friendship has no need of explanations, that is as I under-
stand friendship. It accepts what is given without question,
or cavilling as to much or to little, leaving the giver, alto-
gether free. Friendship, as I understand it, should have
honorable reticences, not only of speech, but of thought;
wise economies of proffered sympathy. In its desire of service *
it should never approach too near, or say the word too much,
since, if it is to flourish and obtain the grace of continuance, it
must be rooted in reverence for the individuality of the per-
son dear to it.
Many reviewers of this volume, because, we think, of a lack
of complete insight into the author's purpose, have spoken of
the double theme of the book. The book has no double theme.
It is one, complete, symmetrical. Poppy St. John and her re-
demption is an integral part to the making of the whole, the
making of Dominic Iglesias.
The study and presentation of this character is one of the
greatest pieces of art and of " pragmatic " value that modern
English literature has produced. We hesitate not in saying that
it is a permanent contribution that no reader of English can
afford to neglect. Here is a man who, from his birth, was good
and worthy in the natural sense. Of vice and indulgence, of
meaner ways, and even of legitimate pleasure, he knew nothing.
The years of his youth and his manhood were spent in devotion
to his invalid mother. " What worthier mission ; what nobler
sacrifice ? M many will ask. Yet, when the object of his life and
his thought was gone, when the attention to business was taken
away, Dominic is forced to ask himself the meaning — the value
of what has been and what is to be. He is driven, as every
man must be driven, to answer the question of life and death-
And, logically, he must answer the question in himself first, be-
fore he can give the answer to others. He has, and always has
had, goodness, the " do good and what you believe matters not."
With this as his sole principle, he finds himself and his life and
the life of his fellows very empty. He seeks amusements. He
:
New Books 541
es not understand their appeal; or rather their appeal does
it satisfy him. He works (or, and succeeds in, the redemption
another's soul; yet in that very work he must ask himself
ly he has the right to call to that soul, what permanent
surance can he give why it should give up the easier and
e more pleasurable for the harder and the altogether uncer-
in. So does he sound life ; and beneath it and beyond it in
e far horizon Dominic finds God, and God speaking through
irist, and Christ revealing himself in his mystical yet real
dy, the Church. Lucas Malet does not show the working of
aminic's mind. She is a novelist, not an apologist or a psy-
ologist; but her art is all the greater, all the more effective,
d, we believe, all the more appealing. She thus describes
atninic's final awakening :
Its (the crucifix) appeal was to the intellect rather than to
the emotions. . . . His {Iglesias') heart and intelligence
grasped the reasoning of it, not only as a matter of supreme,
historic interest in view of its astonishing influence upon hu-
man development during the last two thousand years ; but as
an ever-present reality, as an exposition of the Absolute, of
that which everlastingly has been and everlastingly will be,
and hence of incalculable and immediate importance to him-
self. It spoke to him of no vague and general truth ; but of
a truth intimate and individual, coming to him as the cafl to
enter upon a personal inheritance. Of the obedience to the
dictates of natural religion, and faithful practice of the pieties
of it, Dominic Iglesias had, all his life, been a remarkable, if
unconscious, exponent. But this awakening of the spirit to
the activities of supernatural religion, this crossing of that
dark immensity of space which appears to interpose between
Almighty God and the mind of man, was new to him. He had
sought a language of the soul that might effect an adjustment
between the exterior and the interior life. Here, in the Word
made Flesh, with reverent amazement, he tound it. He had
sought it through the instrumentality of the things of time
and sense ; and they, though full with promise, had proved
illusory. He had fixed his hope on relation to the creature.
But here, all the while close beside him, waiting till the scales
should fall from his eyes and he should see and understand,
had stood the Creator. Fair, very fair, while it lasted was
human friendship. But here, had he that strength and daring
to meet it, was a friendship infinitely fairer, immutable, eter-
nal—namely, the friendship of Almighty God.
542 NEW BOOKS [July,
The book is a vivid, masterful, human document, fulfilling
the strictest demands of great art. We need but add that any
one who does not read it, and read it thoughtfully, will suffer
a distinct loss. The Far Horizon is worthy to take its place
among the great English novels.
•
Assuming that Father Benson is
PAPERS OF A PARIAH, treating his readers frankly, in-
By Father Benson. stead of again exercising, as be
has done before, the privilege of
the profession to present a creation of his fancy as a real per-
son of flesh and blood, this book * consists of chapters extracted
from a diary or notebook of a man of education, who, bred a
Protestant, lapsed into indifferentism, or agnosticism, and after
having for several years experienced an attraction towards the
Catholic Church, was received into it a little before his death,
which occurred when he was about forty* three years old.
Educated at Oxford, he went on the stage, which, after a short
time, he gave up on his marriage, but took up again after his
wife's death; and he quitted it only when incipient consump-
tion warned him that he had not long to live. Of the point
of view expressed in the papers, we may let Father Benson
speak :
They were written, it must be remembered, by one who not
only was not a Catholic, but who did not at all continuously
contemplate the becoming one. Their point of view, there-
fore — and it is in this, I think, that their interest chiefly lies
— is of one who regards the Catholic Church from without,
not from within, though with a favorable eye. He was set-
ting himself, though he did not realize it at first, to under-
stand rather than to criticize, to hear what the Church had to
say for herself, through her external system, rather than to
dispute her right to speak at all.
The greater number of the papers record the writer's emo-
tions and feelings as he assisted at a requiem, at the services
of Holy Week, at Benediction, and Mass. The tenor of the
reflections witnesses to a deeply religious nature and the aesthe-
tic temperament, reminding one of the books of Huysmans,
though displaying more of the religious and less of the aesthe-
tic than did that strange Frenchman. One of the papers con-
• Papers of a Pariah. By Robert Hugh Benson. New York : Longmans, Green 4 Co.
New books 543
ts the Catholic and the Anglican pastor with regard to the
sure of paternal authority which they, respectively, enjoy
' their Bocks. In others life in the atmosphere of religious
1 ts contrasted with that of irreligious worldliness. The
er offers, too, a very reasonable apology for religious per-
ition during the Middle Ages ; and he is at his best in
e reflections on death, as it appears in, and without, the
t of faith. The following passage is a specimen of the note
subdued, sad-eyed humor which is almost everywhere in
lence, and gives piquancy to the matter. Alter speaking of
remorse for sin which everybody sometimes feels, the writer
tinues :
And I suppose, too, that when that unpleasant fact, to
which a requiem witnesses, becomes quite imminent, we shall
experience that regret even more acutely ; at any rate, it
would not be unreasonable to do so. Very well, then, it is
exactly that in which Mass for the Dead rises head and
shoulders above any other form of funeral devotion. The
Catholic Church does not emulate the eminent man who,
when requested by his weeping friend at the hour of death
to declare what was it that gave such a supernatural radiance
to Ms face, answered, with a patient smile, that it was the
memory of a long and well-spent life. On the contrary, she
makes not one reference to the virtues of the deceased —
though it is just to say she has done that the day before (All
Saints' Day) — she does not recount virtues, or even apologize
for failures ; she does what she considers better, she deplores
them. The conclusion of the whole matter then is that I am
pleased to have gone through those exercises of All Souls'
Day, because I feel that they have been extremely good for
me. I do not need any reminders that I am alive, nor that
immortality may only be a brilliant guess, nor that I am an
exceedingly fine, manly, successful, and capable person ; but
it is not bad for me to be told silently, in a very vivid and
impressive manner, that I am going to die some day, that
hope is a fact that must be accounted for, and that, in spite
of my singular probity and extraordinary gifts, there are just
a few incidents here and there in my long roll of triumphs for
which I should like to be sorry.
For an outsider, Father Benson's friend had a remarkable
giit into the meaning of rite and discipline, and a suspi-
close acquaintance with many little points of the rou-
jsly close
544 NEW BOOKS [July,
tine of Catholic life. An instance of the latter is his remark
that some priests always say a " black " Mass when they may
do so, because it takes several minutes less than any other.
If the book is a genuine record, it is a useful testimony, of its
kind, to the Church ; if it is a fiction — it is still useful, but not
so useful.
Of the position occupied by M.
ANTI-CLERICALISM. Faquet in the intellectual world
By Emile Faquet. nothing more need be said than
that he is a member of the Acad-
£mie Fransaise. His religious and political tenets are sufficiently
defined in his own statement that he adheres to no religious
belief, and is attached to no political party. So he claims to
approach with impartiality his task* of studying the national
spirit of irreligion, which he designates as " one of the most
widespread, most profound, and, at the same time, most acute
maladies of the French race." As a starting point of his study
he makes a very interesting analysis of French character; and
lays bare the traits which he holds to be the roots of the prev-
alent anti- clericalism. He next traces the history of the move-
ment or spirit throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. For M. Faquet's reasonings and expositions in this sec-
tion of the work, we must refer the reader to the book itself
— any bald summing up would be an injustice? to him. Suffice
to say that he knows his France, with a familiarity and an in-
sight in sharp contrast with the crude superficiality of such
writers as Mr. Galton. His estimate of the import of the Con-
stitution Civile is just the contradictory of Mr. Galton's. The
French politician " desired a law of separation that should be ,
hostile to the Church and that would contain nothing favorable
to her. Therefore he either maintains separation, balancing
every advantage for the Church by measures of persecution and
oppression against the Church, as was the case from 1795 to
1800; or he desires a backward step, a new concordat, for ex-
ample, so disposed that it puts the Church under the hand of
the central power, as was the case from 1800 to 1804. In the
disposition of mind in which were the Revolutionists from the
end of the eighteenth century, the separation of Church and
State could be nothing but an occasion to persecute the Catho-
lics more than ever, and a motive to oppress them more than ever."
• L Anti-clcricaliwie. Par £mile Faquet. Paris : Socie'tl Fran£aise d'lmprimerie.
NEW BOOK'S 545
And the settlement of Napoleon, which Mr. Galton declares
1 have given the Pope more authority over the French Church
lan he ever had before? Here is M. Faquet's verdict:
It placed the Church of France under government tutelage.
M. Debidour nowise exaggerates when he writes that it was
the "enslavement" of the Church of France. The Church
of France, through the Concordat and the Articles Organiques,
was put under the control of the new government much more
than it ever had been under the royal government.
The anti-clerical policy of the Third Republic is traced
losely, from its inception in 1S71 down to the passing of the
iriand law. That policy M. Faquet shows to have been one
if constantly increasing despotism, in which the cry of anti-
lericalistn was constantly made use of for mere party purposes;
.nd by which cynical injustice and violation of the rights of
Catholics were supported by the flimsiest of sophistries and the
nost transparent of pretexts.
The Briand law in itself, M. Faquet believes, will be a bene-
it to the Church (he wrote before its rejection by the Pope) ;
Hit it will be so much a benefit that the anti-clericals will not
ail to call it the "hi des dupes,"
The persecution against the Church will recommence, and
must recommence, more vigorously and ardently. The auto-
matic, so to speak, procedure of the revolutionists against the
Church is as follows : Despoil the Church ; then as a compen-
sation for the measures of spoliation, accord her some advan-
tages: then deprive her of these advantages, without, of
course, returning to the preceding regime.
This is the history of anti-clerical legislation in a nutshell:
The Church was a proprietor; her property is taken, and
in compensation the budget of worship is guaranteed by a
Concordat. She has this budget of worship guaranteed by
the Concordat ; the Concordat and the budget are suppressed,
[and in compensation they give the Church liberty, saying to
her: "That is better"; which, for myself, I believe. To-
morrow if they see that " it is better," and just so far as they
see that "it is better," and even if, instead of being better,
1 it is worse," and unless they see that "it is of no use at
all," they "will suppress the liberty of the Church.
The radical government, M. Faquet shows, has continually
vol. lxxxv.— 35
546 NEW BOOKS [July,
used the cry of an ti- clericalism as a red herring to divert the
public when on the scent of any fault of the government, and
to turn popular discontent and socialistic unrest from ideas or
courses that might threaten the bourgeoisie. Socialism is gain-
ing ground among the people.
How then is the people to be diverted ? Through one of
its passions. It has but two, the abolition of individual
ownership and hatred of the curt. It is therefore exclusively
— there is no choice — through its hatred of the priest that its
attention must be distracted. The bourgeoisie shakes the
black soutane before the people as the toreador shakes the
red cape before the bull.
These pages tempt to citation. But we must be content
with one more, which is the restatement of the thesis which M.
Faquet has amply sustained in his luminous exposure of the
entire trend of French anti- clericalism for the past generation
— the government of the Republic is a party despotism.
We assert that anti-clericalism, pushed to its logical conse-
quences, as the radicals mean to push it, leads straight to
despotism. It leads there in every way. It accustoms minds
to consider that a man has not the rights of man if he
thinks otherwise than as the government thinks. It ac-
customs minds to consider that a man may be proscribed who
lives in an honorable way, but different from the common
fashion. It habituates minds to despise both liberty and
equality. Liberty, since I am not free to vow myself to a
severe morality, and associate with others who do the same;
liberty, since I have not the right to teach what I believe to
be true, which, at the same time, is nowise contrary to the
constitution oi this country ; liberty, since I am not allowed,
though a man of probity, to teach my son as I wish. Anti-
clericalism accustoms minds to despise equality. It creates
at least two classes ; a first class, which, to the exclusion of
the other class, has all sorts of rights — the right of teaching,
the right of preaching, the right of holding public proces-
sions, and haranguing crowds on the street around the statue
of some hero, and of obstructing the public thoroughfare;
the other class is deprived of the right to teach, the right
to associate, to live together, to hold processions and meet-
ings in the public streets, which latter right, indeed, I would
accord to none, but the anti-clericals give it to one class and
refuse it to the other.
;907.] NEW BOOKS 547
Anti-clericalism, M. Faquet shows, has inflicted incalculable
njury on the nation ; and he believes that it is destined to in-
Uct a great deal more.
It would be scarcely possible for any one, we do not ex-
:ept even the Rev. Mr. Galton, after having studied this illu-
minating book, to persist in thinking that the present cam-
paign is not one against Christianity but against the alleged
overweening pretensions of the Pope.
Mr. Daly's poems" have the gift
CANZONI. of winning friends, as even a first
By T. A. Daly. acquaintance with them makes one
experience. It is not surprising
that they should, within the short space of five months, have
reached a third edition. The reason is that they have the same
qualities that attract friends to an individual : they are at once
felt to be true, pleasant, kindly, distinguished by sympathy and
understanding, and possessed of the happy faculty of making
the reader feel at home. Such qualities have created a love for
the work, and one might say the personality, of a Eugene Field,
or a James Whitcomb Riley, which far greater poets have failed
io call forth ; and the Cansoni of Mr. Daly, modest and un-
imbitious though they are, seem destined to inspire a host of
readers with a like feeling. Already the daily press, which has
acquired a habit of quoting them, has made them loved by many
:o whom the author's name is unknown.
Mr. Daly's muse delights chiefly in the home circle, in love,
and in the joys and sorrows of the Irish and the Italian immi-
grant. It is this last feature that is specially characteristic of
his work and has attracted widest attention. In the dialect of
the " Dago man " he depicts a number of types, now so fa-
miliar on the streets of our great cities, in a way that is true
to life, yet kindly and unoffending. Very unpoetical types in-
deed, they appear, but the poet stoops to conquer: the peanut
man, with the troubles that come to him from the American boy
and girl, from the policeman, from his own love affairs; Padre
Angelo and Rosa slyly conspiring to capture him, with the
good Padre's mild surprise when Rosa brings her trophy to the
ictory; Giuseppe, the barber, stylishly dressed to his own de-
Daly, Third Edition. Philadelphia: The Catholic Slandard and
548 NEW BOOKS [July,
■ _
sire and bent on conquering all hearts; the wily Carlotta, who
does not want to say "yes" till she gets the diamond Ting
from her admirer, yet is faithful enough to be coldly disdainful
of his rival, the stylish Giuseppe; Angela, who can sing and
took pretty, but is good for nothing else ; and the other Carlot-
ta, " twice so big an' strong," who between them sorely per-
plex the poor man that is trying to make a choice ; da comica
man, da musica man, the Italian father and his Americanized
boy; all these, and others, are very humble types, truly, but
they are presented with a humor and kindly observation that
make them delightful and well Worth knowing, even if they are
not highly poetical. They are so clearly and simply drawn
that they stand out in our memory like persons we have known.
To recall them is to smile and be pleased. There is not a bit-
ter note in the book, and the sympathetic spirit in which the
humblest of our Italian immigrants are treated is certain to
conciliate good will towards them.
Equally good . are the Irish pieces ; some are deeper and
more delicate in sentiment, as "The Song of the Thrush";
some broader in their humor, like the unforgettable "Cornay-
lius Ha — Ha — Ha — Hannigan "; and, in another key, "The Irish
Bachelor."
Mr. Daly is happy, likewise, in his poems of love and home,
which are always true and sound. What is most admirable
throughout the volume is the union of wit, humor, or spright-
liness, as the case may be, with a genuine respect for all that
is pure, sweet, tender, manly, and noble. Thoroughly human,
they are also, without any preaching, thoroughly Christian and
Catholic.
This book is from a bygone age,*
THE GOAD OF DIVINE LOVE, in which love and faith were
stronger than to day. As the
present translator observes, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth
century, Stimulus Atnorts, the Spur, or Goad, of Love, was a
title common to many ascetical works, the most famous of
which was that which has been frequently published among the
works of St. Bonaventure, and, therefore, attributed to him.
Most likely, however, although it may claim an indirect origin
• Stimulus Divini Atnorts : that is, The Goad of Divine Love. Very proper and profitable
for all deTout persons to read. Written in Latin by the Seraph ical Doctor, S. Boniventure,
etc. Revised and edited by W. A. Phillipson, Priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster.
New York: Benziger Brothers.
igo7.) New Books 549
rom the Seraphic Doctor, inasmuch as it is inspired by his
pirit, it was really composed not by him, but by one of his
disciples in the Franciscan order about the year 1300. It has
ong been one of the classics of the spiritual life, and was high-
ly praised by Louis of Granada, and by St. Francis of Sales.
A translation of it, "Englished by B. Lewis, A.M., of the same
arder," appeared in 1642, and was offered for sale "at Doway
by the widow of Mark Tryon." The present is a revised and
notated edition of that publication. The editor has retained
the distinctive style and phraseology of the seventeenth century
English, and contented himself with modernizing the spelling,
and softening down some words and expressions which would
hardly pass the canons of modern convention.
Through the translation of his book
THE STEPS OF LIFE. on Happiness, the learned Swiss
By Carl Hilty. jurisconsult. Professor Hilty, be-
came known to the English-speak-
ing world as a remarkable moral philosopher of the practical
sort. He approaches the problem of life in a reverent, religious
spirit, with a full appreciation of its significance. The present
volume of essays* is a sequel to his other book. The signifi-
:ance of the all-present sense of sin, the moral and spiritual
function of suffering, the value to life of a belief in immortality,
are treated in a strain which reveals a thinker possessed of
clear spiritual intuitions and a practical knowledge of human
nature. In a chapter on the knowledge of men, there is a fund
of practical psychology and shrewd observation of a Baconian
quality, but animated with a tenderness and glow of human
sympathy to which Bacon was a stranger. Without assuming
the tone of the preacher, speaking simply as a man convinced
of the solemnity and dignity of life, Professor Hilty lays down
wise counsels, and with sober eloquence inculcates the high
ideals that are needed to combat the prevailing practical ma-
terialism of our present social standards. In many a passage
there is an echo of Thomas a Kempis. Indeed, although not a
Catholic, the tenor of his philosophy, as well as an occasional
quotation, indicate that the author is on good terms with many
of our guides in the spiritual life. There is a familiar ring, for
example, about the following:
Tie Stfpi of Lift. By Carl Hilly,. New York: The Macmillan Company.
S5o New Books [July,
The power of what Christianity calls " the world" is very
great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the
lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy,
all the way down to the baser instinct of the most brutal sel-
fishness, form an extremely close alliance. And the human
heart, now over-daring, now over-timid, is so uncertain, that
even into the life of those who work most effectively for the
good, come hours when they despair, not of their task only,
but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair that,
once and again, God must dispel with a " Be not afraid but
speak. M
And again:
If we look upon life from God's standpoint, instead of our
own as we had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely
and simply making his people happy. No ; first of all, they
are to be made fearless, for all right living is a life of battling,
not of unruffled peace; but of battling without fear, of war-
ring in a good cause, and under sure guidance, with that
heroism which is the highest of all human qualities and the
best of all earthly joys.
♦
Although the sub- title of this book, Essays on Happiness,
might raise some misgivings lest the author, like so many
others, might entertain the principle that life is to be ordered
primarily with a reference to the happiness to be obtained from
it, the paragraph just quoted indicates that he escapes this pit-
fall, and, making the good the end of endeavor, leaves happi-
ness to take care of itself.
Mrs. Thurston is well known by
THE MYSTICS. the success of her previous books:
By Katharine Cecil Thurston. The Masquerader and The Gambler.
This novel • will serve to keep
her before the reading public, which has reason to expect great
things of her, but it will not add to her reputation. The story
is not only short, but jejune and projected) on a low level;
though it may be granted, freely, that the presentation is pow-
erful, the few characters are well marked, and the plot simple
and logically worked out.
* The Mystics. A novel. By Katharine Cecil Thurston. New York and London:
Harper & Brothers.
New books
John Henderson, son of a disinherited, unsuccessful father,
humbles himself and takes the position of secretary to his old
bachelor uncle — the younger and only brother of his father,
..^d the man who has the fortune which by right should belong
to John. This uncle, Andrew, was not only a member, but a
high dignitary, in a new, strange sect called the Mystics. Leav-
ing all his wealth to this sect, and only a pittance to John, he
dies in circumstances which enabled John to become possessed
of the secrets and the ritual of the sect — a main tenet of which
was the hoped-for advent of its great prophet — the master and
high priest of the cult. To fit himself for this role, in reality to
secure the fortune which he has ever regarded as his own, John
disappears, and after an absence of ten years returns, personat-
ing with marked success and power the character of the prophet
and master. But here the fates intervene in the guise of a
charming woman, Enid Witcherley, a neophyte and the newest
adherent of the sect. Her sincerity, her womanliness, and the
growing affinity between her and John, cause him to recognize
the impossibility of carrying his assumed part as prophet. He
makes a free disclosure of himself, and does it in a dramatic,
candid way, losing thereby the fortune, but winning what is
worth incomparably more.
Why is it, we cannot but wonder regretfully, that a writer
of such distinction, of such proven ability as Mrs. Thurston,
cannot, or will not give us fiction which is hightr, trore abid-
ing, more worth while ?
Catholic by birth, training, feeling, there is a divorce be-
tween what she is and what she does. Capable of writing
with a power, a finish that rivals Mrs. Humphry Ward, she
could, we believe, outstrip the latter, so far as truth and grasp
are concerned, in portraying the character and motive of such
personages as live in Helbeck of Bannisdalc, in Eleanor, in Lady
Rose's Daughter.
Great as are these books by Mrs. Humphry Ward, they are
marred by the ignorance, the misconceptions, of one who is out-"
side the Church ; but it must be said that Mrs. Ward's charac-
ters are far and away above the uncanny, shady, and unprincipled
ones whose acquaintance we have made in Mrs. Thurston's books.
The pity of it is that Mrs. Thurston is not alone among Catho-
lic novelists in ignoring what is part of her life and belief.
.552 New Books [July,
It is strange that we have had to
THE CENSORSHIP OF BOOKS, wait so long for a history of the
By Dr. Putnam. i n d C x in English. For of all the
official and legislative institutions
of the Church, the Congregation which presides Over the pro-
hibition of books, stands next to the Inquisition, if indeed
it does not stand above it, in controversial interest and histor-
ical importance; Still further it must strike one as strange that,
when at last we have our first elaborate account of the Index,*
it comes from a non- Catholic writer. Let us be permitted to
say a word expressive of our regret that Catholic scholars,
either here or in England, are not more productive in works
concerning the history of their own Church, and that they so
often leave to alien hands scholarly tasks which should be done
by their own. We must indeed confess, and heartily we make
the acknowledgment, that frequently non-Catholic studies of
Catholic institutions are as free from unfairness as may be hu-
manly expected. Dr. Putnam's volume before us is a signal
instance of an honest endeavor on the part of a Protestant
to get . to the truth of things uninfluenced by ecclesiastical
partisanship. Still, let us express the hope that we may soon
see an era of productivity among English-writing Catholics;
for we live in an age when books are not only an instrument
of propaganda, but a vital and necessary means of self-preser-
vation for any religious or scientific system.
Mr. Putnam's book, we have said, is honorably free from
bias. Of course he does not sympathize with the Index or its
procedure, and doubtless, in writing the work, he was con-
scious now and then of pity, sorrow, or indignation at the
repressive measures of this celebrated Congregation. But he is
simply and solely a historian, and he tries, and successfully
tries, to put before us the main facts in the history with which
he deals. There are phrases here and there at which a Catho-
lic might object, there is an occasional quotation from authors
* like Mendham which were better omitted, but we cannot over-
look, on the other hand, that Mr. Putnam also gives us testi-
monies to the beneficial effect of the Church's book-legislation.
We must not expect to find in a book like this a formal de-
fence of the Index, such as the Jesuit Hilgers elaborates in his
* The Censorship of the Church of Rome. By George Haven Putnam. In two Volumes,
Vol. I. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
>7.] New Books 553
rman history of the Index; but, taking all things together,
must say that if Dr. Putnam and Father Hilgers are corn-
ed, on the ground of scientific impartiality, the former will
; notably suffer.
This first volume, soon to be concluded with a second,
ers the history of ecclesiastical book- prohibition, from its
liest . manifestations in the Christian Church, to the year
k>, just at the close of the great controversies about the bull
rnigenitus." This is a large field to travel and keep within
; than four hundred pages. But, by rigid conciseness, and
[uite German manner of heaping up facts which are left to
ak for themselves, Dr. Putnam accomplishes the task very
ditably. He quotes original sources whenever these sources
extant, and, in fact, all through the work he displays the
dities of a trained student and writer of history. His main
de has been, of course, Reusch, whose history of the In-
c is, and will probably forever remain, Incomparable. But
s book is much easier to read than Reusch's; its mode of
senting the data is clearer, and, in such ways of conven-
ce as paragraph- headings, it is far more satisfactory. This
lot the place to enter into the details of the history of the
lex. To do so were a wearisome task, and a sure provoca-
1 of divergent opinions. So we will conclude this notice
h a word of congratulation to Dr. Putnam and a word of
srrogation to our Catholic scholars in divers universities and
er learned places : When are we going to produce work of
r own along these lines?
^Foreign periobicals.
The Tablet (u May): Cardinal Steinhuber's letter, announcing
the condemnation of the new Milanese review // Rin.
novamento by the Congregation of the Index, is printed
in full. It is prefaced by a few remarks on the gravity
and importance of the condemnation. The determined
hostility of .English Catholics to the McKenna Bill is re-
vealed in the following resolution adopted by the School
Managers of the dioceses of Salford and Liverpool:
" That this association pledges itself to meet, with un-
faltering resistance, the monstrously oppressive and ty-
rannical Education Bill at present before Parliament."
The true notion of Catholic Faith is contrasted with
the "Modern Error" which makes Faith an assent of
the mind relative, provisional, and alterable. A work
on the Holy Eucharist, by the Bishop of Newport, is
announced by Messrs. Longmans. Father Delahaye's
Legend and Hagiography will soon appear in English.
Both these works are to be added to the Westminster
Library, edited by Mgr. Ward and Fr. Thurston.
(18 May): Steps have been taken towards the reforma-
tion of the Italian seminaries. Italy has 268 dioceses,
and nearly every diocese endeavors to maintain its own
separate seminary. Many of these institutions are suf-
fering greatly from poverty, and, moreover, are deficient
both in the number and quality of their professors. It is
possible that those old seminaries will continue to exist
as " petits slminaires," while students of philosophy and
theology will be sent to well-equipped and disciplined
provincial seminaries. The Low Valley Catholic School
case is cited as " a further example of extinction of vol-
untary schools by 'administrative methods."' Here a
congregation of 450 people build a school and in advance
pay their teachers ^192 a year. The West Riding County
Council reduces the salary to ^150. Finally the Board
of Education strikes the school off the grant list and re-
fuses to reopen the case.
(25 May): This number comments at considerable length
on M. Sabatier's reply to Cardinal Gibbons in the mat-
ter of the French situation. " The writer," we are told,
"presents us vritYi tvo\)o\tv^ t^vn> era^t it be the spec-
W.]
FOREIGN PERIODICALS
tacle of one who poses as a serious student of history
condescending to repeat the political clap trap of the
hour." It is on " flimsy pretexts that M. Sabatier has
presumed to call in question the good faith of the Holy
See and the authority of Cardinal Gibbons." A writer
treating "The Concept of Doctrinal Development," be-
lieves that the nature of the safety- line which the Church
has drawn around the doctrine, is expressed in the fol-
lowing points: (i) There is a Development of Doctrine;
(2) The Development is one which preserves the sub-
stantial sameness of sense and teaching; (3) The Devel-
opment excludes all addition to the Deposit of Revealed
Truth ; {4) The Development excludes all diminution, or
abandonment, or rejection of any truth once taught or
defined as an Article of Faith.
{[ June): A letter of Cardinal Rampolla to Dom Hilde-
brand Hemptinne, inviting the Benedictine Order, in the
name of the Biblical Commission, to undertake certain
studies preliminary to the revision of the Vulgate, is
given in full, together with a notice of the Benedictines'
acceptance of that honorable but colossal task. The
Roman Correspondent writes that there has been con-
siderable exaggeration in the reports of the English press
concerning the matter. "If the Benedictines," he says,
" have not been officially entrusted with the revision of
the text of the Vulgate, they have been formally invited
to do all the preliminary work necessary to make that
undertaking possible." "The work will be done by an
army of scholars, laboring unitedly and co-ordinately,
whereas it was left hitherto to individual effort."
■ Month (June) : " God's Orphan," by Jan de Geollac, is be-
gun in this number. The story, though fanciful, is rather
unpromising. The life history of M. Cauchy, perhaps
the greatest mathematician of the nineteenth century, is
interestingly narrated by "B. V." One who signs him-
self " R. H. J. S." discusses "The Higher Fantheism."
"Is it an exaggeration," he writes, "to say that the
Christian may yet learn much from the Pantheist ? The
earnest conviction of a brotherhood among all forms of
life, which the Pantheist possesses, though he misinter-
prets it, may be a genuine, if maimed, worship of their
Creator, and a reproach to our individualize seWis^uwA."
556 Foreign Periodicals [July,
— Ymal Oswin describes the " International Art- Union
of France/ 9 whose purpose is the liberation of art from
individualism, and the cultivation of ideas and the ideal.
The early history of church bells Fr. Thurston finds
obscure. He is ready to venture the opinion, however,
that our splendid modern peals could trace their ances-
try to the rude hand- bell of St. Patrick and his fellow-
missionaries. A description of the Jardihs Ouvriers of
Saint- Etienne is most interesting reading. The success
of this movement, under Father Volpette and the boys
of his college of St. Michel, may very much help the
solution of difficult social problems.
The Irish Monthly (June) : " A Discussion on Art/' is the title
of a little sketch in which Thurlough, an old servant,
acquired a good-natured contempt for the Widow Mur-
phy, because she insists on confusing a modern Michael
Angelo with the original. In this number Judge Car-
ton completes his paper on " Novels and Novel Readers."
The merit of novels, as sources of amusement and intel-
lectual culture, is dwelt upon. Special attention is be-
stowed on the historical novel, as being indispensable to
the student of history. Two great classes of historical
novels are recognized. The first includes those in which
historical personages and facts are the subject matter.
In the second class the framework is historical, but the
characters fictitious. After a few remarks on the domestic
novel, the paper closes with a list of the best Irish works
of this kind, and an appeal to Catholic gentlemen to use
better judgment in avoiding vicious and immoral reading.
La Democratic Chretienne (May) : In a survey of Catholic pro-
gress in America, England, Germany, and Holland, M.
Chanoine Looten, of Lille University, finds much that is
encouraging. He regards as significant the loyalty to
the Holy See of democracy- loving Catholics in the
United States. Apropos of the first anniversary of
M. Paul Lapeyre's death, a brief sketch is given of the
career of this great apostle of Christian democracy.
The New Apostolate and its conditions is the subject
of discussion by Mgr. Pechenard. The obligation of the
higher classes to social service is especially pressing.
Notice is taken of M. Fromont's book on the Industrial
Effect of a Shorter Wor king -day . Utoductioti is not di-
:
Foreign Periodicals 557
minished, material is saved, wages are unchanged. Trie
result is mutual benefit to laborer and employer. The
Salary of Women, by M. Ch. Poisson, is reviewed sym-
pathetically. The situation, which is unsatisfactory, its
causes, and some remedies, find mention. That the au-
thority of President Roosevelt on family problems extends
beyond the borders of this country, is shown by quota-
tions from his pen.
Correspondant (10 May): An anonymous contributor criti-
cizes England's proposal for the limitation of armaments,
which is to be discussed at the approaching Peace Con-
ference, He questions her motives, and suggests that
she is not acting solely in the interest of international
peace. P. Thureau-Dangin urges the French Catholics
to accept the present state of affairs and make the best
of them. Separation does not mean enmity, but liberty.
All true Catholics have a duty to perform toward their
country — one which will never be fulfilled by forming
themselves into a political party. They must look to the
future, not to the past. M. D. Calvogoressi contri-
butes a study ot Russian music and musicians of the
nineteenth century. M, Auguste Boucher, in his po-
litical chronicle, discusses most of the recent important
events in European politics. M. Clemenceau's stand with
regard to the celebration at Orleans of the feast of Joan
of Arc and the imprisonment of two French labor lead-
ers by the government, are subjects which receive lengthy
treatment.
(25 May) : P. Lefebure begins an account of charity
work in America, with a description of the efforts made in
New York from the colonial times up to now. In the pres-
ent number he has not yet reached the account of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society. Speaking of the social work by
the churches in the Dutch times, the methods introduced
later from England into the colony, and the great spread
of the work during the nineteenth century, he declares:
"Christian charity remains the fairest fruit of American
liberty." P. Saint Girons contributes a scientifically
constructed article on the various unions established in
Germany to ensure employers against "strikes." These
unions have helped to prevent strikes due to injustice on
558 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
the part of employers, and by strengthening the em-
ployers will help to deter the men from unjustly striking.
Etudes (5 May) : The problem of the Catholic Party is dis-
cussed at length by M. Maurice de la Taille. Concen-
trated, vigorous action, such as characterized the Crusades,
is needed in the present hour to save the French Church
from her enemies. In this and the following number
M. Joseph de Joannis sketches the remarkable career of
Berthelot from the viewpoint of science. The story of
his many important discoveries is given in detail.——
Religious England, its schools, its parliament, its churches,
is the subject of an interesting study by M. Joseph Bou-
b£e. The writer notes the liberal tendency in religion,
and regrets that among ministers of the Established
Church separation between Church and State is so
widely favored. M. Joseph Ferchat, in his paper on
" Monism and Psychology," charges Alfred Binet with
assuming as identical, in his recent book, UAnu et It
Corps,- things which are totally different.
(20 May): Michelet's charge that the Vatican archives
prove the Holy See, in Avignon days, to have been pri-
marily a commercial institution, is taken up and an-
swered by M. Jules Doizl. The activity of John XXII.,
and other Avignon Popes, in spiritual and intellectual
matters is pointed out; the collection and worthy dis-
position of money are described ; and the unusual atten-
tion given to the department of finance at this time ex-
plained. The recent article of M. Herzog, on the vir-
ginal Conception of Christ, wherein the writer argues
that the dogma is uncertain in history and formally con-
tradicted by the early texts, is refuted on the same
grounds by M. L. de Grandmaison. The decree of
the Sacred Congregation on " Daily Communion," issued
some time ago, is quoted here in full.
(5 June): P. Suau has a sympathetic and discriminating
appreciation of the character and the work of the late
M. Huysmans, whose best productions are adjudged to
be En Route, Sainte Lydwine, and Lourdes.^^—'L. Roure
writes on the extravagances of the cult of Rousseau,
whom M. Nicolas Segur places near our Savior.- A.
Wetterwald thinks that even if China is awakening, the
7.] Foreign Periodicals 559
process is a very slow one, and peril from that quar-
ter is still far distant. A. d'AIes writes that the con-
ception of dogma as capable of development marks an
epoch in the history of theology, lor it attests the effort
of Christian thought to get a belter hold on the mys-
teries of the progress of dogma; and it gives Vincent
of Lerins a special place among the Fathers of the Church.
t Civilta Cattolica (18 May): The first article, discussing the
open letter of 1'aul Sabatier in reply to the manifesto
of Cardinal Gibbons, on the French separation law, adopts
as its own the entire manifesto and defends it, point by
point, against the attacks of the French publicist.
An article on the consequences of the new methods in
apologetics, mentions the rationalistic psychology of Wil-
liam James as connected with erroneous views of dogma,
and criticizes Minnocchi, Le Roy, Laberthonniere, for
methods which lead to scepticism.
(1 June): Condemning the extreme position of either
iside, a writer insists that both speculative and positive
methods of study are needed in theology, both being in
accord with the wise ideal proclaimed by St. Ignatius.
At the present day the greater danger is the scorn of
scholasticism, the preferring of erudition to speculation
and encyclopedism to science,- A writer discussing the
question of Arian forgeries fathered on Pope Liberius
.affirms the falsity of four letters attributed to Liberius
hby Stilting.
Pratique d' Apologetique {1 May): M. F. Prat exposes
the moral doctrine of St. Paul, its basis, principles, and
spirit. Brunetiere as an apologist is considered by
M. J. Cartier. Though he was drawn to the Church
I especially by her social and philanthropic character, he
ever insisted on the principle that in assent to a religion,
intellectual motives should not be separated from moral ;
that to embrace Catholicity is to accept her dogmas.
The question of stigmatas and auto suggestion oc-
cupies the attention of M. Aug. Poulain. The writer
calls attention to the fact that science has not as yet
proved its case against the miraculous interpretation of
the phenomenon. Two recent books on the Fourth
Gospel, those of M. Constantin Chauvin and M. l'Abbe
560 FOREIGN PERIODICALS* [July,
Lcpin, receive comprehensive reviews from the pen of
Alfred Durand, S.J.
(15 May): The interpretation given to certain dogmas
by M. Le Roy in his late treatise, Dogme et Critique,
does not elicit the sympathy of M. J. Lebreton. Ne dis-
cusses in detail M. Le Roy's view of the Resurrection of
Christ. M. Ph. Pousard writes of the practical apolo-
getic of Mgr. d'Hulst.
Le Mots Litteraire et Pittoresque (June): Under the title of
" The Bloody Week," J. Bonnafous gives a graphic de-
scription of the uprising of the Communists in France
during the month of May, 187 1, in which thousands
lost their lives, and millions of dollars worth of property
were destroyed. Rather grotesque to an American
reader seems the account Geotges Chapus gives of the
" Dancing-procession " of Echternach. This is a city
situated near the 'border of France and Germany, where
each year, on Tuesday of Pentecost, a pilgrimage is made,
and large crowds dance in procession from that city to
a neighboring village. The celebration is held in honor
of St. Willibrod, whose prayers brought aid to the city
when in distress. Pierre de Kador£ gives a brief his-
tory of the development of the immense naval force of
nations since the introduction of iron-clad vessels. A
couple of pages are given to quoting an interview between
M. Maurice Barres and the late Bruneti&re, in which is
given some of the latter's views on freethougbt and free-
thinkers. A long essay is presented by Francis Vincent,
detailing the evolution pf Brunetiere's religious views.
This is interesting, as showing the many steps this man
of sound natural principles had to take before he finally
found rest in the bosom of the Catholic Church.
In our June number we gave a notice of a new magazine:
// Rinnovamento. Since the writing of that notice a letter con-
cerning the periodical has been written by Cardinal Steinhuber,
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Index. We publish
his Eminence's letter for the instruction of our readers.
The Eminent Fathers of this Sacred Congregation of the
Index ha<L at their last meeting to treat of a review called
».]
Foreign periodicals 561
// Rinnovamento , recently started in the city of Milan. Not
being wont, except for exceptional reasons, to put on the In-
dex separate issues of reviews in course of publication, the
Eminent Fathers have determined not to adopt this method of
condemnation in the case of the numbers hitherto published of
the said review. But they cannot refrain (rom expressing to
your Eminence the deep regret they have felt at seeing pub-
lished, by men calling themselves Catholics, a review notably
opposed to Catholic spirit and teaching.
They especially deplore the disturbance which such writers
are causing to consciences, and the assumption with which
they pose as masters and almost as doctors of the Church.
And it is painful to see that among those who seem to wish
to arrogate to themselves a niagisterium in the Church, and
to teach the Pope himself, are to be found names already
known for other writings dictated by the same spirit, such as
Fogazzaro, Tyrrell, Von Hugel, Murri, and others.
And while men like these speak in this review with such
self-conceit of the most difficult theological questions, and of
the most important affairs of the Church, the editors declare
that it is lay and non-confessional, and make distinctions be-
tween official and non-official Catholicism, between the dog-
mas defined by the Church as truths to be believed, and the
immanence of religion in individuals. In short, it is not pos-
sible to doubt that the review has been founded with a view
of fostering a most dangerous spirit of independence from the
authority of the Church, and the supremacy of private judg-
ment over that oi the Church herself, and of erecting itself
into a school to prepare an anti-Catholic renewal of minds.
The Eminent Fathers condemn severely this anti-Catholic
spirit, which finds expression among manifest errors in the
review in question, and they desire your Eminence to sum-
mon the editor of the said review to desist from this under-
taking, so misguided and unworthy of a true Catholic ; and
they desire, moreover, that your Eminence be good enough,
as soon as possible, to make public this judgment of the
Sacred Congregation of the Index.
While I have the honor to make the communication to
your Eminence, I most humbly kiss your hands, and am
glad to profess myself
Your Eminence's
Andrea Cardinal Steinhubkr, Prefect.
Thomas Esser, O.P., Secretary,
VOL. LXXXV.— 36
Current Events*
From its very beginning the sec-
Russia. ond Duma was, according to the
expectation of many, on the point
of being dissolved. At last those expectations have been real-
ized, and after an existence of less than three months the second
of Russian parliaments has come to an end. The reason given
in the Imperial -Manifesto for this step is the disappointment
felt by the Tsar at the proceedings of a considerable section
who, instead of setting to work to strengthen Russia, showed a
manifest tendency to augment her troubles and to disiupt the
state. A hostile spirit produced dissensions. Measures pre-
pared by the government were either neglected or rcjecttd,
even those necessary for the restoration of order. The croon-
ing iniquity was the failure of the Duma to carry out imme-
diately the demand of the government that 55 of its members,
charged with being implicated in a plot against the Tsar, should
be excluded from membership and thereby deprived of their
immunity in order to be tried.
The Tsar throughout the manifesto maintains his claim to
be the source of power. The Duma was convoked by his
sovereign will, for the pacification of Russia, principally by the
Work of legislation ; it is dissolved because it has failed to sat-
isfy him. It is to him, the Tsar declares, that God has given
power over ail the people, and he proceeds in further exercise
of that power to change the electoral law. M. de Martens, in
the letter which he wrote some time ago, and which fore-
shadowed the dissolution which has just taken place, declared
that to introduce into Russia a quasi universal suffrage was a
capital error, and that it was the real source of all the calam-
ities which have followed. When it is remembered that Great
Britain has as yet not manhood, but only household suffrage,
qualified by a lodger suffrage of a certain value, and that this
was achieved after struggles of many centuries, it is hard lo
deny the force of M. de Martens' criticism.
The weak point of the position in Russia is that all pouer
is centred in one man set over 120 millions of men, and this*
man is subject to the manipulation of self- seekers working in
the dark behind the scenes, and that it is only by the brute
force of the army, or even worse, of the police, that in the end
1907O Current events 563
government is carried on. This is the state of Russia such as
the dissolution reveals it. The will of the Tsar is the sole rule.
However, that will is, for the present at least, that there shall
be a third Duma, that it shall assemble on the 14th of Septem-
ber next, that all the rights granted by the Manifesto of Oc-
tober 30, 1905, and the fundamental laws, shall remain in full
force, but that the electoral laws shall be modified.
That the new Duma may be Russian in spirit, the repre-
sentatives of other nationalities are to be diminished in num-
ber. For example, the Poles are to have only 12 representa-
tives instead of $6. Elections are to be suspended in those
parts which are not considered to have attained sufficient civic
development. Special means are taken to secure the election
of landlords. Peasant deputies must be house owners engaged
in agriculture. The representation of workmen is practically
annulled. The great complaint made by M. de Martens of the
composition of the recently dissolved assembly, and the chief
cause of its failure in his eyes, was that, of 500 members, only
T20 had received a university education ; and of the rest only a
small number had passed through even a gymnasium. Some
were quite illiterate, some could barely read. For these evils
he new electoral law strives to find a remedy, by increasing
he number of the electoral assemblies of the " intelligent "
:lasses as compared with the representatives of the " non-
ntelligent " classes.
The dissolution has been received in silence by the Russian
people. Whether it is the silence which precedes a storm, or
[hat which is the result of a fall over a precipice, remains to
be seen. Troops dominate the capital. M. Stolypin still re-
mains in office. This may give ground for hope, for although
not the great man which Russia needs, he is at least honest.
It is understood that he prevented the postponement of the
meeting of the next Duma, which was desired by the Tsar,
and still further limitations of the franchise.
A great cause of the lack of efficiency, and of the failure to
put to profit the concessions which have been made, is that no
dominating popular leader has appeared capable of uniting all
the people for the attainment of their just rights, capable of ex-
citing enthusiasm, of overcoming opposition, of bending the
energies of all to the one end. It is not to be wondered at
that the steam-roller of autocratic despotism, which has betn at
564 Current Events [July,
work so long, should have crushed out all initiative in the well.
disposed, and have exasperated those not well-disposed. Its ef-
feet has been to render all subordination obnoxious, and to
make every one wish, when the yoke had been partially re-
moved, to be his own leader.
Although there have been no great uprisings, like those
which took place a year or two ago, the record of outrages is
long. Riots, armed robberies, plots, murders, attempted mur-
ders, assaults on trains, go to make up the list. Poland seems
to have suffered most, especially from strikes due to the activity
of Socialists, of which there are several kinds. No progress
seems to have been made in the negotiations with Great Britain
for a settlement of the differences between the two countries.
If, however, the rumors are true that the King of England is
to visit the Tsar, a favorable conclusion of those negotiations
may be expected.
The determination of Germany to
Germany. have a large navy, implying there-
by a challenge to Great Britain's
domination over the* ocean, is one of the causes of the uneasi-
ness which is felt as to the future. The German Navy League
was formed to render the plan of the government popular and
to raise funds by voluntary subscriptions. It has received, and
still receives, the approval of the Kaiser. Within its ranks are in-
cluded Prussians and Bavarians, Saxons and Wittenburgians ; in
fact, representatives of most of the various nationalties which
constitute the German Empire. During the last elections its man-
ager, General Keim, is said to have taken a very active part in
opposition to the election of Catholic candidates, and in this
way to have abused his position as manager of the League.
The Bavarian members of the League, being mostly Catholics,
naturally resented this breach of trust, and at a recent meeting,
held at Cologne, they proposed the dismissal of the over-ardent
General. The intervention of the Saxon section, however, after
a nine-hours' discussion, brought about a reconciliation. Keim
declared that the allegation was an infamous lie. The General
is no believer in the power of moral influence in the world
as it now is. The only thing which makes Germany respected
on land is the army. If, therefore, she wishes to be respected
on the ocean, and throughout the world, she must have a navy
1907.] Current Events 565
strong enough to command respect. His opinion of the attitude
of the rest of the world towards Germany, is expressed in the fol-
lowing terms : " If a man finds himself in the company of ques-
tionable ruffians armed with bludgeons, while he himself has only
a walking stick, the situation is certainly not an agreeable one."
He left his audience to guess whom he looked upon as the ruf-
fians. The National Liberal speaker who followed him was less
reticent. He declared that a large section of the English Press
was continually propagating the idea that on the day on which
the German mercantile marine was destroyed, every Englishman
would be a pound richer. Momentous issues, only to be set-
tled by " blood and iron," were. General Keim declared on an-
other occasion, developing in the sphere of Weltpolitik. The
General and the Navy League are not to be looked upon, al-
though the latter has the approval of the Kaiser, as representing
the opinion of the whole country. A leading Berlin journal de-
clares that the General is merely a retired miles gloriosus given
to bombastic utterances. But such men are dangerous tools
ready for the use of the higher powers, should these higher
powers decide for war.
The curious union of Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals,
by which the government is supported, has worked satisfactor-
ily during the first session of the new Parliament, all the
proposals of the government having been adopted. The finan-
cial state of the Empire, however, is not so satisfactory. The
Reichstag has adjourned and will not meet again until the
19th of November. Discussions on the dangers and difficulties
by which Germany is said to be surrounded will, therefore, be
limited to the press and to the platform. The relations of Ger-
many to England take the first place in these discussions. The
rote of protector of the Mussulmans assumed by the Emperor,
and the support afforded by him to the Sultans as well of
Turkey as of Morocco, the projected railway through the valley
of the Euphrates, the reforms in Macedonia, and the secur-
ing of an understanding with France — an understanding which
some German publicists regard as being necessary for the well-
being of Germany — afford an ample field for comment and con-
troversy.
So far as regards England and her relations with Germany a
further effort to bring about an improvement has been made by
the return visit paid by a number of English journalists, among
I
566 Current Events [July,
whom was the ever active Mr. Stead. The reception given to
these visitors showed that the Navy League does not faithfully
represent the mind of all the people of Germany, nor, in fact,
of the government. For at a banquet given to them, the
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs declared that the German
naval forces were only required as a protection of the German
coasts and sea trade. " We do not strive for anything more."
For the English policy of the " open door " he had the high-
est praise. " You have never excluded other States from terri-
tories under British influence, but allowed them to go along
with you." The Emperor himself sent a message of welcome,
while the Chancellor of the Empire, Prince Biilow, entertained
them at a garden party. The main object of the authorities
was to convince their visitors of the extremely pacific tendencies
of both the government and the people. Which of the two
voices — that of the Navy League, or that of the journalists
— will prevail, cannot be known at present.
One of the worst evils attendant upon the possession of an
undue degree of power by rulers, is the influence upon its ex-
ercise possessed by secret advisers and favorites. Geimany has
before now experienced the evil effects of such influences.
The most upright and honest of the Chancellors of the Em-
pire — Count von Caprivi — was forced to resign in 1894 by the
intrigues of a Camarilla working against him. There is reason
to believe that the recent dissolution of the Reichstag was
brought by the necessity to defend himself against the same
influences which were felt by the present Chancellor. However
this may be, there has been a great upheaval in the Court
circles where people of this kind work. A newspaper has
published a series of chroniques scandal euses t which has led to
the dismissal of the Commandant of Berlin, to the resignation
of one of the personal aides-de-camp of the Emperor, as well
as that of Prince Philip Eulenberg, who is looked upon as the
chief worker behind the scenes. Public opinion strongly sup-
ports the Chancellor in his struggle with the irresponsible ad-
visers of the Crown.
Might and political expediency have once more prevailed
in the appointment of a successor to the late Prince Albrecht
of Prussia as Regent of Brunswick. The legitimate heir is the
Duke of Cumberland, who is also by right King of Hanover,
as well as Duke of Brunswick, but, inasmuch as he will not
<wj
Current events 56;
enounce his claims to the throne of Hanover which has been
ncorporated into Prussia, he is not allowed to be even Duke
>f Brunswick which, although one of the German federated
itates, retains its identity. A new Regent has been elected by
he Brunswick Diet — Duke John Albrecht, of Mecklenburg -
ichwerin.
Herr Dernburg, the head of the new Colonial Department,
irhich has at last been established, is going to pay a personal
isit to the Colonies, in the hope of making them better sub
erve the purposes for which they were founded as an outlet
or German emigration. At present they are little better than
lilitary establishments.
The general election which has re,-
Austria-Hungary. cently taken place in Austria, be-
ing the first since the adoption of
niversal suffrage, is one of the most important events in the
ecent history of the country, and may even be the starting
ioint of a new era. That universal suffrage should have been
dopted at all involves a departure from long-standing tradi
ions. The Socialists have been its advocates lor several years,
■ut were in themselves powerless. Well-informed writers look
pon its adoption as due to the Emperor. His Majesty is now
i the sixtieth year of his reign. The prospects of the Empire
dt the future are somewhat dark. The large number of vari-
us races of which the Empire is made up are full of jealousy
nd almost of hatred one for another. The effect of universal
uffrage will be to give far larger influence and power to the
eople. In the Reichsrath, as hitherto constituted, there were
ve Curia?, the Curia of Large Landed Proprietors, the Curia
f the Chambers of Commerce, the Curia of the Cities, the
luria of the Country Communes, and finally the Curia of Uni-
ersal Suffrage, comprising some five millions of electors. This
fth Curia only elected 72 out of the 425 members of the Cham-
er. The new Law sweeps away all these Curiae and merges all
oters into one single category of universal suffrage. A house
-hich was practically made up of the representatives of separate
iterests has been transformed into an assembly representative
f the people, without distinction of classes. The old feudal
obility, the rich merchants, the narrow-minded middle classes,
ave all been brought to resign their privileges. What has in-
568 Current Events [July,
fluenced them ? At every stage the Emperor's voice was heard
in support of the Bill, and had it not been for him its enact-
ment would have proved impossible. The outcome of the ex-
periences of his long life and reign, in which be has suffered
so many disappointments, defeats, and losses, the lesson which
all these have taught him is that if he wishes to provide a se-
cure throne for his successor, the basis of that throne must be
widened, and that it must be made to rest upon the masses of
the people.
The result of the elections has, on the whole, been satisfac-
tory. The animosity of the races, which has constituted the
great danger of the past, will not exist for the future. Purely
racial candidates suffered defeat at the first ballots. The Pan-
Germans, whose object is to bring Austria, socially and eco-
nomically and even politically, closer to the German Empire,
and who were the promoters of the Los von Rom movement,
were almost annihilated. The Young Czechs, also, have prac-
tically ceased to exist and Italian Irredentism has been over-
thrown. Instead, therefore, of national conflicts for predomi-
nance, questions will be discussed which will be of real practical
importance for the Empire as a whole.
The next most striking result of the elections is the victory
of the Socialists, of which there are two main bodies — Christian
Socialists, who are Catholics, and Social Democrats. The lat-
ter form the most numerous single party. What their precise
aims are is not clear, but it is understood that they are not
so extreme in their views as the party which bears the same
name in the German Reichstag. Nor is it clear how far the
Christian Socialists agree with the Social Democrats. If the
former represent an attempt to impress upon public legislation
the social influences of the Catholic faith, to make the Church's
power felt for the good of the poorer classes, it will be setting
a good example, deserving to be followed in other countries.
A noteworthy feature of the new law is that it gives the
power to the local authorities of various districts to render vot-
ing compulsory and to impose penalties on the non-voters.
Several districts adopted this provision, but for all that some
50,000 in Vienna and Lower Austria alone failed to go to the
polls.
As the result of the second ballots the new Austrian Reichs-
rath is made up of more than a score of parties. Although the
.**.]
Current Events
list is long, it may be worth giving as an example of the het-
erogeneous character of a European Parliament. The figures
in parentheses represent the strength of each party in the last
Chamber: Social Democrats, S3 (11); Christian Socialists, 67
(26); German Conservative Catholics, 29 (29) ; German Progres-
sives, 23 (30); German Populists or Radicals, 24 (46); German
Agrarians, 21 {4); Free Pan-Germans, 13 (6); Pan-Germans,
3 (15); Young Czechs, 19 (47); Old Czechs, 6 (3); Czech
Realists, hitherto unrepresented, 2; Czech Agrarians, 25 (5);
Czech Catholics, 19 (2); Czech Radicals, 10 (8); Slovene Cath-
olics, 22 (19); Slovene Liberals, 3 (6); Italian Liberals, 4 (12);
Italian Catholics, 10 (6); Croats, 9 (7); Serbs, hitherto unrep-
resented, 2 ; Rumanes, 5 (4). To these must be added Catho-
lic Poles and non-Catholic Poles; Polish Democrats and Pan-
Poles; Polish Populists and Polish Social Democrats; together
with Independent Socialists and Jewish Zionists ; the exact
number of which cannot be given, as the elections were not
complete.
So numerous are the parties that efforts have already been
made to form clubs for mutual co-operation. The German
Conservative Catholics have united with the Christian Socialists,
and as a consequence the two form the largest group in the
house. Efforts have been made, too, by the German Liberals
and Radicals, but not so successfully. It will be observed, too,
that the numbers of Catholic representatives have increased
among the Czechs, Slovenes, and Italians.
Hungary, where the adoption of universal suffrage was first
made a part of practical politics has not yet taken any steps
to realize the proposal. The Magyars perhaps are loathe to
give up the privileges which they possess at present — privileges
which are due to the altogether disproportionate voting power
allotted to them.
The chief preoccupation of the
France. French people of late has been the
discontent prevailing among large
numbers of the working- people. Various strikes, on a large
scale, as has been already recorded, have taken place; and no
sooner has one been settled, than another has broken out. In-
subordination has spread among even State officials, among
whom school-teachers are included. The right to form Trade
Unions is claimed, a right which the government refuses to
570 Current Events [July,
recognize. The Confederation of Labor, an association of unions
of workingmen, representing some 200,000 out of a total of
twelve millions, has advocated methods destructive of all order.
The leaders are absolutists at the other end of the social scale.
Violence, hanging of employers, seizure of factories, deliberate
destruction of property, elaborated plans for the ruin of em-
ployers, such were the methods openly advocated by leading
members of the Confederation. " A restaurant waiter should
quietly leave a tap open and thus let the liquid flow away."
The government, of course, could not do anything else than
arrest the teachers of such morals.
The agitation among workingmen has not been confined to
the land. The State keeps official lists of sailors for service in
the mercantile marine. These inscrits maritimes, as they are
called, were not satisfied* with the Bill introduced by the gov-
ernment for the reform of the existing system of old-age pen
sions. Accordingly they struck, and some of the naval reserve
men gave their adhesion to the movement. The effect of the
strike was an almost complete stagnation of trade and pas-
senger traffic. Fortunately it did not last long. After an in-
terview of the delegates of the men- with the Minister of Ma-
rine, terms were arranged ; amendments are to be made in the
Bill which will make it acceptable to the strikers.
The troubles of the government have reached their climax
in the movement which began in the first week of May in the
South of France. In this movement all classes of the popula.
tion took part. The people living in the country came in their
tens of thousands into the cities to demand that action should
be taken against the adulterators of wine, the sale of which
was their sole means of livelihood. In one place the proces-
sion of the discontented had with it a cart on which was placed
a guillotine; at intervals the procession stopped, in order that
a dummy adulterator might be executed. The agitation has
spread far and wide. Violence has, in many cases, taken place,
as well as destruction of property. In fact it is coming to
have the aspect of a civil war. The government, however, is
resolved that order shall be kept; the troops have not hesi-
tated to fire on the people.
The cause of the uprising is believed by the agitators to
be the adulteration of wine, a procedure which has of late
become common. This has prevented the sale of the wine,
1907.] Current Events 571
which is thus left on the hands of its makers. While the
fact of over-production is undoubted, other reasons for it are
given. There is too much wine, because the French people
are becoming convinced of the evil effects of alcohol. They
are drinking mineral waters, and even milk. Those who do
not give up alcohol altogether, are drinking beer, it is said,
in almost fabulous quantities. A third cause is the growing
custom of blending French wine with German and Austrian
wines. Whatever the causes may be, the result is a movement,
the end of which is not yet in sight.
While the South of France is thus disturbed, the capital
has been consoled by the visits of the Kings and Queens of
Norway and of Denmark. As a result of the visit of the
Norwegian King, it is said that the sphere of ententes cordiales
has been widened by the inclusion of Norway. A more im-
portant event affecting the foreign relations. of France, is the
conclusion of an agreement with Japan by which the posses-
sions of France in the Far East are secured from attack. A
similar agreement between Russia and Japan is said to be on
the point of being concluded. If this is so, peace in that part
of the world, so far as European powers are concerned, is ren-
dered secure for an indefinite period.
The entente cordiale with England has been manifested by
the return visit made by representatives of the London Uni-
versity to that of Paris, as well as by the visit of the Lord
Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow to the Lyons Exhibition.
The reception which they received left no doubt as to the feel-
ings of the French people. Even music has been made use of,
as is in the highest degree suitable to bring about harmonious
relations. The band of one of the British regiments, which
paid a visit to Lille, was received with rapturous enthusiasm.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs has defined the attitude of
the government towards the limitation of armaments which is to
be proposed at the Hague Conference by Great Britain. M.
Pichon, while recognizing the great work which has been accom-
plished by the Conference of 1899, and declaring the present
assembly of the representatives of 47 States a true international
Parliament, expressed no strong hope of a definite conclusion be-
ing reached to regulate the strength of the standing armies of Eu-
rope. A concrete formula was necessary, and none had been
found. The Powers, too, must be unanimous, and some would
572 Current Events [July,
not even discuss the question. France would not place herself
in their ranks. She would enter upon the discussion, and even
hoped that she would be able to point out a possible method by
which diplomacy might find a practical solution of the grave
problem.
The most important event which
Spain. is to be recorded with reference to
Spain is the convention which has
been made with France and with Great Britain, by which the
States mutually guarantee the integrity of their respective
coasts, and also the islands and colonies of each of the con.
tracting parties in ' the East Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The status quo is to be maintained in Algeria, Tunis, and the
Canaries. The peaceful possession of Gibraltar and Malta is
assured to Great Britain. Freedom of communication between
the possessions and their respective mother-lands is provided
for. It looks as if a cordon were being drawn round Morocco,
in view, perhaps, of shutting off that Empire from all foreign
interference. But that would mean war, and we are assured that
peace is the end and object for which the convention was
made.
The affairs of Portugal have excit-
Portugal. ed unwonted attention. The gov-
ernment, for reasons which have
not been clearly explained, seems to have tried to revert, for a
time at least, to an absolute regime. The people, not appreci-
ating the excellence of this kind of government, have offered
determined opposition, and have been fired upon by the troops.
A fuller account must be deferred.
At the other end of Europe, demo-
Sweden, cratic principles have been further
extended. Universal suffrage has
been adopted. What is worthy of note is that proportional
representation forms a part of the new scheme.
The April number of The Catholic World contained in
its review of The Ought to £e's 9 by the Rev. J. T. Roche, the
Allowing sentences:
We should unreservedly recommend the book for circula-
07. % ] A NOTE 573
tion, but for one surprising blemish. It is not, we respect-
fully submit, either profitable or proper, that a priest should
sit in judgment upon, and hold up to the obloquy of the laity,
one of the most illustrious living members of the Catholic
hierarchy ; nor is such an offence lessened, when the attempt
is made to justify it by presuming to interpret an official ap-
pointment made by the Holy See as an implied stigma on the
orthodoxy of one of our bishops. The author has some sharp
criticisms for the members of the laity who venture to find
fault with the clergy : Physician, heal thyself, is a golden ad-
vice that has most value for us all just when we least suspect
our need of it.
The author oi the book in question has written to The
vtholic World, stating that the criticism is entirely unwar-
nted. He requests us to reprint from the book the paragraph
ider criticism, and to add the statement that the bishop referred
died 217 years ago. The paragraph itself reads as follows:
I read with considerable interest on one occasion the writ-
ings of a bishop who had attained a considerable degree of
eminence in his day and age. Those writings were largely
of a philosophical character, and contained much that was
admirable and commendable. There were many evidences of
a deep faith in the power of the Church to enlighten and sanc-
tify the world. There was much, too, that might have been
appropriately written by a pagan philosopher. There was a
something, however, about them which left a bad taste in the
mouth. I tried to discover for a long time why such was the
case, and finally arrived at a satisfactory solution of my diffi-
culty. In the whole range of his writings there were scarcely
a dozen half-hearted references to Mary's power. I was not
surprised to discover later on that these very books had
brought him under suspicion in Rome, and that because of
them he had been shut out from what seemed to be a well-de-
served promotion. Rome, the mother of all the churches, has
ever been suspicious of the orthodoxy of those in whose writ-
ings and teachings Mary had been relegated to the back-
ground.
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.
AMID a large gathering of her friends, Miss Katherine E. Conway was pre-
sented in Boston College Hall with the following illuminated address,
together with the Laetare Medal :
The University of Notre Dame, to /Catherine Eleanor Conway , Greeting —
Following a custom bow some decades old, the University of Notre Dame
on each recurring Laetare Sunday confers a medal on an American Catholic
distinguished for services to science, art, literature, religion, or humanity.
The medal is no mere academic prize, for the recipient is selected in such
wise that the choice carries with it the approbation of the hierarchy, the
priests, and Catholic people of the United States.
In selecting you, Madam, as the Las tare Medalist for the year of our
Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seven, the University is confident that the ap-
proval of the clergy and laity will be cordial and unanimous, for your excep-
tional gifts of mind and heart have been zealously expended in the Catholic
cause.
To the young women of America you have spoken golden words of coun-
sel, and if this were your only claim to gratitude it were enough to mark you
among the daughters of Holy Church. But you have done more than this,
for you have illustrated by your example the virtues of Catholic womanhood,
and have shown to your sisters how they, too, may lead consecrated lives
within the cloister of the heart, and dignify a public career by noble service.
As poet and essayist your influence has been as sweet and wholesome as
the morning ; as editor you have interpreted the Catholic mind with unerring
instinct and have prophesied true things for human liberty. Therefore
The University of Notre Dame acclaims you as one worthy to be joined
to the noble company of men and women who have won and worn the Laetare
Medal. The badge of chivalry and genius, the medal has never been more
worthily bestowed. May you live long to wear it and to continue your labors
for God and humanity !
The reply of Miss Conway was read by the President of Boston College,
Rev. Thomas J. Gasson, S.J., who also presented the numerous letters and
telegrams of congratulation.
Archbishop O'Connell spoke eloquently of the work of the Catholic press,
and in particular of the personal service given to The Pilot by Miss Conway for
many years, from the days of its great editor, John Boyle O'Reilly, to the
present time. His words had a message of hope and encouragement to all the
workers in the field of Catholic journalism, especially to the Catholic editor
who should chronicle church affairs without attempting critical flippancy or
brilliant periods. His duty is to defend the faith with docility as well as
dignity.
« • •
At a recent meeting of the Children of Mary in the Sacred Heart Acad-
emy, Boston, Archbishop O'Connell dwelt on the responsibility of the Catbo-
1907.] The Columbian Reading Union 575
lie woman in the woxid, and the importance of right standards of conduct.
"Whom shall die follow? Not the frivolous woman who from morning until
Alight thinks only of pleasing her own shallow self. Even the pagan world
locks down on such a one and demands of the woman who would stand lor
something intellectual interests and even philanthropy. There is little fear
that Catholic women will be influenced by the mere butteifly of fashion.
There is more danger that they take color from the social leader who man-
ages to combine with her pleasures a certain devotion to things of the mind
and works of charity. Her life looks not only agreeable, but, in a measure,
meritorious. Intellectual and charitable works, however, draw their merit
from the supernatural motive behind them. If Catholic women mingle too
much with a world in which the supernatural is ignored, if they find their
standards there, it is not well with them. The dust of worldliness will spoil
their days.
How shall the Catholic lady, whose position secures for her a certain
leisure, guard herself against the blight of worldliness? By deepening her
spiritual life ; by frequent Sacraments, by daily Mass — this is practicable for
many who do not avail themselves of the supreme privilege — by visits to the
Blessed Sacrament, by spiritual reading. Without this last, one cannot have
the necessary strong hold on the truths of our religion.
The Archbishop would not deny to the devout Catholic the accessories
of her position nor reasonable recreations. But the moral standards of the
Catholic, especially in literature and the drama, are different frcm these cf
the pagan world, and must be remembered even in amusements. Why are
Catholic women ever seen at evil plays? They are too good and pure to en-
joy them. Is it because the play has been praised by " society," and a num-
ber of recognized leaders have been heralded as its patronesses? This is no
justification for wrong-doing. Why can't Catholic women of strength of mind
and character set their own fashions? They do in the Catholic and even in
the non-Catholic countries of Europe. Why not in America? Why not in
Boston? And Catholic standards are the most refined and beautiful; in
every sense the best. Not only is our religion the best, but our social ideals
are the best.
On Catholic women of means and position the responsibility rests of be-
lieving this truth and living up to it. Every one of his hearers, said the
Archbishop, exercised a strong influence over at least a dozen other wemtn
of their faith. Then the influence on their immediate family. Ycu are faith-
ful Catholics, he continued, because of the long tradition handed down for
the most part through Irish ancestors faithful unto persecution ar.d death.
"Your good mothers 1 faith is still a force in your lives. Are you as prayerful
as those mothers, who with less leisure gave so much time to God? Are you
in other ways equal to them in their sterling Catholicity ? If not, what is the
spiritual outlook for your daughters ? In conclusion, the Archbishop urged
serious self-study on all his hearers, that they might find wheiein they were
lacking, and make of themselves the holy and uplifting influences which they
should be in the life of their city.
M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Charles Scribnbr's Sons, New York :
Social and Religious Ideals, By Artemas Jean Haynes, M.A. Pp. xvi.-i68. Price $i
net. Israel 's Laws and Legal Precedents. From the Days of Moses to the Closing of the
Legal Canon. By Charles Foster Kent, Ph.D. With plans and diagrams. Pp. xxxv.-
301. Price $2.75 net.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York:
St. Catherine of Siena and Her Times. By the Author of Mademoiselle Mori (Margaret
Denise Roberts). Pp. viiL-300. Price $2.75.
Fr. Pustet & Co., New York:
Treatise on the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. By Rev. P. J. Hanley. Pp. iv.-57.
Paper. Price 25 cents net.
Society for the Propagation of the Faith, New York:
A Martyr of Our Own Day. The Life and Letters of Just de Bret'enieres. Martyred in
Corea, March 8, 1866. Adapted from the French by Rev. John J. Dunn. Pp. 222.
International Catholic Truth Society, Brooklyn, N. Y. :
Catalogue of Boohs for the Use of Young Catholic Readers. Price 5 cents each ; $3 per 100
prepaid.
Angel Guardian Press, Boston, Mass. :
The Life and Times of Margaret Bourgeoys, By Margaret Mary Drummond. Reviled
with rreface by Rev. Lewis Drummond, S.J. Pp. 275.
Clipping Bureau Press, Boston, Mass. :
Writing for the Press. A Manual by Robert Luce. Fifth Edition. Pp. iv.-goo. Price,
cloth, 60 cents; paper, 30 cents.
J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, Pa.:
Running Horse Inn. By Alfred Tresidder Sheppard. Pp. 395. Disinherited, By Stelli
M. DUring. Pp. 391.
Forbes & Co., Chicago, 111. :
The Truth About the Congo. The Chicago Tribune Articles. By Frederick Starr. Pp.
viii.-i29.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. :
Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of tie
Smithsonian Institute. 1902-/903. By W. H Holmes. Report of the Commissioner $f
Education for the Year ending June jo, 190$. Vol. I. Pp. 655.
B. Herder. St. Louis, Mo.:
lus Regularium Speciale In Usum Scholarum. Edidit P. Fr. Dom. M. Prummer, O.P.
Tomus II. Pp. xxviii.-357. Price $1.50 net.
D. & J. Sadlier & Co., Montreal, Canada:
Hack in the Fifties. On Winnings and Weedings. A Tale of Tractarian Times. By
Elizabeth Gagnieur. Pp. 437.
Browne & Nolan, Ltd., Dublin, Ireland:
St. Brigid, Patroness of Ireland. By the Rev. J. A. Knowles, O.S.A. Pp. XW.-292. Price
is. 6d. net.
Bloud et Cie, Paris:
Dogme et Critique. By Edouard Le Roy. Deuxieme Edition. Pp. xvii.-387. L'Avair
de I'Eglise Kusse. Essai sur la Crise Sociale et Religieuse en Russie. Par Joseph Wil-
bois. Pp. viii.-304. Price 3/r. 50.
P. Lethielleux, Paris:
Ferdinand Bruneticre: V Homme, I'Orateur, le Critique, le Catholic ue. Par Th. Del-
mont. Pp. 202. Le Christianisme et I' Extreme Orient. Par M. Chanoinc Leon Jolv.
Pp. 407. ^ Price 3/r. 50. L' Esprit- Saint, sa Personne Divine, son Action dans lEgHstti
dans les Ames. Pp. viii.-256 Price 2/r. Medulla Sancti T hornet Aquinatis sen Medito-
tiones ex Operibus S. Thomce Depromptce. 2 Vols. Price 5 fr. Logica — Logica Minor;
Logica Major Auctore R. P. Kr. Ed. Hugon. Pp. viii.-5o8. Price 6 fr. Philosophic
Xaturalis. Prima Pars : Costnologia. Auctore R. P. Fr. Ed. Hugon. Pp. 326.
Price 5 fr.
Likrairib Fischbacher, Paris:
Leitre Ouverte A. S. E. le Cardinal Gibbons. Apropos de Son Manifestesur la Separation
des Egliscs et de l'fitat en France. Par Paul Sabatier. Pp. XIX.-83.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. LXXXV. AUGUST, 1907. No. 509.
LITERARY SPYING.
BY LOL'ISE IMOGEN GUINEV.
SOW and then, in portraits of persons unknown to
us, we catch a certain impression, or, rather, con-
viction of reality : where no comparison with
the seen face is possible, the counterfeit gives
testimony which can never be disproved, nor
even modified. It must be "like," we say; we feel that we
know so much, though we have no argument to offer. This
applies particularly to portraits by mechanical process, such as
photographs, or old daguerreotypes. The same very singular
witness is often borne by a book. It is not a game of mere
inferences: the book's secret, rather, is fired at us like a pistol
shot. We see as inerrably as the Recording Angel into the
author's interior. The metaphysical data are so direct and au-
thentic, that the page, like the picture, stands up and blurts
out: t am true. A trained reviewer, if he be worth his salt,
must often, perhaps even almost always, be able to tell how
much heart's blood went into his author's ink. Many of our
classic writers give interlinear revelations of themselves: in a
few of them, the revelations are practically continual. In essays,
or in poems, the undertone of consciousness is readily recog-
nized, whether the "I's" be present or absent. But it is never
quite so easy to be sure at what point little David Copperfield
is Charles Dickens, or little Maggie Tulliver Marian Evans.
Yet stories are certainly the best hunting-ground for the pack
of nosing book-hounds, and only second to stories are drama
and dramatic episode.
Copyright. 1907.
VOL. LXXXV.—
578 Literary Spying [Aug,
As a not too hackneyed example of a bit of modern mor-
ganatic autobiography (if the expression may be permitted!)
take an inconspicuous passage in Loss and Gain. Newman's
hero, an undergraduate convert, is leaving a then all-Anglican
Oxford forever. It is about eight o'clock of an autumn morn-
ing, full of frost and mist ; the young man is alone ; and he
crosses from Magdalen College into Rose Lane, and the wide
stretches of Christ Church meadow.
He walked steadily down to the junction of the Cherwell
with the Isis : he then turned back. What thoughts came
upon him for the last time ? There was no one to see him, he
threw his arms round the willows so dear to him, and kissed
them ; he tore off some of their black leaves and put them in
his bosom. "I am like Undine," he said, " killing with a
kiss. No one cares for me; scarce a person knows me."
He neared the Long Walk again. Suddenly looking obliquely
into it, he saw a cap and gown. He looked anxiously : it was
Jennings. . . . He stood behind a large elm, and let him
pass ; then he set off again at a quick pace. When he had
got some way, he ventured to turn his head around, and he
saw Jennings at the moment, by that sort of fatality or sym-
pathy which is so common, turning round towards him. He
hurried on, and soon found himself again at his inn.
This little excerpt, so suspiciously like a transcript from
real life, arrests one, although Reding is not Newman, nor the
characters in the story identical with any of Newman's fellow-
Oxonians. No don ever cherished a more romantic feeling
towards his University than he who could playfully depreciate
another for being " under no monastic vow to Oxford, to love
it and be true to it for life " ; and none could have written
more spontaneously of Reding's sudden impassioned farewell to
the trees, than the man of force and will and overpowering
tendernesses, who had torn his own bleeding heart from them
and from all else, because he "loved Truth better than many
dear friends." A sort of cumulative evidence plays upon the
page as we lay it down. What if no imaginary collegian, no
Early Victorian sentimentalist of twenty, thrust, at parting,
those dying leaves into his breast ? What if it were — nay, it
must have been ; cries the committed guesser — the great John
Henry Newman ?
K>7-] LITERARY SPYING 579
Something to supplement and match this imputation is to
* found in Mr. Chesterton's glowing monograph on Robert
rowning, published a couple of years since. He, too, has done
little masterful collecting of evidence, while dealing with a
ell-known later poem.
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau explains the psychological
meaning of all his ruthless and unscrupulous activities, by
comparing them to the impulse which has just led him, even
in the act of talking, to draw a black line on the blotting-
paper, exactly so as to connect two separate blots which were
already there. This queer example is selected as the best
possible instance of a certain fundamental restlessness and
desire to add a touch to things, in the spirit of man. I have
no doubt whatever that Browning thought of the idea after
doing the thing himself and sat in a philosophical trance,
staring at a piece of inked blotting paper, conscious that at
that moment, and in that insignificant act, some immemorial
monster of the mind, nameless from the beginning of the
world, had risen to the surface of the spiritual sea.
Again, a final instance may serve to illustrate the indeliber-
e hint of a writer and the prevenient feeling, meeting it much
ore than half way, of his predestined reader. A short while
jo appeared a particularly clever and sensitive sketch in one
: the Catholic English magazines ; it was written evidently by
young Englishman, though under a foreign pen-name, and it
mtained one chapter which bore this perfectly recognizable
amp of personal experience. It depicts a scene of to-day
nong the cafes of Montmatre.
Hugh was in a curious mood, which he knew well, and in
which he could have entered with equal ease into church or
Moulin Rouge. . . . He pushed open the shutter doors
of a tiny "Eden," and went in. . . . The audience had
emerged from the awiul pall of dulness which overhangs at
first even a French music hall, and which is due to the in-
comparable fatuity of the programme, . . . and was now
at the mercy of whatever emotion the actors hung out to
them. . . . Quite unexpectedly the place became full of
a subdued sound, booming in everybody's ears. It was mid-
night : and the bell of the Sacrd Coeur was chiming Christ-
mas Day. On the stage, a farce had just reached the inev-
itable situation in which the heroine exclaims: "Malheur !
580 Literary Spying [Aug.
c 'est tnon mart : sauve-toi vite, mat's vite ! " But at the stroke
of the bell the farce broke off, and [an elderly actress of
ample proportions] advanced, hands clasped, eyes raised and
shining, and in a strong voice sang France's hymn of Christ-
mas midnight :
■ " Minuit, Chritiens / c'est rheure solennelle
Ou r Homme- Dieu descendit parmi nous."
The audience took it up frantically. Eyes streamed with
tears at the sacred names ; some women fell on their knees,
and a few men did the same ; others drank hard ; one or two
chuckled odiously. Hugh leaped to his feet, thrust aside the
astonished gendarme, and fled. ... A tempest of horror
swept him up the last and steepest slope of Montmartre.
He made straight for the terrace surrounding the huge
church. There lor some moments he stood, utterly incapable
of mastering his loathing for that roomful of rotting semis
which he had just left, . . . with its reek of wine and
smoke, and its almost perceptible odor of spiritual death*
Now what is there in the relation of certain incidents, major
or minor, which gives forth, so to speak, a sudden unexplain-
able aroma of the confessional? This little interlude, as we be-
gan by saying, looked and sounded like fact, the fact which in
its extreme Frenchiness was far too imaginative to pass for
fiction; and as conditions permitted inquiry, inquiry was duly
made. Yes, the thing had actually happened, and before the
spectator who was the author. Once more, a case of self-dis-
covery, approving itself, and dealing out delicate compliments
to the men and women sympathetic enough to catch at it.
For here, as elsewhere, sympathy, if only abstinent and in-
curious, is knowledge. It would almost seem, in a world where
the foolish are always eager to detect past events and real
characters in narrative literature, that he who once guesses
right, on all such debatable borderlands, would also be one
who can hardly guess wrong. Many analogous instances must
occur to thoughtful lovers of books, besides the three cited
ire at random. But these three may serve to suggest the
'ar interest of the fine art of spying, to innocent casuists
of employment.
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.*
BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D..
Author 0/ ■■ My Nne Curad" ; " Lutt Dilmtgt" ; " Gltnanaar," lie.
PART III.
Chapter I.
BEFORE THE FOOTLIGHTS.
■
N the snug, well-appointed drawing-room of a hand-
some villa outside Dublin, a small but very select
party of Dublin fashionables was gathered at the
close of a cold evening early in the March of
this year. The lawn in front sloped down to the
sea ; and on a summer evening the view across Dublin Bay,
down along the coast, to where Bray Head juts out and frames
the picture in green and gold, would be almost unrivalled.
This evening, with the cold east wind blowing back to the
shore the plumes of smoke from cross-Channel steamers, the
iawn looked gray and sad in the growing twilight ; but in the
large bay-window that jutted over the basement in the villa,
there was a pretty picture that lent a little light and beauty
to the scene. A fair, tall woman in evening dress was turning
over the pages of an album or pictorial story-book for the de-
lectation of a little boy, whose yellow ringlets ran over his
dark blue velvet dress, and hid the broad collar of fine lace
that covered his shoulders and breast. The child looked in-
tensely pleased with the amusement. The lady looked tired '
and weary. But suddenly that aspect of sadness disappeared,
and she appeared to make a violent effort at the transforma-
tion, for she drew herself up to her full height, smiled softly,
and gently toyed with her rings, when a gentleman came for-
ward, spoke a few pleasant words, drew the boy gently aside,
and pulled down the blinds, against which instantly shone the
soft ruby light from the chandelier inside.
* Copyrighl. 1906. Longmans, Green & Co.
582 LlSHEEN [Aug.,
It was the evil quarter- hour before dinner — the pass gelida
of that daily holocaust of society; when the guests are frozen
by first introductions or limited acquaintance ; when the host-
ess is frozen by frightful anticipations of spoiled viands, kitchen
catastrophes, yawning intervals between courses, and all the
other dread possibilities of the dinner-table; when the waiters
are frozen into frigid icicles of propriety and decorum; and,
probably, the only warm person under the roof is the cook.
Mabel Outram, who had just returned from the darkness and
screened lights of the window, where she could toy with a
boy's curls and forget herself, now put on her stage appear-
ance before the footlights, and looked cold and dignified as the
rest, which coldness did not in the least degree thaw out even
when she knew she was an object of admiration ; and had over-
heard a little prim old lady, who had' been watching her
through a tortoise-shell pince-nez, whisper:
" A daughter of the gods, divinely fair."
And cold and slimy as a coiled snake was Ralph Outram,
as he leaned against the marble mantelpiece and listened cyni-
cally to the dreary platitudes of a certain Professor of Ethnol-
ogy, who was pouring into his ears a lot of information about
the very India from which Outram had so lately come. He
listened with- lifted eyebrows and scornful lips to the bookish
learning of the amiable, but tiresome pedant ; and when the
latter, tapping him confidentially on his coat sleeve, asked:
44 But you will clear up one point for me, on ethnological
grounds only — not on- historical, or theological, or philosophical
grounds, but on ethnological — because really there is no science
worth speaking of in the end, but ethnology — what is this I
was going to ask? Oh, yes; the ethnological explanation of
the very singular fact that a handful of men, say fifty thousand
at most, can keep down, subdue, and control some hundreds
of millions of, what I am led by my rather extensive reading
to believe, the most intelligent and highly- cultured races on
the earth ? "
Outram looked his questioner all over, pulled his red, brist-
ling moustache, and answered sententiously and with pauses
between the words:
41 The whip — and — the — sop ! "
I907.] LISHEEN 583
"Who — what?" said the Professor, staring at him.
" The whip — and — the — sop ! " repeated Outram, with slower
and more prolonged pauses.
" I don't quite understand, my dear friend," said the Pro-
fessor. " You military men have the advantage of us literary
folk, in that you can express yourselves laconically and, if I
may use the expression, emphatically. The whip — and — the —
sop ? I never heard of such things, and I feel sure I have
read every book that was ever written about India."
"You won't find these things in books," said Outram.
" Where then ? " asked the- Professor.
"In real life," answered Outram, "of which books are but
a fallacious and lying presentment. India is governed," he con-
tinued, as the Professor was about to make a strong protest,
" by two things — the shades of Hastings, Clive, Gough, Have-
lock, and others; and is held down, strapped down," he said
with vivacity, " by the whip — and the sop. The sop is held in
the left hand, and is extended to those who are worth it. The
whip is held in the right hand behind the back — thus, and they
who won't accept the sop, must accept the whip; and it is
the less pleasant ot the two."
" Dear, dear, you surprise me very much," said the mysti-
fied Professor, " I must take note of this. It is most interest-
ing. The whip — and — the — sop. The whip in the left hand to
be extended- first ; and whosoever does not take the whip, must
swallow the sop. Most interesting from an ethnol — "
But just then the amiable Professor had to be recalled to
social duties; and, as he passed into the dining-room, his part-
ner was much embarrassed by hearing him murmur:
"The whip and the sop ! The whip — and — the — sop 1 Dear
me ! Strange I never heard of such things before 1 "
Mabel and Outram were the guests of the evening; and
occupied the place of honor next the host and hostess; and the
dinner drew wearily along. It was broken for Mabel by three
events. The first was that she was asked more than once by
the little amiable old lady of the tortoise-shell pince-nez, who
had flattered her with such consummate subtlety in the draw-
ing-room, whether she did not admire very much a spray of
lilies of the valley, which sparkled across the delicate back-
ground of a clump of maiden-hair ferns; and a magnificent
bunch of chrysanthemums, a name which the old lady feigned
5 84 LISHEEN [Aug.,
several times to forget, although lost in admiration of the su-
perb browns and coral reds of the winter flower. The second
was a startling statement made by a young lady that she bad
a pet poodle that would easily fit into, and be decidedly com-
fortable in one of the ruby finger glasses on the table. The
third was an animated discussion that was going on at the fur-
ther end of the table, within the circle dominated by the host-
ess, and limited to Outram and the Professor.
The latter had never got over his surprise at the naive ex-
planation of British supremacy in India that had been given by
Outram ; and, as he reflected during the pauses of the dinner
courses, he became convinced that either Outram, like many
other Anglo-Indians of whom he had heard, was profoundly
ignorant of the bearings of the vast question propounded by
himself, or else was deliberately mocking him. This latft idea
gradually became a certainty, as he observed the cynical man-
ner in which Outram seemed to treat every question, social or
otherwise, that came up for discussion at table ; and being a
man oi profound erudition, and enjoying a European reputa-
tion, he was much annoyed at the contemptuous flippancy of
this officer. He had a swift revenge.
A young girl, questioning Outram about Hindoo life and
manners, hinted her idea that the Brahmins were a class of
rare holiness of life and detachment from all earthly things.
This was quite enough to awaken all the angry contempt of
Outram for subject races of any kind.
" There is no measuring the depths of ignorance," he said,
"that exist among all Europeans on this subject. Books are
written that deserve only to be burned by the common hang-
man. You will see articles in the Fortnightly and Nineteenth
Century that should not be written by a clerk in a London
counting-house. Brahmins pious ? Brahmins disinterested ? We
will soon hear that a Jew hath a conscience ; or that a Fakir
is clean."
The Professor was gently toying with his dessert fork ; and
he looked up with a smile of bland satisfaction mantling his
rosy face, framed in silver white whiskers.
" I fear," he said, as if about to answer some foolish ques-
tion put by a beardless undergraduate, "that Mr. Outram is
too sweeping in his observations. There are distinctions in this
matter as in all things else. There is, of course, a certain class
90?.
if low-caste Brahmins — the Brahmin Sowkar, or the Marwar-
ee — a kind of priestly Shylocks, usurious and exacting. But,
hen, there is also the Chitpawan or Konkanee Brahmin, who
iave given us in India leading lights in every department of
octal and political life."
And the Professor laid down his fork and looked around,
s if he would ask: Is there any other point on which you
/ould desire to be enlightened?
Outram scowled at him with all the contempt of an ancient
xpert for a young amateur; and he asked in a chilling way:
S"The Professor has been in India, I presume?"
"Oh, no, not' at all"; said the Professor. The admission
[enerally brings a blush of inferiority with it; but not with
he Professor. "It is a pleasure in store — a pleasure in store!"
" But I have," said Outram with significance. " I have only
ust returned from fifteen years' service in every part of India,
m the Himalayas to Cape Comorin."
And it was I," said the Professor with modest assurance,
ho wrote the article on 'The Brahmins' for the Encyclo-
'dia Indica."
It was a triumph. Every one felt it. The sympathy of
he entire table was with the learned Professor. Mabel was
istening with a little embarrassment, but much interest.
"And do you hold, sir," said Outram icily, "that you can
;ather more information about a people or a race from books
—I presume you read a good deal on the subject?"
"I had to consult no less than three hundred and twenty-
even authors," said the Professor, "and to employ two aman-
lenses, in order to expedite the work."
" A great cry and little wool," said Outram offensively.
' And do you still think that the reading of books can give as
Jose an insight into the habits of a people as direct inter-
:ourse and observation ? "
"Certainly," said the amiable Professor, not at all heeding
he insult, " certainly, my dear sir. Is it not clear that the
inprejudiced observation of many persons, who have taken
heir ideas either from personal experience or the foresight of
>thers, should count more for truth than the observations of
me man, who possibly — I do not say it applies to you — pos-
ibly, may have been unable to divest himself of the prejudices
)f an official ? "
586 Li SHEEN [Aug.,
It sounded reasonable to all but Outram. He answered
again sharply :
" I have seen certain things and can testify to them. You
have never seen them and cannot testify. Which is the more
likely to have grasped the truth ? "
" Certainly I who have not seen these things/ 9 said th<
Professor.
" I think we shall leave the gentlemen to discuss the*
questions over their cigars/' said the hostess rising. "The)
are too deep for us poor women ! "
And with that sad confession of inferiority, the ladies swep
from the dining-room.
When, after some little time, the gentlemen rejoined them
it was quite clear there was not only an armistice, but a posi
tive alliance, between the Professor and his antagonist. Nay
the Professor had become enthusiastic about Outram; and ha<
scribbled over half a note-book with learned jottings for futur
reference. Blessed cigars ! Blessed Lady Nicotine ! How coul
any one, least of all a king, have written against thee, tho
peacemaker amongst men ?
"We mustn't," said the Professor, as he sat comfortabi
upon a sofa, propped with pillows, and held his tea in his le:
hand, whilst he waved his right hand gently, " we mustn
again introduce learned ethnological discussions amongst ladies
but my friend, Mr. Outram, has been just telling us a story-
an experience of Indian life — which will bear repetition and 1
not quite out of place in a drawing-room. Ahem!"
Outram drew his red eyebrows together in a kind of scov
but instantly recovered himself, and toying with a teaspoon, 1
said :
" The Professor is too kind. I fear the story is not qui
so interesting as his benevolence would lead you to suppose
" Let us be judges of that, Mr. Outram," said his hoste
" It will have the merit of novelty to us all, except, of coun
Mrs. Outram."
" Don't except me, please," said Mabel. " I do not recc
lect any incident in Mr. Outram's Indian life that would mei
the Professor's encomiums."
There was a note — a slight note of sarcasm here ; and Out
ram winced under it. But he threw the feeling aside gaily.
" Quite true. I did not deem it sufficiently interesting t<
V :_-r- : xr . L:_r:..-:
.1 — .
'v *
u ■ 4:
^ ^1*—* nur% •- • """f* *~
-*-■!-. i r»t
•* <*
. -S ^.;:t. . rr^T sir :. - : : . :■>: .
^"Cof -vrrr vie c c *<■:-■:•- % ;-
1:1 §*r w::_.i fcri.T :n: *j. . ; *.
Passed :h*: ^r£j . ir j i : * .- . ^
^uec :"-• chili, i-i <*;■: .v
throw the wretchei :j
*» .■ \
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x ■*
■ V
.\ . %
: a. v
■ \.
. m
Or kidlings' fames s;i:ic::;.v. .;>^.-.: ; v - *. . \ .
he took back the chili. „»r.i xi".«: >,- •••.■«•
he had no sooner ione so. than .; :•.,-,, .,!••!•■ %•,«..
\ " .
588 LISHEEN [Aug.,
tions were asked that could not be answered ; inquiries were
made that oould not be a shelved ; and in the end, the good
man was subjected to such obloquy and calumny, that he de.
termined to part with the girl, although she had become as
dear to him as a daughter. People at home, who read books"
— here Outram glanced at the Professor — " are at liberty to
form their own crude opinions about foreign races ; but I tell
you " — here Ou tram's voice became so fierce and hoarse that
the ladies started — "that it needs experience of those con*
quered and half-savage tribes to understand their devilish ma-
chinations. Fortunately, like your good Irish here, they hiss
and spit at each other; and would sell their fathers for a
rupee; and this alone makes their subjection easy.
" Well," he continued more calmly, as if he were freeing
himself from all personal interest in the matter, " it then be-
came a question where Ballajee Chitnees could send his adopted
child, whom he had called Satara. At length he sent her far
up the country to a fellow- Mussulman, reputed pious and hon-
orable; but even there vengeance, Brahminical vengeance, fol-
lowed the girl ; and, after some months, her new protector was
glad to part with her to a certain British official, who,. as he
knew well, snapped his fingers at the whole tribe of Brahmins
and Mohammedans.
" Under his protection she grew up, a tall, thin girl, with
soft black eyes, lustreless unless when excited, and then, by all
the gods of India, you never saw such sheet-lightning as that
which shot and played beneath that girl's forehead."
He stopped a moment as if conjuring up that figure. He
did not notice his wife's eyes fixed steadily upon him with
awakened curiosity.
" I forgot to say," he continued, " that she had not a baubee
in the way of money ; but there was found in her garments a
ring, a strange intaglio, resembling those single eyes in triangles
which sometimes represent the Trinity in Christian countries.
The eye was cut deep into a kind of opalesque stone, and the
latter was ringed in solid gold in the shape of a cobra. This
does not sound very strange. What is strange is, that in the
light the stone was a dead, dull, pearly thing; but in the dark
it seemed to flame and smoke just as phosphorus does. And
there was a strange and ominous similarity between the flames
of that intaglio and those which shot across that girl's eyes
I907-] LISHEEN 589
when she grew excited. Whether the ring was of value in a
lapidary's eyes I cannot say. Some would think the stone val-
uable in itself; some thought it valueless. But it was a talis-
man reputed to have the power of warding off death from the
wearer."
" But, my dear sir," interrupted the Professor, " that's quite
impossible — superstitious, you know ! Mere relics of paganism.
I wrote an article on amulets many years ago for the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica — the gist of which was that these things were
all right for the Middle Ages — Holy Grails, Lady of Shalott,
Magic Mirrors, etc. ; but they are completely out of place in
the nineteenth century."
'• Do you think so ? " drawled Outram. " There is one wise
saw, Professor, I would recommend for your consideration:
•" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio* —
" You know the rest. Any one who has betn in the East, and
has not merely read of it, will tell you that Europeans had
better restrain their expressions of omniscience when dealing
with these questions. At any rate, I can testify that more
than once I escaped a sudden death whilst wearing that ring.
Call it coincidence, if you please, I think it was more."
"But the story, the story, Mr. Outram," exclaimed the la-
dies. " What became of Satara ? "
" Oh, Satara ! Well, she grew up rapidly under her British
protector and developed extraordinary powers. She could do
what she pleased with her wonderful hands — string beads and
corals, arranging colors in a way that would make Europeans
despair ; . she could carve metals in a kind of repousse work that
was a miracle to behold; she could cut intaglios and raise
cameos on all kinds of stone; and shape and polish alabaster
and other vases until they shone like precious stones. And she
interwove with all her work a kind of symbolism, never allow-
ing the smallest thing to pass from her hands without some
mute lesson or warning conveyed in a sign, sometimes almost
imperceptible, but always clear to the initiated. Where she
learned that symbolism no one could tell. Probably in the
mountains under Poojarees or Tibetan Lamas, who had strayed
across the frontier, and who seem to know all that is worth
knowing about the other world.
590 Li SHEEN [Aug.,
"Well, things went on in this way for some years. Vari.
ous attempts were made to kidnap the girl ; but she was safe
under the English flag. Then a strange thing occurred. Un-
known to himself, Satara had contracted a very strong affec
tion for her protector ; and one day, in a fit of jealousy, she
upbraided him in terrible language for some imagined slight
He resented it, and turned her from the house. Then he re-
lented and brought her back. She used to hang around his
room, chanting strange poems in her native dialect :
"'What has a slave done to anger the Son of the Priests
of the Sun ? All night long have I lain flat on my face on
my bed ; and there was no one to give me food or drink.
Who was the Mighty One that saved me from the anger of
Sira and the teeth of the serpent of the desert ? Who was
raised up by the full speech of the gods to be my father; and
who hath taken the place of Medudu my brother? And shall
I be cast away from before the face of my Lord; and never
more break his bread and wait upon him ? '
"This was all very well ; but again the same awful jealousy
broke out, and again she was dismissed.
" The third time she came again, purring and fawning around
him like a wild cat ; and again he drove her forth. She went
away meekly, having first deposited the ring on his dressing-
table, with a few kind words of farewell. But next morning
when he awoke he found himself all coated as with silver. He
was a leper from head to heel."
The ladies cowered together and uttered little shrieks. But
Outram went on :
" He came down to Madras, where I met him. For six
months the doctors were dosing him with all kinds of medicine;
and at last he was partially cured. Some fakirs offered to cure
him wholly by incantations; but he would have none of them.
When I was coming home he gave me the magic ring."
"Where is it? Show it to us! " exclaimed the company.
" Not now, not now ! " he said. " My wife — "
Here for the first time he glanced towards Mabel. White
as alabaster, she lay back on the pillows of the sofa in a swoon
that seemed like death.
1907.] LISHEEN 591
Chapter II.
THE NEW OVERSEER.
Hugh Hamberton and his ward had accompanied the mourn-
ful procession from Lisheen as far as the main road, when, on
a sudden thought, the former wheeled round his horse, and
both rode back to the farmyard. The old people !were still
sitting disconsolate on the wreck of their little household fur-
niture, and Hamberton approached them with a proposal to
come over and settle down near Brandon Hall.
"You cannot stay here/ 9 he said kindly, "there is no shel-
ter for you. Come with me, and I shall put you in a new
cottage and get work for you."
They thanked him ; but no !
" Here I was born, and here my father and mother lived
before me," said the old woman. " An' here I was married,
and my children first saw the light. I cannot lave it now till
I lave it for the last time."
" But you have no shelter, no house room," pleaded Ham-
berton. "You cannot remain here to perish with cold and
hunger."
" No matter," was the reply. " God is good ! We'll make
a little bed for ourselves in the cowhouse or barn."
' " But that will be illegal possession, and you can be arrested,"
said Hamberton, his British ideas of the supremacy of the law
rising above every other consideration.
" So much the better," said the old woman, " we can then
go and jine our poor children, and be all together again."
Disappointed, and almost angry at such stubbornness, Ham-
berton was about to leave the yard, when he saw the solitary
figure of Maxwell bent together in the growing dusk. He rode
over and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Come, my man," he said, "you have no business here
any longer."
Maxwell arose. His face- was so drawn and pallid from suf-
fering that Hamberton hardly knew him.
" Yes ; thank you very much. I will go," Maxwell said.
"Then we'll ride over and send a trap for you," said Ham-
berton.
592 LISHEEN [Aug.,
"No, no; I shall walk/' said Maxwell. "It is only a matter
of a few hours."
" But you look weak and suffering," said Claire Moulton.
" We'll send the trap, and you can be with us sooner than if
you walked."
" No, no ; thank you ever so much," he said. " The truth
is, I am anxious to get away from this place as speedily as pos-
sible."
" Very good, then," said Hamberton. " We shall ride over
and make things ready for you. Go straight to Donegan's cot-
tage. Donegan ! You'll remember ? "
" Yes, thank you. I shall be there between eight and nine
o'clock."
And Hamberton and his ward rode away.
Maxwell looked around the wretched place and picked out
of the cottage debris his little valise, now much dilapidated.
He went slowly across the yard and accosted the desolate old
people.
" I'm going away," he said humbly, " perhaps forever. I
cannot leave your hospitable house without thanking you for
all your goodness and kindness to me while I was with you."
" And the devil's own bad return you made," said the old
man turning away.
" You do not understand. Some day I will explain ; and all
will be cleared up," said Maxwell.
"It will," said the old man bitterly. "It will be cleared up
that we kep' a rogue and a thraitor under our roof."
" Asy now, asy, Owen," said his good wife. " Shure, how
do we know ? In any case, it was for the love of God we tuk
you in, an' kep' you. An* 'tis for the love of the same God
we forgive you, if you have done anythin' agin us."
"Then, you'll say good-bye?" he said, holding out his hand.
With the old instinct, the poor woman wiped her clammy
hand on her check apron, and put it in his palm.
"Say 'God bless you!' also," he asked.
"Yes; good-bye, and God bless you!" said the pious old
woman. " Sure, a prayer like that can harrum no wan ! "
" God will reward you ! " he said, turning mournfully away.
It was a long and weary road that led to the village of
Cahercon, nestling under the mighty shadow of Brandon Hill,
and touching the hem of the mighty ocean in the recesses of
1907.] LIS HE en fc 593
Brandon Bay. He had hardly gone a mile from Li sheen, when
the hills sloped up precipitously, and he saw he had to make
bis way through a mountain pass or gorge that shelved up-
wards and upwards, until it touched the summit, and then sloped
down to the valleys through which the river makes its way
to the sea. It was a lonely walk. The moment he entered the
gorge, nothing could be seen but the blue stars glinting softly
down, all their vast splendors shorn away by distance, until
they became but points of light in- the illimitable blackness of
space.
He was hungry and weak and melancholy; and it is these
things that make men meditative. And Maxwell's thoughts ran
back to the problem he had suggested to himself so many years
ago in Trinity ; and, looking down on the past few months he
had spent there in that lonely valley* and looking up at the
heavens, so solemn, so sad, so silent, he heard himself mutter-
ing : Yes,
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
And the thought came uppermost : Would it not be as well,
here and now, in this remote mountain valley, to lie down and
seek the rest that is eternal ? For old sayings, old songs, old
utterances came upwards, and he thought :
"And if there be no meeting past the grave;
If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis vast ;
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep,
For God still giveth his beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep he wills — so best."
I suppose then, he considered, I should now turn aside from
the road, and lie down on the wet bracken or furze there in
some mountain cavity, where the eyes of man seldom rest; and
suppose that, in a few days or weeks, some shepherd's dog
should find me. There would be an inquest; and the verdict:
" Tramp, died from hunger and exposure. Name unknown.
Supposed deserter, etc." And then all would be over. No
more problems; no more speculations. Absorbed in the Infin-
ite like all the many millions before and after me. That is all.
It was but a fancy, a dream occasioned by hunger. But he
shook it aside as a cowardly suggestion ; and had he not a mis.
vol, lxxxv. — 38
594 LISHEEN [Aug.,
si on, growing every day more interesting and absorbing, as he
mixed more freely with his fellow- beings? He turned aside
where a laborer's cottage fronted the road, across which the
ruddy light from the fireplace streamed. The family were at
their frugal supper. Bareheaded the father sat at the head of
the table, his children grouped around him. The good house-
wife was going about busily. It was a picture of life, social
happiness, comfort, love, consecrated by poverty.
" God save you I " said Maxwell, in the country dialect. He
had learned so much.
" God save you kindly," was the response. There certainly
was some reserve. Tramps were constantly coming around, and
frightening women and children. And Maxwell knew his ap-
pearance was hardly respectable.
"I'm weak with hunger 1" said Maxwell.
" That's a dizase that's aisily cured," said the man of the
house. " Here, Sandheen, quit out o' that, and give your chair
to the sthranger."
Sandheen, with his mouth crammed with pdtatoes, reluctant-
ly rose, carrying with him an armful of potatoes. Maxwell sat
down, eagerly swallowed some home-made bread and milk, and
turned to go.
"You're in a mighty hurry intirely," said the man of the
house.
" 1 must be at Cahercon to-night," said Maxwell, taking up
his valise.
" Oh, that's where the grate gintleman lives," said his host.
" Mr. Hamberton ? Yes ; I have been evicted with the rest
of the family down there at Lisheen to-day; and am offered
employment by Mr. Hamberton."
"Wisha, were you now? Sit down and tell us all about it,
man," said the host. "We hard of the eviction; but that's all.
Tell us all about it."
It was the smallest recompense he could make for the gen-
erous hospitality offered him. But he delayed only a little
time ; and soon got out again under the stars.
His way now lay through a deep defile in the mountains,
which rose black and threatening at his right hand. At the
left side there was after a time a deep declivity broadening out
into a plain ; and he thought he saw the glint of the stars in
a tiny lake, and heard the murmur of a river on its way to
1907.] LISHEEN 595
he sea. That river he soon had to cross; and, down on the
evel road, he made his way swiftly forward, till the lights of
he little hamlet broke across his way. He found Doncgan's
loose easily, and had a warm welcome. The first thing that
(truck him was the sense of comfort and perfect neatness all
iround the cottage, contrasting so strongly with the discomfort
ind sordid surroundings at Li sheen. The floor was tiled and
spotless; there was a large range whose steels shone in the
amplight; the dresser was well filled with plates and dishes
md tins; the children were gathered around the kitchen table,
reading by the light of a lamp whose opal shade threw a golden
light on their books. Donegan was a tall, thin, Celtic figure,
sinewy, clean, alert, with deep blue eyes shining out from be-
neath black eyebrows. His wife was a small, blond woman,
irery quietly but carefully dressed.
She came forward without any bustle, and taking the valise
from Maxwell's hand, she said :
"You must be both tired and hungry I"
"I am both," he said cheerfully, his spirits rising with the
brightness of the scene around. " But I think I've come to the
right place for both I "
"Well, sit down and make yourself at home," she said.
" I'll have a cup of tea and a couple of eggs for you in a
minit ! "
" You come from the eviction at Lisheen ? " said her hus-
band, bending his keen eyes on Maxwell.
"Yes"; said the latter. "It has been a sad and a trying
day." He said no more, but looked vacantly at the range fire.
After supper he was shown into a small, neat bedroom,
poorly but tastily furnished. There was a camp bed in a cor-
ner, the linens were spotless, the blankets soft and clean. The
counterpane was of cotton with a heavy, honeycombed pattern.
There was a washstand, a dressing-table of deal, and a small
strip of carpet near the bed. A few pious pictures decorated
the papered walls. He crept swiftly into bed ; and the sense
Df comfort on the hard mattress and beneath the cold, clean
sheets kept him awake for a while. He thought that then and
there was the beginning of a change in his fortunes, and the
end of his trials. But his thoughts would revert to the events
of the day just passed — the mournful horror of which was op-
pressive.
596 LISHEEN [Aug,
He shook it off, as all troubles should be thrust aside by
great thoughts. And great thoughts — thoughts of self-sacrifice
and benevolence, thoughts of human fellowship cemented by
noble actions, thoughts of a glorious surprise for the poor peo-
ple with whom his life had been so strangely linked, of their
resurrection and subsequent life, freed from all lower cares for-
ever, wider and nobler thoughts of the regeneration of a whole
race to be effected by new methods on a broad scale of hu-
manitarianism and justice — flooded his soul and seemed to fill
him with a new sense of exaltation and happiness, under which
he passed away into the realms of unconsciousness and happy
dreams.
One of these disturbed him much. It was just before the
dawn, and it woke him up with a merry peal of bells, as Don-
egan burst into his room.
"That's the seven o'clock bell. You're not to mind it, the
mashther said, this morning. I'm off."
He was in such a mighty hurry that when he returned at
twelve o'clock to dinner, Maxwell could not help interrogating
him.
" Oh, begor," he said, " if we aren't inside the works at the
last sthroke of the bell, it manes a quarther's wages docked
for that day."
" Smart practice ! " thought Maxwell. " But," he said, "you
have excellent wages ? "
" Divil a betther ! " said Donegan. "A pound a week, house
free, two tons of cOal at Christmas, and a quarther of garden.
T herself aims a few shillings by washin' ; an* all round we
are fairly thrated enough ! "
" An' quite satisfied, of course ? " said Maxwell.
" Well, yes " ; said Donegan. " There was wan fella wanted
to make a fortin all of a heap ; but, begad, he came to grief.
I'll tell you the shthory to-night. But the masther would like
to see you to-day!"
"Where?" said Maxwell. "At the works?"
"No; up at the grate house," said Donegan. "He said
about three or four o'clock ! "
" All right. I shall be there," said Maxwell.
It was an eventful interview; and the most eventful feature
of it was that Maxwell noticed on his entrance into the dining-
room, to which he was most reluctantly introduced by the liv-
1907.] LISHEEN 597
eried footman, that he was treated with some deference, although
Hamberton addressed him brusquely ; and that Miss Moulton
seemed unable to rest her eyes on her work, but was watching
him intently. It was the first time since he left Dublin that
he was in a room that recalled, by its surroundings, old asso-
ciations ; and everything in the furniture, the hangings, the
sideboard, the glass and silver, the noble pictures, seemed to
smite his senses with eager and pleasant suggestions The
contrast between such elegance, and between the whole ap-
pearance of this gentleman and lady and his own shabbiness,
smote him with shame, and he blushed and fumbled uneasily
with his worn and broken hat.
"Sit down!" said Hamberton. "Arc you all right after
your journey ? Was Donegan all right ? "
"Yes"; said Maxwell. "I feel well this' morning. The
Donegans were very kind."
" Look here, Maxwell/' said Hamberton, playing with a pa-
per knife, but watching his visitor keenly, "you're a bit of a
mystery, you know. At least, it is quite clear you don't be*
long to the people around here. By the way, Claire, isn't Max-
well our landlord's name ? "
" Yes " ; said Claire, " that's his name I "
" And a d d bad landlord he is," said Hamberton. " I
had the devil's work to get a lease from the fellow, or his
agent, for this place. He had as much fuss over it as if we
were buying land in Belgravia. Well, Maxwell, you're a mys-
tery ; but you have an indefeasible right to keep your own
secrets, and I'm the last man in the world to break in on your
privacy. You're not strong; so I have determined to make
you time- keeper and overseer in these works. Bells go at
seven, twelve, one, and six. Half time on Saturday. Every
man must be inside the gates at the last stroke of bell, or lose
a quarter. Do you understand ? "
Maxwell nodded.
" You'll also hold yourself in readiness to meet me at any
time and do any account work or other I shall select. Your
wages — one pound a week, cottage furnished and free. You're
not married ? "
Maxwell started; and, forgetting his part for the moment,
looked towards Miss Moulton and smiled. Strange to say, she
smiled back, and a faint tinge ran over her face and forehead.
598 LISHEEN [Aug.,
" All right. Then we'll get an old woman to do the neces-
sary things for you. Nance Brien — Would she do, Claire?"
" Yes " ; said Miss Moulton abstractedly.
" Donegan will show you your cottage," said Hamberton,
bringing the interview to a conclusion. "Anything else?" he
asked, as Maxwell seemed to hesitate.
"No; but—"
" Say it out, man, whatever it is," said Hamberton.
"Well, you see, I'm very shabby in dress," said Maxwell,
with a faint blush. " I know I'm presuming too much ; but
perhaps you would advance — "
"No"; thundered Hamberton. "I never advance wages.
But I'll see to it. Your clothes are good enough for every- day
work. I suppose 'tis Sunday you're thinking of. By the way,
what religion do you profess?"
" Well, Church of Ireland," said Maxwell.
"Very good. 'But we have no church here, thank Heaven.
What have you been doing for the last few months on Sun-
days?"
" Smoked a cigarette whenever I could get it ; and read
Shakespeare," said Maxwell.
"Read Shakespeare!" echoed Hamberton. "You're the
very man I want. Have you read any other authors?"
"Yes, all"; said Maxwell, recounting all his literary ac-
quaintances, ending with Ibsen and Tolstoi.
"The man I'm looking for all njy life," said Hamberton
half-musingly. "I don't ask how you have become acquainted
with all the demigods of literature ; but you can help me ma-
terially to build up the social and intellectual character of my
people. Have you any objection, or is it in your line?"
" It has been the dream of my life," said Maxwell. " It is
why I am here."
" Then you have had experience," said Hamberton. " How
did you succeed with these poor people over at Lisheen?"
" I dared not even attempt it," he replied.
"Dared not?"
" Yes — dared not " ; said Maxwell with some heat, that
glowed through his eyes and face. " How could I speak of
such things to a people sunk in all kinds of abject poverty,
"^th. the hand of the bailiff ever on their doots, and the awful
v of landlordism glooming over all ? What time had tbey
1907.] LIS HE EN 599
lor such things ? From cockcrow to sundown it was work,
work, work, and work, not for themselves but for another.
Where's the use of talking about the resurrection of a people
until you remove the stone from the door of their sepulchre?
You cannot have a nation without manhood ; you cannot have
manhood without education; you cannot have education with-
out leisure and freedom from sordid cares; and you cannot
have the latter until landlordism is removed wholly and -entirely
from the land. We are Protestants in some shape or form.
But I tell you, we would have succeeded in making our Catho-
lic countrymen brutes, were it not for the saving power and
grace of their religion. Don't wonder at my heat, Mr. Ham-
berton, Miss Moulton. If some one doesn't speak, the very
stones will cry out against us."
"True, my young friend, true. I wish to Heaven your
namesake, Maxwell, was listening to you. Meanwhile, it is a
good rule to find the work nearest to your hand and do it.
I'll place at your disposal all the books you need."
Chapter III.
DEPOSITIONS.
•
The trial of Pierce and Debbie McAuliffe was swift; the
judgment summary and vindictive. These were the days when
Ireland was governed by satraps — half-pay officers, returned
Indians, etc. — and when the law was stretched to the utmost
against agrarian offences of every kind. The resistance to evic.
tion was grave enough ; the wounding of the officer made it
heinous. The two young people were sentenced to six months'
hard labor, and then to find sureties for good behavior for
twelve months afterwards.
Young and healthy, they bore bravely up against the rigors
of confinement for some weeks. Then, the meagre food began
to tell on constitutions used to plentiful, if hard fare. Pierce
bit his lip and made no complaint. But after the lapse of a
couple of months, the want of food weakened Debbie's mind,
and, losing all her pride of being a victim of English law, she
began to brood over her sorrows and losses. The dread # soli-
tary confinement, too, began to affect her mind. With no in-
tellectual resources, hardly able to read, she was thrown in
upon herself, and the mind, like a mill without grist, began to
600 LISHEEN [Aug.,
grind terribly upon itself. Strange hallucinations would arise,
dreams within dreams, even in her waking moments; and the
centre of the horrible maelstrom of thought was ever and al-
ways Maxwell. By degrees the angry thoughts that would come
uppermost against him, and which in the beginning she sup-
pressed with an effort, began to conquer her; and she raged
in silence against him, all her smothered and untold affection
tortured into ungovernable hate.
At last, one day, a visitor told her that Maxwell was in-
stalled prime favorite at Brandon Hall ; and had been trans-
formed from the aspect and condition of a tramp or laborer
into the decent costume and appearance of an overseer. Nay,
he had been actually seen out at sea in a boat with Miss
Moulton. That same day her father and mother were brought
in by the police from Lisheen. They had retaken possession
of a house ; were again evicted and warned. They again de-
fied the law, and illegally broke thfe padlocks that had been
placed on the doors; and were now arrested on the charge.
The thought drove the girl wild. She paced up and down her
narrow cell, her hands clutched fiercely behind her back. Then,
in a sudden but not unpremeditated impulse, she rang her bell
violently and the matron appeared.
" I wants to see the Governor," said Debbie doggedly.
" The Governor ? " echoed the matron doubtingly.
"Yes," said Debbie excitedly. "I wants to see the Gov-
ernor, and at wanst."
" Very well," said the mavron, locking the door carefully
and departing on the strange errand.
She returned quickly, and informed Debbie that the Gov-
ernor would see her after dinner.
" Come then," said the matron.
The Governor sat at his desk in his little office near the
front entrance to the prison. He was an old man, pale and
grave, like one who had had much responsibility, and had been
well schooled by experience. He beckoned to the girl to be
seated, and ordered the matron to remain.
" I wants to see you alone," said Debbie, with an air of
defiance.
"That cannot be, my good girl," said the Governor gently.
" You have something to say or some complaint to make, and
we must have a witness."
I907.J
LlSHEEN
601
"Whin the gintlemen comes around, they sees the prisoners
done in their cells without anny witnesses," said Debbie.
" True. But that is for complaints against officials. If you
lave any complaint against Matron Hickson, I shall take it in
ler absence."
Debbie moistened her dry lips, and rubbed her clammy
lands on her check apron.
" 'Tis no complaint I have agen any of ye," she said.
' 'Tis a murdherer that I wants to get what he desarves."
"Do you mean a man who has actually committed a mur-
ier," said the Governor, " or do you mean a ne'er-do-well,
who ought to be in gaol?"
" I mane a man who killed a girl," said Debbie, " and
whose conscience is throubling him, night and day, over it."
"That is a very serious charge, my good girl," said the
Governor. "You understand the consequences; and that you
will be bound to appear against this man ? "
Nature began to struggle against the passion for revenge in
;he girl's breast; but she held it down firmly, and answered:
" I do. I only want him to get what he desarves."
" Very well, then," said the Governor, drawing over a sheet
>f foolscap. "I shall takes notes now of your evidence; you
will make your after depositions on oath before a magistrate.
What is your name?"
"Debbie McAuliffe." .
"That is Deborah, I suppose. Place of residence?"
" Lisheen."
" Yes, Lisheen " ; said the Governor. " Now an
rler Majesty's prison at Tralee."
I "Now, what is the name of the man ?"
"Robert Maxle," said Debbie.
"Very good. Trade, or profession, or business?
le?"
"He was workin' wid us," said Debbie, "as a farm-hand.
But I suspects he's somethin' else."
"What do you suspect?"
" Well, some says he's a desarter from the army ; but I
enow he's a gintleman."
"A gentleman?" said \ the Governor, laying down his pen,
ind looking searchingly at the girl, and then at the matron.
'Yes"; said Debbie, seeing his incredulity. "Maybe as
inmate of
What is
602 LISHEEN [Aug.,
you lave mi tell me shtory me own way, without yer cross-
hackling, you'd get at the thruth sooner."
" Very well/' said the Governor, taking up his pen again
*' But be careful, my good girl. This is more important than
you think."
Again Debbie moistened her lips, and choked down the
emotion of affection, which she had conceived for Maxwell, by
steadily keeping his image away from her mind. Then she re-
sumed :
" About six months ago, it may be more or less, a thramp
kem to our dure. There was no wan inside but tnc poor mo-
ther. We were all out in the fields. He had nothin' wid him,
but an ould bag. Me mother gave him somethin' to ate and
dhrink ; and whin we kem back from the fields, me father tnk
pity on him, and axed him in to shtay wid us, as he couldn't
do better for himself. So he shtayed. .We tuk him to be a
desarter from the army, bekase he looked like a sojer; but I
knew from the beginnin' that he was a gintleman — "
"How did you know that?" asked the Governor.
" Be his inside flannels and fine linen, when I was washin'
thim," said Debbie, with a blush.
" Well ? "
"There wor other raysons, too," continued Debbie, "bat
they were nayther here nor there. At all events, he shtayed
wid us, wprkin' a little, ontil about Chrismas, whin wan day,
he tuk it into his head to go away. He was goin' out the
gate, whin I wint afther him, and shtopped him, and axed him
to come back. He didn't say a worrd, but kem back, an' 'twas
well he did, for that night he was down in a ragin' faver. We
nursed him, meself and me mother, through that faver," con-
tinued Debbie, taking up a corner of her apron, and twisting it
around her finger, whilst her tears fell fast at the recollection
of those days and nights, and all the affectionate attention they
had lavished on Maxwell. "We brought him the preesht to
console him, although he was not belongin' to us, ontil at lasbt
he got well, and was able to set up. Thin, one day a gintle-
man and lady called to see him ; an 9 she put her eyes an him,
an' fram that day out we got no good a him. But me brother
sushpected somethin' ; an' he watched him. He saw enough to
make his hair shtand on ind. Maxle, this man, used to be goin'
up be himself to a plantation, or screen up over the house; an 1
LISHEEN
there me brother Pierry watched him. He saw him carryin' on
seen antics that he got frightened and axed me to go wid him.
Twas a moonlight night, an' there was a heavy fog, but we
could see everything. This man came out from the trees into
an open place, and began callin' on the sperrit of the girl he
killed, an* goin' up an' down, nether and over, ravin' and tearin'
like a madman I didn't see the ghosht meself, but Pierry, me
brother, did. Well, thin, to make a long shtory short, he kep'
up this cryin' and moanin' for half an hour ; and thin he wint
through the whole thing agin, murderin' the poor girl and stiflin'
her. I wanted to come away, but me brother wouldn't lave
me. So we shtopped onti! he kem out agin, and began to keen
over the poor corp, an' callin' on all the divils in hell to blasht
an' blow him for all he was worth. Then the cool divil lighted
his pipe and began to shmoke as if nothin' had happened; an'
we kem away dead wid the fright of it."
"But what was the girl's name?" asked the Governor.
"How do I know?" said Debbie. "Sure he wasn't goin'
to tell us."
'" H'm," said the Governor, musing on the strange story
"And where is this man now?"
" I'm tould he's over at a place called Brandon Hall," said
Debbie. " An' he's galivantin' about with another girl there. I
suppose he'll kill her too."
"Brandon Hall? That's where Mr. Hamberton lives," said
the Governor.
"Yes"; said Debbie. "An' 'twas he and some girl wid
him that kem over and turned him' agin us the day we wor
th run out."
"Very well, my good girl," said the Governor rising. "That
will do now for the present. I'll just read over your informa-
tion from my notes, and you can verify them ; and afterwards,
you can make the usual depositions before a magistrate. But
I never heard of the murder of any girl in this neighborhood.
(Did you, Mrs. Hickson ? "
"No"; said Mrs. Hickson. "Not for years around here."
"But this man was from Dublin," insisted Debbie. "I tould
you he was a gintleman, an' from far away."
"Oh, very good," said the Governor. "Now, listen; and
make any corrections you please ! "
He read over the girl's statement from his notes, slowly and
604 LISHEEN [Aug.,
emphatically, dwelling on what he deemed the important points
in the narrative. He then asked her whether she was pre-
pared to abide by what she had said. Debbie gave a reluc-
tant answer. The horror of the affair and of its consequences
was beginning, to smite her with a kind of remorse. She was
then asked to sign her name to the paper, which she did with
trembling hand. The matron witnessed it, and took her back
to her cell.
Left alone with her own thoughts, and reflecting on what she
had done, a sudden flood of feeling swept over her weak mind,
and nearly broke down her reason. It is always the case with
weakened intellects, that they are goaded into sudden and often
irremediable courses under the influence of passion or emotion;
and then sink down into corresponding despondency and dread
of the very evil they had been so exultant in committing. The
evening had come down, too, quickly ; the darkness was gather-
ing around the lonely girl in her whitewashed cell, and all the
phantoms of a highly-strung imagination began to assemble
around her, and torment her. The strong affection she had con-
ceived for Maxwell — the tenderness of which she was uncon-
scious when she called him back from the road, and which
grew into a deeper feeling from the sense of the help and pro-
tection she had given to the sick man — now revived, as she
dwelt on every particular of their lives. His gentleness, his
courage, his unfailing urbanity; the long evenings around the
hearth, when he had whiled away the weary hours by stories
and such interesting conversation, his deference towards the old
people, his patience with rough food and homely bedding and
the hardships of rural life; above all, his demeanor towards her-
self, treating her with the respect due to one of high rank, and
never resenting her practical jokes and stinging allusions, all
came back with the lonely hours, until she paced her cell with
long, fierce strides, and something like madness seemed to burn
into her brain.
She flung herself upon her bed and tried to calm her ago-
nized brain. In vain. She tossed from side to side, rose up,
and paced her cell again. Her supper, thin gruel and bread,
was passed in through the aperture in the door. She swallowed
it half-unconsciously and only because the pangs of hunger were
irresistible. At last, when the hour for retiring came, she knelt
down by her bed, and began to pray. The old familiar prayers
1907. J LISHEEN 605
came to her lips, but now without meaning or unction ; and
she started up, almost shrieking:
" Mother of God in Heaven, have pity on me this night ! "
and commenced pacing her cell again.
At midnight, she lay down undressed ; but her restless brain
throbbed back over the past, recalling with terrible distinctness
all that had occurred, whilst her conscience kept asking: What
business was it of hers if Maxwell had committed murder ?
Were there not police and detectives, whose business it was to
discover these things ? And would she not forevermore be
branded as an approver ? And how could she stand in a court
in her prison- clothes and give evidence? And evermore her
brain would keep repeating: Too late! Too late! You have
taken a step that cannot evermore be retraced.
After some hours of such torture, the weary brain stopped
its wild workings for a moment, and she sank into a troubled
sleep. But here again all the sub-consciousness of her mind
became furiously wakeful, and she had some fearful dreams,
rushing wildly without sequence or cohesion into each other —
a panorama of horrid and repulsive pictures, broken, distorted,
and only uniform in their hideousness, as they glided into each
other. In the last, she stood perforce on the drop, side by
side with Maxwell. She was to die with him. She saw all the
lugubrious preparations that were being made for their execu-
tion. She seemed not to care, until she thought she heard
Maxwell's voice muffled from beneath the white cap: "Debbie,
forgive me ! " She tried to catch his hand in a farewell, but
her hands were tied together; and in the effort to break the
ligature, she woke. She felt the cold, damp sweat of terror on
her forehead, as the gray, silent dawn crept in through the
barred window of her cell.
She rose instantly; and violently jerked the bell. The night-
matron appeared.
"I wants to see the Governor, and immajietly," said the
half- frantic girl.
" Go back to bed, and keep yourself quiet," said the matron.
" No, no, no " ; said Debbie. " I wants to see him at
wanst. I tould him a lot o' lies yesterday ; and maybe I'd get
an innicent man hanged."
"Well, he can't be hanged to-day," said the matron. "You
can see the Governor after breakfast. Lie down an' try to sleep."
606 LlSHEEN [Aug.,
" God help me! There's no more shleep for me/' said the
poor girl. So the matron drew out the prison-door and locked it
After breakfast she saw the Governor again.
" I wants to tell you/' she said abruptly, " that I tould a
parcel of lies yesterday about that man. I was mad jealous,
whin I hard he wos keepin' company with another girl over
there at Cahercon."
The old man looked at her keenly but compassionately.
He then touched the bell.
" Send Mrs. Hickson here ! " he said.
The matron appeared. •
"Mrs. Hickson, has the doctor called yet?"
"No, sir; he'll be here at eleven."
"Well, then, let him see this poor girl first. I think she is
a case for infirmary treatment."
"I'm not sick," said Debbie. "'Tis throuble of mind. As
you tell me that that man — that Maxle won't be hanged, I'll
be all right agin."
"I think I may promise that," said the Governor. "But
you must see the doctor and get examined. Please see to it,
Mrs. Hickson."
And Debbie was placed in the infirmary that evening.
Meanwhile, the one most interested in this little drama,
was pursuing his own course with a singular degree of success,
and some happiness. He soon perceived that the conditions
adapted to the social and intellectual resurrection of the people,
were here realized; that is, material comfort and well-being
were secured without the nervous dread of being removed or
destroyed. This constituted the element of safety, the one ele-
ment that has always been unhappily absent from nearly every
department of social life in Ireland. For Hamberton, though
a strict disciplinarian over his men, was very just, and even
generous with them when he saw there was a disposition to act
fairly towards him. Towards Ned Galway; and such schemers,
he was inexorable ; and yet, even alter Ned's dismissal from
the works, Hamberton contrived to perform many a secret act
of kindness towards him.
Here then was the foundation for the very work Maxwell
had set out to perform ; and he threw himself into it with
energy. In a short time he had completely gained Hamber-
ton's confidence, and could count on Miss Moulton's co-opera-
I907-] L1SHEEN
tion. By degrees, little shelves of books made their appear-
ance in the cottages — pretty, little cheap editions of standard
authors, suited to the people's capacities ; the sounds of accor-
dion and concertina were heard every night through the open
doors ; little dances were got up ; and, as the days grew longer,
once or twice, little picnics were held away up on Brandon
Hill, or out on Brandon Point. Then, one day, Maxwell in-
duced Hamberton to give him the upper loft of the store,
where specimens of rare marbles were kept. This he turned
into a concert-room with a splendid, wide stage at the end;
and here he proposed to give lectures, hold penny readings,
and give dramatic entertainments the long nights of winter.
He, too, became an ever- increasing object of interest to
Hamberton and his ward. His gentlemanly bearing, his quiet,
unostentatious work, his solicitude about the men and their
families, made him not only a useful, but most interesting co-
operator in their work. Sometimes, under pretext of business,
Maxwell was invited to lunch at Brandon Hall ; and after
Hamberton had discovered what a well-stored mind he had,
and what a knowledge of books and men, he often asked him
up to spend the evening at the Hall, where they talked over
all manner of things — the world of men, their weakness, their
meanness, their nobility, the eternal surprises that awaited every
one who made a study of them, greatness of spirit where one
would least expect it, and baseness and brutality where one
would look for the highest and loftiest principles of conduct.
One evening the conversation turned on Gladstone's treat-
ment of Gordon at Khartoum ; and Maxwell broke through
his usual calm manner and flared up against the treatment of
the hero.
"So he is a hero of yours also, Maxwell?" said Hamber-
ton, "You know Miss Moulton keeps a lamp burning before
his picture, as they do before the eikons of Russia."
"Yes; he was a rare, silent spirit," said Maxwell. "A man
who could endure much; who could fight, and never lose his
humanity; and who had the deepest and most real interest in
the very races which he subdued. To have power and not to
abuse it seems to me the rarest of all virtues."
" I wish he were at Lisheen the other day," said Hamber-
ton. "He would have an object-lesson in Irish landlordism."
608 LISHEEN
"Yes"; said Maxwell. "I wish Gordon had come to Ire*
land and looked at things with honest, unprejudiced eyes."
"But he was in Ireland!" said Hamberton. "Did you
never hear ? "
" Never! " said Maxwell. " I should give something to know
what he thought ! "
" Perhaps Miss Moulton would tell you," said Hamberton.
" I have treasured a letter of his found and published after
his death," said Claire Moulton, " in which he speaks sympa-
thetically of the Irish."
" And what does he say about landlords ? Tell Maxwell.
He may use it in one of his charming lectures to the men."
" Oh, very little ! Only that he would sacrifice a thousand
pounds to see an Irish landlord come down from his high
estate and live a few months amongst the farmers, and as one
of them."
Maxwell's pale face flushed, and then grew more pale, as
he looked questioningly from Hamberton to Miss Moulton.
But he saw nothing in their faces to lead him to think there
was any subtle allusion to himself.
" A safe bet, I should say," he murmured at length.
"And yet, where's the impossibility, or the incongruity?"
said Hamberton. " Even as a novelty, or an experiment, it
would be worth' attempting. Coriolanus tried it; Tolstoi is
trying it over there in Russia; there was an Al Raschid amongst
the Arabs. Why should not Irish landlordism, barren of every
other good, produce at least one hero?"
" You hardly know them ! " said Maxwell musing.
" True. I'm afraid Miss Moulton will die an old maid, for
she avers that she will marry the impossible hero, whenever
he comes her way."
" But I didn't promise to wait for him ! " said Claire.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
THE SPIRIT OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
BY H. P. RUSSELL.
Solus Cam Sole.
Car ad Car Laq*itxt.
Ex Umbtis tt Imaginibxs in Verilalim.
RAPHAEL is said to have thanked God that he
lived in the days of Michael Angelo; there are
scores of men I know, there are hundreds and
thousands I believe, who thank God they have
lived in the days of John Henry Newman."
So writes one who was led captive by "the form and voice
and penetrating words" of "that living presence that drew to
itself whatever there was in Oxford that was noble in purpose
or high and chivalrous in devotion." And another asks: "Who
that had experience of it could forget Newman's majestic coun-
tenance — the meekness, the humility, the purity of a virgin
heart 'in work and will,' as the poet says, a purity that was
expressed in his eyes, his kindness, the sweetness of his voice,
his winning smile, his caressing way, which had in it nothing
of softness, but which you felt was a communication to you of
strength from a strong soul — a thing to be felt in order to be
realized ? "
And when that spare form and majestic countenance were
missed from St. Mary's, Oxford, and that musical voice, " the
memory of which lingers like an echo in hearts beyond count-
ing," was no longer heard there, " it was as when to one kneel-
ing by night in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great
bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still"; and
while many in due course followed the great leader into the
true home of the truths they had learnt from him, others, who
in good faith remained, long mourned a loss which they felt to
be irreparable, so unmistakably had he who had left them been
the centre, strength, and. director of the movement to which
they owed their spiritual life.
Dr. Temple, for instance, over whose study mantle-shelf a
a large portrait of Newman used to hang, when Bishop of Ex-
VOL. LXXXV. — J9
610 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.,
eter — and presumably subsequently also when successively in
London and at Canterbury — was wont to recommend to his
clergy the study of John Henry Newman's sermons in the prep,
aration of their own, and his simple manner of reading the
Scripture lessons, free, as it was, from theatrical effect, as the
most edifying for their congregations; and at mention of that
name, on which be loved to linger, a great tear would course
down the rugged cheek of the strong, massive face, which so
aptly has been described as chiselled from the solid rock.
But from whence did the power to attract minds so various
and temperaments so unlike proceed ? From whence the con-
vincing eloquence and soul-subduing influence of those writings
which to far-off ages the world over will not fail to speak home
to hearts beyond counting with ever the same force and per-
suasion ? What, in a word, is the secret of Newman's person-
ality ? In him was bestowed by the Divine Giver such a gift
as is rarely given to the world, a teacher and guide equipped
with powers commensurate with a work for which the Church
will everywhere venerate his name, even as St. Augustine's, until
the Great Day shall reveal its measure and fruit — a leader who
none the less depended on the guidance of that Giver, even as
those also, for whom he was to sound every depth of a great
problem, depended upon the faithful co-operation of his giant
intellect and richly endowed soul with the Divine will and
purpose.
If, then, we would know the secret of Newman's influence,
we must seek it, not simply in the fact of his extraordinary
personal endowments and the circumstances of his time and
surroundings, but much more in that simple surrender of his
being at whatever sacrifice, that unswerving dedication of his
time and talents with such keen sense of responsibility and un-
tiring energy, and that singleness of aim for the accomplish-
ment always of the Divine purpose, which characterized every
stage of his long pilgrimage ; we must study, in a word, his
life of more than ordinary sanctity, as manifested on every
page of its history and as breathing in every line of his writ-
ings ; we must study his spirit.
SOLUS CUM SOLO.
Solus cum Solo, alone with the Alone, here was the "ada-
mantine basis of reality", upon which, as Dr. Barry observes,
1907.] The Spirit of John Hen,
Newman "set up his religion." Ever "the lonely pilgrim whose
Hfc is a voyage of discovery, and his path over undreamt-of
waters," the ali-pervading sense of the presence of " him who,"
Newman expressed of himself, "lives as a Personal, All-
seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience," from early child-
hood onward into extreme old age possessed and governed him.
Always waiting for indications," observes Mozely of his Ox-
ford life, " whatever happened for good or ill he acted upon it.
It was a providential stepping-stone in a field of uncertainties":
" Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see
The distant scene — one step enough for me."
It was this " trembling attitude of soul," waiting always upon
the Divine will, prompt and fearless to fulfil it as he saw it,
his singleness of purpose and sincerity in all he said and did,
his transparent honesty and fairness towards adversaries, coupled
■ith that unbounded sympathy of which we shall speak later,
that gave the tone, directness, and irresistible attraction to that
long intercourse so affectionately cherished in the memories of
his fellows and disciples. Herein too we see the force that
sustains those lucid writings which have led captive and con-
vinced so many souls, and are destined to save so many more,
little though their author in his humility anticipated their per-
manence. Solus cum Solo he meditated, as in silent communion
with his Maker, so likewise when writing or preaching, deliver-
ing that which he had received from first-hand rather than from
books, with sensitive reverence for the Divine author, (or the
sacred message with which he was charged, and for ihe souls
to whom that message had to be delivered in the manner most
suitable to its subject and best calculated to appeal to the mind
and will of the hearer or the reader.
His style is thus simple and free from self-conscious effect
and sentimentality, never aiming at ornament or rhetoric, but
always at clear, accurate, and reverent representation. "I think
I never have written for writing's sake," he says simply of him-
self, "but my one and single desire and aim has been to do
what is so difficult, vis., to express clearly and exactly my
meaning." In speaking of other writers he bids us consider,
not so much the author's diction, as his "mental attitude and
bearing, the beauty of his moral countenance " ; he fulfils, all
612 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.,
unconsciously in himself, his own definition of a great author:
"his one aim is to give forth what he has within him; and
from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be
the splendor of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he
has within him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity.
Whatever be his subject, high or low, be treats it suitably and
for its own sake. His page is the lucid mirror of his mind
and life."
Thus, " to Ruskin who deliberately built up a monument
stately as the palace of Kubla Khan," as Dr. Barry observes,
Newman " is a contrast, for the very reason that he does not
handle words as if they were settings in architecture or colors
on a palette; rather he would look upon them as transparen-
cies which let his meaning through"; and while "Ruskin may
be said to have built his lofty prose on the sacred text, fami-
liar to his awakening sense of beauty in words," Newman, on
the other hand, " while shrinking from an application which he
would have thought profane, was taught by it the grave sever-
ity, the chastened color, and the passionate yet reserved tone
that lend to his sermons a more than human power." To these
sermons, indeed, may fitly be applied their author's description
of great instrumental symphonies: "They have escaped from
some higher sphere; they .are the outpourings of eternal har-
mony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from
our home; they 'are the voice of angels, or the Magnificat of
saints, or the living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divine
Attributes ; something are they besides themselves, which we
cannot compass, which we cannot utter."
Solus cum Solo, Newman wrote, and the reader, who in like
manner examines his writings, finds there his own thoughts,
because derived from the same source, though expressed as he
could not himself express them, so pathetic is the power that
so intimately, subtilely, and kindly, as Dean Church observes,
deals with the soul. The shallow or careless reader, on the
other hand, misses more than half the author's meaning, ob-
serves Dr. Barry, while the hasty critic fails to comprehend an
intellect so superior to his own, or to appreciate such honest
reserve ; so sensitive is the author's treatment of his subject, so
penetrating and exquisite the shading.
And as he wrote, so did he preach. Never the pulpit ora-
tor, his "every sermon was an experience," writes Barry, " the
1907.] The Spirit of John Henry Newman 613
still figure, the clear, low, penetrating voice, the mental hush
that fell upon his audience while he meditated alone with the
Alone, . . . his discourses were poems, but transcripts too
from the soul, reasonings in a heavenly dialectic, and views of
life seen under innumerable lights, as from some Pisgah- mount
of vision/' "Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English
that was only pure and lucid," says Dean Church, ". . .
they made men think of the things which the preacher spoke
of, and not of the sermon or the preacher." " As he spoke,"
exclaims another contemporary,* " how the old truth became
new ; how it came home with a meaning never felt before 1
He laid his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some
inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about
himself he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which
it would have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and
big words to state, were dropt out by the way in a sentence
or two of the most transparent Saxon." " He always began
as if he was determined to set forth his idea of the truth in
the plainest and simplest language," observes a third contem-
porary of the Oxford days,f " language, as men say, ' intelligi-
ble to the meanest understanding.' But his ardent zeal and
fine poetical imagination were not thus to be controlled. As I
hung upon his words, it seemed to me as if I could trace be
hind his will, and pressing, so to sp^ak, against it, a rush of
thoughts, of feelings which he kept struggling to hold back,
but in the end they, were generally too strong for him, and
poured themselves out in torrents of eloquence, all the more
impetuous from having been so long repressed. The effect of
these outbursts was irresistible, and carried his hearers beyond
themselves at once. Even when his efforts of self-restraint
were more successful, those very efforts gave a life and color
to his style which rivetted the attention of all within the reach
of his voice." The very endeavor to preach not himself made
them sensible that, though mindful of his audience, he was still
solus cum Solo, and but the voice by which Another was speak-
ing to their souls.
COR AD COR LOQUITUR.
And in this commune solus cum Solo in all he wrote and
said, we find the interpretation of his adoption of the words
* Principal Shairp. t Sir F. Doyle.
6 14 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.,
" cor ad cot loquitur " as the motto on his cardinal's shield.
From hence only could he have acquired that " marvelous sen*
sibility " — absent from the writings of others of talent and
genius whose lives were not as his — " without which he could
never have thrbwn himself into minds unlike his own/' that
"gift almost unrivalled of touching the heart when he spoke
or wrote " Well may Dr. Barry conclude that " Newman's
prose cannot grow obsolete; it will endure by its self-centred *
poise. Thanks to its grave and tender wisdom, and its feeling
for that in man's heart which throbs to some rhythm of eter-
nity, it cannot be forgotten."
Cor ad cor loquitur^ thus he addressed himself to all to whom
he was charged with a message, " with infinite consideration
for persons as they came before him," and "unlimited power of
sympathy " ; by force of a personality formed and perfected by
uninterrupted communion with his Maker, and by sknctification
and subjection of his extraordinary endowments, he gathered
round him friends unsought, who, in Dean Church's words, " were
bound to him, not merely by enthusiastic admiration and con-
fidence, but by a tenderness of affection, a mixture of the
gratitude and reliance of discipleship with the warm love of
friendship, of which one has to go back far for examples, and
which has had' nothing like it in our days at Oxford." And
when the time of trial at Littlemore cjrew towards its climax,
it seemed to the lonely sufferer that, in view of the parting of
the ways, now within measurable distance, he had enough to
do in thinking of himself and his conduct. Yet his great
distress, as he revealed in letters to friends, was not so much
on his own account as on account of " the perplexity, un-
settlement, alarm, scepticism " he feared he was causing others.
This, as he says, was "the constant, urgent, unmitigated pain"
that followed him, intensified by the circumstance that he could
not, as formerly, speak to them heart-to-heart on the subject
which was nearest the hearts of all of them.
But when each " moor and fen " and " crag and torrent" had
been passed, and the dawn of faith bad dispersed the shadows
of doubt, and revealed to him his true course; when the great
sacrifice of all that had been and might be his at Oxford had
been completed, and " with the morn " the " angel faces " had
smiled him welcome to his true home — then were his lips re-
opened and his pen set free to speak heart to- heart to countless
1907.] The Spirit of John henry Newman 615
souls through long years yet before him, more persuasively than
ever before, and with a note of joyousness that was absent from
his former words and writings. For while he gave himself to the
ministry of the Church in the numerous ways in which his service
was so generously fulfilled, he was mindful always with the old
affection of the others whom he had outstripped in the homeward
journey, and of those who, in ever increasing numbers " amid
the encircling gloom," sought "the distant scene." Many such,
though most unlike in mind and temperament, and amid cir-
cumstances so various, have found in his writings the solution
of every perplexity; so marvelously has the great author and
guide anticipated every problem, dispersed its gloom, sounded
each depth in the passage of the waters, and bridged each tor-
rent.
Thus to all, including strangers, who consulted him on the
trial that once was his, and which he saw was now doing its
work in them, he was accessible always, whether by letter or
by visit, answering, as it sometimes seemed to them, not so
much their questions as his own, for, while entering into their
difficulties as none other could, he was on such occasions spe-
cially solus cum Solo, "the solitary thinker who saw what they
could not see, and whose wisdom had grown to be reminis-
cence." " God loves every one of us individually," he medi-
tated {if one may speak of a personal experience); "the re-
membrance of this truth is the great need with so many." He
paused as he looked kindly on his Anglican clerical visitor and
humbly continued: "But I need not say this to you who must
have noticed it in dealing with souls." Presently he resumed
his meditation and suggestively added : " We should make acts
of laith in God's love for us individually : ' My God, I believe
thou dost love me,- Jo, here I am, do with me as thou wilt.'"
After a while he concluded: "I cannot say to you: 'Be re-
ceived'; at the same time, I have no doubt at all as to whither
you will be led if you are true"; he could but point the way;
divine grace would effect its own work. The impression left
upon his visitor may be expressed in Dr. Barry's words: "His
beautiful modesty was a compliment which he paid to the truth
and his own mind, It gave him an incomparable charm ; it as-
signed a limit within which he had no equal"; and we may
add that the words " solus cum Solo," so expressive of his atti-
tude of soul from first to last, and " cor ad cor loquitur," so ap-
6i6 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.,
propfiate as his motto, supply the interpretation. Small wonder
that Charles Marriott, when Newman was on his " death-bed
as regards his membership with the Anglican Church/' should
have addressed him as the one " whom I love best on earth,"
or that testimony should be borne that " public mourning, and,
what is rare indeed when a man of ninety dies, private grief,
took up their parable, joined hands over the grave at Rednall
in which this perfect friend was laid."
Nor was his sympathy confined to those who were anxious
in the cause of religion. When, for instance, on occasion of
Kingsley's disgraceful accusation, he gave to the world the
history of bis religious opinions, it was, to use his own. words,
" for the sake of the Religion which I profess, and of the
Priesthood in which I am unworthily included, and of my
friends, and'/ 9 as he proceeds, " of my foes, and of that general
public which consists of neither one nor the other, but of well-
wishers, lovers of fair play, sceptical cross- questioners, inter-
ested inquirers, curious lookers-on, and simple strangers, un-
concerned yet not careless about the issuie." And so success-
fully was his subsequently adopted motto " cor ad cor loquitur''
realized, that " the whole nation became a sympathetic, and
ere. long a convinced audience. Not the 'Letters' of Paschal,
nor those of Junius, won more instant success." The future
Cardinal, whose elevation all England hailed with joy as a re-
cognition of his worth and as a tribute of honor to their coun-
try, became more than ever the object of his countrymen's
veneration, pride, and attachment.
Nor, again, was the expression of his sympathy confined to
what may be described as his contemplative labor for souls;
the active element by which, in accordance with the spirit of
the age, the life work of others, as, for instance, Manning's,
has been estimated, and sometimes compared with Newman's/
was by no means wanting in the life of the latter. Archbishop
Ullathorne has borne witness that the great Oratorian's literary
works were wrought " in the midst of labors and cares of
another kind, and of which the world knows very little . . •
each of a distinct character, and any one of which would have
made a reputation for untiring energy in the practical order."
Amongst these he instances " the establishment of the Oratory
of St. Philip Neri — that great ornament and accession to the
force of English Catholicity," as also of the great Oratory
1907.] The Spirit of John Henry Newman 617
School ; the founding of a University in Ireland, of missions in
Birmingham and elsewhere, with church and schools and "several
years of close and hard work " ; of " poor schools and other
pious institutions connected with the Oratory/' and constant
duty in the poor house and gaol of Birmingham, added to " the
toil of frequent preaching, of attendance in the confessional, and
other parochial duties " ; and, as manifesting his keen sympathy
with suffering, and ready response to calls of charity, at what-
ever cost and risk, his going forth himself, in preference to
sending other priests of the Oratory, to minister to the sick and
dying, " when the cholera raged so dreadfully at Bilston," where
he " remained till the worst was over." Another work the
great Oratorian had in contemplation at Oxford, where he
bought land for the purpose, and who shall say what might not
have been the gain to the Church had it been allowed to pro-
ceed.
People who imagine that the active element, as the world
takes cognizance of it, was wanting in Newman's life, forget,
morever, that he tells us that in early life he had for some
years a great drawing to missionary labor among the heathen;
they forget that in the event his manner of life and service
was appointed from above, and that he never spared himself
in the work that was given him to do, laboring at his desk
sometimes from twelve to fourteen hours a day, when the cause
of the truth and of his neighbor's good required it ; that, in the
words' of James Anthony Froude, he " has been the voice of
the intellectual reaction of Europe, which was alarmed by an
era of revolutions and is looking for safety in the forsaken
beliefs of ages which it has been tempted to despise," that to
him, " if to any one man, the world owes the intellectual re-
covery "of Catholicism, and that every English-speaking bishop
and priest, preaching friar, Franciscan tertiary, St. Vincent
brother, and district visitor, in consequence, owes the facility of
his active ministrations, in greater measure than he is some-
times aware, to the personality and writings of him who exer-
cised "a spiritual authority far surpassing that of any English,
or perhaps European, writer of his time," and whom Pius IX.
designated " the Light of England."
6i8 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.,
EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS IN VERITATEM.
" Ex utnbris et imaginibus in veritatem." These, the memor-
able words which the great Cardinal chose for his epitaph, re-
cord more than a personal experience, though he doubtless did
but contemplate by their choice a reference to the Divine mercy
and grace by which he himself had come out of shadows into
realities. They record, besides, that which he has achieved by
force of a personality formed solus cum Solo in the long pro-
cess by which he was appointed to solve for others, as well as
for himself, each question of a great problem; they record the
great work effected by means of the writings which illustrate
that process and its issue, and which will speak from the writer's
heart to hearts beyond reckoning until the end of time.
Ex utnbris et imaginibus in veritatem — how the words in-
scribed upon their simple tablet arrest the visitor's steps at the
threshold of the church of the Oratory at Edgbaston ere he
passes within the sacred scenes of the life of dedication, of the
ministry, and of the death of him of whom they so pathetically
and so eloquently speak! Who but has been moved as they
greet him, or that has failed to recall as in a flash the memo-
ries which they awaken of that long pilgrimage devoted in its
every stage to the elucidation of the truth with such singleness
of purpose, consistent energy, and ready sacrifice for God and
for his neighbor's sake ; who that has failed to note their ring
of triumph vibrating with reminiscence of so much accomplished
for religion, and with portent of still more abundant fulfilment,
by means of the rare gift bestowed by the Almighty upon his
Church in him whose epitaph they record !
And if we may select from among the lessons by which the
great Oratorian has so lucidly cleared the path for converts ex
umbtis et imaginibus in veritatem, the choice would probably
by most of them be given to that which he has taught us, first,
of the gift of divine faith, and, next, of the visible kingdom of
the Catholic Church.
In regard to the former he has demonstrated the truth of
its supernatural character and that we depend for it utterly
upon the Divine bounty ; that without it we cannot discern the
truths of the Divine revelation ; that, while man's natural reason
is the eyesight of his mind, it is not more than eyesight; that
it depends, therefore, as truly as does his physical eyesight, up-
1907.] The Spirit of John henry Newman 619
on a light from without to see; that just as the latter, however
keen and strong, will avail him nothing at all in the dark, but
requires the light of the sun to enable him to see the things of
nature, so in like manner does the former depend upon a par-
allel gift from without to discern things spiritual.
Men need, then, in the first place to recognize this fact,
and, in the next, humbly to acknowledge their dependence at
the feet of their Maker and implore, each solus cum Solo, the
Divine mercy for the light of a supernatural grace to lead them
ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem ; and such acknowledge-
ment of their dependence and self-surrender is the more nec-
essary, inasmuch as religion is not a matter of the reason merely,
but much more of the will and affections — cor ad cor loquitur,
the Heart of the Teacher to the heart of the disciple or learner.
And submission to the Teacher, divinely appointed to in-
struct the nations and each individual composing them, is re-
warded with this gift of faith, the nature and prerogative of
which is to disperse every shadow of doubt in regard to the
truths of the Divine revelation, and in place of views and
opinions about them, to impart the clear light of certainty.
For divine faith, unlike human opinion, admits of no admix-
ture of doubt, since, obviously, we cannot at the same time both
believe and doubt; it makes a man as certain, moreover, of
his belief in the doctrine revealed as he is that the doctrine,
because revealed by God, is certainly true. Nor can he imag-
ine that a time may come when he will not be as certain as
he is at present (though he is aware, of course, that he may be
assailed by temptation), for he knows that "to make provision
for future doubt is to doubt at present"; be has received a
gift which, since the Divine gifts are without repentence, will
not be withdrawn, and he feels sure that "it is not without an
effort, a miserable effort, that any one who has received that
gift, unlearns to believe."
And then as to the means by which the Divine revelation
has been transmitted, the antecedent argument for a visible so-
ciety or kingdom, not of this world though in it, to embrace,
in the name of him to whom the nations of the earth belong,
the human race in unity of religion — a kingdom endowed with
his authority in relation to jurisdiction and with his infallibility
in teaching — finds its justification in the fact that, under the
government of the Pope as his Vicar and representative, such
620 The Spirit of John Henry Newman [Aug.
a kingdom has from the first been spread into the world, gath-
ering into its fold the nations and races most various, and
holding them in unity of faith and worship, organization, alle-
giance, by means of its unity in universality of jurisdiction— a
jurisdiction which takes no account of national frontiers and is
everywhere independent of the civil power in the domain of
religion. And thus we are furnished with an a posteriori argu-
ment which cannot fail to convince those who are willing to
believe that a revelation has been transmitted by means of a
visible Church Catholic, that the one ecclesiastical body politic
which at this hour does in substantive fact possess such a ju-
risdiction — the one kingdom that is not of this world, because
superior to the efforts of secular states to divide and subdivide
it into national churches, as has been done with other religious
bodies — the one Church which is visibly one in government
throughout the world is, to the exclusion of all other churches,
the visible kingdom of the Savior of the human race.
Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. What though
churches such as the Greek and the Russian possess an episco-
pal hierarchy, priesthood, and sacraments, this does not make
them parts of the same visible kingdom as that over which
Christ's Vicar reigns; since to be of the same visible polity or
kingdom they would need to be under one and the same juris-
diction. And as to " the poor Anglican Church " — ex umbris
et imaginibus — "I cannot tell how soon there came on me —
but very soon — an extreme astonishment that I had ever imag
ined it to be a portion of the Catholic Church. ... I sup-
pose the main cause of this lay in the contrast which was pre-
sented to me by the Catholic Church. Then I recognized at
once a reality which was quite a new thing with me. Then I
was sensible that I was not making for myself a church by an
effort of thought ; I needed not to make an act of faith in her;
I had not painfully to force myself into a position, but my
mind fell back upon itself in relaxation and in peace, and I
gazed at her almost passively as a great objective fact." St-
curus judicat orbis terramm.
ALONG THE TRACK."
BY M. F. QUINLAN.
" I would fain go back to (he old gray river
To the old bush days when our hearts were light ;
But, alas ! (hose days have fled forever
They are like the swans that have swept from sight."
JWAY off in the Back Country of Australia there
are as yet no fences and few laws. From the
settled sea-board of the east coast the -white man
has pushed inland ; bit by bit he has taken pos-
session of the black fellow's country ; year by year
he drives the native further out. Soon the arid spaces of the
interior will be all that is left to the wandering tribes. It is
but another instance of the survival of the fittest ; of the weaker
race going down before the strong.
That the Australian native is a degenerate is undisputed.
Indeed, with the exception of his Tasmanian brother, he stands
lowest ot all in the human scale. ' Physically a weakling, his con-
stitution has been further impaired by the inroads of civiliza
tion. Now he wears clothes; and when he doesn't die of drink,
he dies of lung disease. These three things have come in the
wake of the white man.
As regards the ethical side of things, the black fellow's be-
liefs are few, and those mostly negative. He worships no god;
he offers no sacrifice. The future to him is a blank. The after
world is a great empty space. It contains nothing; yet it is
full of dread. There is no spirit save one, and that, the great
spirit of evil. It is summed up in the word Devil-devil. This
is the Alpha and the Omega of native theology. It is a belief
that takes to itself the intangible form of some terrible wrath to
come.
Where the dead go, none may follow.
And when a black fellow dies in the mi-mi by the creek he
is buried by the tribe without rite or ceremony. A hollow place
is scooped out in the sand where the body is laid. Over this
622 "Along the Track" [Aug.,
is erepted a pile of logs to the height of eight or nine feet
This monument of trees has no religious significance, but during
the night watches it forms a solace to the living, when the
dingos howl around the lonely grave.
Once buried, the name of the dead man may never more be
uttered. To speak of him is to disturb his spirit, besides un-
loosing the chains that bind him in the nether world. So the
black fellow shuts his lips in fear as he passes by the grave
in the sand. It is best to forget the dead ; otherwise the shade
will return and walk the earth — and no dead man ever returns
without some harm befalling the living. Nor is this power of
working ill confined to the departed. For the belief that obtains,
among the island tribes of the South Seas, is current also in
Australia: viz., of the power of the human will to wreak ven-
geance on a foe by merely wishing him ill. Thus a black fel-
low falls sick; and the native doctor is accordingly summoned.
But if the sick man does not respond to medical* treatment, as
understood by the native doctor, then it may safely be as-
sumed that an enemy is " pointing the bone " at his victim.
It may be that the other tribe, to which his enemy belongs, is
distant a hundred miles or more. What matter ? Is not the
power of thought mightier than a stretch of scrub ? His enemy,
therefore, is willing him to die ; by his pointing the bone he
insures the desired result. Convinced of this the doomed man
will not eat ; he sits and ponders on the will power of his
enemy, until he is numbered among the greater tribe who lie
asleep beneath the logs.
In parts of the Northern territory cannibalism still exists
among some of the more savage tribes. There the custom of
cracking a skull with a " waddy " lacks finality. Hitherto a
man had not only to be killed, but eaten whole and entire be-
fore his doom was adequately sealed. But even by the shores
of Carpentaria it is possible to get evolutions of thought, and
to-day the cannibal conforms, however distantly, to the more
fastidious tastes of modern times. No longer will he consume
his enemy as of your; to-day he partakes only of the "caul-
fat/' by which he ensures to himself the dead man's virtues—
if he has any — failing which, he obtains the right of succession
to his adversary's skill with the spear.
Intellectually it may be said that the black fellow does not
count. He makes no tracks through the wilderness; and, as
"Along the Track"
Robert Louis Stevenson says, they who make no roads, are
thereby "ruled out from intelligent participation in the world's
brotherhood." When the native Australian walks, he throws
his weight on to the ball of his foot, spreading out his toes
after the manner of the cloven footed animals. Like all shoe-
less savages his feet pass over the dried leaves without sound;
and as he goes his eyes see everything — the cleft in a rock; the
exact position of a fallen twig; the shape of a tree beside any
particular water-hole — these things he will remember as he moves
along in the open.
It is about a hundred years now since the first pioneer
struck out for the waste places of the Northwest. And as he
advanced through the country, riding on horseback, the blacks
fled in fear to hide in the scrub. For did not the while man
come as a new and strange creation; as a centaur; as a god?
To the blacks horse and man were but one, as they leaped
across the scrub in mighty bounds. So the natives crouched
behind the patches of trees, waiting for these beings to pass.
But it so happened that the white man had come to stay.
Accordingly he selected a suitable territory, and, as the black
man holds no title-deeds, the transfer of the land was effected
without any waste of red tape. The method of taking over
the country had the advantage of simplicity. No sooner had
the pioneer seen a likely stretch of country, than he applied
to the Government for a lease of it. Sometimes he rented it
at a farthing an acre ; sometimes he bought it outright for a
nominal sum. The boundary of the newly- acquired property
had to be fenced in ; this was the one condition required by
the authorities. Soon other pioneers came. They too selected
their land, and so the fences spread themselves out into the
silent places of the interior. Now, it is only in the far North-
west that the country lies open, as it did before the white man
Thus for thousands of miles there is not a square acre
of unappropriated territory. Every mile, every acre, nay ! every
foot has been swallowed up by this hungry, omniverous white
To-day there are railway routes from various points along
the sea-board; railways that begin at the east side of the range
country and finish up in the western scrub. Where the rail-
ways end, the coach roads begin. Further out the stock routes
lie open, and along this line of route are Government tanks
624 "ALONG THE TRACK" [Aug.;
where the traveling stock may drink. For in the vast stretches
of the Northwest there are no rivers, and the creeks run dry
in the drought. But, besides these easily discernible tracks,
there are otner tracks to follow which need a trained eye.
These are mere pads leading in and out of the wilderness; just
the track of the mail ; hoof marks and no more, which lead to
the distant homesteads. In the back country the mail passes
but once in every few weeks, and the letters are then carried
on horseback.
For when a letter drifts to the great Northwest — "where all
the rovers go " — its transport takes on a romance of its own.
And now by coach and mailman's bag it goes from town to
town,
And Conroy's Gap and Conroy's Creek have marked it "fur-
ther down."
Beneath a sky of deepest blue where never cloud abides,
A speck upon the waste of plain, the lonely mailman rides.
By big lagoons where wild fowl play, and crested pigeons
flock.
By camp-fires, where the drovers ride around their restless
stock. . . .
So the mail bag travels on through the country, until the
letter is handed in at the bush homestead that lies beyond the
sky line of the scrub.
Unlike the homesteads of the South, which rival in site
and architecture the mansions of the various capitals, these back-
block homesteads are mostly bungalows — just wooden buildings,
having an outer coating of mud and a roof of thatch. Round
two or three sides run wide verandas, and grouped about the
garden ai myalls and eucalyptus trees. Cloi
to the !, overseer's house, then comes the quar-
1 finally the men's hut Thi
ul homestead" on every
■ iintry,
i though of comparative!]
=o steadily, yet so quietly, that
unc accustomed to the presence
,:dirdirg the white
1907.] "ALONG THE TRACK"
man with fear, the feeling of the natives soon changed it
one of curiosity which is now merged into a fixed sentim>
of awe and wonderment at the superior power and cunning
the white pioneers.
Surely, say the aborigines, this "big-feller" white man b
god. For does he not hold in his hand the secrets of the
earth? And has not his voice power over all things? As it
was in the beginning, so to-day in the waste places, the over-
lord of creation speaks and the beasts of the earth do his bid-
ding. The horse is his servant, and the dog his slave. And the
great flocks of sheep and the vast mobs of cattle, do they not
journey hither and thither as the white man wills? Does h?
not stay with his hand the bird on the wing; and the busn
fire, does it not acknowledge his cunning? Nay more; of all
the elements, is not the water the mightiest, as it is the most
precious ? Yet the water, no less than the fire, obeys the will
of the white man. The underground lake lies fathoms deep.
In the heart of the earth it sleeps, clasped round with living
fire. For centuries untold it has slumbered there, and none has
been its master. Then the white man comes, and he probes
its depths. He whispers down through the earth four thousand
feet. "I have need of thee," he says. And the sleeping lake
rises up at his call ; boiling and seething it comes, as if in
anger at his summons. Yet it comes nevertheless, spreading
itself out in homage at the feet of its lord.
" Big- feller white man, him god." Such is the verdict of
the black fellow, given in the rudimentary jargon of the statio
settlements.
Thus the Australian aborigines have acquiesced in the ac-
quisition of the territory which was hitherto their own, For
the same reason, also, they render service to the more enlight-
ened race. In return for this, the native camps are entitled to
receive the necessaries of life. But, as everything in this world
is comparative, it is only to be expected that each pioneer
should judge for himself what these necessaries consist in. Yet,
by some mysterious unanimity, the generally received idea takes
shape of blankets and "grog." The blanket no doubt is
ome of a flickering Christian instinct; the whisky —
whisky is unusually under proof. Sometimes it is
iky at all; only kerosene and blue-stone; for the na-
onsidered to be undiscerning. The native only
— 40
i
626 "Along the Track" [Aug.,
asks to drink of the white man's drink. And after all — so the
pioneer argues — the results are much the same.
So the black fellow drinks his grog and wraps his blanket
round him. Why ? He knows not why. He only knows that
the wearing of a blanket is the white man's decree ; and with
his pipe and a plug of tobacco he staggers back to his camp.
To eat, to sleep, and to get drunk again — these are the only
privileges that the native requires. Sometimes he works, but
only for as long as the white man sees.
Once the Australian native made his own fire by rubbing
two sticks together ; now he asks for the white man's light
" Wee mah." Give me a match (*. e. t fire give). This is
the demand of every black fellow that hits the white man's
track. By degrees they are losing their grip of life in the
open. Even now, the blacks as a people have ceased to be.
Soon the individual black will have died out.
In the settled districts of the country there are to day va-
rious Government Settlements where the remnants of a tribe
are cared for at the public expense. These native camps are
in the charge of a public official who is responsible for their
physical and moral well being. But it is not unknown fot this
white overseer to set an example of evil living in the camp.
This, together with dishonest practices in selling for his own
profit Government goods intended for gratuitous distribution, is
not calculated to maintain the white man's reputation as a be-
ing of higher grade.
Indeed, with such examples before him, it becomes a mat-
ter of difficulty to pursuade the native of the ethical advan-
tages of Christianity.
Nevertheless, attempts continue to be made in various mis-
sion settlements to convert the blacks to the white man's creed.
With this end in view, the black boy is clothed and fed and
educated. It is a fairly liberal education, comprising, as it
does, not only the doctrines of religion, but certain social ax-
ioms which are illustrative of the common rights of man.
Among these he is taught that there is neither black nor white
in the kingdom of heaven ; that all, irrespective of race or
color, are classmates in the school for saints. Besides this,
he learns that a laborer is worthy of his hire; that for a
month's work he is entitled to a month's pay. These and
other social truths he hears, and some of them he remembers.
m
907.] "ALONG THE TRACK" 627
It may be that religious truths are beyond his comprehen-
sion, but this social "jabber- jabber," as expounded by the
missionary, of the relations between capital and labor — these
are doctrines which may be translated into the concrete of vis-
ible things. Accordingly it is these teachings which receive his
intelligent support.
To the settlers in the back blocks the Christianized black
boy is a black boy spoiled. He is regarded by them as a mis-
chievous element ; as one who incites to rebellion, spreading
disaffection in the camp. He knows too much. He is not
wanted in the Northwest.
In this way it sometimes happens that " the boss " and "a
boy " start off at daybreak to muster along the boundary.
They are away ail day ; and at sundown a solitary horseman
returns, his gun across his saddle bow. "The boy" is lost, he
says; lost in the scrub. Next morning a riderless horse whin-
nies its way back to the homestead with its bridle trailing.
There the matter ends. A black boy more or less does not
matter in the back country.
Possibly at the native camp he is missed and mourned.
But who shall dare speak of the dead? Perchance the old
men may shake their heads as they sit round the open fire, or
the wail of the gins may be heard : wah ! wah ! in long-drawn
tones of grief. But the name of the dead man is blotted out
to-day and forever from the speech of the living tribe.
Far along the track the white man is autocratic. Perhaps
this is inevitable in the rough and tumble life of the pioneer-
ing days, when he sketches in his own policy and dictates his
own terms. He is beyond the arm of the law. Intercourse is
difficult between him and his fellows. Many hundreds of miles
cut him off from the more settled districts. And in the stretches
of unfenced scrub that lie out in the glare of the torrid zone,
a man is apt to cast his conscience, like a worn out shoe.
Here the Ten Commandments are no longer current. Like the
rabbit-proof fences, the Decalogue falls short in the scrub.
But just as it is a question of time when the restraining fences
will creep out into the open spaces, so with the succeeding
years comes a stricter sense of personal responsibility; and, by
degrees, the mode of life in the back country is being brought
into line with that which obtains further east.
To-day the mail and the teamster are the only regular way
6S8 "ALONG THE TRACK" [Aug.,
farers in the far districts. The former represents a luxury; the
latter a necessity ; for the teamster is the accredited carrier of
provisions throughout the Northwest. To the cattle stations he
goes but once a year, when he brings a year's rations: flour,
sugar, tea, and other household requisites, to the weight of
four or five tons. But to the sheep stations he makes more
frequent journeys, in view of the greater opportunities for
"back-stuff. 91 Here he is more or less sure of a return load:
skins and bales of wool left over from last shearing, which still
await transport to the seaboard. For this cartage the squatter
pays well. And for the rest, the teamster's life is a pleasant
one. Six miles a day is the average rate of progress for a
bullock team. But this presupposes a good season. In bad
times, when the herbage is poor, the teamster must cover eight
or ten miles a day if he is to obtain a sufficiency of pasture
for his cattle.
Two bullock carts usually travel together ; one for the
goods ; another for the teamster and his requirements. Among
the latter are to be reckoned the teamster's wife and family.
At the tail of the domestic cart straggle various hens and
chickens, who pick up what they may along the track. After
them come the four or five tame goats which complete the
teamster's household.
At sundown the bullocks are unhitched and the party camp
for the night. And after supper, which is partaken of round
the camp-fire, the teamster and his men lie themselves down
on the warm, dry ground, with only a blanket for covering;
the bullock wagon being reserved for the teamster's wife and
his children. But usually the cart contains only the girl chil-
dren; — for every son of a teamster believes in scratching for
himself.
As regards the bullocks, they, too, find their own feed,
straying out into the open. Perhaps there are in all forty bul-
locks: twenty to the team. This means that each may roam
off at will in forty different directions. To prevent this, one
particular bullock is picked out — a beast that is known as a
stray er — and to the neck of this stray er is tied a bell. And
as cattle are lonesome things, and fearful of being alone in the
night, the rest of the mob will keep close to the bell for
greater company.
The Australian bullock bell is about twelve inches long. It
907.] "Along the Track" 629
ives out no tinkling sound. There is no music in it — nothing
ut a dull knock, knock. Throughout the night it breaks upon
lie stillness : this sullen, clanging note. It reaches across the
:vel country like the sigh of a wandering soul ; a soul that
eeks for rest.
On the open plains the sound of the bullock bell can be
icard miles off. Sometimes when the ranges lie behind, and
he wind is favorable, the sound may be thrown back to a dis-
ance of seven miles. But to hear it one must have a trained
ar and the sheltering night. For at dawn the foreground pul-
ates with the music of the new-born day; the buzz ot insect
ife; the cry of the bell- bird; the chirping of the feathered
ribes awakening in the Mulga* trees — all of which voices shut
tut the whispers from beyond.
Once the sun gets up it needs a black boy to trace the
traying bullocks, as, with ear pressed close to the earth, he
ells of the passing of cattle; though even the acute hearing of
he black boy will not serve outside an area of two or three
niles.
But with the first streak of dawn the wayfarers are astir in
hese waste places. For, while the men are rounding up the
rattle, the fire must be made and the breakfast prepared. Be-
ides this, the bullocks must be yoked, an operation which
akes time. First they must be driven in to camp. Then the
nates must be got together, for every bullock requires to be
roked with his own mate. Otherwise he declines to be yoked
it all. The yoking of a bullock team is simple enough in the-
>ry — the tackle being merely a wooden log which passes over
he shoulders of every pair of bullocks, and a bow, or iron col-
ar, which circles the neck of each. This iron collar is affixed
>y pins to the yoke. From this it follows that the difficulty
>f the teamster lies in the simultaneous yoking of the two ani-
nals — for the log must be kept horizontal. Therefore it takes
wo men to hitch up the bullocks; meanwhile the test of the.
nob may be off again across the plain.
It is here, however, that the teamster's wife lends a hand,
is a helpmate should. The breakfast is now left to cook itself,
is with whip in hand she circles round the cattle and prevents
hem breaking camp. To the uninitiated one bullock is hardly
listinguishable from the other. But not so to the teamster's
rife, for, like the cattle- dog, she knows each of the forty bul-
630 "Along the Track* 9 [Aug.
locks by name. Deft of hand and quick of eye, it is seldom
that the daughter of the scrub is beaten by the mob. Just a
sudden movement — and the long, sinuous lash flies out and
orders the restless one to be still. Or perhaps a bullock has
broken away from the men and* got mixed up with the mob.
In an instant she has given the word of command; the lash of
the cattle-whip has followed her eye, the cattle dog springs
forward, and the required bullock, signalled by name, is suc-
cessfully cut .out from the mob.
So the team is yoked ; but the sun is already high in the
heavens before the travelers are on their way.
At first the creaking of the wagons fills the air, as they
jolt away over the rough ground. For a while, too, the voices
of the men are borne back along the track. Then the echoes
drop lower, getting fainter and faiijter by degrees as the dis-
tance widens. Finally all human -sounds cease, as the bullock
teams pass on into the silence ; and the boree scrub, filled with
a sense of untold desolation, stretches out its empty hands in
vain entreaty to the far horizon. From sky line to sky line
the vast world of the Northwest lies open, flat— a sea of gray-
green against the blue.
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
m
and
BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P.
VII.— SPIRITISM (CONTINUED).
|HE " subliminal " theory, mentioned in our last
article, is, we may say, mainly due to Mr. F. W.
H. Myers. It was elaborated by him in a series
of articles which he published in the Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research for 1892
It maintains that, besides our ordinary conscious
mental operation, there is a constant stream of consciousness,
flowing on within us, as he says, " at a level beneath the
threshold of the ordinary waking life." These words "beneath
the threshold" explain the term "subliminal," of which they
are an English translation. Our ordinary consciousness he ac-
accordingly calls "supraliminal," or "above the threshold."
"Above ground" and "underground" would convey about the
same ideas.
Our supraliminal consciousness is that by which we usually
become aware of the phenomena of the objective world, and
by means of them, of the mental operations of others; and also
of our own, by ordinary introspection. The subliminal, how-
ever, has a much wider field, obtaining information by means
beyond the reach of the supraliminal, not only concerning ma-
terial things, but also as to the mental world outside of our-
selves, not needing for either the physical senses required by
the supraliminal. It is considered, as noted above, to be a
stream, that is, to be in constant operation; acting like a per-
sonality distinct from our ordinary or supraliminal one. It
is, however, only occasionally that the latter is aware of its
action, and then rather by memory, or by subsequent indica-
tion, than actually at the time. But it may have its effect on
our ordinary mental processes, as, for instance, in what are
called the " inspirations " of genius, in the reception of tele-
pathic messages, and in veridical dreams. In the hypnotized
subject it appears to be specially active; and even after the
hypnotic trance is over, it may have its effect on our supra-
liminal life, as in the case of suggestion given to a hypnotized
632 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [Aug.,
person as to future action. And it may be held that what
seem to be communications from some entirely external intel
ligence, are really originated simply by itself, and that auto-
matic writing and such phantasms as appear to be telepathic
are largely, if not entirely, due to it. It seems to work best,
(ad extra at any rate), when the supraliminal is in abeyance,
as in hypnotic, or even ordinary sleep ; but even at other
times, or in usual conditions, it may be capable of giving infor-
mation, unperceived by the supraliminal, to some other en-
tirely distinct mind, thus being able to supply such a mind or
spirit with the facts necessary for beginning an impersonation
of some living or deceased human being about whom the spirit
may as yet know little or nothing.
This " subliminal " theory, simply by itself, serves to account
for a considerable part of the communications which may be
received, even at a seance, and when the medium as well as
the visitors are in a normal state, and which purport to come
from the deceased relatives of some one or more of the circle.
These communications may come simply from the subliminal of
the medium acting together with those concerned in the circle,
and thus obtaining information not intended to be given by
them, and which may even have been (supraliminally) forgotten*
Such a result seems to them to constitute a very good "proof
of identity"; that is, to show plainly enough that it is pro-
duced by the deceased person from whom it purports to come.
Indeed this explanation holds good even if the supraliminal fails
to remember the fact communicated, and has to verify it by
consultation with friends afterward ; for it may well be that
the subliminal is in possession of many facts which the supra-
liminal has never made its own.
The subliminal theory has obtained, to a certain extent, a
general acceptance, and often seems to be taken for granted.
It fits in very well with the facts of hypnotism and of clair-
voyance, and explains the cases of telepathy in which there has
been no conscious effort on the part of the agent to make an
impression on the percipient ; and applies also quite satisfac-
torily to the matter of dreams, though the great majority of
these can be accounted for well enough without it. It finds
favor, of course, with those who are incredulous as to the ex-
istence of other spirits than our own, or of our own after death;
and if it could be shown to account for all the phenomena of
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 633
apparitions (specially of those which seem to have a local en-
tity) and of spiritism, it would deserve exclusive adoption on
the principle of not supposing more causes than are needed to
account for the observed facts. But in the judgment of those
who have most deeply studied these facts, a few of which we
have given, it does not suffice to explain all these.
Clairvoyance, with the allied matters of crystal-gazing, shell-
hearing, and the like, is perhaps to the general student its best
argument. How far it is necessary or convenient in hypnotism,
experts can best determine.
But it seems quite plain that it has to be strained almost,
if not quite, to the breaking point in accounting for all that is
to be found even in the actual communications of spiritism.
Dr. Hyslop describes at great length the objections to it in the
third chapter of a long discussion, entitled " A Further Record
of Observations of Certain Trance Phenomena/' which constitutes
of itself Part XLI. of the Proceedings of the Society.
And if we pass from the matter of the communications them*
selves to the astounding phenomena produced in attestation of
them, the subliminal explanation seems simply to disappear.
How can it be conceived possible that the subliminal mind, any
more than the supraliminal, can lift heavy objects from the
floor, elevate the medium in the air, write without the: medium's
contact on paper or a slate, and, above all, produce materiali-
zations such as we have described ? Of course it may be said
that these marvels are accomplished by some unknown powers
of which we are all, more or less, possessed ; but there seems
to be no reason why a subliminal mind should have them, any
more than a supraliminal.
The only reasonable explanation of these phenomena (the
reality of which seems, as we have said, to have been practi-
cally settled by recent photographic tests, and which is certainly
generally admitted by those familiar with the facts), is that they
are due not to a mysterious part of our own personality, but
to some personality or personalities entirely independent of our
own. And the trend of belief among investigators is, we think,
practically unanimous in that sense. And if we admit the op-
eration of such personalities in producing these attestations to
spiritist communications, there is, of course, no reason whatever
for denying their authorship in the communications themselves.
It is not, of course, necessary to exclude entirely the sublimi-
634 Recent Results of psychical Research [Aug.,
nal operation in them ; this, as has been said, may be a con-
venient explanation of their initial stages at any rate.
But after all, at least in the matter of spiritism, the sublim-
inal theory seems to be something like the fifth wheel to a
coach. It is not necessary to exclude it, but there is no need
to admit it. And, indeed, in other matters, if the existence of
other spirits than those of living human beings is once admitted,
as of course it is by all Christians, the subliminal idea becomes
rather superfluous. It loses the recommendation which it would
otherwise have of not bringing in unnecessary causes. It be-
comes an unnecessary cause itself. Its stream of conscious-
ness may just as well be that of an independent set of beings
(or even a single being), associated with us, and familiar with
the events of our lives, and of those of others, as that of a
mysterious adjunct to ourselves. And though the objection is
not a scientific one, it is a strong moral one, against the whole
subliminal hypothesis, that it confuses our idea of our person-
ality and personal responsibility, to believe in such a partner
to our lives, on whom as a " wicked partner," our responsibility
can be thrown.
Even if we grant that the subliminal theory can be explained
in a way to make it consistent with true ideas of philosophy or
religion, still it is, on the whole, a dangerous one to most of
those who may accept it, and it is better and safer to get along
without it, or to minimize its sphere as far as we can, con-
sistently with observed fact.
Let us, then, now turn to the spiritistic theory, which is con-
stantly becoming more and more indicated by facts. In general,
this is that the communications coming through mediums, as
well as the remarkable phenomena attending them, require, at
least for their complete explanation, the action of some agency
other than that of living human beings ; and furthermore that
this agency is (as is evident) not one working by regular phys-
ical law, but one of intelligences and wills like our own; in
short, that " spiritism " is the true and appropriate name for
the whole matter ; that, so far at least, the spiritists are right
in their belief.
But they do not [stop with this. They maintain that the
spirits who make the communications, and give such extraor-
dinary attestations of them, are indeed what they pretend to
be, departed human souls.
I
1907.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 635
It is of course very natural that this idea should be enter-
tained. We very rightly presume that any one with whom
we communicate is telling the truth, unless we have learned,
by experience with some particular person, to distrust his
veracity, or the circumstances of the case itself would make
departure from the truth probable. If, then, the spirits com-
municating are found to be telling lies, we should soon cease
to believe them ; but, on the contrary, we usually find, so far
as we have means of testing it, that the information which they
give is correct. And we see no particular reason from the
circumstances of the case why they should not tell the truth.
So the first presumption is that they are, indeed, what they
claim to be.
And besides, thev give " proofs of identity," such as we
should usually be satisfied with, even in important practical
matters of business. Suppose that a claimant to property under
a will should appear, representing himself as the legatee named
in it; even though there be no one lo identify him, and the
circumstances (such a; a prolonged absence) make such identi-
fication impossible, we should be inclined to believe in his claim,
if he strongly resembled photographs formerly taken of the
legatee, if his handwriting was the same, and especially if he
was familiar with such details of the early life of the one whom
he asserts himself to be, as could not be supposed to be known
by a stranger. And such proofs as these are given in abun-
dance by the spirits, particularly of the latter variety. If I
adopt the belief that it is really a spirit external to my own
that is sending a message to me, even one incident, which I
feel sure was known only to one person beside myself, may
seem quite enough to show that the message comes from that
person. But we do not have to depend on one such incident;
many may very probably be given. Then his whole turn and
peculiarities of mind may seem to be reproduced in the mes-
sage, or in the conversation which may follow. As to hand-
writing, there will be no trouble, probably, about that; and- if
a materialization occurs, his features will, perhaps, be recognized.
"Why, then," we may quite plausibly ask, "should not the
spirit communicating be the one whom we suppose it to be,
and for whom we have asked ? "
It must be acknowledged that for those who have no be-
lief, and see no special reason for any belief, in any spirits ex-
cept human ones, the evidence or proof of identity ^towi b«$
636 Recent Results of Psychical Research [Aug,
such occurrences is good enough, unless something supervenes
to disturb it. There is no doubt that the supposition that the
person we wish to communicate with us is really doing so is a
sufficient and satisfactory explanation of what occurs, and is
moreover the simplest one that can be given.
We say, " unless something supervenes to disturb it. 1 ' In
some particular case, nothing may so supervene. But one
must judge, not by one case, or merely by one's own personal
experience, but by the general experience of all who have had
any.
One very curious and suspicious circumstance is the inabil-
ity or reluctance to give the names borne on earth by the
spirits supposed to be communicating. If there is anything
that a real departed soul would seem to be sure to know, it
would be his or her name. We may easily forget the names
of other people, but very seldom our own. And there seems
to be no reason why memory should fail after death on this
particular point, or should give a false name instead of the true
one.
A very notable instance of this last failure is recorded in
the case of a spirit or " control," frequently manifesting him-
self through the celebrated Boston medium, Mrs. Piper. He
called himself " Dr. Phinuit," and claimed to have been a physi-
cian residing at • Marseilles. No record has been found of any
such physician ; moreover, the supposed Dr. Phinuit was un-
able to communicate in French. For this he gave the paltry
excuse that he had in the later part of his life lived in Metz,
among many English, and had forgotten his own language;
but was quite willing to substitute for this excuse one pro-
posed by the sitter, Dr. Hodgson, that he had to use the
brain of the medium, who was not familiar with French. This
may be considered as rather "thin," as mediums qt sensitives
often use languages unknown to them. .
In this case, it seems evident that this "Dr. Phinuit" gave
a false name. But if really a departed human soul, he must
have had a true one. What reason can be alleged for not giv-
ing it ? None that is at all apparent, as to have forgotten it
seems absurd. But if he was not a departed soul, but a spirit
of some other kind, a reason at once appears, in his not having
one to give, but being obliged to make up one; and a French
one might appear advisable, as being harder for Americans to
look up.
-
If we once admit the possibility that these spirit communi-
cations come from spirits of some other kind than our own,
their whole behavior will, perhaps, become more accountable, in
other cases as well as in this.
This is strongly indicated by the following general exper-
ience. The spirits communicating, even when venturing to com-
mit themselves to a definite name and personality, seem indeed
to know many events in the lives of those whom they claim to
be, but to be unable to give a complete, connected, and thorough
account of them. They omit many things which they ought, it
would seem, to remember, and indeed to regard as important.
It is, of course, hard to detect these omissions by inquiry,
without leading up to the very points which they omit. If one
should ask: "Do you remember such and such an event?" of
course they would probably say they did. And they might be
able, even if not what they pretend to be, to distinguish be-
tween true and false events by a telepathic (or, if you like, sub-
liminal) communication from the inquirer. It may, therefore,
be hard to catch them in ignorance of what they ought to know ;
but it is a strong evidence against their claims that they omit so
many matters which they ought to state without being asked,
if only to dispel doubts perhaps remaining. And though it may
be hard to catch them, still they are sometimes caught. They
may excuse this by saying that the conditions are not good, or
that the spirit in communication has gone away; but these ex-
cuses ought not to satisfy any except those determined and
anxious to believe.
Further information, not forthcoming at one sitting, may
be given at another, when " the conditions are more favorable,"
or the spirit is on hand again. This will probably satisfy those
willing and anxious to believe ; but the following explanation
really seems more reasonable.
Let us suppose, then, that it is not the supposed departed
soul that is communicating, but some other spirit of a nature
different from ours. Of course such a spirit may have knowl-
edge of many things in the life of the deceased individual whom
it has undertaken to personate, but it is not at all likely to
know them all, and may easily be ignorant even of many im-
portant ones. Those which it does happen to know it will
communicate at once; such additional ones as it may be able
to find out it will produce later. This is the simplest explana-
tion of the "unfavorable" and " favorable " conditions aU^td. -,
1907.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 637
638 Recent results of Psychical Research [Aug.,
the former are simply ignorance, the latter subsequently ac-
quired knowledge. As to the spirit which is being interrogated
going away, there seems to be no reason why it should do so.
As to the favorable or unfavorable conditions, there may be
something in that, even on the theory we are now proposing; for
the mind of the sitter, which could usually give the information
required, may be more or less ready to commupicate it, either
telepathically or by the more practical process of " pumping,"
which is more or less available to the ordinary fortune-teller.
Of course, if the above be the true explanation of the phe-
nomena of supposed communication from departed souls, it will
be inconvenient to the spirits personating them to be pinned
down to the representation of some deceased person, the details
of whose life are well known to the inquiring sitter. They will
prefer to present themselves under some general or vague name,
and to give information rather as to their present state than
as to their supposed former life on earth, and this will specially
be likely to be the case if they take the position or office of
regular and habitual guides or "controls" to the medium. A
very well-known instance of this is to be found in the exper-
iences of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses, which have been described
in a previous article. His chief " controls " called themselves
" Imperator," "Rector," and "Doctor." Of course they pur-
ported to be real deceased human beings, and it may be pre-
sumed that they passed themselves off as eminent sages of the
past, to give still greater weight to their teachings. Mr. Moses
naturally desired to know who they were, and had before his
death succeeded in getting them to give the names by which
they were known on earth; and he communicated these names
to Mr. Myers.
A spirit representing itself as that of Mr. Moses began, soon
after his death, to communicate through Mrs. Piper. A descrip-
tion of Mr. Moses* former appearance was given by other spirits,
who vouched that this spirit was really the genuine Mr. Moses.
It now fortunately occurred to his sitters to ask " Mr. Moses,"
thus duly attested, to give them the names he had given to Mr.
Myers, of Imperator, Rector, and Doctor. " After a good deal
of shuffling and delay," as Dr. Raupert tells us, "three names
were actually given, but, much to the disappointment of those
interested in the experiment, none of these three names was
found to correspond with those disclosed to Mr. Myers by Mr.
Stainton Moses during Yv\s Y\te \ats\^"
1907. ] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 639
It hardly needs to be shown that the spirit calling himself
Moses was a fraud ; certainly the real man would not have for-
gotten the names communicated to him. And it is quite prob-
able that Imperalor & Co. were even bigger frauds than he.
It does seem a little strange that they could not have been
kind enough to tell the so-called Mr. Moses what the names were
that they had given to the real man when on earth ; but some
at least, of these spirits seem to be so built that they rather
enjoy lying and deception, even when it does not pay.
A similar story is true, we believe, of Mr. Myers himself,
and a post-mortem representative.
Mr. Myers had prepared a document containing some views
of his on spiritistic (or, at any rate, psychical) matters, and en-
trusted it to the keeping of a friend, promising to communicate
after death with this friend if possible, and tell him in what
points, if any, he saw reason to modify his views. After Mr.
Myers' death, a spiritual, Mr. Myers came by a medium to the
front, and gave some interesting communications; but on being
asked how far his present knowledge confirmed what he had
written in the document, he was unable to understand what
document was referred to. Evidently this post-mortem Myers
was a fraud ; the real one simply could not have forgotten a
matter of such importance.
Instances like these seem to show very clearly that the spir-
its from whom communications are received, even granting
them to be those of deceased human beings, are not always
the spirits that they pretend to be. Some of them at any rate,
are, therefore, liars, and it is vain to look for any trustworthy
information from such. And it must furthermore be remem-
bered that the Imperator, etc., of Mr. Moses were among the
most respectable, as it would seem, of any of the spirits who
have made communications; they took a lofty tone, as of a
high order of spirituality, and seemingly were anxious to teach
the world, through Mr. Moses, truths of great importance. It
is, of course, quite possible to maintain that they had nothing
to do with the so-called Stainton Moses who communicated
through Mrs. Piper; but surely, if they were really in earnest
in their work through Mr. Moses, it was their business to
pose the fraud committed by this impostor, especially as " Im-
perator " and "Rector" (or spirits calling themselves by these
names) were frequent controls of Mrs. Piper herself. Perhaps
these latter were also frauds; why, then, were they &at tit-
=
640 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [Aug.,
posed by the genuine ones controlling Mr. Moses; and why
was not the real Mr. Moses himself produced ? That they
should not have the power to accomplish these very desirable
ends, seems hardly credible, if they were of the high spiritual
order to which they claimed to belong.
There seems to be but one reasonable explanation, on the
spiritistic theory, of these difficulties; namely, that none of the
spirits concerned in this Moses affair were really in earnest,
but trifling with their sitters, and trusting to luck not to be
found out. The real Mr. Moses was not, it would seem, avail-
able to them, and the pretended one probably acted without
due consultation. But this way of going on is entirely irrecon-
cilable with the idea of their being departed human souls, ele-
vated above the plane which they occupied in this world, en-
lightened by a more perfect knowledge of the truth, and
anxious to share this increased knowledge with us. If these
spirits who claim to have so much to reveal to us are departed
human souls at all, they must be souls of a very low character
for truth and honesty; such that if we had met them in their
life on earth, we would not trust to them for information on
any matter of importance. And yet these very ones, Imperator,
etc., in their communications through Mr. Moses while he was
on earth, are, as we have said, among the most respectable of
any who have worked through any medium, if we can judge
by the general tone of the messages which they gave to him.
Departing from particular instances, and looking ever the
ground generally", we find it impossible to construct any defi-
nite and harmonious revelation out of the communications made
in modern spiritism. But it they* were made by deceased human
beings, surely there would be some sort of agreement, unless
they were animated by a deliberate intention to deceive. We
find, however, no sort of agreement, even on the most impor-
tant matters. Dr. William Potter, formerly himself a spiritist,
testifies as follows in his book, Spiritism as It Is. He says
with regard to their teachings :
We are taught that God is a person ; that he is omnipo-
tent; that he is governed by nature's laws; that everything
is God ; that there is no God ; that we are gods. We are
taught that the soul is eternal ; that it commences its exist*
ence at conception, at birth, at maturity, at old age. That
all are immortal, that some are immortal, that none are im-
mortal. . . . TYiaA. s^vrita iifevfct live again in the flesh;
1907.]
RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 641
that they do return, and enter infant bodies, and live many
lives in the flesh. . . . That there is no high, no low, no
good, no bad. That murder is right, lying is right, slavery
is right, adultery is right. That nothing we can know can
injure the soul or retard its progress.
"All the above teachings " (and many others which we have
omitted), the author tells us, " we been heard given by media
or from communications."
We cannot wonder that, on recognizing the hopeless con-
tradictions in spiritist statements, investigators are driven back
to the "subliminal" theory, as that readily accounts for the
mingling of human opinions, existing in the medium or the sit-
ters, with any genuine information which may be received, or
makes the whole structure of spiritism merely a reflection of
human notions. And of course a tenable system, as far as this
matter of communications is concerned, may be made by com-
bining the subliminal theory with that of real messages from
the departed. Some will prefer to hold to the former alone,
as the verification of any facts unknown to the sitters is cer-
tainly very rare. But, as we have said, it can hardly be made
to account for the undeniable signs and wonders worked in at-
testation of the communications.
The " demonic " theory, which is irresistibly suggested by
the fraud, lying, and deception which runs through the whole
matter of spiritist communications, however free from any sus-
picion of common human trickery they may be, is, it would
seem, the one which will best satisfy the impartial investigator
of the whole business. By an impartial investigator of course
: mean one who does not close his mind absolutely to the
possibility of other spirits beside human ones, And by this
" demonic " theory we mean that which regards the mass of
the communications made in spiritism as the work of malevo-
lent, unembodied (not disembodied) spirits, such as every Catho-
lic, and indeed every believer in the Bible, is sure actually ex-
ist. And it attributes the signs and wonders, mainly or entirely,
to their operation. It does not necessarily altogether exclude
the subliminal, or even the occasional appearance of the de-
parted soul ; but the latter is in no way required by it, and
is rather useless as an appendage to it. We propose to pro-
ceed to examine this theory more fully in our next article.
(to be continued.)
AN INTERNATIONAL ARRANGEMENT.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
RHE Hon. Charles Browne Latimer, dying without
an heir, had left all he died possessed of to bii
late wife's young niece, Mary Glynn, with an
express stipulation that she should reside at
least six months out of every year on her Irish
estates.
He had not been an absentee landlord himself, and he was
not minded that one should follow him. He had been a good
landlord, too ; and in the enlightenment which gradually came
to his niece regarding the attitude of the people towards her-
self and her predecessors, her thoughts were often hot concern-
ing his generosity towards these people and their scant repay-
ment of it.
Miss Glynn had been brought up in the secure, friendly
life of one of the English Home Counties. She and hers bad
held a position in the minds of the people from which it
seemed no chances of time or change could dispossess them.
The Glynns had always been to their tenants and humbler
neighbors the great family, hardly less than royalty itself, per-
haps more, since the good people of Greenings were not likely
to come in contact with royalty, which had a somewhat myth-
ical suggestion for them by reason of its distance. Whereas
there had been Glynns at the Manor House time out of mind,
beyond tradition even. There was nothing to suggest that there
would not be Glynns there till the solid earth should fall in
ashes.
At first Mary had expected the same attitude of mind from
the people of Lismoyne; but she was very soon undeceived.
The Latimers had been at Lismoyne nearly a century, and that,
to Mary's mind had given them time to take root in the place.
Now she discovered, to her amazement, that she and hers
were creatures of yesterday. The O'Donnells had been O'Doo-
nells of Lismoyne " before the mountains were made," accord-
ing to the people. They were O'Donnells of Lismoyne still.
i9o7-] An International Arrangement 643
The Latimers and the Glynns were merely episodic birds of
passage ; they had no real place in the thoughts of the people.
The feeling was expressed with great frankness, even by
those whose interest one would have supposed it to be to hide it-
Mary had been a Lady Bountiful at Greenings. She had
been accustomed to feed and clothe and keep warm the whole
village in a hard winter; and the village, being a village of
the most patient people on earth, had never thought of grum-
bling because a hard winter would have meant starvation and
cold if there had not been a Lady 'Bountiful at the Manor
House.
She was a well-endowed young woman, and she was pre-
pared to do as much for Lismoyne as she had done for Green-
ings. She had been shocked, on her first arrival, at the rag-
gedness and dirt of Lismoyne. Her English conscience had
been awakened, and she had vowed to make the village look
like an English village as soon as the work could be accom-
plished.
Her nearest neighbor, Lord Dunfanaghy, a pleasant, cyni-
cal, middle aged bachelor, had laughed at her enthusiasm.
" My dear young lady," he had said, looking with admira-
tion at the fresh, honest face of the English girl, handsomer
because of the excitement of her thoughts, "let me tell you
what Charlie Latimer would have told you if he had lived.
Do what you can to make them comfortable in their own way,
if you must — I don't say you'll succeed, I've seen too many
philanthropic efforts go to seed — but don't try to benefit them
in your way. If you give thera English model cottages, they'll
break your heart in no time to see them. They won't make
use of any of your appliances for their comfort. You'll find
the hens in the bath-room, the potatoes in the parlor — "
He did not conclude the picture, but his face wrinkled in
innumerable fine lines of laughter.
Things had failed quite as dismally as Lord Dunfanaghy
had prophesied. Nor did Mary's efforts on their behalf endear
her to the people. When she discovered that her first model
cottages had been put to strange uses she showed open indig-
nation. But what was the use of it? "Sure, we never had
any comfort since the thatch was taken off, and them ould
kitcheners is terrible cowld, let alone being more than any cra-
ture could manage," the matrons had answered Mary
644 An International arrangement [Aug.,
Some of them even abandoned the kitchener to rust and to
be a place for the hatching hen, and had dug out the parlor
grate, so that they could light a fire on the hearth. The last
use the bath-rooms were put to was to wash anybody. The
scullery coppers remained unpolluted by soap and water. If
anything, the model cottages were in a short time a worse eye-
sore than their neighbors, which, crouching under their weight
of thatch, seemed somehow to belong to the barren, beautiful
landscape, with its miles of brown bog and its background of
mountains darkly purple.
" They really behave as though I had done them an injury/ 1
Mary acknowledged ruefully to Lord Dunfanaghy.
" That's how they feel it," he replied. " District visiting is
not for the Irish. We are a less patient people than the Eng-
lish. We don't take kindly to having our business minded
for us."
" I have spent more on this village in six months than I
should need to do in Greenings in six years," Mary complained.
She had discovered by this time that her neighbor's cynical
utterances covered such a deal of generosity and helpfulness
that she had learned to let them go. " I am really keeping
the whole village. Lismdyne House might be a mediaeval mon-
astery for the crowds of pensioners it sends away full and over-
flowing every day. I have discovered that my kitchens are
crowded every morning. They all think that they ought to
sit down for a chat, and they do sit down."
41 To be sure they do. Haven't you Irish servants?" inter-
jected Lord Dunfanaghy.
" And they are so particular about what they take. I be-
lieve I am feeding the village dogs as well as the village peo-
ple. They even leave the food about outside sometimes. There
is more wasted than would keep Greenings going for a week.
And the worst of it is I get no thanks."
She ended with a laugh. The sense of humor — an odd, ir-
responsible kind of humor, without which Lord Dunfanaghy
assured her life in Ireland was impossible — had been develop-
ing of late. Life at Greenings had given no opportunities for
this particular kind of laughter.
" To be sure you don't," Lord Dunfanaghy assented cheer-
fully. " Aren't you only one of the new people, Englishers,
sprung from nobody knows where ? They don't even think you
1907.] AN INTERNATIONAL ARRANGEMENT 645
good and charitable; not they. Aren't you sitting in the seat
of the old family, giving what they ought to give? A crust
from an O'Donnell would be received with passionate gratitude,
where you might beggar yourself for them and receive no
thanks. You are just beginning to discover the Irish problem."
It was all true. Old Katty Whelan, the beggar-woman, had
put it with crude sincerity a day or two before on receiving an
alms from the young lady.
"I do be often thinking," she had said, " of the time the old
family was in it " ; and she had looked up regretfully at the long
house front, with the turrets at each corner. "Great doings
there was in it, the people do be saying, and open house for
everybody but the bailiffs. Och, sure, the old times was always
the best."
Even the beggars had not the professional gratitude towards
her, Mary considered, with the half- bitter humor which she was
fast learning in this mad country; and then she remembered
how Lord Dunfanaghy had said to her once that the people felt
she was giving away things not rightly hers, but the O'Donnells'.
Oddly enough there sprang up in her heart a desire that
she might have stood with this ungrateful people as the old
family stood. She knew that there was not a man, woman, or
child in the country round who would not have done anything
for Madam O'Donnell, or Cecilia, the pale girl with the beau-
tiful oval face framed in bands of dark brown hair whom she
had passed on the road ; or for Sir Teig O'Donnell, whom she
knew nothing about except what was to his discredit.
"You won't have any game and you won't have any sal
mon," Lord Dunfanaghy had assured her quietly, when she had
talked of shooting and fishing parties at Lismoyne. " Every-
thing has been poached so long. Teig takes what he wants for
himself and sends the surplus to Dublin. The people follow his
example, and think it very handsome of Teig to permit it. His
laxity about his property makes him, if possible, a little dearer
Fto the people."
"But it is my property," cried Mary, aghast.
" Pooh ! You think it is. The people don't think so, and
Teig doesn't think so. You know the property came to the
Latimers by marriage. The O'Donnells lost it originally by a
game at cards. Teig would put a debt of honor before any
other debt, being Teig. But they say that Walter Burke, whose
646 AN INTERNATIONAL ARRANGEMENT [Aug,,
daughter married Hugh Latimer, cheated at the cards. It is
even said that he wanted to make restitution on his death- bed.
Peasants' stories. I don't attach any importance to them; but
the people do, and Teig does, and Cecilia and Madam look 00
them as gospel truth. So Teig poaches your game and salmon;
and the whole countryside follows his excellent example."
" I am going to stop it," said Mary, setting her teeth.
" Better be like Charlie Latimer, and let it go," counselled
her friend. " You'll only make the country too hot to hold
you."
" We'll see. Why doesn't Sir Teig O'Donnell do something
to earn an honest living instead of poaching ? "
" Faith, my dear, the poor chap never got a chance. His
mother can't bear him out of her sight. She hasn't been well
this many a year. He's had no education except what he
scraped up from Madam's old chaplain, Father Roche. He's
full ot learning, and he's given what he could to Teig. Cecilia
too stays with her mother, although she's wedded to the con-
vent since she could think for herself. Teig would have made
a fine soldier. Perhaps he'd never have done as brave a thing
as staying by his sick mother and leaving it to people to ask
the question you've just asked."
Unfortunately the Laughing Philosopher, as Mary had come
to call Lord Dunfanaghy, was away, and likely to be away for
some time, when the events occurred which embroiled Miss
Glynn with the O'Donnells.
It was a perplexity and a vexation to herself that the country
and the people, and the old family, had come to interest her to
a disproportionate extent. She had a profound interest in
things that baffled her; and the more unsatisfactory the people
were, from her point of view, the more interesting they became.
Why could she not dispossess the O'Donnells in their affections?
Why must they always look at her as though she were a stran-
ger ? She had been oddly fascinated by Cecilia O'Donnell's
spiritual, pale face, and had made overtures to her with a gen-
erous impulsiveness when she had met her by accident at the bed-
side of a sick woman. The nun like creature had looked at her
with a startled gaze. Mary had seen that when they met
Cecilia's thought had been for flight. She had always acted on
impulse and had rarely had cause to regret it. Now she spoke
and acted impulsively.
1907.] AN INTERNATIONAL ARRANGEMENT 647
" I am so sorry to hear that Madam O'Donnell is not so
well," she had said. " Is there nothing I can do ? May I call
to inquire how she is ? "
" She is better, thank you," Cecilia had replied, with an
alarmed look. "There is nothing you could do, thank you. And
we live so quietly. My mother sees no one but old friends."
It was while smarting from the rebuff that Mary gave orders
about mending the gaps in the stone walls which enclosed
Lismoyne. She had wondered when she first came what the
gray, buttressed stone walls were needed for. At Greenings
the woods were open wherever they skirted a public road; and
nothing was the worse for it.
But here it was different. She supposed the people were
more destructive, less law-abiding than the English. Anyhow,
gaps had been broken everywhere in the wall. The people had
helped themselves to whatever they could carry away. The
plantations had been destroyed for firewood ; the people's sheep
and goats and lean cattle wandered and fed where they would.
On the day Mary gave the order she had found a whole en-
campment of tinkers, i, *,, gypsies, settled down comfortably
within sight of her front windows.
Masons had to be brought from a distance to rebuild the
walls. Mary's farm bailiff, a young Yorkshireman, very amiable
till the bull-dog fit fell on him, thoroughly devoted to his
young mistress, was very much interested in the mending of
the walls. Within the walls Harding was going to establish
English order, English law-abidingness. He was in favor of
English gamekeepers too. If he had dared, he would have sug-
gested English servants. He had his way so far as the head-
gamekeeper was concerned.
The first breach in the wall was repaired, made good. Hard-
ing saw and approved, and reported well of the mason's prog-
ress to his mistress. It happened to be at the nearest point
of the wall to where the bare stone-keep and the little dwell-
ing-house abjoining housed the O'Donnells. The next morn-
ing the masonry was down ; except for the new stones lying in
all directions the gap was as it had been.
It made Mary very angry. It made Harding's face lose its
amiable expression and assume one dark and dogged.
"There was one of the wild deer shot last night," he said
to Mary. " If you'll give me orders, Miss, I'll stop it."
648 An International arrangement [Aug.,
" Stop it," said Mary shortly. She was too furious to ask
what Harding intended to do.
That day the gap was rebuilt, and the next morning the
wall was down again. It happened two or three times. Mary
drove over herself to the nearest police barracks to lay an in-
formation against Sir Teig O'Donnell. The red- faced sergeant
was hypocritically sympathetic, but at the same time plainly
anxious that she should not prosecute Sir Teig.
" Your Ladyship wouldn't be feeling the loss of the few birds,"
he said. " Sure, what would a young lady like yourself want
with them ? 'Tisn't as though your Ladyship was a gentleman."
"Sir Teig O'Donnell is a poacher," she said. "He shall
go to jail like any other poacher."
" Go to jail ! " cried the sergeant aghast. " Sir Teig O'Don-
nell go to jail! Now, look here, your Ladyship, your Lady-
ship's young. Don't go for to be destroying yourself talking
that way. I wish Mr. Latimer was here to-day. Sir Teig in
prison ! Oh, Lord ! Your Ladyship wouldn't be let live in the
country if people was to hear you talking that way."
It made Mary angrier than ever. She answered the ser-
geant sharply that it was his duty to arrest Sir Teig O'Don-
nell like any other poacher. As she drove off, sitting behind
her high-stepping horse, she was aware that the sergeant and
his "subs" were looking after her in amazement. She had an
idea that perhaps they, too, were among the poachers. She •
recalled some of Lord Dunfanaghy's humorous tales, over which
she "had laughed with a wry mouth, having too much of the
English land owner in her to be able to enjoy them thoroughly.
A few days later she was awake in the gray dawn, and she
heard a shot fired in her woods. She was up in an instant.
For a few nights all had been quiet ; and she wondered if the
head-gamekeeper and his men were on the watch.
She was broad awake and tingling with indignation. She
dressed herself with what speed she might, and went down
through the quiet house. Outside the dews lay heavy on the
grass ; and the east was troubled. She thought the clouds
shook as though there, were thunder behind them. Lines of
rose trembled in the gray. The mountain peaks began to grow
light while yet their flanks were in deepest shadow. The first
birds were twittering in the nests. The wind came up from the
sea with a delicious freshness.
She might have been Aurora walking through the dewy
grasses, so fresh was she, so fair, with the roses in her cheeks
and the proud, angry light in her eyes. She had not thought
what was going to happen if she came upon the poachers. She
had set the law in motion against them ; and if they were in-
clined to be rough with her she was quite defenceless, quite
unarmed. She had not thought even to bring a dog with
her.
She walked some way through the woods before she came
upon anything more formidable than the rabbits and the squir-
rels, and the birds that were all singing now since the sun was
up, and warming the wood through and through. Not a sign
of any human creature. If there had been poachers, they had
apparently gone home to their beds. There was no sign of
her own men either. She had walked a mile or two and had
had the wood to herself.
Then — she came out in a clearing, and her heart leaped and
dropped. The wide, grassy path stretched before her to a gap
in the wall, the gap. Lying within the gap there was some-
thing huddled up, face downward on the grass. As she went
up to it she saw a gun lying beside it.
Her heart was cold within her as she went up to the
quiet figure. A low moan startled her and at the same time
gave her an exquisite relief. Then he was not dead; but he
must be very badly wounded. As she stooped down beside
him she all but knelt on a wide patch of blood already becom-
ing glazed in the sun.
The figure stirred under her hand. Then, to her immense
relief, the golden head turned a little way about, and a pair of
gray eyes, exhausted with pain and loss of blood, stared at her
heavily.
"I thought no one would ever come," he said. "It was
my own gun. There was barbed wire across the gap. I fell
over it and the gun went off. It struck me on the leg. It's
been pumping blood like mad. After the first I didn't dare
stir. The bleeding ought to be stopped as soon as possible."
His eyes closed. It had been an obvious effort to him to
speak.
Miss Glynn had always held it to be the duty of every
man and woman to become as efficient as possible in as many
directions as possible. One form her activity had taken was
directions a
650 An International Arrangement [Aug.,
attending ambulance classes. She could make a tourniquet and
a bandage with any, well, shall we say, medical orderly?
She disappeared for a second or two and then came back,
tearing something white and dainty and much be- frilled into
strips as she came. She had found a stick which was suitable
for her purpose.
She never looked at the man while she bandaged the leg
above the wound and twisted it tightly by means of the stick.
Then she dipped some of her strips in the water which ran in
a little hollow close by, and washed the wound itself before
binding it up.
The man lay with his eyes closed. He was extremely
handsome, with strong features under the mass of roughened,
golden hair. The mouth, unhidden by any mustache, was beau-
tifully moulded; the throat was splendid.
Despite her perturbation of mind, Mary noticed the rough
country clothes he wore, evidently made by a village tailor.
Yet he was a gentleman — quite obviously and distinctly t
gentleman. A big fellow, too. As he lay stretched out now
on the sod his limbs were enormous.
Suddenly he opened his eyes and asked for water. She
brought it to him in the hollow of her hands, and he drank.
Then he smiled at her. The smile transformed his face, gave
it an innocence, a good- will which were very alluring.
" Now, you will be pretty easy," she said. " It won't blce^
any more. Will you lie quite quietly while I go for help?'*
"Where?" He caught at her dress and fingered it, ^
though he were unwilling to. let her go.
" To the gamekeeper's cottage close by in the first
stance. We must have the doctor first Then I shall have Y
carried to Lismoyne House."
" But why ? " he asked. " Why not to my own house ?
is nearer. I am — "
" I know," she said quietly. " You are Sir Teig O'Donn
What would happen to your mother if you were brought ho**
like this?"
" Why," he said, " the shock might kill her."
The color was returning to his cheeks. For the life of b^ J
Mary Glynn could not but find him pleasant. She did nP*
draw away the fold of her skirt from his fingers.
" So you see," she said, as though she were speaking to *
i
I907-] An International Arrangement 651
child, young and dear, " it will be better for you to be taken
to Lismoyne. We shall nurse you, Aunt Marcella and I. Aunt
Marcella is a quiet mouse, who sits in the chimney corner till
'ihe is needed, and then she is invaluable. Your mother must
"be told, quietly, so as not to frighten her. She can come to
you if she will. Lismoyne is big enough."
When she had spoken she had a ridiculous feeling that she
ought not to have. said it. Was she getting to be as mad as
he rest of them ?
"I know," he said. "You are very good to me. You are
Miss Glynn, of course ? I have seen you when you have not
seen me. How good you are to me ! You were going to put
me in prison, weren't you ? "
"There," she said, "you've talked enough. We shall have
plenty of time to talk over those things. They should not
have put up the barbed wire. It wasn't playing the game. Now
keep very still while I am away."
She ran to the gamekeeper's cottage as swiftly as Atalan-
ta. One messenger was despatched for a doctor, while another
went to the house for materials to form a litter. She saw to
every detail of the removal herself. It was the oddest piece of
topsy-turveydom. Harding, who had been summoned to help,
being a man and logical, whistled to himself over the illogicality
of women. Miss Glynn had spoken harshly to him about the
barbed wire ; but she was unjust. She would remember later that
she had given him a free hand, and would make the injustice
good.
It was Mary's own idea to convey the news of her son's
accident to Madam O'Donnell through Father Roche, who was
a man of the world, and had a way of regarding the O'Don-
nells, and for the matter of that, Miss Glynn, with a pleased,
humorous smile, as though they were children. After the in-
terview with Mary, and having seen the invalid lying on a big
bed in a room, the comfort of which was in odd contrast to
the bareness of everything at Spook Castle, the priest went
away, twinkling to himself at his own thoughts.
An hour or two later Madam O'Donnell appeared, leaning
on his arm. She was a little, delicate, black-browed, oval- faced
lady, with a sense of her own importance which would have
been ridiculous if it had not been so obviously sincere.
She was, at first, all for removing Sir Teig to the Castle,
652 An International Arrangement [Aug.,
and when she was dissuaded, she gave in with an air as
though the Queen yielded the Heir-Apparent to a subject's
care.
"Faith, he'd be twice as long getting well with us as he'll
be there, ma'am/' said Father Roche to her afterwards. "1
see nothing but short commons ahead of us, now the boy's
not able to forage for us."
Other thoughts he kept to himself, although he used to
smile so much, as though enjoying a very delicious joke, that
it made Madam and Cecilia wonder what it could be about.
There was plenty of time for Sir Teig and Mary to discuss
the question of the poaching before Sir Teig was well enough
to be moved from Lismoyne to Spook Castle. Meanwhile the
friendship between Madam and Cecilia and Mary grew, so that
it was quite simple and easy for the larder at Spook Castle
to be better stocked than it had ever been before, without any-
body poaching the game. Mary's sense of humor was certainly
developing in the right way when she smiled to herself over
Madam's acknowledgments of her gifts, which were as though
she did the giver great honor by her acceptance.
Even when Sir Teig was downstairs on a sofa, and might
have been transferred to Spook Castle, he seemed in no great
hurry to go.
"When you are able to get about again," Mary said to
him one day, "will you still poach on my preserves?"
" It would be within my rights," he said. " But, gratitude
forbids."
He had a couple of puzzled lines down the centre of his
young, white forehead, just where the tan left off with a start-
ling suddenness. The tan was still there, despite his illness
and his immurement. He was wondering where the supplies
were to come from, since pretty well all the game of the coun-
tryside must be counted as of the preserves of Lismoyne.
There had been a good deal said between them which ought
to have led up to a solution of the difficulty, but always, at
the psychological moment, the young man had pulled himself
up short, the girl had changed the subject quickly.
"There is no question of gratitude," she said with her eyes
down. " You got hurt through me, and Aunt Marcella and I
have nursed you back to health again. The poaching is noth-
ing ; it is the point of view. If you still believe you have the
1907.] An International arrangement 653
right to the things, your refraining from taking them will be
nothing."
" Of course we have the right/' he said with a flash.
"Then of course you have the right to everything here?"
she said, looking at him from under her long eyelashes.
"In equity, yes"; he answered. Then he burst out pas-
sionately : " If it was mine, if it was mine in law, I know
what I should say, Mary."
"And why not say it?" she said sweetly. "Why not let
it be yours in law as it is in equity — ? There, there, be quiet.
You are not strong enough — Ah, yes ; I loved you from that
morning — "
"Teig would have been a poacher to the end, if Mary hadn't
married him," Lord Dunfanaghy said later on with a chuckle
to Father Roche. " Now — by Jove, I shouldn't be surprised if
you found him one of these days preaching the Game Laws.
He's building the wall, and the people won't mind it from him.
And he's putting floors in the cabins and new thatch on them,
and building sties for the pigs. To be sure the people say:
' His Honor knows what's best.' It's an idyll to be sure ; but
by and by, when they've settled clown, you'll find Teig turn-
ing into a very good sort of Squire. Mary is learning from
him, and he's learning from Mary. A very good sort of an
international arrangement, I call it."
ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, Ph.D.
flROM time immemorial relations between na
and things have occasioned much discussion, and '
failure to take account of these relations has often
resulted in confusion. Some mistake the name
for the thing ; many fail to recognize the thing
without the name ; others are unable to free themselves from
their attitudes toward the name, long after the course of life
has changed the thing. We are anchored to our likes and dis-
likes by names* vocabulary, attitudes, and interests, and the
fourfold emancipation of thought, which truthseckers should tin
at, is a work of tedious care and long waiting.
Modern civilization dislikes the name and the thing Social-
ism. If a no n -socialistic measure be called socialistic, many
who dislike the word, are won to opposition because of it. If
a measure that is socialistic escape the opprobrium of the name,
it escapes opposition that would be aroused were the name
used. The case is much the same with liberty and private
property. We love the names and fail too often to see where-
in the reality is gone. Let no man attack liberty or privates
property by name! Yet we are incredibly patient of social
processes which tend to rob the one of its real meaning and
the other of its justification.
It is true that in Socialism, as in all popular movements and
in all defense of actual institutions, there is much confusion -
If believers in Socialism disagree radically in their statements
of principle and in their interpretations, they should be patient i
with us who, not of their fold, seem to be unable to make sv
statement of our views of Socialism which its advocates wil
admit as fair. A Catholic bishop stated some time since thaaw
Socialism is hatred of man, of society, of God, hate deep, vil^s
bitter. A formal reply by a socialist gathering resented th».
charge. While one may not care to see the matter stated m i
that way, there is no doubt that what was charged again as
Socialism had been actually seen in it. From another CathoL m
6s 6 Attitudes Toward Socialism [Aug.,
deep sympathy with the mental distress of a believer who drifts
into the feeling that in this supreme question of reform, he may
not safely trust his leaders. Cannot the general Catholic atti-
tude be justified in his eyes, in a way to win him back from
doubt to loyalty, from impatience to trust ? His capacity for
both loyalty and trust are shown in his willingness to accept
socialistic leadership almost without question. Is the warrant oi
his own Church less strong when it asks him for trust? One
might rest the case here. If a believer allows his sympathies
to drift away from faith, and himself, sets up the limits to the
Church's authority over him, he has already lost an essential
element in his Catholicity.
It is not easy to make a satisfactory concrete definition of a
Catholic. In the report of the lecture above referred to, a
Catholic is defined as one
whose Catholicity determines his intellectual convictions re-
garding conduct and theories affecting conduct ; one who
does not assert his intellectual independence of the Church
in that province of thought over which, by divine right, it
claims either infallible or magisterial authority ; one, there-
fore, who gives intellectual assent not only to the definitions
of the Church, and to those beliefs which are clearly articles
of faith, but also permits his mind to be directed by the
teaching power of the Church in the practical solution of
questions which arise in his time and country, and which
have a vital bearing on matters of faith and morals, even
though the pronouncements of the Church on these subjects
are neither explicitly nor implicitly contained in the deposit
of revelation.
This definition, doctrinally accurate and comprehensive, is,
of course, not used ordinarily in making an enumeration of
Catholics ; if applied rigidly, it would probably be as severe on
the capitalist as on the Socialist, since capital tends to depart
from the spirit of Catholicity quite as much in fact as Social*
ism does in theory. The Catholic who answers to that definition
makes no difficulty concerning Socialism. But the Catholic less
finished in his formation, less clear in his mental relation to the
Church, held in the clutches of many social forces of which he
is scarcely conscious, may be misled into rebellious discontent,
if, being inclined to Socialism, he finds the anathema of his
Church against it.
1907.] ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM 657
i. The Socialist of this type is usually driven to his theo-
ries by an intense emotional recoil from the social conditions
about hira ; fierce competition leading directly to gross selfish-
ness; disintegration of society; disestablishment of principles
of Christian conduct in the business and industrial world. He
finds no satisfactory explanation of the Church's patient tolera-
tion of these conditions. Unsettled in this manner, he looks to
Socialism for relief and believes that he sees promise of it.
He realizes, then, that the Church is set firmly against Social-
ism, and his mind is given over to distrust of the Church's
leadership and wisdom. What may be said in justification of
this attitude of the Church ?
2. Socialism has bitterly opposed the Church, reviled reli-
gion, and scorned its expression. It has represented it as a
shrewd piece of trading on ignorance and superstition, as a
contrivance hypocritically engaged in servile defense of capital.
Under the term Socialism as used, reference is made to the
men who have loved and taught it, the literature they have
produced, and the methods they have employed, the party spirit
that they have developed. It is of course said every day that
these are Socialists not Socialism, and that as Washington, who
was a freemason, did not make our institutions an expression of
freemasonry, so the atheistic Socialists cannot make Socialism
atheistic.
To that it may in fairness be replied that the cases are
scarcely alike. Socialist leaders have looked upon the Church
as an obstacle to them; the virtues she attempts to develop are
not of the kind that Socialists welcome ; and they have spoken
and written against her in an openly hostile way. That So-
cialism is something else, that many Socialists do not share
this spirit, simply makes it necessary to exercise care in speak-
ing of them, but it does not hide the fact that accepted lead-
ers have made their attacks on the Church or Christianity, part
of their active propaganda. Let us say only, then, that this
is true of many Socialists and of much Socialism, not of all
Socialists and all Socialism; true only as far as it goes.
(3) But in addition to this personal hostility to the Church,
we find that the essential economic tenet of Socialism, collective
ownership of capital with its implications, reaches its strongest
setting in a systematic philosophy which includes atheism, ma-
terialism, determinism, repudiating the basic doctrines of the
VOL. LXXXV.— 42
658 ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM [Aug,,
Christian view of life. This does not mean that collectivism is
not or cannot be otherwise expressed. It can be otherwise ex-
pressed. But, in fact, it has come to its strongest expression
as part of a materialistic philosophy, which the Church neces-
sarily repudiates. In as far then as Socialism does actually
appear in such a system of thought and interpretation of his-
tory, the Church is compelled to condemn and oppose it at
whatever cost. Representative Socialists have found it wise to
go beyond their economics into philosophy and theology, to
teach a new concept of life. It is surely fair to charge Social-
ism with such doctrines in as far as they are identified with it
But this does not refer to all Socialism nor all Socialists.
4. There are others, let us say, who are Socialists and have
nothing to say on philosophy or theology; who advocate the
collective ownership of capital and governed distribution of
product, and confine themselves to that. The reading of any
average treatise on economics or politics will furnish illustra-
tion. The proposal involves so many and such radical changes,
advocated with such intemperate energy, that no great institu-
tion, gifted with the sense of established facts, can easily ac-
cord a welcome to it, no matter by what process of reasoning it
is defended, or by what apparent facts it is invited.
It is not easy to realize how the mind of the Church hears
the talk of Socialism. She has lived all these centuries, aiming
to overcome the forces of sin and social evil ; fighting with elabo-
rate and impressive ritual to force man to believe in his own re-
sponsibility ; struggling against the varied and subtle passions of
man, in the endeavor to make real to him the life beyond.
She has watched the fairest and purest among her children
consecrate themselves to religious life, and has seen, only too
often, whole communities fall from their original zeal, because
they failed to conquer human nature. She has fought against
those who have taught that human nature is entirely de-
praved, and yet she has not been able to abandon herself to
unquestioning trust in it. Her moral system, her concept of
justice, the whole fibre of her judgments, have become inex-
tricably identified with property institutions as history has seen
them develop. She has tried, in season and out of season, to
convince man of the facts and processes of the supernatural
life. All of this is in and of her life and thought and attitudes
and vocabulary, and the Socialist presents himself to her, one
ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM
of her own children, let us say, and tells his story. She finds
the names and thoughts that he uses strange to her ears and
unwelcome to her mind. A cure-all is offered when she has
looked the centuries through for even hopeful progress, She
has fought for justice and has been reviled for it — and here is
justice guaranteed in one phrase. Atmosphere, emphasis, tone,
analysis of evil, force for reconstruction, brought to her notice
by Socialism, are so unlike her own atmosphere, emphasis, and
tone, that it is incredible that she would be friendly to it at
once. The Church's inability to overturn her own psychology
and to adopt an entirely new one in a moment, would seem to
explain, in part, her aversion to the new doctrine, even taking
it at its best, and not blaming to it the shocking accessory
doctrines on love and marriage and religion which many among
its believers hold.
A fear seems to assert itself, naturally enough, that there
are well-defined dangers in the psychology of revolt ; that the
mind which frankly accepts this economic scheme as now pro-
posed^ may find it easier to become more and more radical
than to become less and less so, and that, when this and that
stubborn obstacle get in the way, the fiery temper that bodes
disaster supplants the caution that good sense suggests There
is some danger that the story of Troy and the wooden horse
is repeated in the cases of many, who, accepting the socialistic
principle, failed to foresee the germs of further revolt that it
contains. In plainer words, there is among churchmen an ex-
plicit feeling that the Catholic who becomes a Socialist in the
supposedly innocent way of advocating only collectivism, runs
risk of going much farther, to the detriment of his faith and
loyalty to the Church.
On the question of fact, there is some confirmation. It is
stated that in Germany, Catholics who have become Socialists
tend to abandon Catholic worship and sacraments, and they
have been known, when dying, to refuse the services of a
priest, saying: "I shall remain consistent."
We have seen here in the United States, at least two priests
abandon their faith and Church and enter among those who
scoff at her, after becoming Socialists in the supposedly harm-
less sense of the term. It is stated that not a prominent
member of the Socialist parties in the United States, who was
once a Catholic, has remained so. A Catholic Socialist in a
660 ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM [Aug.,
western city, delegate at the time to a labor convention, left
the Church during a sermon on Socialism, because the preacher,
a scholarly and fair-minded man, who had studied Socialism
many years, accused the movement of being materialistic. An
investigation of a small number of alleged Catholic Socialists
in a western city showed that not one of them was a practical
Catholic. Some who have been in the movement, and have
left it, give assurance that its spirit is directly sceptical and
irreligious.
There is no desire in these statements of fact to force their
meaning in any way. The suggestion may be of service to
some who are at a loss to know why the Church seems to op-
pose Socialism under whatever form it presents itself. If others
find no value in the thought presented, they may pass it by.
II.
Another point remains to be considered, one on which it
is not easy to get an explanation that is entirely satisfactory
to the class now held in mind, Catholics who might be in-
clined to believe in economic Socialism ; that is, whether or
not, in fact, Socialism does actually aim at the abolition of
private property in such a way to run counter to the divinely
sanctioned natural right of property. No effort is made in
these pages to account for the attitude of churchmen who
maintain that it does. The main desire is to state the problem
as it appears to the hypothetical Socialist that we have in mind.
From one prominent Catholic source we learn that Socialism
aims at the confiscation of wealth ; that it is advocated by
hoodlums and rabble; and that it is in violation of the divine
command: "Thou shalt not steal." From another Catholic
source we learn that an official organ of one of our socialist
parties " boldly attacks the divinely recognized right of private
property. " An English priest published recently a sermon on
Socialism under the text: "Thou shalt not steal."
Let us make full allowance for all such charges against So-
cialism, and assent fully to the condemnation of the Socialism
of which they are true. But if we meet a type of Socialism
of which this is not true, what are we tx> do ? If we meet a
kind of Socialism which aims to defend and extend concretely
Attitudes Toward Socialism 66i
and directly the enjoyment of private property in its natural
personal functions ; if we meet a kind which believes fully in
private ownership of what is economically called wealth, and
which is accurate in its analysis of property and sure in its
aims concerning it, how are we to meet it ?
We might claim that such a distinction is useless and it
evades the issue. Yet our economists recognize the distinction
between capital and wealth as fundamental, and they have no
difficulty whatever in treating the two as involved in distinct
economic processes. We might say that in last analysis it is
only the wealth function of things, and not the capital function,
that justifies property. Again, we might claim that those who
make the distinction between capital and wealth, and believe in
the sanctity of private ownership of wealth, are not Socialists.
But that would involve contradiction with palpable facts, al-
though we do meet at times in socialistic literature the phrase
" abolition of private property." Or we might admit that there
is value in the distinction, but claim that a Socialist who em-
braces this form of doctrine will surely tend to become more
radical and endanger his faith in the process, This appears to
be a well-warranted position, but it has no value for many of
those whom we have in mind, For them it is merely a pro-
phecy, and as such it has no value as an argument.
Let us, then, assume that we may have a type of Socialist
!and Socialism in which no " confiscation of wealth " is pro-
posed ; in which the " divinely sanctioned right of private prop-
erty" is not attacked. We may then endeavor to outline the
processes through which our hypothetical Socialist's mind works,
and see the questions which present themselves to him.
I. Looking at the facts of property, he finds that the pres-
ent system, as it has worked out, contains no normal guaran-
tee to the individual that he shall own such wealth as will best
enable him to attain to full development. Distinguishing be-
tween hoodlum and vicious, lazy, and idle on one hand, and
willing, industrious, and deserving on the other, he finds that
by hundreds of thousands these latter are shut out from enjoy-
ment of any property beyond owning precarious and insufficient
incomes. He finds degradation, arrested development, misery
resulting. He sees, furthermore, that among those who accu-
mulate quantities of property, perversion of aim, disorder in
motive, false ambitions blight their lives and rob them only too
662 Attitudes Toward Socialism [Aug.,
often of healthy understanding of life and its meaning. He
finds also that the middle class, historically the safest and no-
blest, appears to be in process of disintegration and lives in more
or less fear. This is so true that practically all intelligent mem-
bers of the middle class realize and frankly admit that their
earning capacity now is far short of the obligations which they
feel toward their families, and they resort to accident insurance,
life insurance, and mutual benefit societies of all kinds to pro-
tect those dependent on them. For them insurance is a ne-
cessity and mercy, though the rich take advantage of it also
with different motives.
At any rate, the struggle to maintain ourselves, and make
such progress as the average course of life demands, costs so
much energy, that nearly everywhere the emphasis on the prop-
erty motive is excessive, with doubtful results in men's lives.
We find that property has undergone tremendous development;
that to property in actual things have been added symbols in
money and in credits; that future things, things yet to be pro-
duced in coming decades, are now owned, bought, accumulated,
and sold in the credit symbols — bonds, stocks, mortgages ; that
the present generation already owns and traffics in the earnings
of men and women who will live twenty and forty years hence.
In this way, the apparent volume of property is expanded to
incredible proportions, and these valid claims on future prod-
ucts may, at any moment, be converted into claims on actual
products noto on hand in society. Thus the passion for indefi-
nite accumulation and chance for it are found everywhere ; the
forms of credit which may be owned remove all or nearly all
the natural obstacles to possession ; new and unnatural uses
for property, quite foreign to its primary natural function as
wealth, appear and affect its distribution extensively.
Our hypothetical Socialist finds, furthermore, that capital or
property has become a special interest in society, affecting legis-
lation and administration, and that the intensity of the property
motive has so far undermined character that we tend to sus-
pect our courts, legislators, executives, and our leaders, of
basely selling themselves into the service of any one who wishes .
to enrich himself at the expense of the public. The money
motive is like blood-poisoning in the social body, as our So-
cialist sees it.
2. It may now be clear that the divinely sanctioned natural
ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIALISM
right of private property will give us one set of results in a
society living on a basis of property in things only, without
money and credits. It will give us another set of results when
the money symbol is devised and sanctioned, for money per-
mits one to accumulate claims rather than things. It will give
us still another set of results when society devises credits, draw-
ing back into actual life and transaction products of years and
years to come. Money is not wealth economically, nor is it
capital, unless for a banker or money changer; credits are not
wealth, nor are they capital except for the broker or trader.
There is no wealth but life, and industrially capital is in things
that grow or develop into uses for life and living.
3. Let us assume that divine and natural laws have sanc-
tioned this evolution of property through money and credits.
Overlooking the teaching and activity of the Church against
credits and interest in centuries which have no modern coun-
terpart, and, as well, her doctrine on the nature of money, let
us find profits, interest, massive accumulation, competition,
inequalities of fortune, legitimate and sanctioned, but surely
not specifically imposed by natural and divine law. Let us
protect every holder of property to the fullest, and ask, with
our reformer, if natural and divine law forbid one to work for
reorganization of property. There is no need now to ques
tion how far the whole business and industrial worlds have
thrown off Christian ethics; how far factory owners, railroad
presidents, stock jobbers, stock watering geniuses, competing
grocers and meat packers, and steel manufacturers and bankers,
corporations generally, will welcome the Catholic theologian to
their desks, and listen with proper docility while he exposes
the Christian principles of just price, reasonable profit, and
loyal methods on which business should be conducted. Nor
need we inquire how an ideally living Catholic, or Catholic in-
stitution, may invest money in a way which will not involve
contact with fraud; whether if one invest in railroad bonds,
one must find out if the company's methods of earning are no-
ble and fair and merciful. And if one may invest only where
such methods are employed, where is one to find such corpo-
rations and how may one know them ? We may leave aside
all such direct and somewhat embarrassing questions, and allow
that our supposed Socialist recognizes and sanctions all prop-
664 Attitudes Toward Socialism [Aug.,
erty holdings now found. It society prevented by natural and
divine law from commencing to-morrow to bring about a total
reorganization of property that concerns only the future ?
If, for instance, legal sanction were withheld hereafter from
all forms of industrial credits in a way to hinder individuals in
the future from creating, selling, or owning them, or deriving
revenue from them, we might see a first step toward accumo*
lation by society, of the ownership of, and control of, all credits.
Society might thus enter industry as a competitor with indi-
viduals, and by use of ordinary competitive methods drive them
out of business, or, more mercifully, wait for a generation when
the transfer would accomplish itself.
With this stroke, speculation might be wiped out, it is
thought; individuals who made a living by handling credits, or
lived on income from them, would be compelled to go into pro-
ductive activity. This change would reduce the social valua-
tion of property enormously, and society would revert to a ba-
sis where wealth resumes its natural function and the individual
owns what he earns, having neither opportunity to accumulate =
beyond, nor incentive for it, nor need of it. On the whole, the=-
main contention of our hypothetical Socialist might be realized^
— in his mind — by such a step. He asks then if in methodb
or alleged results any violation of natural or divine law is-
found.
III.
In speaking in this manner, an effort was made to hint at
the course that our Socialist's mind is apt to take. The out-
line, true to what may be assumed to be his mental process,
follows the thought out unrelated, and passes, unnoticed for
the moment, the conflicts of principle and relations of other
factors involved. The reader may feel that this is all fiction,
theory, yet the class that asks the question concerning Social*
ism and the Church will grow, and it may be worth while to
study the attitude of mind and sympathy which prompts the
question. This type of inquirer refuses to be satisfied if informed
that Socialism attacks the natural and divine right of property.
He claims stoutly that his kind does not.
The point held in mind is not whether or not the Church is
Attitudes Toward socialism
665
ike a stand against Socialism. She has done so. But in
g that position, now and then ccme to expression, reasons
;. The individual who is inclined toward Socialism, if dis-
ied with churchmen's position, is doubly dissatisfied if he
any inaccuracy or false assumption underlying it. Were
type of individual merely an individual it might be well to
r that he remain as he is, for no great institution can in
world work stop to settle the temperamental difficulties of
one whom she meets. But it seems probable that men of
type will increase in number and in intensity of feeling.
:e the matter of retaining influence over them is one of
rtance. It is probable that Socialism will become less
al, or better, that many, who are less radical than present
rs, will go into the movement. They will carry with them
sympathy with Christianity and less of the cruder emotions
h have heretofore held sway. This increases the menace
jcialism by making it more plausible, and less obnoxious,
>ut diminishing its fundamental mistakes. It is probable
we shall hear less and less of hate, of free love, of atheism,
materialism, and that the movement will centie around the
itial project of making collective, the ownership of capital,
more that this is done, the more keen, direct, and accur-
vill be the understanding of property, of its social function
individual basis to be found among Socialists. If they de-
>, fully intending to protect and expand private and personal
erty in wealth, it will be useless to claim that they aim at
scation of wealth, or that they attack the divinely sanctioned
of private property.
>ne does not become a Socialist, or incline toward Social-
unless one lose, in proportion, confidence in the actual order
ings. Now the number who tend to lose this confidence
ars to increase. Men are appalled at the corruption due
ie intensity of the money motive, distressed at being forced
into dishonest and disloyal business practices; they are
ied at the iong train of undeniable evils which follow prop.
organization as we have it. And such impressions ac-
ilate and reinforce one another, doing much more to make
dists than the propaganda of Socialism's leaders. It is not
ashion nowadays to analyze social problems into terms of
must be done in terms of institutions, social forces, and
it must be done
666 Attitudes Toward Socialism [Aug.,
the like. Instead of turning back to religion and its forces,
men who tend to lose confidence in the present order, merely
go on and devise another set of institutions, call them Social-
ism, and look for happiness and a golden age.
As regards the Church, her position is viewed from two
standpoints by those who find fault with her attitude toward
Socialism. First they are at a loss to understand her spirit of
toleration of conditions as they exist. They miss the volume
and directness of protest constantly to be found where she it
active, and they forget the limitations to her activity placed by
circumstances of modern lite. Second, they get from Socialists
or from any other source a habit of quoting Scripture texts to
show that the present order is in violent contradiction of Christ's
teaching, and that the proposed socialistic order is the purest
expression of it. A text, telling them to hear and obey the
Church, does not impress them one-half as much as one con-
demning the rich man. It is legitimate, seemingly, to quote
Ambrose, Basil, and Jerome as showing that purer Christianity
is socialistic, but quite wrong to quote Marx and Engel and
Kautsky and Bebel to show that Socialism is atheistic.
That the Church's position is wholly warranted will not be
doubted by any who see the whole situation, but it must be
worth while to endeavor so to develop her position and ex-
plain it, that the class held in mind now may be impressed by
the accuracy of analysis, correctness of assumption, and reason-
ableness of view which she takes.
There is no pretense to satisfy, in these pages, all who are
in any way inclined toward economic Socialism. Setting aside
the Socialism that is hostile to the Church, the Socialism that
is materialistic and deterministic, concerning which there need
be no question, we find it alleged in Catholic circles that So-
cialism aims at confiscation of wealth, abolition of private prop-
erty. If it does, it merits the worst said against it. As to So-
cialism which claims that it aims to protect, extend, secure
private ownership of wealth, by giving to each, practically all
that he produces — and thereby distribute property naturally—
1907.] Attitudes Toward Socialism 667
we appear to lack a literature which satisfies those who are in-
clined toward it.
One may not wisely pretend to anticipate the action of those
in the Church to whom authority is committed. That, even in
this form of Socialism, there may be menace to personal liberty,
to the stability of institutions, to the developed doctrine of
justice, a confusion in relations of individual to society, an en-
tirely or largely false analysis of social wrongs, and a mistaken
impression concerning the power of mere institutions to remedy
them ; a view of the nature of social laws and forces quite unlike
that held traditionally in the Church; that all of this and much
more may be found in Socialism's least objectionable form is,
indeed, quite probable. That there are, consequently, abundant
reasons warranting the Church's action against Socialism is will-
ingly assumed by her children who trust her. All who are in-
terested will naturally welcome a development of authoritative
literature on the problem. If sincere Socialists tell us that
they do not attack private property in wealth, it is well to be-
lieve them and to account for opposition on grounds other than
this, that 'they do attack it. .
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE.
BY MAX TURMANN, LL.D.
III.
f S we have seen * two articles of the law introduced
by the government on December 15, 1906, were
measures of active war against the clergy. But.
through the influence of M. Briand, other clauses
were inserted in the law to the end that Catho-
lics might legally hold religious services, and also form organ-
izations without having to submit to the law of Associations
Cultuelles which had been condemned by the Holy See. The
Minister of Public Worship offered them the benefit of the law
of 1881 on public meetings, or that of the law of 1901 on the
liberty of association. M. Briand thus explained this change
of tactics :
The significant importance of the fact that Catholics have
refused to organize Associations Cultuelles, and that the eccle-
' siastical authorities have not taken advantage of the oppor-
tunity offered them to retain control of their properties, cau-
not be denied. So long as we felt certain that Associations
Cultuelles would be established throughout the country and
that religious worship would be continued, either in an or-
ganized way by means of them, or privately through individ-
- ual initiative, no legal difficulty in the matter presented itsell.
But from the moment that the Catholic Church refused to ac-
cept the special legislation of 1905, and forbade the organiza-
tion of Associations Cultuelles which would possess the power of
administering ecclesiastical property, the government con-
sidered that the Catholic Church came under the jurisdiction
of the common law and possessed the right of holding its
religious worship and its services as an organized society
under the law of July, 1901 .t
We propose to have these things definitely stated in laws,
and legislation will thus offer new facilities to those who wish
• Thb Catholic World, July, 1907.
t This law regulated the liberty of a:
to practise their religion freely and peacefully. Public wor-
ship may be celebrated either by Associations Culhtelles, re-
taining all the privileges of the law of 1905; or by common
law associations, organized according to the law cf 1901 ; or
by public meetings, which may continue to be held through
individual initiative, by virtue of the common law of June 30,
1881. Moreover, we propose to sanction, by a special clause,
the interpretation already given to the law of December 9,
'9°5-
We give here the text of the two articles concerning the
holding of public worship, according to the plan proposed
by the government :
Article 4. The public exercise of a religion may be carried
out. independently of the associations subject to the stipula-
tions of Clause iv. of the law of December, 9, 1905, either by
means of associations regulated by -the law of July i, 1901 ;
or by means of assemblies, held by individual initiative,
under the law of June 30, 1881 ; and according to the pre-
scriptions of Article 25 o( the law of December 9, 1905.
Article 5. Iu default of Associations Culluelles, the edifices
set apart for the exercise of public worship, with their fur-
nishings, will continue, save in cases o! disaffection as pro-
vided for by the law of December 9, 1905, to be placed at the
disposal of the faithful and of the ministers of religion for the
observance of their ceremonies.
This right of ownership may be accorded either to Associa-
a/ions Cultueites, instituted in compliance with the law of De-
cember 9, 1905 ; or to associations formed by virtue of the
above-mentioned stipulations of the law of July 1, 1901 ; or
to ministers of religion, whose names must be stated in the
declarations prescribed by Article 25* of the law of December
9i 1905- The possession, as above provided for, of the said
edifices and their furnishings — with an understanding of the
obligations formulated by Article 13 of the law of December
9. J 9°5. will De accorded by means of a legal deed, drawn up
by the Prefect, for the holdings placed in the hands ol a se-
questrator and those belonging to the State and to the de-
partments ; and by the Mayor for those which are the prop-
erty of the communes.
Although severely criticised by members of the opposition,
and by M. Ribot in the name of the Progressive Republicans,
670 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN fiRANCE [Aug.,
and by M. Jacques Piou, President of the Action Liberal* Popu.
Zaire, this ministerial project was, nevertheless, voted by the
Chamber and the Senate. On January 2, 1907, it was pro-
mulgated as law.
A few days later, January 6, the Holy Father addressed an
encyclical to the clergy and people of France, in which he
again protested against these measures of persecution. In that
encyclical the Holy Father wrote :
History will relate that we have defended you, beloved
sons, with all the strength of our great tenderness; that we
have demanded and continue to demand for the Church,
whose eldest daughter is the Church of France, recognition of
the hierarchy, inviolability ot ecclesiastical property, sod
religious liberty ; that if our demands had been satisfied there
would be no religious war in France; that on the day
when they are satisfied, the much-desired peace will reign.
After the publication of this encyclical, the Bishops of France
assembled for the purpose of discussing the most practical method
of maintaining public worship. The assembly was held in the
middle of January at the Chateau de la Muette. At the first
session the Bishops unanimously signed an address to the Holy
Father, expressing their gratitude and their filial obedience.
The Bishops further took emphatic exception to the calumny
against the Holy See, that it was influenced by aims and pur-
poses foreign to its religious mission ; and to that against them-
selves, that they were following the Pope not so much from
conviction as from discipline. The Bishops issued another doc-
ument which came as something of a surprise to both Catho-
lics and opponents. It is known as the " Declaration of the
Bishops of France." Through it the Bishops again protested
against the position in which the Church was placed; but—
and this point is of considerable importance — they affirmed their
willingness " to make a trial of an organization for public wor-
ship," provided the obscurities of certain texts of the law of
1907 were cleared away. This is, in part, their declaration:
• The Bishops also drew, up, on January 15, an address which was sent to many for-
eign bishops, in response to messages of sympathy which had been received. " On this ab-
ject," the address read in part," we bear witness to the spirit of Catholic solidarity which man-
ifested itself in so many countries. We regret that its manifestation should have been occa-
sionally accompanied by a resolution to boycott French merchandise. Such a resolution but
thinly veils a spirit anything but religious."
■ELOPMENTS IN FRANCE 67 1
An administrative contract, agreed upon by Prefects on
the one band, and by Bishops and Rectors on the other, may
by the terms of the law place the latter in possession of the
churches. ... In expressing ourselves as disposed to
undertake a trial of agreements of this sort, we ask the
right to introduce into such agreements any clauses not
destructive of public order, but destined, rather, to give us
two absolutely necessary guarantees — one concerning the
permanence and protection of religious services in the
churches thus given to us; and the other concerning the
safeguarding of the principles of the hierarchy.
In order to offer a definite plan for the negotiations with
the civil authorities, the Bishops added to this document a
copy of a contract which they considered acceptable. By the
terms of such a contract, to be entered into by the mayor of
each commune and the rector of the parish, authorized by
his bishop, the municipality would grant to the priest the pos-
session of the church and all its furnishings for a period of
eighteen years. But it was stipulated that if, during this period,
the priest who signed the contract ceased (for any reason) to
be rector of the parish in question, said possession was to go
by right to his successor appointed by the bishop of the dio-
cese. (Recognition was thus given to the hierarchy.) Under
another clause the mayor was to refrain from all intervention
with regard to either the administration of the parish or the
occupation of the building. This declaration by the Bishops
produced a most favorable impression upon all those who —
Catholics or non-Catholics — really desired religious peace.
It came, moreover, at an opportune moment, for the spirit
of bitterness and hostility had relaxed. The Abbe Lemire had
succeeded in obtaining assurance from the government that the
pension fund for aged and infirm priests would not be with-
drawn. The government, doubtless through the influence of
M. Briand, had abandoned the prosecution of ecclesiastics guilty
of the "offence of the Mass," and on January 22, 1907, had
by law done away with the obligation of a preliminary declara-
tion for the holding of religious worship.
While protesting, as a matter of form, against the declara-
tion of the Bishops, M. Briand expressed his willingness to en-
ter into negotiations. The Minister of Public Worship published
672 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [Aug,,
a circular, or rather a number of circulars, indicating how the
prefects and mayors might come to an understanding with the
bishops and rectors in drawing up the deeds concerning church
property. As a result, it was felt on both sides that a com-
promise would be effected. The Prefect of the Seine and the
archiepiscopal administration of Paris had consulted concerning
the metropolitan Church of Notre Dame. The contract drawn
up in this instance would, in the minds of many, serve as a
type. In all the dioceses the municipalities, by a large major-
ity, had signified their willingness to sign the contract. VAquu
taine, the organ of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, declared that
a speedy agreement between the Church and the Government
was most probable.
But it was all too good to be true. M. Clemenceau, in the .
course of a debate in the chamber, practically attacked his col-
league, M. Briand. As a result the Minister of Public Worship
left the chamber and sent in his resignation. The news of this
action caused such dissatisfaction among the greater part of the
majority that M. Clemenceau, returning to the tribune, offered
his apologies to M. Briand. The latter then withdrew his resig-
nation. A few days later M. Briand, in a long speech, defended
his policy of conciliation. M. Clemenceau refrained from pro-
testing against any portion of the speech, and even affected
•to approve of his colleague's statements. But in reality the
President of the Council was planning his revenge. He so ma-
noeuvred that the Bishops were unable to accept the conditions
he laid down, and as a consequence negotiations were broken
off. M. Clemenceau summoned the Prefect of the Seine, who
was negotiating with the diocesan administration of Paris, and
ordered him to declare that the contract, proposed by Cardinal
Richard, did not please the Government, and that among other
concessions the religious authorities would have to promise in
writing not to place at the head of parishes foreigners, or for-
mer members of religious orders. In the face of such exactions
the Archbishop concluded that it would be useless to present
another form of contract, and once more the reign of religious
peace was postponed.
One must not conclude, however, that all these efforts for
the restoration of peace have been utterly useless. We are now
nearer to a solution of the religious problem than we were in
December, 1906. The solution may not give entire satisfaction ;
1907.] Recent Developments in France 673
it will at least give toleration. Passions are not so intense ;
the hierarchy has given every proof of an earnest desire for con-
ciliation ; . the priests continue to celebrate freely the offices of
religion ; the faithful attend ; the churches are open ; and ap-
parently nothing is changed.
But the problem of how the clergy is to be supported is
soon to present itself in a most urgent and alarming manner.
In every diocese the bishop has been compelled to organize the
" pence for worship/ 9 in order to meet all the heavy burdens
which formerly, in great part, were borne by the State, the de-
partments, and the communes. To give some idea of the funds
that will be required by each bishop, it will suffice to cite, ac-
cording to Mgr. Pechenard, the newly-appointed bishop of Sois-
sons, a list of expenses now imposed on each diocesan admin-
istration :
1. The salaries of all ecclesiastics officially connected with
the diocese.
2. The general administration of the diocese.
3. The large and small seminaries now despoiled of their
resources. The seminary buildings have been taken over by
the State.
4. The maintenance of aged and infirm priests ; the fund for
whom is now under sequestration.
$. The help that must be extended to poor churches and to
poor dioceses when in want and distress.
Where these necessary funds will come from no one can say.
It will, at least, be absolutely necessary for the richer sections
of the country to come generously to the aid of those poorer
or less Catholic.
Yet, in spite of these innumerable difficulties, perhaps on ac-
count of them, one feels an awakening of zeal among the clergy
and the faithful laity. Our priests have accepted, not only
without murmur but with joy, the trials that have come and that
are yet to come. For the most part they are without any per-
sonal means, yet they are determined to remain faithful to the
Church, even though such fidelity should reduce them to ex-
treme poverty.
Freed from the many obligations which the Concordat im-
posed upon them, our bishops are doing apostolic work among
souls. In Paris the venerable Cardinal Richard is creating par-
ishes in the crowded districts, which in that respect had been
vol. lxxxv.— 43
674 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE [Aug.
so poverty-stricken. At Versailles Mgr. Gibier has engaged the
Abb£ Gayraud to lecture — not in church, so little frequented
by men, but in a theatre that is thronged with men eager to
hear the Abba's words. At Rheims the archbishop has called
together his priests and the heads of the diocesan charities, in
order to study and discus's the form of missionary work that
would best meet the present conditions. The young men of
the Sillon are carrying on an active propaganda in special con-
gresses; in public discussions; in the press.
On all sides we are witnessing an awakening of religious life
and zeal. The present hour is, therefore, not one of discour-
agement, but rather of hopeful effort. Perhaps, even with re
gard to those in power, there is no cause for absolute despair.
I am fully aware that M. Briand has stated " that no govern-
ment could dream of taking up again with Rome relations broken
off by parliament," but I also recollect that the same M. Briand,
in a moment of bitter feeling, said that the government did not
deny to itself the right of learning from the events of the cur-
rent year. I hope for a good outcome. I obstinately believe
in a happy future for Catholicism in my country.
(the end.)
Hew Boohs.
A spirited sketch • of the great
BRUNETIERE. French critic for whom, as M. Jules
Lemaitre has said, France and the
Church will long wear mourning, comes from the pen of a
learned professor who, we should say, has drawn his knowledge
of Brunetiere less from personal communication than from a
wide acquaintance with Brunetiere's voluminous writings. He
speaks of the man; the critic; the orator; the Catholic. 'The
early struggles of the impecunious student, who scorned delights
and lived laborious days, are slightly touched upon. His tire-
less energy, prodigious memory, combative disposition, and
somewhat autocratic impatience with those who held opinions
*
contrary to his own, are the features which stand out most
prominent in M. Delmont's picture of the man The chapter
devoted to the critic — the best of the book — contains, in ex-
tremely compressed form, the judgments of Brunetiere on most
of the great names in French literature.
Considerable space is consecrated to the Catholic. M. Del-
mont remarks that Brunetiere came to Catholicism from afar.
He points out, in disappointingly brief form, the milestones of
that journey. He ascribes the conversion of Brunetiere chiefly
to the influence of Bossuet. A vety pronounced conservative,
M. Delmont places no bounds to his admiration for those
opinions, tendencies, and statements in which Brunetiere mani-
fests his devotion to order and tradition ; and he treats as il-
logical lapses from right thinking and right feeling, Brunetiere's
manifestations of approbation— neither few, nor insignificant —
for modern ideas and individual initiative. He is disedified
and provoked that the great man should have found any good
in democracy. He reprimands him for having said a kind
word for the French Republic, though in doing so, Brunetiere
only followed the instructions of Leo XII I., for whose states-
manlike genius and brilliant successes M. Delmont, incidentally,
expresses profound admiration.
Above all, M. Delmont is scandalized that Brunetiere should
have found so much to admire in the United States. When
adherents of the politico -religious school, to which this emi-
nent professor of the Catholic faculties of Lyons seems to be-
• Ferdinand Brunetiere . By Th. Delmont. Paris : P. Lethielleux.
676 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
long, turn to the United States for arguments against democ-
racy, they usually exhibit a genuine talent for unintentional
caricature, which is rendered all the more amusing by the pro-
found conviction of the artist that he knows thoroughly what
he is talking about. Within the limits of a page M. Delmont
has shown that, in this particular line of intellectual effort, he
need not fear any of his numerous competitors. After stating,
in striking rhetorical form, that " the McKinleys and Roose-
velts can, for four years, annul every vote of Congress, and,
with impunity, steal the Philippines and Cuba from Spain, and
Panama from Central America," he makes this wonderful an-
nouncement: "The United States is nothing but a plutocracy,
with its electoral college of Tammany Hall, possessed of thou-
sands of millions, and exercising an absolute dictatorship dur-
ing four or eight years ! " As if to complete the amazement
of his readers, at his own wealth of information and the un-
speakable degradation of the United States, he gravely appends
a footnote to declare that " President Grant was compelled to
restore 120 millions stolen by his friends and himself during
his presidency." And : " It has just been discovered that the
senators of the American Congress received 185 millions for
declaring war against Spain and robbing her of Cuba and the
Philippines!" What explanation is to be offered of the fact
thac the most resolute and extreme vilifiers and traducers of
the United States in Europe are a certain section of our fellow-
Catholics ?
This is an admirable text-book, •
ADVANCED CIVICS. meeting as it does every standard
By Dr. Forman. demand made of a text-book. The
author has succeeded in describing,
very clearly, a most complex government. Each chapter is
followed by a series of suggestive questions and exercises,
which will enable the student or reader to test, and to com-
pare with life and literature about him, the theory exposed.
This appeal for personal judgment of political conditions, and
the direct concrete application forced on the reader, give Dr.
Forman's volume an actual value distinct from its character as
an exposition. The work completes admirably the course be-
gun in the author's elementary treatise.
* Advanced Civics. The Spirit, the Fotm, and the Functions of the American Government.
By S. E. Forman, Ph.D. New York: The Century Company.
New Books
677
MOTHER.
By M. Gorky.
new volume* was placed
trip of the famous Russi
The reviewer had the double ad-
vantage or disadvantage of know-
ing little about Gorky or his liter-
ary and political work when this
his hands. The recent disastrous
to the United States, and his suc-
cess in outraging American public opinion by his conduct, placed
his name in prominence, but did little to commend his gospel.
Mother is a story of revolutionary Russia, in which a mother
and her son appear as active characters. The son is the
earlier convert and the mother, a sturdy, undeveloped woman,
with slowly awakening perceptions, and greater capacity for
feeling than power of expression, lollows him by the force of
situations in which she is placed. The whole tragedy of peas-
ant life is brought before the reader with great force in the
choppy dialogue and direct literal view of things with which
the work abounds. The spirit and methods of revolution are
well described, and the hopeless lot of the lower class is brought
out impressively.
As it may be assumed that the average American would
not hesitate a moment to join the revolutionists, were he trans-
planted from this land of free speech, free press, and democ-
racy, to the domain of the Czar, where such essential bless-
ings are denied to benighted and oppressed throngs, wholesale
condemnation of many of the teachings of Gorky's book might,
though merited, appear out of place.
The story gives a good insight into the Russian socialistic
revolt ; hence, as a document, it will have value for all students
of Socialism.
Recently, when in the course of a
conversation, the name of Miss
Addams was mentioned, a professor
of sociology, whose Ireedom from
sentimentality is above suspicion, rtmarked, with emphasis:
"Ah, that is the ablest woman in America!" Certainly, Miss
Addams' preeminence among, her sister-sociologists is undis-
puted. And why should not the professor of sociology assume
that primacy in sociology is absolute primacy ? Did not the
fishmonger feel that he had exhausted the possibilities of pane-
» Molhtr. By Maxim Gorliy. New York : D. Applcton & Co.
IDEALS OF PEACE.
By Jane Addams.
678 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
gyric when he testified that the illustrious departed nobleman
had always been very fond of fish ? With wide experience in
work for the betterment of social conditions among the poor,
Miss Addams has the gift of understanding the meaning of the
facts and systems which have come under her sympathetic no-
tice. She looks beneath the surface of individual character and
present conditions for the causes of the evils that she bears
witness to. Her calm and detached attitude towards the prob-
lems which she examines gives the impression that her conclu-
sions are not merely the disguised postulates of a preconceived
theory, but convictions obtained from a dispassionate observa-
tion and analysis of facts.
The present volume * consists of a collection of studies,
which, though not a logical, consecutive unity, are, neverthe-
less, correlated to a common central thought. This idea is that
the strongest force available for the suppression of war is the
development, through the influence of industrial life, of the
consciousness of human brotherhood and solidarity.
The newer ideals of peace are active and dynamic, and if
properly fostered would, in Miss Addams 9 judgment, do away
with war. In contrast with them, the older ideals have been
passive; they have been inculcated, for many years past, by
two arguments. " The first has been the appeal to the higher
imaginative pity, as it is found in the modern, moralized man.
This line has been most effectively followed by two Russians,
Count Tolstoi in his earlier writings, and by Verestcbagin in
his paintings. 91 These men appeal to us, one by the pen, the
other by his brush, by presenting the sordidness, the squalor,
the measureless cruelty of war. " The second line followed by
the advocates of peace in all countries has been the appeal to
the sense of prudence ; and this, again, has found its ablest
exponent in a Russian subject, the economist and banker Jean
de Bloch. He sets forth the cost of warfare with pitiless ac-
curacy, and demonstrates that even the present armed peace is
so costly that the burdens of it threaten social revolution in
almost every country in Europe." Continue to make the best
of these means, but employ a greater one to hand, which is to
press into service " the ancient kindliness which sat beside the
cradle of the race," and strengthen it to overcome ambition and
greed and desire for achievement, which are the roots of the
* Newer Ideals of Peace. By }ar\t kddaixw New York: The Macraillan Company.
J07-] NEW BOOKS 679
rife among nations and among classes — this is the gospel
lat Miss Addams preaches.
The survival of ideas proper to the age of militarism and
rife, and the endeavor to regulate the industrial age of to-
ay by them, Miss Addams essays to show, are the prolific
luses of the evils of city government in America. The same
listake results in a shortsighted, wasteful, and unjust handling
f the immigration problem, of the problem of child labor in
ictories and elsewhere, and in the exclusion of women from
mnicipal government, to the manifest disadvantage of civil ad-
linistration.
On the question of child labor, Miss Addams arraigns
Linerican legislation for its short-sighted inconsistency, and
^ministers a reproof to American self- complaisance. She ar-
ues that, compared with European countries, the United States
; deficient in protective legislation ; -and
We have made public education our great concern in
America, and, perhaps, the public school system is our most
distinctive achievement ; but there is a certain lack of con-
sistency in the relation of the State to the child after he
leaves the public school. At great expense the State has
provided school buildings and equipment in which to prepare
professional teachers. It has spared no pains to make the
system complete, and yet as rapidly as the children leave the
school-room the State seems to lose all interest and respon-
sibility in their welfare, and has, until quite recently, turned
them over to the employer with no restrictions.
As a leader in the work of Hull House, Chicago, Miss Ad-
ams has come in close contact with the immigrant, and the
empathy which she has. for him is one of the features which
istinguish her writing from the dry ratiocinations of the mere-
r academic theorist. One of her most characteristic chapters
; that devoted to our failure to utilize immigrants in city gov-
rnment, chiefly through neglect to take advantage of " the
reat resevoirs of human ability and motive power" contained
1 the special abilities, habits, and qualities, industrial and
loral, of the various races pouring into the country.
Because of a military inheritance we, as a cation, strictly
contend that all this varied and suggestive life has nothing
to do with government nor patriotism, and that we perform
68o NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
the full duty of American citizens when the provisions of the
status on naturalization are carried out. In the mean time,
in the interests of our theory that commercial and govern-
mental powers should have nothing to do with each other, we
carefully ignore the one million false naturalization papers in
the United States issued and concealed by commercialized
politics. Although we have an uneasy knowledge that these
powers are curiously allied, we profess that the latter has no
connection with the former and no control over it. We steadi-
ly refuse to recognize the fact that our age is swayed by in-
dustrial forces.
This is a very suggestive book. Its one weakness is that,
though it does not quite neglect the ethical and spiritual stand-
ards of life, it allows them to be overshadowed by the economic
and the merely utilitarian.
If, in compliance with a fashion
ST. BENEDICT'S RULE, lately in vogue, old Dame Europa
By Blair. were to take us into her confi-
dence on the subject of " Books
that Have Helped Me," an honorable place would be assigned
to the Regula Sancti Benedicti* which more than any other
printed record of thought, with one grand exception, contri-
buted to evolve modern civilization out of northern barbarism.
It was a mighty force a thousand years ago; and though the
field of its direct influence is sadly restricted to-day, it is still
a rich source of far-reaching spiritual endeavor. The present
translation, which leaves scarcely any opening for criticism,
though in characteristically Benedictine spirit, it is devotional
rather than critical, appeared first in 1886. It is a cheering
sign of the times that there is a growing demand for the works
of other days, whose solid piety and robust spirituality con-
trast so strongly with the pretty sentimentalities which flourish
too exuberantly in much of our distinctly modern devotional
literature.
In this novel f Mr. Galsworthy hits
THE COUNTRY HOUSE, off, in a very piquant vein, the
By Galsworthy. salient points of the life and the
prejudices of the aristocratic "land-
ed gentry " of England — the pheasant shooting, the racing stable,
* The Rule of St. Benedict. Edited, with an English Translation and Explanatory Notes,
by D. Oswald Hunter Blair, M.A. St. Louis : B. Herder.
t The Country House. By John Galsworthy. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons.
NEW BOOKS
London club life, the country magnate whose creed is : " I be-
lieve in my father, and his father, and his father's father, the
makers and keepers of my estate; and I believe in myself, and
my son, and my son's son. And I believe that we have made
the country, and shall keep the country what it is. And 1 be-
lieve in the public schools, and especially in the public school
that I was at. And I believe in my social equals, and the
country house, and in things as they are, forever and ever.
Amen." Mr. Galsworthy's forte lies :n depicting traditional
prejudices, and the types which represent them, rather than
in the creation of individual characters. He treats them in a
vein of tolerant, kindly cynicism, which absolves the men and
women from the responsibility that belongs to the system which
has created them as they are. A prospective divorce gives the
author, through the mouth of a shrewd and kindly old lawyer,
an opportunity of inveighing against the illogical and perverse
principles embodied in the marriage-laws of England, as they
are interpreted by public opinion and prejudice.
The scope of this neat, well-printed
ENGLISH CATHOLIC MIS- volume* is to furnish some details
SIONS. on the missions and churches that
By Kelly. have been established, or revived
in England since the Reformation.
It might be called a compendious Historical Catholic Directoiy.
The names of places are arranged in alphabetical order.
The author, it seems, did not, in a great many instances,
receive the friendly assistance that he hoped for from persons
in a position to supplement, or correct his own stock of infor-
mation ; and he was, to a great extent, obliged to rely " on
Catholic magazines, newspapers, country histories, private mem-
oirs, and letters of the last hundred years." The scanty and
fragmentary character of the data at his disposal has convinced
him that, notwithstanding all the care he has taken to avoid
eriors, he may not have entirely succeeded ; and he intimates
that he will be grateful for any corrections that may be brought
to his notice. This appeal will, probably, evoke a much heart-
ier response than did the one which he made for assistance in
the preparation of the work. A correspondent of the Tablet
• Historical Netet c* EnjtiiA Catholic Minions. By Bernard W. Kelly. St. Louis: B.
Herder.
682 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
furnishes him with a long list of misstatements and omissions;
and assures him that the list is by no means exhaustive.
Others are pointed out in the reviewing columns of the same
journal. However imperfect the execution may be, Father Kelly
deserves credit for the conception and undertaking of a useful
work, a future edition of which will, doubtless, leave no room
for criticism.
Not only the man whose ambition
WRITING FOR THE PRESS* is to see some of his thoughts in
By Luce. print, but all who are striving after
a good English style, will find in
this little hand-book* a wealth of helpful counsel and useful
information. The book is worth its room, were it only for the
copious lists of words and phrases— correct and incorrect — com-
mon mistakes, and trite expressions, which it contains. It gives
a lot of useful hints for the newspaper writer and the author
who hopes to have his stories accepted, besides much technical
knowledge — useful to everybody, but especially to any one ex-
pecting to deal directly with the printer — concerning the various
kinds of type, the correction of copy, the cost of printing and
publication, etc., etc. One notes with satisfaction that the author
has taken care to point out a number of terms relating to Catho-
lic doctrine or discipline about which grave blunders are frequent-
ly made. He makes, however, a distinction between "christen"
and " baptize " which neither theology nor philology will ap-
prove.
The Roman historian tells us that
IN THY COURTS. when the enemy's general heard
By Vignat. that the Italian soil upon which
his victorious army was encamped
had just been sold at a high price in Rome, the news gravely
increased his apprehensions as to whether he was destined to
conquer that resolute spirit. Somewhat similarly, French Jaco-
bins might find food for reflection in the fact that the Superior
of the Jesuit French House of Studies which, owing to the ex-
pulsion from France of the religious orders,' is now established
in England, has published for the benefit of his young country-
men and countrywomen a little bookf intended to promote
* Writing for the Press. A Manual by Robert Luce. Boston : Clipping Bureau Press.
t In Thy Courts. Translated from the French of Louis Vignat, S.J., by Matthew
Fortier, S.J. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
07.] New Books 683
; growth of vocations to the religious life. The book is much
>re concise than St. Alphonsus' well-known work pn the same
)ject. But it sets forth clearly the nature of the religious life,
5 notes which indicate a genuine vocation, and the course which
ty dictates when obstacles to the adoption of a vocation
•sent themselves. A page or two of appeal, towards the close,
5 written exclusively in view of French conditions. Yet, with
cellent judgment, the translator has not altered them. The
iirage and zeal which glow in them transfigures all the book,
re Vignat writes:
A certain thought, no doubt, has more than once pre-
sented itself to our readers. The religious in France are dis-
persed or in exile ; the convents are, or are threatened with
being, closed ; the common talk is of expulsion, of seculari-
zation ; the police are in pursuit of such as are suspected of
leading community life. In these stormy days is it well-
advised to come forth and speak to us of religious vocation ?
But remember that every nation in which Catholicity is still
full ot life bears, as it were, by necessity, the germ of religious
life. My confidence in my country's religion is too strong to
let me think that fetters and spoliations inflicted by law will
suffice to check the soaring flight of Christian life and its full
expansion in the practice ot the evangelical counsels. Catho-
licity strikes its root deeply into the strata of our old French
families. In spite ot the wreckage that strews the ground
after a day of violent storms, it will spring forth again steadier
and more full of life than before.
The spirit which speaks here will survive Combes and Clem-
ceau.
The booklover will welcome the
LONGMANS' POCKET dainty little editions of favorite
SERIES. works which are coming from the
Longmans' press, as a pocket libra-
The quality of paper, print, and binding are excellent, and
1 price, withal, remarkably low. Of the numbers just issued
\ Apologia* will, we have no doubt, become a favorite. It
itains, besides the entire text, all the notes, appendices, and
ters (including the correspondence that passed between New-
n and Whately) that are found in the larger edition. An-
* Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Being a History of his Religious Opinions. By John Henry
dinal Newman. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
684 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
other. Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology? consists of
the text of the large collection of epigrams selected from the
whole range of Greek poetry, that is published in the larger
and much more expensive work of the editor, J. W. Mackail,
Professor of Poetry in Oxford. Finally, we have a new edition
of the piece of self- revelation which that strange genius— i
mystic who lost his bearings, a soul made for God, which digged
to itself in the wilderness cisterns that could hold no water—
Richard Jefferies, called his autobiography.!
This book J is the latest addition to
CALIFORNIA MISSIONS, the now considerable literature on
By Hildrup. the subject of the Far West Mis-
sions.
It is a bright, popular treatment of the theme, very thor-
oughly and sympathetically done — and has this marked feature,
full-page illustrations of the old mission churches.
It may be said in truth that the kindly spirit of Helen
Hunt Jackson, who was the pioneer in this field, has been
shared by all those who have followed her. And this is the
more remarkable, since these writers as we recall them — Steele,
Lummis, Wharton James, and Norman Dent — like Mrs. Jackson
herself, are non-Catholics, and hence must have had prejudices
to overcome.
We have grown so used to the notions and expressions of
"Romish domination," "far-seeing Jesuitical plans," " priest-
craft," that to find a consensus of Protestant writers unite in
appreciation of the zeal, sanctity, and whole-souled devotion of
these old padres is a matter more of surprise almost than of
gratitude. It proves that noble lives possess a power to win
recognition, though it come somewhat tardily.
This is the sort of a book that one loves to pick up and linger
over. The profuse and well- executed illustrations catch the
eye, the narrative is full of interest, and the historical chapters
are brief and accurate, and evidence considerable study.
We note, however, a few errors of fact, and as they tend
* Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Edited by J. W. Mackail. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co.
t The Story of My Heart — My Autobiography. By Richard Jefferies. New York : Long-
mans, Green & Co.
\ The Missions of California and the Old Southwest. By Jesse S. Hildrup. Chicago:
A. C. McClurg & Co.
907.] NEW BOOKS 685
to deepen unduly the impression, only too well founded, that
many of the missions are ruins, we think they should be cor-
rected. Certainly it is true that the "missions" as such, mean-
ing the whole aggregation of rectories, ranches, shops, enclosed
lands and dwellings for the Indian neophytes, are gone, if we
except Santa Barbara. But the author is mistaken in saying
that San Juan Bautista and San Luis Obispo are in ruins; a
wrong impression is conveyed about San Luis Rey mission.
The picture of San Miguel Church fails to do justice to its
present appearance. The work of restoring and transforming
other missions is going on very encouragingly.
If one would know what war is in
FROM BULL RUN TO CHAN- all its fearful reality, as well as in
CELLORSVILLE. all its entrancing splendor, let him
By General Curtis. rea( j t hj s book. # It is written by
a Congressman, who, being hardly
at manhood's years when Fort Sumpter was fired on, raised a
company of soldiers, sons of up- State farmers, and led them to
the Virginia battlefields. The reader follows the young Union
soldier as a confidential guide, and enjoys a kind of history
that makes fiction useless. Ordinary war history is a narra-
tive of great events, occasionally illustrated by personal incident.
Here is a piece of war history, a book replete with personal
experiences, and with occasional references to the larger conduct
of battle and campaign. History as given here from the dying
lips of heroes, from letters written by the light of camp-fires,
witnessed by graves and by wounds, is unquestionable; and
its fascination is of the highest kind. The historian's research
into archives has been faithful and laborious; but it is more than
rivalled by this loving quest of tear-bedewed letters from the
front, and recollections of actual survivors.
The next thing to witnessing actual warfare, is to read such
things as the following, narrated by eye-witnesses:
When advancing on the enemy, who was in possession of
our guns which he had turned and was firing on us, the
colonel's order not to fire until the regiment was within short
GeDtral U, S. Vols. N*» York and London : G. P. Pulni
686 NEW BOOKS [Aug,,
range, and he would give the word, was well observed except
by Solomon Burr, Company D. He ran a few paces in front
of the line, and with deliberate aim discharged his piece at t
man in the act of sighting one of the guns. It was a telling
shot, and the man was seen to fall. It is believed that this
shot killed the Confederate Lieutenant-Colonel Faison. It
was Burr's last shot, for, while reloading his musket, he was
instantly killed by a ball which passed through his body and
seriously wounded George Hill, of the same company. Eli-
akim H. Sprague, a recruit, aged forty-two years, stood in
the ranks beside his son, Persho B. Sprague, nineteen yean
of age, an originaf member of the Sixteenth. Kliakimwas
almost the first to receive a mortal wound , and expired in the
arms of his son. After closing his father's eyes, the son re-
sumed his place in the firing line, faithfully discharged his
duties, and by a second enlistment fought to the end of the
war.
The eminent rector of the Catholic
HIGHER EDUCATION OF Institute of Toulouse has marked
THE CLERGY. the seven or eight years of his
By Mgr. Battifol. administration by the various arti-
cles and academic addresses which
are here united in a volume. 9 AH of them deal with educa-
tional matteis, with the exception of two interesting critical
studies, one on the meaning and limits of the history of dog-
ma, the other on MargivaPs Richard Simon, The rest are oc-
casional in character and contain much of merely local inter-
est; still they afford scope to Mgr. Battifol to develop ideas
of permanent and general importance. Despite the widely dif-
ferent subjects treated, which at first give one the impression,
to speak familiarly, of mere odds and ends brought together
to form a book, there is a unity of view and aim running
through the volume We greatly regret, nevertheless, that the
opinions of this alert and experienced educator have not found
a more formal and systematic expression.
Two thoughts remain uppermost in our mind after laying down
this volume. The first concerns what we may call post-gradu-
ate study. To Mgr. Battifol this is synonymous with thorough-
ness. The aim of the university professor, according to him, should
be to get to the bottom of the questions he treats; it is not his
• Questions d' Enseignement Supirieur EccUsiastique. By Pierre Battifol. Pahs: Lecoflre.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 687
province, in any particular course, to cover a wide field, but to dig
deep in a limited area. In other words, be is an explorer hfmself
and aims to teach his students the best method of exploring
for themselves. Method, then, rather than matter, is bis chief
object. The narrowing influence of such specializing our au-
thor expects to see counteracted by the variety of subjects a
student undertakes. It is characteristic, perhaps, of French
education that he takes little account of the broadening influ-
ence of the student body upon the individual, a factor on which
Newman, in his Idea of a University, lays so much stress.
The second thought, and it is a very important one, is the
necessity for the Church to succeed in having a sufficient num-
ber of thoroughly equipped scholars. Many evils have resulted
to the Church of France, in the opinion of Mgr. Battifol — and
undoubtedly he is correct — from the absence or lack of real
scholars, devoted to the interests of the Church; and this again
results from the absence of Catholic Universities or faculties,
at least, of advanced studies, which alone can raise up genuine
scholars. In the eighteenth century we have the singular spec-
tacle of an entire clergy — bishops and priests — blind to the
signs of the times; owing to their supineness there is no Catho-
lic intellectual life, and the entire intellect of the country is
captured by an infidel philosophy. At the Revolution, the
worthless Catholic faculties are swept away, and the Church is
deprived by law of all organs of higher education. The edu-
cated intellect of France is allowed to develop without the con-
currence or serious opposition of Catholic thought; the Church
has orators and prophets and an innumerable host of ready
scribes, but scarcely a genuine scholar. The natural result, as
Battifol points out, is that each side becomes unintelligible to
the other; there is no interchange of ideas; each moves in a
world cut off from the other and widely different from it. Con-
flict was inevitable. This bitter experience seems to have been
required to teach the leaders of the Church of France the need
and value of Catholic Universities, which, accordingly, were es-
tablished as soon as the liberty was granted by law. The les-
son was learned and these institutions have already rendered
most important service. Only recently did the Holy Father
urge the bishops to preserve them, at any cost, as they are all
but essential in modern times to the life of the Church. This
lesson Mgr. Battifol insinuates in persuasive tones, which few
688 . NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
readers of his book will resist; but the facts speak more pow-
erfully than his eloquence, for history shows that a church
whose leaders are indifferent to her intellectual needs is doomed
to loss of prestige and influence.
The fourth volume of Dr. Kent's
ISRAEL'S LAWS, . great work on the literature of the
By Dr. Kent. Old Testament deals with the laws
and legal customs of Israel.* The
plan followed by Dr. Kent, it will be remembered, is to place
before us the literature of the Old Testament in chronological
order. Accordingly, in this present volume he arranges the
Hebrew legislation under the classification of I. The primitive
code; 2. The Deuteranomic code; 3. The Holiness code; 4.
The Ezekiel code; and 5. The late priestly code. These va-
rious strata of Hebrew law are grouped under the headings
proper to the subject-matter with which they deal — criminal
law, judicial procedure, sacrificial law, and so on.
It is obvious from this that Dr. Kent accepts the custom-
ary critical analysis of the documents of the Old Testament.
Let those find fault with him for this who will. But at all
events Old Testament students of all shades of opinion must
be grateful to him for an orderly and painstaking presentation
of the complicated legal system of the ancient Jews. More-
over, his work is highly valuable as giving an insight into the
methods of higher criticism, and as such should be welcomed
by such students as desire to be acquainted with an intellectual
position before they either support or condemn it.
In the preface and indexes of the book there is much sub-
sidiary information, especially on the relation between the legal
enactments of Babylon and Israel. In conclusion, we take
pleasure in acknowledging that Dr. Kent is a reverent scholar
whose main purpose is to edify and instruct.
Admirers of the philosopher in
AUNT JANE OF KENTUCKY, homespun— or, more particularly,
By Eliza Calvert Hall. i n « caliker "— may anticipate much
pleasure in the acquaintance of
Aunt Jane of Kentucky.^ The white-haired Southern woman,
• Israels Laws and Legal Precedents, By Charles Foster Kent, Ph.D. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
t Aunt Jane of Kentucky. By Eliza Calvert Hall. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
1907.] NEW BOOKS 689
with her comprehensive delight in horse races and "daffydiis"
and patch-work quilts, her endless reminiscences of the olden
time, and her cheery joy in the present, is decidedly worth
knowing. There are moments of real pathos in more than one
of her narratives, but the prevailing tone is quietly humorous.
" Nobody ever could see how it was that Amos Matthews
and Marthy Crawford ever came to marry, unless it was jest
as I said, to have somebody always handy to quarrel with
about their religion," she comments dryly. " That day the
baby was born I thought to myself: ' Well, here's somethin'
that'll make Amos forgit his callin' and election for once,
anyhow' ; and I wrapped the little fellow up in his blanket
and held him to the light, so his father could see him ; and
Amos looked at him like he was skeered for a minute, and
then he says : ' O Lord ! I hope it ain't a rebrobate 1 ' "
The musings of Aunt Jane's anonymous listener are some-
what startlingly in contrast to the prevailing rusticity and sim-
plicity of the anecdotes. Quotations from Austin Dobson's bal-
lades, interpolations of a poetic and even mystic character, do
not, in a book of this style, contribute toward unity of effect.
Even a note of great beauty may produce discord; and dis-
cord, as the portrayers of New England life have so well real-
ized, is even less desirable than monotony. With this pos-
sible exception, the book is one of the most creditable of its
kind, and Aunt Jane's sympathetic optimism should win her
many friends.
The Ethical Addresses Publishing
THE CHURCH IN FRANCE. Company has just issued a pam-
By Salter. pn let • by Mr. William M. Salter
on the French religious situation.
The opposition of the Pope to the formation of associations for
worship Mr. Salter considers to have been unwarranted and to
have had its origin in the papal conviction or claim that all the
property of the Catholic Church belongs to the Roman Pontiff
and the bishops. Mr. Salter reflects to a considerable extent
the views expressed by Mr. Dell in the Fortnightly. The one-
Mr. Dell's statements have over and over again
tkt Catholic Chunk with the French Refvhlic. By William M. Sailer.
Ethical Addresses Publishing Company.
lxxxv— 44
690 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
been fully exposed. Though desirous of taking an impartial
view of the controversy, and of forming a just judgment on the
situation, Mr. Salter has missed two important factors in the
problem : ist. The Pope claims control of the churches and
church property only because, and so far as such control is re-
quired to safeguard the authority of the hierarchy and its full
authority over worship;' 2d. The settlement effected by the
Concordat was intended and accepted as an inadequate com-
pensation for the unjust spoliation of the Church in the violent
days of the Revolution. Mr. Salter assumes that church prop-
tkty belonged, absolutely, by a just title, to the State.-
From our Catholic publishers come
JUVENILE LITERATURE, two groups of reading matter for
the younger world. One set is
primarily religious, the other is primarily entertaining, but in
both edification and entertainment are provided. The first set*
consists of a number of short lives of saints, written for young
boys and girls. The other f contains a number of tales for the
young that, perhaps, might not be disdained by the class that
is " standing with reluctant feet " by the edge of the often-
sung Rubicon. Indeed Miss Keon's very good story is artistic
enough to deserve the attention of mature readers who are not
too sophisticated by indulgence in contemporary problem-plays
or the bold realism which caters to the prevalent taste.
The author of After the Ninth Hour\ follows in the track
of Fadto/a, and takes us back to the days of the first persecu-
tion in Rome.
Hound the World % is a series of illustrated articles on all
sorts of subjects, from the making of cut glass to the making
of American officers at West Point; and a great variety of
scenery, from the Arizona Desert to the Bay of Naples.
• Patron Saints for Boys. With Illustrations. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. Patn*
Saints for Girls. With Illustrations. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. Patron Saints for Catho-
lic Youth. 2 vols. By Mary E. Mannix. New York: Benziger Brothers. The Confessor at
Court; or, the Martyrdom of St. John Nepomucene. From the German. Techney. Illinois:
Society of the Divine Word.
t When Love is Strong. By Grace Keon. The Other Miss Lisle. By M. C. Martin.
Winona. And other stories. By W. J. Fisher. St. Louis: B. Herder.
% After the Ninth Hour. By R. Monlaur. St. Louis : B. Herder.
§ Round the World. With Illustrations. New York : Benziger Brothers.
In this volume ' of three hundred
THE BEST POEMS. odd pages we have Mrs. Meynell's
By Alice Meynell. selection of the best that has
bloomed in the English Parnassus,
from Chaucer to Wordsworth. She has taken poetic quality
alone as the norm of her judgments. No marks, to use the
phrase of the competitive examination paper, have been assigned
to piety, patriotism, or sentimentality. Without ignoring the
approbations of tradition, Mrs. Meynell has exercised a good
deal of independence in her decisions, both exclusive and in-
clusive. Many poems that have usually enjoyed a place in
other anthologies are absent here; while some others which
have been frequently ignored by recent anthologists have here
come into their own again. Doubtless, almost everybody will
think that some particular favorite of his own might have had
the place assigned to some poem which never appealed to his
taste. But everybody will, we think, agree that exquisite dis-
cernment has, in general, been displayed in Mrs. Meynell's
selection. And where the entire work indicates such high criti-
cal taste, it will prove worth our while to review the grounds
we have for those preferences which have not been confirmed by
Mrs. Meynell's censorship.
That Mrs. Meynell has set her standards very high may be
inferred from the single fact that Gray's " Elegy " has failed to
obtain admission ; though, indeed, Mrs. Meynell feels that she
has to offer some apology for the exclusion:
My labor has been ... to gather nothing that did not
overpassa certain boundary-line of genius. Gray's "Elegy,"
for instance, would rightly be placed at the head of every-
thing below that mark. It is, in fact, so near to the work of
genius as to be most directly, closely, and immediately re-
buked by genius ; it meets genius at close quarters and almost
deserves that' Shakespeare himself should defeat it.
Through Mrs. Meynell's doors the whole troop of Eliza-
bethans have passed without question — Raieigh, Spencer, Lyly,
Sidney, Lodge, Greene, Daniel, Marlow, Drayton, Sylvester,
Campion, Nash, around the chief, and rare Ben Johnson. Her-
rick, with thirteen pieces, is outranked, as far as numbers are
e Among the Bcsl Toems, Made by Alice Meynell.
6Q2 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
a test, only by Shakespeare himself ; while "Holy George"
and Crashaw have the ample recognition of eight poems each.
Lovelace is the only cavalier who has secured a seat among
the immortals ; and here we must express our personal griev-
ance that " Cupid and my Campaspe played " has been left in
the outer darkness. The Scottish Ballad poetry is represented
by " Helen of Kerconnell," " The Wife of Usher's Well," "The
Dowie Dens of Yarrow," " Sir William and May Margaret/'
" Sir Patrick Spens," and " Hame, Hame, Hame." If the poets
in their present abode continue to take any interest in their
terrestrial fame, Mrs. Aphra Behn must feel that Mis. Mey-
nell's approbation of the song from Abdelazar, is a measure of
compensation for the indignities which she suffered in the pil-
lory of Macaulay. When Pope observes that he has barely
obtained entrance through his " Elegy," while Drummond of
Hawthornden is surrounded by five of his offspring and Henry
Vaughan by seven of his, he may reflect that the whirligig of
time brings its revenge. Addison, Cowper, and Dryden have
also to be content with one for each. Burns has two. "Oh,
yes " ; you will say, perspicacious reader, " of course, ' Scots wha
hae ' and ' Highland Mary.' " You have forgotten that neither
patriotism nor sentiment can, on their own merits, pass Mrs.
Meynell's strict eye. Burns gets in with " To a Mouse " and
the comparatively neglected " Farewell." Wordsworth towers
in pride of place, with a patriarchal train of twenty- one. If
you have any pretensions to critical skill you may exercise it
by trying to name them. Byron is represented only by "The
Isles of Greece " ; but Mrs. Meynell, in her Preface, antici-
pating " the inevitable question," says that in a secondary
anthology — an anthology which would have included Gray's
" Elegy," other lyrics of Byron would appear ; and
if the last stanza of the " Dying Gladiator" passage or the
last stanza on the cascade rainbow at Terni,
" Love watching madness with unalterable mien,"
had been separate poems instead of parts of " Childe Har-
old," they would have been amongst the poems that are here
collected in no spirit of arrogance, or of caprice, of diffidence
or doubt.
From the foregoing indications of the anthologist's prefer-
ences, it may be guessed that Shelley and Keats obtain con-
spicuous recognition. Between them they enjoy forty pages.
All the greater poems and odes of each are included, together
with many of the shorter ones. The collection closes with
Hartley Coleridge's " She is not fair."
Certainly, Mrs. Meynell has not admitted anything un-
worthy into her collection ; and we must be grateful to her
for having rescued from the gathering dust some of the most
beautiful little lyrical poems of the language. Yet we cannot
help feeling that her exquisite feminine taste might have ob-
tained considerable advantage from the collaboration of some
robust masculine judgment. There is but one example of mar-
tial poetry in the collection, and that a not very striking one,
Campbell's " Hohenlinden." There is little or no representation
of that poetry which appeals less to the fastidious cultivated
taste than to the elemental man, yet between Chaucer and
Wordsworth there is many a poem which makes the heart
throb faster and fills the reader with the glow of action. Mrs.
Meynell has, perhaps, made her decisions too exclusively in
the atmosphere of the drawing-room or the library. This will
be apparent to anybody who searches this volume to select
some poems for reading before a popular audience. But, it
may be said, such a test savors not merely of philistinism,
but of Gothic barbarism. Perhaps; yet the "Iliad" and the
"Odyssey" were composed for popular audiences ; and Moliere
accepted as peremptory the decisions of his old housekeeper.
We are debtors again to Kate
CHRONICLES OF REBECCA. Douglas Wiggin for this delight- .
By Kate Douglas Wiggin. ful volume." The fascinating little
heroine of these chronicles first
won our hearts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and in the
present sequel, though we see still more of Rebecca, we leave
the last page wishing that there were many more chronicles to
be recorded. The inborn qualities of unconscious humor, of
sympathy, of frankness, of leadership that belong to the per-
sonality of this original heroine, go to make up a sterling
character study of American girlhood. In turn, Rebecca's many
friends, with all their native charm, figure prominently in these
Ribrua. By Kale Douglas Wiggin. Boston : Houghton. Mifflin
694 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
new episodes. The story, abounding in touches of genuine
humor and pathos, comes as a delightful treat to both the
younger and the older reader.
Since the appearance in abbre-
MEDITATIONS ON CHRIS- viated form of the Meditations on
TIAN DOCTRINE. Christian Dogma % by the late Bish-
By Bellord. op Bellord, there has been a wide-
spread demand for their publica-
tion in full. This demand has been mtt by the Sisters of
Mercy, of Callan, Ireland. The present publication # includes
two volumes.
It is a notorious fact that there is a growing tendency to
regard Christian dogma as a matter for the catechism class
and the school- room, and to consider it as something quite in-
dependent of practical, every-day life and conduct. The theory
that ethics is independent of religion has infiltrated itself in a
measure into the popular mind and the popular way of looking
at life. "What," for example, "has the truth of the Blessed
Trinity to do with our moral conduct; what support and in-
spiration can it give to us for a nobler and higher life?"
We know the absolutely essential connection between dogma and
Christian conduct; that without the former there is no such
thing as faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God.
Yet how often do we bring this truth home to ourselves and
make the teachings of our faith matters of practical applica-
tion ; of loving service ; of guidance and direction ? And do
we realize the pressing importance of training the coming gen-
eration in this wholesome and strong way, whereby faith will
be to them a practical thing of life, and, really living their faith,
they may be intelligent, earnest children of God ?
Bishop Bellord's meditations ought to be a popular book
among Catholics. The meditations, though learned, will be in-
telligible to the simple ; and profitable, as well, to the erudite.
They include all the subjects of Christian teaching — God, the
Blessed Trinity, Creation, the Incarnation, the Blessed Virgin,
the moral aspect of our conduct in life, Grace, the Virtues,
the Sacraments, Death, and Judgment. The meditations show
both the wonderful and surpassing fruit that may be drawn
* Meditations on Christian Dogma. By the Rt. Rev. James Bellord. 2 vols. Callan, Co.
Kilkenny, Ireland : The Convent of Mercy.
from Christian dogma, and that what is generally regarded as
a dry, abstract study, may be, as well, a most practical and
devout exercise. The reader will not only be aroused and in-
spired in his affections; he will also be instructed and fed with
nourishing and sustaining meat. For bis matter Bishop Bellord
has drawn from widely different sources, from St. Thomas, from
Max Nordau, Benjamin Kidd, and Herbert Spencer. We em-
phatically commend the work to priests and to laity. The
volumes may be procured directly from the Sisters of Mercy,
Callan, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland.
Here is an old acquaintance under
MARY IN PROPHECY AND a new name.* The change Is an
FULFILMENT. improvement. The present title is
By Quigley. more dignified, significant, and so-
norous than the old one. It re-
quired a little courage and some perseverance to ask a bookseller
for Ipse, Ipsa, Ipsum ; and the name was no less repellant to
the ear than it was clumsy to the eye. Generally speaking,
epistolary controversies, carried on in a newspaper, scarcely de-
serve to be preserved permanently in all their original exuber-
ance. The main question is often smothered by irrelevancies,
or lost sight of, as side issues or incidental disputes are pur-
sued; and, unless one, at least, of the disputants has the se-
renity and self-control of a Newman, many pages will be marred
by personal recriminations that, however they may have stimu-
lated the enjoyment of those who followed the fight in their
morning newspaper, seem but paltry personalities to one who
reads twenty years after, caring only for solid argument or
logical exposition. This volume is not entirely exempt from
the original sin of its kind. It might be cut down to half its
size without eliminating anything more than ephemeral value.
But the remaining half is so solid, that if we cannot have it
put through the refining process, we prefer to have it as it is,
rather than not have it at all. It contains an able defence of
Catholic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin and the wor-
ship of the saints; a striking exposition of the principle of de-
velopment, as a key to the consistency of the Church ; and
some straight, effective argumentation against the claims of the
Church of England.
•Mary, Mother of Christ, in Ptofktcy and Fulfilment. By R. E. Quigley, K.C. Third
Edition. New York: Fr. Pustet & Co.
696 New Books [Aug.
Half a dozen sermons on the Blessed Sacrament are pub*
lished by Messrs. Pustet in a thin paper volume. • The ser-
mons are plain, sound, solid, and logically divided. They are
very suitable for Corpus Christi, the Forty Hours 9 Devotion, or
the occasion of First Communion. There is at least one bizarre
legendary miracle that might have been left out by the trans-
lator, who, by the way, has done his work well.
The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Christ Child Society,
of Washington, D. C, has just reached us. The continued and
ever- increasing work of this Society demands special praise.
In its early years the Society limited its efforts to the relief of
the poor children of Washington. It has now widened its scope
to settlement work and has already established settlement
houses in six sections of the city. Its work among the Italians
is worthy of note. We can but trust that each succeeding
yearly report will show the same proportionate increase of fer-
vor and of effectiveness as the reports of the past seventeen
years have evidenced.
Dr. A. M. Fernandez De Ybarra, in this pamphlet f of four*
teen pages, has given us a valuable contribution to the history
of the Spaniards in America. It deals particularly with Dr.
Diego Alvarez Chanca, a physician of much learning, who ac-
companied Columbus on his second voyage of discovery. Dr.
Chanca sent to the municipal council of his native city, Seville,
what is unquestionably the first written document concerning
the flora, the fauna, the ethnology, and the anthropology of
America. The author gives paragraphs from this letter, which
include a description of the first part of Columbus 1 second voy-
age. A very appreciative letter of Cardinal Merry del Val ac-
companies the pamphlet.
* The Sublimity of the Blessed Sacrament. From the German. New York: Fr. Pustet &
Co.
\A Forgotten Worthy — Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca. By A. M. Fernandez De Ybarra,
M.D. Reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago: Press
of the American Medical Association.
jforeign periodicals.
The Tablet {S June) : A decision of the Pontifical Commission
De Re Biblica on the authorship and authenticity of the
Fourth Gospel. The reasons to the contrary brought
forward by the critics in no wise weaken the tradition
that St. John the Apostle wrote the Last Gospel. In-
ternal testimony confirms this decision, and furthermore
the alleged difficulties can be solved now as in all pre-
vious times. The Fourth Gospel cannot be considered
otherwise than as a strictly historical document.- The
Holy Father has formally approved of the establishment
of Catholic colleges for women at Oxford and Cambridge.
Four rules are laid down for the new institute: it must
be separated from the University proper, it must be
under the management either of nuns or Catholic ladies,
it must have a private chapel, the students must be
chaperoned when going to and returning from lectures.
The Rev. James F. Mackin, Pastor of St. Paul's
Church, Washington, D. C, has recently received a tes-
timonial of the Holy Father's great pleasure and satis-
faction. The good priest is accorded well-merited praise
and justly extolled for his valiant endeavors to carry out
the " Motu Proprio " on Church Music.
(15 June): An interesting study of The Grammar of As-
sent, and an attempt to measure its far-reaching possi-
bilities if justly considered.
(22 June); A rather full account of the history of the
Latin Vulgate, suggested by the Commission given by
the Pope to revise that text. Mr. T. L. Corbett in-
troduced in the House of Commons a motion to in-
quire into the need for inspection of monastic and con-
ventual institutions. While the motion was defeated, as
it has always been on its periodical appearance about
July 12, a different temper seems to have intervened,
for this year the vote was very close and great feeling
was displayed upon both sides of the debate.
{29 June) : Considerable interest continues to be manifested
in Rome in the question of the authenticity of the Holy
House of Loreto.
698 Foreign Periodicals [Aug.,
The National Review (July) : The regular department, " Episodes
of the Month/' always furnishes interesting, if not— (or
men differ sometimes on political matters — agreeable read-
ing. The National never hestitates to express its mind
hi clear and unmistakable terms. Captain Mahan writes
on " The Hagve Conference and the Practical Aspect ci
War." Captain Mahan argues that a nation may seek
advice, but may not abdicate responsibility. We quote
at some length from the article :
In putting forward these truths of material pressure, with a
bareness perhaps somewhat brutal, I must not be understood
to justify, far less to advocate, the predominance of material
considerations over moral. I simply look existing facts in the
face, which is in strict accord with my proposed point of view
— the practical aspect of war, its place in the economy of the
world which now is, and the possibility of shortly replacing it
with some alternative equally efficacious and less detrimental,
the world remaining the same. I believe, with full intensity
of personal conviction, that when moral motives come to weigh
heavier with mankind than do material desires there will be
no war, and coincidently therewith better provisions of reason-
able bodily necessities to all men. But the truth still remains
as stated by Jesus Christ twenty centuries ago, that between
material and moral motives men and nations must commit
themselves to a definite choice ; one or the other — not both.
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. By his own definition
Mammon applies as clearly to the simplest bodily necessities,
to the mere tood and clothing, as to the grossest insolence of
luxury. The question is not of the degree of the devotion,
but of the service chosen, of the Master. This will be either
the moral motives summed up in the phrase Kingdom of God,
or the material. So far as the advocacy of peace rests upon
material motives of economy and prosperity, it is the service of
Mammon, and the bottom of the platform will drop out when
Mammon thinks that war will pay better. The common sense
of mankind recognizes the truth of this affirmation. We
speak of mixed motives ; but we know that, be they two or
many, one alone receives true allegiance and will prevail.
The others may modify or hamper ; to one alone belongs the
title " master " ; and we have common proverbs and common
experience that the service of the moral assures in the end suf-
ficiency of the material.
The author concludes:
Let us not deceive ourselves by fancying that the strong
material impulses which drive those masses of men whom we
style nations, or races, are to be checked or guided, unless to
the argument of a reasonable contention there be given the
strong support of organized material power. If the organized
disappear, the unorganized will but come into surer and more
dreadful collision.
In " Kaiser Wilhelm v. Count Witte," by Julius, it
is charged that the German Kaiser's influence effected
the removal of the Russian Premier Jesse Collins
writes that the necessity for a reform in the English
antiquated land system is now generally admitted ; but
the writer attacks as entirely unsatisfactory the land
policy of the present government R. Bosworth
Smith makes a plea for the better observance of Sunday.
The Crucible (June): Henry Cullimore, M.A., writes of modern
language teaching in secondary schools. Its educational
value, as now taught, he considers very great. " If we
are being taught to think by means of other school sub-
jects," he says, " language teaching will tend to make us
think sympathetically and broadly. And as its educa-
tional effect is produced not by making us masters of
any given language, but by making us interested in the
linguistic habits of strangers, it is no great evil that the
curriculum of a modern secondary school is large, and
that consequently the amount of space on the time-
table reserved for teaching any one language is limited."
"The Mother's Part in the Education of her Sons"
receives attention from the pen of Jeanne Leroy-Allais.
The physical and moral health of a lifetime, she insists,
nearly always depends upon the purity of childhood.
At an early age especially, and even until manhood's
estate is reached, a mother's vigilance and care are of
vital moment. Mary Blanche Leigh describes the work
of the Nymphsfield Boarding Out Committee, and the
success with which it has met during the four years of
its existence.
The Bombay Examiner (25 May): Fr. Searle's article on Tele-
pathy is reprinted from The Catholic World. A
700 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug.,
correspondent cites a case of mysterious stone- throwing
which occurred in her father's house, when the latter
refused to move out on demand of the landlord. " Every
eveniug about sunset stones, starting from pebble size
and gradually increasing till they became so huge at to
terrify, began to fall near those within the house, but
without harming anybody." This mysterious stone- throw-
ing frequently occurs in India, when the natives have any
grievance to settle. While in some cases the phenomenon
is shown to be due to human agents, in others it is
seemingly inexplicable.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (June): L'Irlande Contemporaitu
et la Question Irlandaise is reviewed at length by the
editor, who is of opinion that M. L. Paul Dubois has ac-
complished his task better than most Irishmen could have
done. Such vital topics as, "The Land Question";
" The Economic and Financial Situation"; "The Gaelic
League " ; " The Education Question " ; and " The Liter-
ary Revival"; are ably handled by M.Dubois. "What
strikes one most in the whole study," writes the rever-
end reviewer, " is the accuracy and minuteness of the
information, the acuteness and penetration of the criti-
cism, . . . and the all-pervading sympathy with Ire-
land which runs through the work." Rev. P. Morris-
roe has a somewhat exhaustive discussion on Altar Wine.
In this age of unscrupulous merchants, the Church has
to guard against the possibility of an invalid Mass arising
from the use of adulterated material. Under four theo-
logical headings, the question of what constitutes real
wine is treated in a practical and technical manner. De-
cisions given by the Congregation of the Holy Office
where doubts have arisen, are quoted.
Le Correspondant (10 June): Henri Bremond contributes an
apology for Huysmans. He refers to this writer's holi-
ness in the most eulogistic terms, and speaks of him as
one whom he could defend before the devil's advocate.
" The Right of War " is discussed by Charles Du-
puis. After relating the history of the movement to de-
fine rights, etc., he criticizes a recent German publica-
tion on the subject, as revolutionary, and as one which
sets at naught many of the conventions agreed upon in
I907-]
Foreign periodicals 701
1899. Auguste Baucher is of the opinion that Sir
Henry Campbell Bannerman's plan, for the limitation of
armaments, will not be accepted at the Hague. In
his chronicle of economical and social movements, A.
Bechau notes the fact that in the matter of exports
! France is the one country that does not show increase.
France, though progressive and active industrially,
at the present time is in a state of unrest, due princi-
pally to the menace of the progressive tax. It has the
tendency to produce on all sides lying and hypocrisy,
particularly in the matters of income and capital. The
law has already been denounced by seventy- seven of the
Chambers of Commerce of France.
(25 June): Albert Touchard, writing on the relative
strength of the United States and Japan, is of the opin-
ion that the American navy is superior in units and not
inferior in discipline and courage. The difficulties to be
overcome by each would be about equal. Were France
I to lose Christianity, there is certain to be a moral de-
cline. This is the thesis Abbe Klein defends, and in sup-
port of it notes particularly the alaiming increase of
(drunkenness. Are we more just in our criticism of
art than critics were in the eighteenth century ? By
[comparing the letters written from Italy in 1739 and
1740 by Charles de Brosses with those of Marie-Charles
Dulac, Paul Hazard is loath to say. Critics of both per-
iods have their faults De Brosses misunderstood Giotto,
But why should we blame him, when in the same breath
we condemn those he loved, such as Carlo Dolci or
Guido Reni ? Nowadays artists and critics are more in-
dividualistic and care less for rule.
Annates de Pkilosophie Chretienne (June): M. E. Jordan, criti-
cizing Bishop Donai's history of the Inquisition, demurs
to the right reverend author's frequent apologies for that
tribunal. The Abb^ Dimnet reproaches M. Baudin for
caricaturing rather than characterizing Newman in a late
work on the English cardinal. M. Baudin is a keen and
ardent scholastic, and he endeavors to show that New-
Iman was not a philosopher, that he was a sentimental
romanticist, " brother to Chateaubriand, Rousseau, and
George Sand"; and that he distrusted logic because he
702 Foreign Periodicals [Aug.,
did not understand its nature and function. These as-
sertions M. Dimnet rejects as based upon a total misap-
prehension of Newman's temperament, and of the prob-
lems which he set himself to solve. M. Charles
Calippe shows how Lamennais' mind passed from belief
in Catholicism to a sort of positivism.
La Revue Apologitique (May) : This review enters upon its ninth
year. Studies on vital present day questions, such as
the Johannine Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, the Di-
vinity of Christ, the Eucharist and Modern Criticism,
the Supernatural, etc, are promised for the coming year.
The ancient history of Christianity in the Sorbonne
is treated by H. Dutovquet, S.J. L. M£chineau con-
tinues his history and analysis of the idea of an inspired
book, occupying himself in this issue with the centuries
extending from the Council of Trent to the middle of
the nineteenth century.-*— " The Dogma and Authentic
Acts of the Martyrs " is completed in this number.
Confirmation of Catholic dogma and practice is found in
the recorded words of those who died for Christ in the
early ages of the Church.
Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i June): A. Pacaud devotes
several pages to the discussion of OU£-Laprune's concep-
tion of moral certitude, and the application of this to
religion. Moral certitude, according to the late philoso-
pher, is of a firmness that excludes all doubt, though
the evidence is not really mathematical. The author
concludes that it would be " difficult to find any philo-
sophical theory that harmonizes better with the Catho-
lic .doctrine of faith." The symptoms and peculiar
causes of the religious crisis in youth, form the theme
of M. Gossard's article. — : — A. Hamon defends the san-
ity of Blessed Margaret Mary. While science, litera-
ture, and the press would have us believe that the Church
in France has had its day, E. Terrasse gives reasons
why this is not so.
(15 June): A. Durand continues the series on the Gos-
pel account of the infancy of Christ, and discusses the
historical value of various texts. Ch. Ponsard makes
a few suggestions on college education. After a care-
ful study of the biblical account of Josue and the sun
.] Foreign Periodicals 703
H. Les&tre writes that it is expedient to interpret this
account poetically.— A. Hamon takes exception to
those who claim that St. Theresa was hysterical. He
bases his position on the saint's pathological, intellec-
tual, and moral state. H Religion," writes £. Terrasse,
11 is the line that unites man with God. If this line is
broken, man falls, the family is scattered, society crum-
bles. Religion is necessary for the happiness of the
world."
Us (20 June) : Alexandre Brou, in a lengthy exposition,
apologizes for the work of the foreign missionaries.
Adverse criticism of the results accomplished by them he
pronounces unjust. The Idea, frankly considered as
such, independent of any theory of its evolution from
sensuous impressions and images, M. Joseph Ferchat finds
to be a strong proof of the spiritual soul. The psychol-
ogy of the idea he treats at some length. Obedience
in the Army is studied from the moral view- point by
Maurice de la Taille. Apropos of a recent translation
of the Imitation of Christy M. Joseph Brucker contributes
a paper on the history of this excellent little book and
its author. The decision of the Biblical Commission on
the authorship and historicity of the Fourth Gospel is
quoted in full. M. Adhlmar d'Al&s discusses the re-
lation of Catholicism to society.
Civilth Cattolica (15 June): Le Roy's conception of dogma
is severely criticized. His endeavor to minimize the in-
tellectual side of dogma and to interpret it in a practi-
cal sense, as though its meaning predominantly refers to
conduct rather than to belief, and his further effort to
maintain that dogmatic formulations cannot be fitted into
an intellectual or philosophical scheme, are declared to
contradict the official Catholic teaching as to what dogma
means. The study of Pope Liberius is continued, aim-
ing to show that the Arians have falsified history re-
specting this Pope and his famous lapse. Another
article describes the legistation of the first Christian
emperors. A criticism of Kant upholds the thesis
that this philosopher's notion of autonomous reason con-
flicts with the rights of God.
u$ Thomisti (May-June): R. P. Edouard Hugon, O.P., in
704 foreign Periodicals [Aug.,
the leading article, speaks of the relation of Faith to
Revelation. The latter is properly understood only as
a special, direct illumination from God. Faith in the
true sense cannot exist without such a revelation.
The Theory of Autonomous Conscience, is made the ob-
ject of exposition and refutation by Fr. H. A. Montague,
O.P. Many ventures have been made as to the au-
thorship of the "Te Deum." R. P. Cagin has recently
attributed its composition to Nicetas de Remesiana. His
theory is discussed at some length and its merits weighed
by Fr. A. Agaesse, O.S.B.
L Action Sociale de la Femme : M. Ren£ Doumic has a con*
ference on the teaching of French literature. He takes
issue with the proposal made by M. Salomon Reinach
that, for purposes of study, the prose- writers of the
eighteenth century be substituted for those of the seven-
teenth. The latter, he insists, have a greater educative
value than the former, since they possess not only an
art of expression that is superior, but moral ideals that
are wanting in their successors of the eighteenth century.
He appeals to his hearers to combat the growing spirit
of revolt against Bossuet and his contemporaries, in favor
of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists The editors out-
line their plan for the dissemination of good French
books, to offset the influence of the atheistic propaganda.
Two important conferences are reported ; one by M.
Ed. Aynard on the social role of women; the other by
Mile. Ponson on the Normal School.
The Expository Times (June) : Dr. Hastings announces a new
one-volume Dictionary of the Bible. It is not an abridg-
ment of the larger work, but an entirely new one — all
the articles written afresh by specialists. Dr. Mathe-
son's Representative Women of the Bible is briefly noticed
— a work in which the author's " imagination soars al-
most out of sight." Apropos of Dr. Turche's article
on " Christianity and the Comparative Study of Reli-
gions," in the New York Review, which is favorably no-
ticed, it is said that there are students of comparative
religion opposed to Christianity, not because they have
studied religion comparatively, but because they began
the study with the purpose of pulling down Christianity.
They emphasize points of similarity between, Christianity
and other religions, and at the same time ignore or hide
differences, Dr. Edwin Abbott's new work, which he
calb Apologia, is adversely criticized. It is said that he
has failed to accomplish his purpose, which was to ex-
plain how it is that he rejects all miracles and yet be-
lieves in the Divinity of Christ. To this is added a
synopsis of Dr. Ryle's refutation of the Neurotic theory
of the Miracles of Healing which appeared in the last
number of the Hibbert Journal.— — Hildebrand Hopfl,
O.S.B., calls attention to Erasmus' rendering of II. Cor.
iv. 3. Fr. Vincent McNabb gives in outline St. Thomas'
proofs for the Resurrection of Christ.
The Dublin Review (July): Wilfrid Ward, in "Two Views of
Cardinal Newman," discusses two late books: The Mys-
tery of Newman, by Bremond ; and Newman, Pascal,
Loisy, and the Catholic Church, by Williams. Mr. Ward
finds the former entirely unsatisfactory, incomplete, and
almost grotesque. " M. Bremond has taken as a model
for his work a smaller man cut out of the real Newman
— and a good deal altered and damaged in the cutting "
The criticism of Bremond's work is extensive and de-
tailed. On the other hand, Mr. Ward thinks that Mr.
Williams' book is, in spite of its defects, of very high
value. He hopes to have the occasion later to discuss
the value of some of its contentions. " We cannot, in
view of the present weakening of all belief in the super-
natural, afford to lose such works, either because they
do not conform to what is largely an etiquette of theo-
logical phraseology, or even because in the stress of real
and helpful thought incidental statements are made which
are open to just criticism and need revision." " Roma
Sacra," by Dr. William Barry, is occasioned by Benja-
min Kidd's Principles of Western Civilisation. It is a
study in world-civilization. " We owe our civilization
to the Pope. Can it survive without him?" P. J.
Connolly, S.J., writes critically on Brunetiere. For Bru-
netiere all French literature may be reduced to three
great epochs, which are marked respectively with the
characters of subjectivism, objectivism, and idealism. Ro,
mantic literature is subjective; Naturalism is objective;
VOL. LXXXV. — 45
706 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug.
Idealism preserves a happy balance between the two.
A grasp of these principles of Bruneti&re will give the
key to his whole critical armory. Fr. Benson, writing
on " A Modern Theory of Personality," says that the
scene of the present struggle between theology and secu-
lar science is in the field of psychology. The writer
states that, as an amateur, he attempts to indicate the
outlines of the dangers and the possibilities of the the-
ory; the theory under discussion is the one worked out
by such writers as Hudson, Starbuck, and Myers. This
hypothetical theory, to the mind of Fr. Benson, tends
to establish a presumption, on the scientific side alone,
for a belief in the survival of human personality after
death. "The Feast of the Dead/' by Fr. Thurston,
is a criticism of Dr. Frazer's article on " The Feast of
All Souls," wherein Dr. Frazer maintained that the feast
was nothing more or less than an ancient Celtic festival
which the Church, unable to suppress, was at length
induced to assimilate. Fr. Thurston shows that Frazer's
contention is without reasonable evidence. Count de
Mun has a most important article in French on "The
Religious Question in France."
The Reverend Ethelred Luke Taunton, well known to the
readers of The Catholic World, to whose pages he was a fre-
quent contributor, died May 9. Father Taunton was the first of
his family fo take Orders since the Reformation, and was born
October 17, 1857. He joined fhe Oblates of St. Charles, with
whom he was ordained a priest in 1883. In 1888 he left that
Community, after meeting with a serious accident, which was
the cause of his subsequent persistent ill- health. For many
years, however, he was a diligent literary worker, a frequent
contributor to many magazines, and the author of several his-
torical works, including: The Black Monks of St. Benedict ; The
Jesuits in England; The Little Office of Our Lady ; and The
Law of the Church. Father Taunton was also a musical critic
of note. R. I. P.
Current Events.
The events which have recently
France. taken place in four departments in
the South of France are both in-
teresting and instructive. The French people have long ago
passed from under the domination of monarchs, and, after long
struggles, have attained to that most complete degree of self-
government which is represented by a Republic. Liberty,
equality, and fraternity are universally recognized as the ideals
of national organization, and yet peace has not been at-
tained. The discontent of the wine growers first manifested
itself in enormous assemblies. At a single place — Montpel-
lier — there was held the largest mass meeting that has ever
taken place in France, more than 500,000 people having assem-
bled from the regions in its neighborhood. Every effort was
made by the organizers of the movement — for it was deliber-
ately planned — to keep it peaceful and within the bounds of
legality. But this proved impossible. At Nimes, Perpignan,
Toulon, Montpellier there were riots. At Perpignan was seen
the old-fashioned token of revolution — the erection of barri-
cades. These, however, were soon pulled down.
It was found necessary, after much hesitation on the part
of the government, to call out the troops. Then an event took
place which, disguise it as they may, has sent a thrill of anxie r
ty through every Frenchman's heart. At Narbonne, at Mont-
pellier, at Perpignan the soldiers showed not only sympathy
with the agitators, but clear marks of insubordination. The
garrison at Narbonne told their officers that they would not
march against the crowd, even if they were ordered to do so,
The men forming the regiment of Infantry at Montpellier be-
gan to hiss when told to be in readiness for action ; a large
number of the soldiers jumped over the wall and there was a
regular mutiny. The men ot the Second Engineers openly de-
clared that they had decided not to march, and would hold up
their arms, butt-end uppermost, if brought face-to-face with
the wine growers. It was at Agde that the most serious of
708 Current Events \ Aug.,
these occurrences took place. There 300 men of the 17th
Regiment of the Line left their barracks and, having prevailed
upon an even larger number stationed in another barracks to
make common cause with them, pillaged the powder magazine
and set out to punish the soldiers who, by obeying orders, had
been faithful to their duty.
These events have caused the gravest anxiety, and with
reason. An attempt has been made to explain the insubordi-
nation of the soldiers by what is called the system of recrutt
ment rigional, a system which, for various reasons of military
and economic convenience, leaves the conscribed soldiers in
the vicinity of their own homes, among their own relations
and friends. To call upon soldiers to act against them would
naturally be more than even a soldier could do. There seems
reason to think, however, that this is only, at the best, a part
of the truth. There has been for a long time an actively pro*
moted propaganda of anti-militarism, ot which M. Hervl is the
leading representative. The promoters of this propaganda teach
that 3II military service is pernicious, that the army is the last
means left \o capitalists of oppressing the poor, that it is better
for soldiers to shoot their officers than the enemy. Tracts and
leaflets innumerable have been circulated inculcating these teach-
ings, and there are those who think that the recent occurrences
manifest the fact that these teachings have not been without
result upon the minds of the soldiers. A former Inspector-
General of the Army, General Langlois has declared in the
Senate that the morale of the troops is affected. The cure of
the evil is, however, he thinks, still easy; the sacred fire of
devotion to duty still lurks beneath the thick layer of cold
cinders which has accumulated within the last few years. The
mutinous troops have been transmitted to Africa. The gov-
ernment has been able and willing to vindicate the law, and
to punish its infraction. The whole matter gives, however,
reason, as the French say, furiously to think. It is important
to notice that the movement is in no sense political.
It was not, however, in the ranks of soldiers alone that in-
subordination was found. Civil officials, who in France are al-
most as subservient as soldiers, and are, in fact, very much in
the same position, threw in their lot with. the movement. More
than 200 mayors, with their respective councils, formally re-
1907.] Current Events 709
signed their offices and gave in their adhesion to the non-
payment of taxes, a course openly adopted by the agitators as
the means of securing* their aims. Flags were hauled down
from the town- halls, and in their stead black banners were
hoisted. In one case the doorway of the town-hall was bricked
up to indicate the opinion which they had formed of the useless-
ness of the government. It is clear when the French people
are really moved they are ready enough and able enough to
find ways of showing it.
The government seems, on the whole, to have acted in a
suitable manner. Without having been too eager to take re-
pressive measures, when it became clear that such measures
were necessary, it did not hesitate to act energetically. A bill
was introduced into the Chambers to prevent the abuses
of which the wine growers complained — the watering of wine
and an excessive admixture of sugar. After a somewhat long
discussion, rendered necessary by the fact that what was good
for the people of the South was not favorable to the interests
oi the people of the North, the bill was passed in a modified
form. The • government refused to accept the resignations of
the mayors, and made an appeal to their patriotism which,
after the arrest of one of the more prominent of those officials,
seems to have been effectual.
The Committee of Argeliers, at the head of which was M.
Marcellin Albert, the government treated with wellrdeserved
severity. This Committee had arrogated to itself the right to
govern the four departments as if it were a legitimate authority,
and had for a brief space become omnipotent. To M. Clemen-
ceau's circular to the mayors M. Albert had replied: "We
have no orders to receive from the Prime Minister." The order
to arrest the Committee was given. Four out of the seven,
however, succeeded in evading the officers, among them M. Al-
bert. He took the somewhat histrionic course of going to Paris
to interview the Premier. This was the climax of his career; M.
Clemenceau advised him to surrender, paying his iailway fare
back to the Midi. The Southerners did not appreciate so pro-
saic a return and M. Albert, having found that his power was
waning, gave himself up to the police. The outcome has yet
to be seen.
If the movement has come to an end, it is due rather to
tyio Current Events [Aug.,
the use of force than to any willing acceptance of the duty of
obeying the law. In fact, this duty seems to be recognized in
Very few places and by very few people. In England the spec
facie has been seen for some years past of reverend ministers
&nd grave deacons, and even of justices of the peace and
magistrates, refusing to pay rates legally assessed. This resist-
ance has been rewarded by an attempt to change the law on
the part of the government. And now there are some Angli-
cans and even Catholics who, having seen this success, are
themselves threatening to take the course which was condemned
before as hostile to all good government.
With the best will in the world to obey the law, as altered
\n their favor, a problem of sufficient magnitude remains to be
solved. The fact is undoubted that some two millions of
people are on the borders of starvation ; the cause of that fact
is not a failure of the harvest, but too good a harvest; more
wine has been produced than can be sold. There are, how*
ever, those who say that the over-production is artificial and
dishonest, that adulteration to an alarming extent has been
practised, and this not by other wicked people, but by the
wine growers themselves. If this is the case, the remedy will
easily be found by a return to the ways of truth and justice,
and regret for the sufferings of so large a number will be
changed into satisfaction that as they have sown so have they
reaped. In fact, moral delinquencies seem to be the root arid
source of many of the events which are causing anxiety to the
country.
It is believed by many that the so frequent accidents which
have occurred in the French Navy are due to the recent wide-
spread adoption of sabotage. When men holding high places
have not hesitated to advocate it, it is not to be wondered at that
workmen should adopt the practice. Sabotage means the wil-
ful spoiling of anything a man is charged to do. A man em-
ployed to make a nut who deliberately so makes it that it will
not hold is practising sabotage. That a man who had a bad
master or who was not sufficiently paid should so act was pub-
licly declared right by one of the members of the French As-
sembly. People who accept such teaching can hardly be ex-
pected to appreciate the teaching of the Church.
The ministry of M. Clemenceau still remains in office, al-
I907-]
Current Events
711
though with a reduced majority. The necessity of supporting
it in energetic action against the illegal proceedings of the wine
growers obtained for it a larger measure of support in the
Chamber than it would otherwise have received. Continental
Cabinets have, as a rule, very precarious lives, and it is difficult
to account for their fall. The waning influence of the present
French Cabinet is, however, said to be attributable to the In-
come Tax Bill, which has been introduced by the Minister of
Finance, M. Caillaux. Some of its provisions are of so inquisi-
torial a character that the mere proposal to introduce them ex-
cites the greatest opposition.
The visit to Germany of M. Etienne, the distinguished pro-
moter of the French colonial attempts, and a recent War Minis-
ter, and his reception by the Kaiser and his Chancellor, have
revived rumors that Germany is still actively pursuing the plan
of bringing about an entente between the two countries. The
so-called mission of M. Etienne has, consequently, been much
discussed. The government, however, declares that it is no
way responsible for M. Etienne's visit. The ,entente with Eng-
land remains in full force and vigor. An Exhibition is being
held in London with the hope of strengthening the bonds by
the extension and development of trade to be promoted by the
Exhibition.
The conclusion of the agreement with Japan has given great
satisfaction; for it removes the anxiety which undoubtedly ex-
isted in the minds of many Frenchmen as to the possibility of
Japan seizing an opportunity to revenge herself for the undue
complaisance shown by France towards Russia in the recent
war.
Although the French have a poor opinion of kings, the lat-
ter, on the contrary, seem to have a high opinion of the French,
or at all events of their head and representative, the President.
M. Fallieres has, within the space of some four weeks, been made
the recipient of the Grand Cross of the order of St. Andrew,
given by Tsar; of the Maha Chaki Order, given by the King
of Siam ; and of the Order of the Chrysanthemum, given by the
Emperor of Japan.
7 1 2 Current e vents [ Aug.,
In Germany as well as in France
Germany. moral delinquencies of a special
character are the cause of most of
the disturbances which have to be chronicled. The common
parasites of all personal governments, back-stairs intriguers,
worse than the pests of popular institutions — demagogues — are,
of course, always at work ; but it is startling to learn that in these
our days, and in the home of criticism, learning, and science,
the3e causes of trouble to honest workers for the good of the
state have also been guilty of practises not fit to be mentioned.
This at least is the charge publicly brought against the ca-
marilla, of which Count Philip Eulenberg was the head — a ca-
marilla which has for long had great influence over the Emper-
or, and which has led him to take several important decisions,
particularly that of dissolving the Reichstag last December. The
Count, however, is bringing an action in the Courts of Law to
vindicate himself from the accusations which have been brought
against him, and it is to be hoped, for the honor of Germany,
that he will be successful.
The Emperor, of course, knew nothing of the alleged guilty
proceedings, and as soon as he learned of them inflicted due
punishment upon the wrong-doers. In fact, except in the mat-
ter of duelling, right morals find in the Emperor a vigilant de-
fender and enforcer. He has caused what is described as a
wholesale expulsion of officers from the military riding school
at Hanover on account of their addiction to gambling, and to
those who were left he used very strong language in condemna-
tion of the practice. In future officers who habitually indulge
in high play will be dismissed from the service.
The scandals which have arisen on account of the violation
of the moral law by some two or three of the Colonial gov-
ernors seem to show that these functionaries think .that they
can be a law unto themselves. The unsavory proceedings of
Dr. Peters, which were brought before the world some years
ago, and which caused his dismissal from the service, have
again excited attention on account of a libel action which he
has brought against a paper at Munich. We are not concerned
with him, or with the action itself ; but it served to bring out
before the world the notions which some men prominent in
the political world entertain on the subject of public morality.
At the libel action evidence was given by General von Liebert,
ex-Governor of German East Africa, member of the Reichstag,
the president of the Anti-Socialist League, to whom was ad-
dressed Prince Biilow's manifesto during the last election. This
high authority sought to justify Dr. Peters' proceedings, by de-
claring that it was impossible to get on in Africa without cru-
elty, and that human life had an entirely different value there
from what it had in Europe. He condemned the Courts which
had condemned Dr. Peters. It is only fair to say that the
General's utterances have themselves met with widespread con-
demnation.
A somewhat important change has been made in the Ger-
man Imperial Ministry, while in the Prussian Ministry two
changes have taken place, Count Posadowsky, the Imperial
Secretary of State for the last ten years, has retired from office,
and by so doing has strengthened, it is thought, the position
of the Chancellor, Prince Biilow. Although not hostile, yet
they were not by any means friendly. General regret is felt
at the resignation of the Count; for to him is attributed in a
large measure the progress which has been made in the social
legislation which is so distinguishing a mark of recent German
legislation. Although an aristocrat himself, and a member of
the landed class, his attitude towards the great social problems
of the day became sympathetic, and he was the advocate of
(ar-reaching reforms. He was the chief author of the measures
for the protection of children, seamen, and shop assistants,
which have been adopted, and of the system of insurance
against old age, accidents, and illness. He had in charge the
new programme of progressive social policy. On this account
his retirement has caused something like consternation. More-
over, he did not approve of the attack made upon the Catholic
Centre by Prince Biilow. He is succeeded as Imperial Secretary
by Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, who has hitherto been the
Prussian Minister of the Interior and who, although a Conserv-
ative, is said to have manifested some liberal instincts in his
treatment of the relations between the Prussian police and the
Prussian public. He has also proved himself a capable admin-
istrator.
A new Minister of Education has also been appointed in
7i4 Current Events [Aug.,
Prussia. No change of policy seems to be involved in this sub-
stituting Dr. Holle for Dr. von Studt, as the views of the for-
mer are declared to be based on a strictly, religious foundation.
The appointment, therefore, does not realize the hopes of the
Liberals and Radicals who, in Germany as elsewhere, are in
favor of the secularization of education. The problem presented
to Prince Biilow is somewhat difficult. In the Imperial Reich-
stag he has to govern with the help of Liberals and Radicals
in opposition to the Catholic Centre; while in the Prussian
Diet he has to rely upon the support of the Catholic Centre
against the Liberals and Radicals. His Liberal and Radical
supporters in the Reichstag are by no means pleased with the
recent appointments.
In the hope of improving the relations of Germany and
England a party of journalists of the latter country have been
returning the visit paid last year to England by certain German
journalists. They were received with the utmost courtesy, not
only by the Kaiser but also by the King of Saxony and the
Prince- Regent of Bavaria.
Even more dignified visitors were the Lord Mayor, Alder-
men, ahd Common Councilmen of the City of London, who
went over to Berlin in full state. These were entertained by
the municipalities of Berlin and Charlottenberg; received by
the Reichstag, and welcomed by the Emperor (although not in
person on account of absence from Berlin), at his palace at Pots-
dam. Those hospitalities although, of course, they cannot de-
cide the question of peace or war yet contribute in no small
degree to create an atmosphere favorable to the better decision.
On his side, the Emperor sent to England representatives of
himself at the unveiling of the statue of the late Duke of Cam-
bridge. These representatives were, of course, received with
all honor and duly decorated. The exchange of civilities will
culminate in the visit which, after so many years of absence,
the Emperor is to pay to the King of England in the coming
autumn.
. The first session of the Reichsrath,
Austria-Hungary. the Lower House of which meets
for the first time elected by uni-
versal suffrage with the abolition of all distinctive privileges,
1907.] Current events
was opened by the Emperor in person. In his' speech he made
an almost pathetic appeal for union and harmony: "It is my
most lively desire to leave, when the time shall come, as a
precious inheritance to my peoples, the assured existence of
their national possessions, and thereby to guarantee to all a
national peace that may be a joint treasure to all lovers of the
Fatherland. ... To all who bold dear their popular char-
acteristics, and the weal of the State, I address the plea that
they will co-operate with entire devotion to the attainment of
this goal."
The introduction of universal suffrage was due to his trust
in the loyalty of his people. This widening of the foundations
of State would, he hoped, go hand in hand with a concen-
tration and increase of the State's political power. He reminded
the members that the right to participate in decisions created
co. responsibility for the fate of the body politic. A long list
of proposed social and agrarian reforms was-given, including a
scheme of insurance for sickness and old age, which he looked
upon as the crown of the social work which he had begun in his
early youth by the liberation of the peasant class, The speech
concluded with the following impressive words: "Through the
grace of Providence it has been vouchsafed to me to lead two
generations of my peoples. I have seen the toils of my princely
office rewarded by a love and loyalty tried in all the vicissi-
tudes of destiny and by my peoples' progress in well-being and
civilization. To further this progress, and well and truly to
administer the inheritance of the glorious history of our fathers,
is the task to which I have dedicated my whole life. With
this same goal before your eyes you will find the way to con-
cord and internal peace, which to see assured I should esteem
the highest favor of fate. May the reconciling spirit of love of
the common Fatherland brood over your work, and may the
blessing of the Almighty accompany you therein." It is to
be hoped that the spirit and aims of the monarch may be
shared by every member of the new Assembly, and that the
abolition of every privilege which is its distinctive character-
istic may have practical results. The President of the Chamber
was chosen out of the ranks of the Christian Socialists who
constitute the distinctively Catholic party. Nothing further
has so far to be recorded of the proceedings of the Parliament,
and so it may be presumed that all is going smoothly
716 Current Events [Aug.,
Quite otherwise is it with the Hungarian Assembly. Not
long ago Europe was resounding with outcries about the wrongs
which the Magyars had to suffer from the Liberal party, which
was said to be Austria's instrument for oppressing disinterested
lovers of liberty and national rights. For years all parliamen-
tary proceedings were paralyzed and institutions of self-govern-
ment were in great danger of becoming discredited. Scenes
were witnessed which would have brought a saloon into disre-
pute. Within the past few weeks there has been a renewal of
deliberate parliamentary obstruction and a repetition of disgrace-
ful proceedings. But now it is the Magyars who are the op-
pressors of the downtrodden and the foes of liberty. Although
in a minority in the country, the Magyars have a large major- •
ity in Parliament over the various other races represented in the
Hungarian House. And they wish to stand in something of the
same relation towards those races as the Austrian Germans were
accused of wishing to take up towards the Hungarians. Among
these races are the Croats who, looking upon themselves as
having been treated unjustly in the proposed exclusive use of the
Hungarian language even on Croatian railways, have begun to
practise what the quondam obstructors declare to be obstruction
of an altogether outrageous character. Scenes have been wit-
nessed which vie with those of which before the Magyars were
the authors, and epithets which it would not be seemly for us
to recount.
The minor question which was the cause of the trouble last
year led to the revival of fundamental political questions in-
volving the relations betweens the two nationalities. The Ban
has resigned and has been replaced by an official more op-
posed to the Croatian aspirations than was his predeces-
sors. The Compact of 1867 between Austria and Hungary
placed the Croatians practically at the mercy of Hungary. In
1868 an arrangement was made between Hungary and Croatia
which has proved oppressive, especially in a financial sense, to
the latter. Several members of the present Hungarian govern-
ment promised, during the conflict with Austria, certain conces-
sions. These promises, now that they are in power, they have
made no effort to keep. On the contrary, the Hungarian Pre-
mier, Dr. Wekerle, declared in the Chamber that the govern-
ment would pursue a severe course in order to teach the Croa-
1 907.] Current Events 7 1 7
tians respect for the unity of the State and to keep them with-
in their proper limits. A former Premier, Baron Banffy, goes
farther and proposes to make the Ban of Croatia merely the
representative of the Hungarian executive, thus depriving the
Croats of the autonomy which they have hitherto possessed,
and refusing to Croatia the position which they themselves
have been claiming as to Austria. Croatian obstruction in the
Chamber is to be overcome by the government's enactment of
an ordinance on their own authority. The Magyars are, in
fact, acting in a more arbitrary manner than ever they accused
the Austrians of doing. The Croatians are determined to offer
strenuous resistance. They have refused to take any further
part in parliamentary proceedings.
Affairs in Russia are in much the
Russia. same state as they were after the
dissolution of the second Duma.
A good deal might be written about prospects, expectations,
hopes, and fears. But when everything depends, as it still
does, upon the will of an autocrat, these affairs are of little
more interest than are those in the Dominion of, say, the
Amir of Afghanistan.
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION
THE most interesting incident of the National Editorial Association's con-
vention, at the Jamestown Exposition, was a speech by the venerable
Crosby S. Noyes, editor of the Washington Star, His subject was "Jour,
nalism Since Jamestown/' and incidentally he drew a striking contrast be-
tween the conditions attending the pioneer colonist, like Captain John Smith,
who had no newspaper press to aid him, and those attending the public man
of to-day, like president Roosevelt, whose success and prestige have been due
largely to exploitation of his words and deeds in the up-to-date journal. Hit
speech was filled with happy simile, appreciative and satirical comment, and
vigorous defense of the profession in which he has been a conspicuous figure.
Mr. Noyes said, in part :
Captain John Smith's achievements, in the way of planting and sustain*
ing the English colony under the most formidable difficulties, were as worthy
of glorification as the deeds of Theodore Roosevelt, but he lacked the aid of
the newspaper press that has so greatly helped the latter in his upward ca-
reer.
The newspapers have given Mr. Roosevelt their vigorous support in his
reform policies; have exploited all his sayings and doings through the
twenty-four hours of the day ; glorified the man and his work and made his
name a household word in every home in the land. He has seemed some-
what slow in acknowledging his indebtedness to the press, but perhaps he
will think of it some day when he is not too busy.
Captain John Smith had no such newspaper aid, and his great deeds
have thereby gone unhonored and unsung.
Following up this reference to the early absence of a public press, the
speaker reviewed briefly the history and progress of the English and Ameri-
can newspaper. A notable point showing modern advancement was cited in
the fact that only seventy years ago, in 1837, not a single newspaper repre-
sentative was present in the Senate at Washington to report a word of Web-
ster's famous reply to Calhoun on the currency question.
Discussing the journals of to-day, Mr. Noyes made this caustic comment
on certain of them :
Take a copy of an up-to-date penny dreadful. You will find it packed
with horrors. The front page and several inside pages are devoted to lurid
depictions of the great scandal-murder case, the special thriller of the day,
with pictures and biographies. ...
At first glace the appearance of such a paper as representative of modern
journalism has a discouraging look ; but on a closer view, when it is seen that
the newspapers of this degraded class can be counted almost upon the fingers
of one hand, and that the clean, sane, reputable journals of the country num-
ber twenty thousand or more, we can take a more cheerful view of the situa-
tion.
• • •
The papers which Professor Frederick Starr contributed to the Chicago
Tribune upon his return from the Congo Free State have now been collected in
a small volume under the original title, The Truth About the Congo. Chicago:
■
1907.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 719
Forbes & Co. It was under this title that the articles were first published.
They have been the cause of malicious and untrue statements concerning the
author, and have made him the subject of bitter attack.
Professor Starr's account of the country is not by any means in agree-
ment with that of some other observers. It is, upon the whole, favorable to
the Congo rulers. Readers who are looking for harrowing tales of the atroci-
ties, about which so much has been written of late, will be disappointed.
That there have been atrocities he admils ; that many are still committed
there — as elsewhere— he does not deny; that they will continue he thinks
highly probable. But as to the frightful floggings, the chain gangs, the mu-
tilations, and the various other horrors which have been dwelt upon, he makes
light of them. Flogging is general in the Free State. Of that he is con-
vinced ; but in all my journey in the Congo, he adds , while I frequently heard
the word flogging, and constantly heard the word chicotte, I never heard the
French term for either. The Belgians, he holds, are not responsible. He
saw plenty of flogging, however, and gives a lively description of the cere-
mony as he saw it conducted. Chain gangs are to be seen at every post.
But Professor Starr does not seem to be greatly impressed by these phenome-
na. To grieve over the weight carried in the form of chain and ring is
simply ridiculous ; there are to-day thousands of women among these Congo
tribes who, for the sake of decoration, carry about their neck a heavy ring of
brass weighing twenty, twenty-five, or thirty pounds. It is no uncommon
thing for both men and women to have a weight of thirty, forty, or fitly
pounds of brass and iron rings and ornaments upon them. Moreover, he
thinks it very doubtful that the natives are as susceptible to pain as we are.
While Professor Starr is apt to discount the stories of atrocities, he is
likewise inclined to disagree with the usual idea of the African character.
The frequent charges of dishonesty arid ingratitude seem to him unjust.
The African knows, as well as we do, what constitutes truth, yet he lies,
especially to white folk. He has as clear a knowledge of mine and thine as
we, and yet he steals from his employer. The explanation is that he
tbinks we are constantly getting something from him ; he knows that the
white man is a stranger, and consequently to be respected; for through-
out tribal life the stranger is a menace; he is being plundered because be is
a being who plunders. That, according to Professor Starr, is how the
matter appears to the African; and it is easy to apply this conception in ex-
plaining other matters which have often astonished the white man.
The Protestant missionaries generally seem to him too full of a com-
plaining spirit. They are always grumbling and finding fault with the
Government, whether the Government is responsible or not. If their atten-
tion is called to some apparent purpose to reform abuses, they shake their
heads and say it will come to nothing; it is a subterfuge. If, as time passes,
the thing assumes the appearance of reality, they say there is some hidden
and mysterious purpose back of it; the State would never do so well unless it
were preparing some new iniquity. The attitude of complaint becomes
habitual ; the ability to see improvement seems completely lost.
Professor Starr, as it will be seen, is, upon the,who!e, inclined to stand
up for and to defend the Belgian Administration. M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
A
Longmans. Green & Co., New York:
The Holy Eucharist. By the Rt. Rev. John Cuthbert Hedley. Pp. xix.-ajS. Price $i.ao
net. Pragmatism. By William James. Price $1.25. Story of Ancient Irish Cmhxa-
tion. By P. W. Joyce. Price 50 cents net.
E. P. Dutton & Co., New York:
Notable Pictures in Pome. With many illustrations. By Edith Harwood. Pp. xvii.-3o6.
Price $1.50 net. Sicily. The New Winter Resort. An Encyclopedia of Sicily. By
Douglas Sladen. Illustrated. Pp. xiv.-6i6. Price $2 net. The Ronton Capitol m
Ancient and Modern Times. By E. Rodocanchi. Pp. xvL-250. Price $1 net. The
Museums and Ruins of Rome. By Walter Amelung and Heinrich Holtzinger. In two
vols. Price $3 net per set.
Harper & Brothers, New York:
The Administration of an Institutional Church. A Detailed Account of the Operation of
St. George's Parish in the City of New York. By George Hodges and John Rdcfaen
Pp. XXU.-324. Price $3 net.
Benziger Brothers, New York:
Meditations for Seminarians and Priests. By the Very Rev. L. Branchereau, S.S. Trans-
lated and adapted. Price $1 net.
P. J. Kennedy & Sons, New York:
Sodality of Our Lady. Hints and Helps for Those in Charge. By Father Elder MnQan,
S.J. Pp. 256.
The Baker & Taylor Company, New York:
The Gothic Quest. By Ralph Adams Cram. Pp. 355.
Tennant & Ward, New York :
A Short Introduction to Franciscan Literature. By Father Paschal Robinson, O.F.M.
Booklet. Pp. 55. Price iq cents.
The National Civic Federation, New York:
Socialism. By W. H. Mai lock, M A., of England. Paper. Pp. 238.
George C. Peck, New York:
The New Apocalypse. By Henry Grafton Chapman. Paper. Pp. 38.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass. :
Industrial Education. A System of Training for Men Entering upon Trade and Com-
merce. By Harlow Stafford Person, Ph.D. Pp. vi.-86. Price $1 net.
B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo.:
La Familia de Santa Teresa en Amirica y Primera Carmelita Americana. Por el Dr. D.
Manuel Maria Pdlit. Pp. 383.
The Burrow Brothers, Cleveland, Ohio :
History of the Society of Jesus in North- America, Colonial and Federal. By Thomas
Hughes, of the same Society. Text. Vol. I. From the First Colonization till 1645.
Pp. ix.-655
Australian Catholic Truth Society, Melbourne:
Datly Prayer. Pamphlet. Price 1 penny. The Very Rev. Father M. T. Ratisbeu.
Pamphlet. Price 1 penny.
Sands & Co., Edinburgh, Scotland:
The Philosophers of the Smoking- Room. Conversations on some Matters of Moment. By
Francis Aveling, D.D. Westminster Lectures. Thiid Series. Edited by Rev. Fran-
cis Aveling, D.D. Including six lectures: The Church Versus Science; Mysticism;
Socialism and Individualism ; Authority in Belie/; Revelation and Creeds ; Theories of
the Transmigration of Souls.
P. Lethielleux, Paris:
Le Progres du Liblralisme Catholique en France sous le Pate Lion XIII. Vol. I. and II.
Luttts pour la Liberie de L'Eglise Catholique aux Etats-unis. Pp. 128. Cursus Scrip-
tura Sacra. Pp. 440.
Victor Lecoffre, Paris:
Saint Elio. Par Paul Parsy. Price 2 fr. •
Alphonse Picard et Fils, Paris :
Guibert de Nogent. Historie de sa Vie. Par G. Bourgin. Pp. lxii 1.-249.
Bloud et Cie, Paris:
Lamennais et Lamartine. Par C. Mardchal. Pp. 373. Price 3 fr. 50. La Force Curatrin
a Lourdes et la Psychologic du Miracle. Pp.39. Price ifr. La Crise Religieuse et
I' Action I ntellectuelle desCatholiques. Par C. Dupuis. Pp.90. Price z fr. 50.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona:
Instruccion para ensenarla virtud d los principiantes y Escala E spiritual. Por el Padre Fray
Diego Murillo. 2 vols. Price 12 Pesetas. Los Escesos del Estado. Por el Ilmo. Dr.
D. J. Torras y Bages. Pp. 85. El Cathdlico de Accidn. Por P. Gabriel Palau, S J.
Pp.176. La ImportaHcia de la Pnensa. Por D. Antolin L. Paldex Pp. 249. Price
2*50 Pesetas. Caracteres del Anarquismo en la Actualidad. Por Gustavo la Iglesia.
Pp. 456 Price 5 Pesetas. La Com union Frtcuente y Diaria. Por el R. P. Juan B.
Ferreres, S.J. Pp. 138.
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Vol. LXXXV. SEPTEMBER, 1907. No. 510.
THE ITALIAN PRESS-ITS PARTIAL PERVERSION.
V 'OD wine needs no bush," and it would be super-
fluous to write in order to dwell upon the good
qualities of the annual output of newspaper mat-
ter; these will invariably find advocates enough,
beginning with the editorial staff who produce
them. But, though to pull up all the tares and leave only the
wheat standing is an impossible task, we yet may very profit-
ably employ a little time in weeding in that garden of print
wbere, although so many fair flowers flourish, weeds, alas I do
abound in ever- increasing profusion.
It is because we hear so much and such a deal of "high
falutin " as to the "beneficial powers of the press," that we
begin with an "attacking" statement, and think it maybe just
as well to dwell a little on the other side of the picture, and
consider some of the frequently bad and insidiously evil effects
of press influence on the public mind. Indeed, if only we
could, we would dearly like to pillory certain " gutter-press
rags " which, like all cheap-and-nastys, find easy circulation
among those classes of persons always ready to swallow more
than their proverbial allowance of a "peck of dirt."
Having now resided abroad, at intervals, for many years, we
think it is true to say that one requires so to live, to grasp
fully to what depths the press can sink and to what aims,
subversive of morals and religion, it can lend itself. People
living in England, or America, naturally do not see more than
one — if even that — foreign paper, French, Italian, German, to
which they may subscribe, and that probably one of the lead-
ing, high-toned papers, such as the Figaro, Le Temps, Corriert
Copyright. 1907. The
VOL. LXXXV.— 46
722 THE ITALIAN PRESS [Sept,
della Sera, Kolnischi Z$itung % etc. Consequently, they with dif-
ficulty can believe the statements often made by permanent
English or American residents abroad, as to the deplorable
lack of censorship of the press which exists on the Continent,
and its imperative need. It is not too much to say that if a
tithe of what is daily published, circulated, exposed for tale,
on the newspaper kiosques abroad, were to be translated into
English, or issued in journal form in London, Edinburgh, New
York, there would ensue such a " spontaneous combustion"
and revolt among newspaper readers as would lead to a prompt
suppression of the same and the much-to-be-desired punish-
ment of their editors.
The " power of the press/ 9 of which we read and hear so
often, lies not so much in the quality of its utterances as in the
quantity of its readers. Given an uneducated, fallow public
mind, and nothing will be too grossly unbelievable to be be*
lieved; and newspapers will continue to be a power in the
land, in any land, so long as people continue to believe firmly
that whatever is in print is true. The old adage, of believing
nothing you hear and only half of what you see, it of little
account nowadays, and most persons will seriously affirm, by
way of testimony to the truth of their assertions, that "it wis
in the papers to-day 1" The gospel truth of the press appears
to be an established conviction of the ordinary public mind,
and we expect it to be but a matter of time before we shall
see in the law courts, witnesses being sworn— not on a mere
Bible — but on a copy of (let us say) the Daily Mail. (We
make a present of this idea to the judges, as a solution of the
difficulty which we believe still attends the swearing-in of non-
Christian jurors.)
But the particular bit of cabbage patch which we want to
hoe just now, and which has come under our daily notice for
years, lies in Italy. Not that only in Italy bad papers unfit
for print are daily published, but we can quote from facts which
are constantly before our eyes— and of making many newspa-
pers in Italy there is no end — literary and unliterary, religious
and anti- religious, political and non- political, dull and clever.
Very much the same gamut is sounded as in other countries,
but one invariable, dominant note is eternally harped on in every
Italian paper we have ever seen, and that— the presence always,
in every kind or class of journal, of strong personal bias for or
1907.] THE ITALIAN PRESS 723
against the Church. No editor and his star! can let Church
matters alone in Italy for twenty-four hours ; not a leading
article appears but some sort of reference must be made for
or against religion ; and the religious question rages in Italy,
cropping up at every turn. This is a most noticeable feature
in Italian journalism to Anglo-Saxon eyes, for as a rule, ex-
cept in definite religious papers and magazines, recognized as
such, we let Church matters alone to work out their own sal-
vation, and are not forever letting loose lay terriers to try and
worry ecclesiastical cats
Though there are, of course, some Italian papers (we are
speaking of that class to which, in accordance with the title of
this article, we intend to refer) that know how to express
themselves in fairly becoming language, there is a class of
paper which gives vent to the most poisonous and subverting
opinions, in language which leaves behind it all bounds of or-
dinary decency. We quote, as an instance, that our readers
may see for themselves what we mean, the following, taken from
the advanced socialist paper VAvanti, A short time ago the
Osstrvatore Romano (a Vatican organ in so far as it is made use
of by the Vatican when official utterances are to be published),
dealing with that most thorny subject, the character, etc., of
Giordano Bruno, expressed itself very unfavorably towards that
personage — perfectly legitimately so — but this is how its refer-
ees to Giordano Bruno were alluded to by its violent con-
temporary (we give full quotation together with our translation):
I DIFFAMATORI DELLA STORIA.
V Osservatore Romano di stasera pubblica alcune
righe su Giordano Bruno, le quali rilevano tutta I'os-
cenita settaria di quegli animi di sagrestani. Ecco
quel che dice del filosofo nolano, etc.
THE TRADtiCERS OF HISTORY.
The Roman Observer, of this evening, publishes
some lines on Giordano Bruno, which show up the
sectarian obscenity of the sacristan spirit. This is
what it says regarding the Philosopher of Nola, etc.
This is an almost everyday example of Italian billingsgate.
Another more insidious method of influencing for evil the
public mind, is in the choice of extracts from foreign papers
which are reprinted, and which are generally those which most
724 The Italian press [Sept,
profitably might be omitted. Take this example, reprinted from
Le Soir, whose editors apparently are rejoicing in the fact of
having converted the church of the expelled Marist friars, at
Le Plaisance, into a cinematograph hall. The Italian paper
prints the following edifying notice:
Al posto dove sorgeva l'altare, noi abbiamo messo
il cinematografo. Cosi invece della Messa noi offriamo
al pubblico un trattamento morale ed istruttivo, che in-
contrcrk, ne siamo certi, l'approbazione unanime.
On the spot where the altar used to stand, we
have put a cinematograph, so that in place of the Mass
we ofter the public a moral and instructive entertainment ',
which we are convinced will meet with universal ap-
proval, etc.
These and such as these are the titbits offered for the Ital-
ian public's delectation. Italy is dominated by its press more
than almost any other country, and it can be easily imagined
what effect this incessant open and underhand attacking of
things religious — this constant drip, drip upon the stone — roust
have. Add also the fact that here newspapers are published
at a half- penny ; so that every workingman who can read can
probably afford to buy the one of his fancy.
Bad as the influences of the above types of papers un-
doubtedly are, their effects are yet mild in comparison with those
of the now notorious and almost unmentionable Asino — a paper
which within the last iew years has reached the acme or rather
the apogee of what may be regarded as the output of moral
filth. No adjective can be too strong as applied against this
production, and one re- emerges as half suffocated from a sewer
after a perusal of its vilely worded attacks against everything
that represents morality or religion — attacks against the Church,
the Pope, the priesthood — in which it hesitates at nothing,
pouring forth its weekly polluting stream of poison.
This paper, with its highly colored and often clever cartoons
and caricatures as frontispiece, is exposed on all stalls for sale,
and though a law already exists in Italy by the enforcement
of which its sale might be prohibited, so far, owing to a par-
tial-spirited indifference on the part of ministers of justice, it
has gone on its way unmolested.
However, " deepest Black means White most imminent/ 1 and
1907.] The Italian press 725
in its more recent issues so scandalous and openly flagrant has
been the Asino's breach of all laws of decency, that protests
fhave at last made themselves heard at headquarters, and in the
Italian Parliament the deputy Santini has energetically pushed
a measure, which has culminated in the trial of the editors and
management. Pending the trial, the paper is having its (let us
hope) last fling, and its illustrated immoralities meet the eye
everywhere, exposed as they are where every Italian boy or
girl can read and see them. Truly there is an eleventh Beflgia in
the Inferno wailing for a second Dante to describe, and where
shall be found alike together the authors and. editors and sub-
scribers of their talents and wealth to the soul destroying jour-
nals which spring up in all countries and in all languages.
The excesses of the press abroad are almost incredible. It is a
perfectly horribie sight to any one believing in a God and a
future state and that man has a soul as well as a body to care for,
to see even the little children daily looking at, being permitted
to read, and hearing read aloud, whatever garbage a certain set
of atheistical and impure-minded men may choose to throw and
strew around them; and it is a disgrace to Italy, // Bel Paese,
that such publications as referred to should be allowed to flour-
ish, and no official check be placed upon them. Whilst her
gardeners sleep their perpetual siesta, her garden runs to riot;
and if, together with the increase of education, Italy does not
see to it that fit food for young Italy's intellectual digestive
powers is supplied, and that in place of the present cheap ref-
uses now eagerly swallowed, at least wholesome nourishment
is provided, neither she nor any other similarly erring nation
can hope to avoid the cataclysm already threatening the world
— that of a Proletariat without God, without morals, in possession.
The argument that it is in the power of the reader to ac-
cept or reject at will the statements laid before him, is useless,
for it is an established fact that when acknowledged " leaders
of public thought " write for the public — the public is led.
Moreover, the responsibility of such leaders lies in this, that
holding as they do the position of accepted and recognized direc-
tors of public opinion, they have no right to think their unformed
thoughts aloud in print ; nor can they (all back on the state-
ent that what they have written is only so much " undeter-
mined, indefinite suggestions or reflections, and not authoritative
isertions ; they are subject to correction," etc. These and
ke catch phrases are generally employed after some most
ch
3St
726 THE ITALIAN PRESS [Sept.,
decisive opinions have been expressed. When these views are
signed by some well-known writer's name they must, of ne-
cessity, carry weight ; the Anal disclaimer goes to the winds and
is unheeded by the average reader, who forthwith proceeds
(possibly unconsciously) to assimilate and make them his own.
If editors of papers and writers of press articles would more
often reflect on their responsibility before God and to man, fewer
irresponsible articles would be laid before those millions of
readers who read without judgment, and imbibe as truth what-
ever is laid before them.
Uncomplimentary as it sounds, a great deterrant to this
blind belief in their paper's utterances would doubtless be, in
many cases, a personal acquaintance and knowledge of those who
write for them! But only a few of the multitude personally
know the writers for papers which they read, only a few grasp
the fact that that awe-inspiring pronoun " WE " is but the mul-
tiplication of the most egoistic " I " of the individual who is
giving expression to his own (very often) most bigoted views
of the question in hand.
If, instead of quoting and implicitly believing the " excel-
lent article in to-day's Times \ Standard" etc., the reader would
spare another second of his time to thinking " such and such an
article was written by Mr. and embodies his personal
views," and so accordingly allow for the personal bias which per-
meates most press utterances — then, as Professor Teuflesdrockh
might say, Then would the articles, stripped of their disguise'
and the many enfolding garments of individual opinion, step
out naked to the eye ; and one would arrive at their raison
d'etre and at the man who writes them ; and of the man who
writes them Teuflesdrockh again would tell us— he is but "an
omnivorous biped that wears breeches!"
But is there no remedy which can be found ; no antidote
to the spreading poison ? May not, perhaps, the very force which
creates the evil, if rightly directed, stem it, extirpate it ? Why,
in this century of syndicates, cannot a Press Syndicate be formed*
which shall have funds invested for the sole purpose of — wher-
ever some strikingly obnoxious species of newspaper is mak-
ing its way — there establishing a counter one, outbuying it, un-
derselling it, stamping it out entirely. If this syndicate were
formed among the good class of the press, and supported by public
subscriptions and made international, then the really beneficial
powers of the press vio\a\A Y>* fa&tAtely ^m^lo^ed in a crusade
1907.] THE ITALIAN PRESS 727
p against the increasing publication of impure matter, and would
gain the support and backing of all right-feeling persons. It
might, too, prove a safety valve to the millionaires unable to
spend their millions, and who are now sometimes reduced to
giving costly dinner parties to their pet dogs or monkeys.
If our International Press Syndicate ever comes into existence,
we believe it would bring about the much- desired eradication
of bad journalism, and secure a universally high standard instead.
Nothing is truer than that " it is easy to be amusing if one
does not shrink from being nasty," and it is this force of humor-
ous nastiness which so often creates a big sale of bad-toned,
immoral papers. Moral papers, to combat immoral ones, must
therefore not be lacking in humor — as sometimes they are —
and we await, with anxiety and curiosity combined, the first
appearance of the new Italian paper which, issuing from Bologna
and being started by public subscription with the sole purpose
of combating week by week the Asino, has chosen as its title
// Mulo I Absit omen, we hope it may prove to be devoid of
certain characteristics generally attributed to mules. It is some-
thing — a very great something — that the effort is being made
and proceeding from Italy herself, contra la stampa imvioralt —
against the immoral press; and that this phrase is becoming a
heading occasionally to be met with now in one or two good
leading papers.
It is almost inevitable that counsels of perfection should
remain such, and good advice as to not believing all one sees
in print should not be taken ! An uneducated and an unreflect-
ing public will doubtless continue (in spite of this article !) to
believe what it can get and read for a half-penny. We re-assett,
however, that it is for these unreflecting minds, that reflective
editorial ones should legislate, and, in fact, are responsible. Our
" seed field is time," and the sowers, the rulers of the press,
should sow good seed in the vast world-fields before them, lest
they " reap — the whirlwind." For " liberty is one thing, but
excess of liberty is another," and the great Juggernaut car of
" liberty of the press " rolling on has already crushed its mil-
lions of victims, in the form of minds poisoned, young hearts
and thoughts depraved, evil insinuated, and morals eternally
undermined.
Is there no power in Christianity, even in Catholic Italy,
which can intervene and check its course?
LISHEEN; OR, THE TEST OF THE SPIRITS.'
BY CANON P. A. SHEEHAN, D.D.,
Autkir of '• My Nrw Curatt"-; "Lulu Dtlmegi" ;
Chapter IV.
THE PORPHYRY VASE.
m
f HE meditations of Ralph Outram, as he stood in
his dressing gown before his glass the morning
after the dinner party, were not pleasant. Morn-
ing meditations, as a rule, are not pleasant. It
is only when the blood has begun to course
swiftly through the brain, and to shake off the stagnancy where
unpleasant visions dwell, that fresher and more exhilarating
ideas come upward. His was not the unpleasantness of an-
ticipations or remorse, but only vexation at having been be-
trayed into what he called " a tactical blunder." Thete are
some minds to whom tactical mistakes are of far more serious
consequence than deadly sin. Outram's was one of these ; and,
between his teeth, as he performed the duties of his toilette,
he cursed that old professor, that treacherous whisky, those
opiate cigars, those odious women, for betraying him into what
might prove the more serious trouble of bis Hie. For, all the
long way home, Mabel, who had recovered rapidly from her
swoon, was ominously silent, or answered only in monosyllables;
and he knew from her calm, stony face, as she entered the
house, and went straight to her room, that she had seen a sig-
nificance beneath the simple vesture of his story, that was
known to no one but himself.
"Those women," he muttered, "you cannot show them a
pebble but they want to build a mountain out of it. Witb
their intuitions, their inspirations, their fancies, their suspicions,
one dare not even lift the corner of the veil that every man,
from a sense of duty, should keep pegged down over his past
life."
* Copyright. 1906. Longmans. Green & Co.
1907.] LISHEEN 729
And then he went over in detail all that he could remember
of his story and its suggestions. Suddenly a thought seemed
to strike him with startling suddenness. He pulled back the
sleeve of his dressing gown and shirt and looked long and
anxiously at a mark high up on the arm, like the cicatrice of
an ancient wound, except that instead of being long and nar-
row, it was a circular blotch, rimmed by a ridge of flesh and
sunk down in a pale, flabby skin in the centre. Then he pulled
open his shirt front and stared at bis breast in the glass. Yes;
there were a few healed wounds here and there.
"The marks of Paythan triangular knives, we shall say,"
he murmured. But his face wore a frown of apger and vexa-
tion. He dressed leisurely, turning over in his mind a hundred
things which he might say to his wife ; and debating earnestly
with himself what would be the most politic course to pursue —
to make light of the whole thing ; to laugh away her anger or
her fears ; to simulate anger ; to fall back upon his usual cold,
sneering manner, and then, if. the lady persevered in her un-
pleasant mood, to hiss defiance at her; or — to make a clean
breast of all and to commence anew. Alas! no; that cannot
be even thought of. It would be sheer madness. The veil
must be kept pegged down. All men do it. Society could
not otherwise cohere. These little -dissimulations are the cement
of good society. If all men and women were to lay bare their
secrets to the world, what a cataclysm there would be ! It
would be just like a West Indian earthquake, when the terrified
inhabitants rush out clothed in sheets and towels and counter-
panes.
" I shall lie still till the earthquake comes," he said. " I
cannot afford to appear in undress before any one."
Like all men who amuse themselves by anticipations, he was
a little pleased, and yet disappointed, to find that Mabel had not
come down to breakfast. The Major was alone, sitting over in
his armchair near the fire. He was now hardly able to move.
His lower extremities had been turned into stone. He was
reading a letter, apparently with great interest, aud not with-
out emotion.
" Here is a letter from Bob," he said, as Outram came over
and held his hands to the fire. " You remember Bob ? "
11 Of course — Maxwell. What news ? "
" Strange enough. This is what he says " :
730 LISHEEN [Sept,
Cahercon, April 20, 18— .
Dear Major: Here is a letter as from the dead. I have
had all the experiences of a Robinson Crusoe, or Haroun al
Raschid, for the past seven or eight months ; and am just now
located as above as farmhand and general overseer or time-
keeper over some marble quarries. Most likely you would not
hear from me until my term of probation had expired, but I
want you to do something for me, and without delay. Yon
know Bernards — Colonel Bernards ? He lives down near Kil-
liney. His agent is Steevens, Maguire & Co. Well, I want
him to sell me at once a farm which is on his estate here,
called Lisheen, lately occupied by a family named McAuliffe,
whom he has evicted, and who are now lodged in Tralee gaoL
The farm is practically worthless to him now, as you. know.
No one dare take it. And I shall give his own sum, provided
he sends me promptly deed of sale, duly signed, eta I will
explain all afterwards when we meet. How is the old enemy?
I hope he is sparing you. I know almost nothing of the outer
world, and am afraid of asking questions. All can wait.
Yours truly, Robert Maxwell.
Address as above, and keep strictly* private.
" Quixotism after Quixotism/' said Outram. " Some Kerry
colleen has bewitched him ; or, perhaps, he is so enamored of
his Robinson Crusoe life, he is going to abandon civilization
forever and take up the farm at — what do you call the place?"
"And get himself shot, " said the Major. "Lisheen, he calls
it, half mountain, half bog, I suppose, like all Kerry.' 1
" Well, well, wonders will never cease," said Outram, going
over to the breakfast-table and touching the gong.
" See is Mrs. Outram coming down to breakfast," he said
to the footman.
" No, sir " ; was the answer. " Mrs. Outram's maid says
that she will breakfast in her room/ 9 .
" Very good. Tired after last evening," he said to the Ma*
jor. " We had a most stupid dinner ; and I was bored to death
by a Professor of something — a short, dumpy, Pickwickian little
fellow, eye-glass, seals, corpulence, gaiters; no, he was in even-
ing dress, that was all the difference between himself and the
immortal. The fellow wanted to prove," he continued, as he
1907.] LlSHEEN 73 1
poured out his coffee, " that he, who was never outside Ireland
knew more than an Anglo-Indian like myself, or you — "
" The — fool," said the Major, who was particularly sore on
that point. "What did you say?"
" Say ? Well, what can you say to a fool ? " said Outram.
" His contention was that, that you can get more information
out of books than by experience — by reading about a thing
than by seeing it."
" And what did you say ? "
" I said all I could," said Outram. " I exhausted my knowl-
edge, and poured it through the sieve of the fellow's mind ;
and then I remembered a wise old saying: Answer a fool ac-
cording to his folly."
" How was that ? " asked the Major.
" I invented a story, or rather built up a legend upon a few
facts, as novelists do, and poured it through his little brain as
he sipped his whisky and water. He swallowed it all as easily
as he swallowed his liquor. And he was so entranced that
he induced me to tell the same story to the ladies in the draw-
ing-room. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if they also
believed it, and if it were over half the drawing-rooms in
Dublin in a week."
" You must tell me that this evening after dinner," said the
Major. "Or, perhaps, Mabel will tell me all about it at lunch."
" Yes, Mabel will tell it better than I. She quite under-
stands that it was improvised for the occasion- — a little fact, a
lot of fiction, like all romances."
"You're going to the city?" asked the Major.
"Ye — es"; said Outram.
"Would you mind calling at Steevens & Maguire's, and
say I should like to see a representative of the firm to-day, if
possible? "
"Yes, certainly; they are agents, in one of those streets
off Dame Street, I believe?"
"Yes, quite so. How do you know them?"
"Little business matters. I can send them a message, of
course, in case I should not be able to call."
"Yes; but it is urgent. It is all about Bob's letter and
his commission. And you see it must be done at once."
" Of course. I'll see to it. What is his address, by the
732 LISHEEN [Sept.,
"Cahercon, Co. Kerry."
11 Very good. I hope Mabel will be able to come down
early. Nothing else in town ? "
44 Nothing,'* replied the Major.
Mabel came down to lunch. She looked so pale, so woe-
begone, so distressed, that the Major was startled. She took
her seat wearily at the table, but eat nothing. The Major
looked at her with anxious eyes. He was not so entirely en*
grossed with his gout, as to fail to see, for some time past,
that his daughter was not happy. No complaint ever passed
her lips; but she went about the house looking after her
household duties, dressed, drove out in her carriage ; dressed
for balls and dinners, went to levees ; but in such a mechanical
and spiritless way, so dull, so cold, so unemotional, that her
father saw clearly there was something wrong, but he forbore
asking questions, for he dreaded revelations.
"•She was naturally cold and reserved," he thought, "her
mother's disposition — but this new manner or disposition it
something more."
But this afternoon her features were dragged and distorted,
as by some acute pain ; and there was cut deeply upon them
the sad sculpturing of sorrow and of woe. She turned aside
from the table, drew a chair opposite the fire, and with hands
folded on her lap, continued gazing in silence at the jets of
flame that burst from the burning coal. The Major was too
deeply impressed to say anything. He shifted uneasily in the
armchair, and was silent. Then he bethought him of Bob Max*
well's letter, and fumbling for it, he handed it to her. She
merely glanced at the subscription and handed it back. Then
she said :
" Father, could we — I mean you and I — go away some-
where ? "
" Go away ? " echoed the Major. " Not now, Mabel, not in
the height of the season, when no one leaves town."
" Couldn't we sell out this place and furniture, and go
abroad — to Spain, to the Riviera, to Algiers, anywhere?"
"What's the matter with you, Mab ? " the Major said.
"You're not well!"
She burst into passionate weeping, and kneeling on the
hearth-rug by her father's feet, she put her head on his hand,
and moaned :
1907.] LlSHEEN 733
"Well?. I'm too well, God help me! If only I were ill
enough to die, and be at rest ! "
" Now, now, Mab," said her father. " This is nonsense, or,
what is worse, hysteria; and you know you must not give
way to that. You're too young, and too newly married, to
yield to such weakness ! "
" Ah, my God, if I had never married," she moaned pite
ously. " If only I had the sense to remain with you, and
nurse you to old age and the end I Oh, what madness pos-
sesses girls that they do not know their happiness, and must
fling it away ? "
And she wept bitterly.
" Come now, Mab," said her father. " This won't do.
What has come between you and Ralph ? I know you are not
happy together. But that often happens. By the way, what
was the story he told last night at dinner? Come, tell it all
to me. Ralph said you could tell it better than he."
"Did he tell you that, Father ?" she cried, with eyes flash-
ing through her tears.
" He did. It was his last word this morning, as he was
going to the city. He said he concocted a story last night to
please some old duffer of a professor. It was all fancy, or
nearly so. But, he says, it will probably be all lover gossipy
Dublin before a week."
"What a liar! What a hypocrite!" she murmured. "It
was his own history he told. Men must make a confession of
their lives sometimes; and he was excited with drink. Did
you suspect that he was ever addicted to drink, poor old
Pap ? "
" I did. God forgive' me, I knew it ! " said the Major, with
humble sorrow.
The two sat silent for a long time, watching the flickering
fire, and busy with their own thoughts.
" Ah ! if you had only married Bob — poor Bob ! " said the
Major at length.
But she put her hand over his mouth and stopped him.
Then, after another pause, she rose up and left the room. As
she went upstairs to her room, wearily and with heavy steps,
catching at the balustrade to help her, she paused for a mo-
ment beneath a lobby window of colored glass. Here on a
pedestal was the porphyry vase, which had been sent by an
734 LISHEEN. [Sept,
unknown hand from India, with the Sanskrit letter which her
husband refused to interpret. She had passed it a hundred
times before without a thought, except the unconscious admi-
ration of its perfect and polished beauty. Now, she stood still,
and studied it. The great broad cavity shone beneath the
colored glass of the window, here crimson, here blue and yel*
low. She thought she would give a good deal to know its his-
tory — who made it, whence it came. Then her husband's words
about the little Hindoo girl came back to her; and she re*
membered, with a kind of vague horror, that he said she never
turned out any work of art from her hands, except with some
symbol, or symbolic meaning, which sooner or later would be
revealed. She argued then : This vase is a symbol — but of
what? She couldn't think. But as she watched it, she thought
she saw the coils of the green snake, knotted at the bottom of
the vase, stir; and she shrank back in terror. It was pure
imagination, of course. But she took up a heavy paper-weight
that lay on the table — a five- pound solid shell, fixed in ma-
hogany, which her father had brought home from India; and
poising it in her hand, as if in self-defence, she looked again.
Whether her imagination, strung by sleeplessness and worry,
was over- excited, or whether the lights that flickered and
faded from the window, deceived her, she thought she saw the
hideous green reptile stirring again ; and in a paroxysm of hor-
ror, she brought down the heavy paper-weight with all her
force upon the snake. The green stone crumbled as if it were
glass, and the porphyry vase parted in two, as if cut by a
knife. It did not fall to the ground, but remained on the
pedestal, the edges, clean cut, now an inch apart ; and she
saw that the thickness of the beautiful vase graduated from
three or four inches at the foot to an inch in the centre, and
then widened out to greater thickness, where the edge of the
vase lipped over.
Horrified at what she had done, she still felt a strange
thrill of exultation, as if the breaking of that vessel symbolized
some decisive turn of fate for her. " At least," she thought,
"it means a change, a rupture of present relations, a new life,
and that is a great gain."
She went to her room, and sat down to think. Leaning
her weary head on her hand, she looked out through the win-
dow where the dreary sun was shivering down the west amidst
1907.J LISHEEN 735
banks of gray, ashen clouds. She began to review her mar-
ried life — her first feelings of repulsion from her husband, which
broke on her ambitious schemes and made them seem a sacri-
lege, committed in what should be the home and sanctuary of
pure, unselfish love; her surprise, growing rapidly to indigna-
tion, when she discovered, at first unwillingly, then with grow-
ing feelings of disgust, her husband's real character; her attempts
at secrecy, keeping the lid firmly down on the terrible secrets
of her wifehood; her forced dissimulations in society; her feeble
efforts to maintain her dignity at home; the revelation, that she
had made the one great blunder of a woman's existence, irrepar-
able, except by the merciful finger of death — all came up, to
weigh her to the earth in remorse and sorrow. The cold, set-
ting sun peeped into no more dismal scene than the boudoir of
that beautiful girl.
The sun went down. The twilight fell. Then the night.
The shadows darkened round her and wrapped her up in their
gloom. Thus she sat motionless, staring into the night, until
she heard the footstep on the stair that she knew to be her
husband's ; and she felt that the great crisis in her life was at
hand.
Chapter V.
FATHER COSGROVE'S DILEMMA.
There was one very troubled soul, in and around Lisheen,
during these critical days. Father Cosgrove was one of those
strange spirits, who could bear with the most perfect equanim*
ity his own troubles; but was weighed to the ground with
the thought of the sufferings of others. Humiliations he had
patiently borne, poverty was his chosen lot in life; time could
have no fate in store for him which he dreaded; and therefore,
so far as he himself was concerned, he had neither anxiety, ap-
prehension, nor remorse. But, like a true priest, he bore the
infirmities of others, and carried their sorrows.
The eviction at Lisheen was a sore trial to the heart of this
tender priest. He had heard nothing about it until the follow-
ing day, And then he and his pastor did all in their power
to alleviate the misery of this little unhappy portion of their
flock. But this was not his chief trouble. Strange to say, he
was more deeply concerned about Brandon Hall than Lisheen ;
736 LISHEEN [Sept.,
more apprehensive of the future that lay before Hugh Ham-
bcrton, than that which seemed already to have created itself
for Owen McAuliffe and his family.
He had conceived a strange liking for Hamberton. Beneath
all the cynicism of the latter, he had discerned indications of a
certain nobility of character, which he knew to be rare amongst
men. When men rage against their kind,, it is generally from
disappointed hopes, or cruel disillusion. The man that can be
patient with humanity is a saint, as we have already said, or
one who has accepted its baseness as a part of the finite con-
dition of things. Hamberton's verdict on his race was: "You
are wholly and altogether beneath contempt ; but, such as you
are, as I have not the discredit of your creation, I must make
the best I can even of you." "And then/' he might have added,
and this was the one thought that was perpetually harassing
the mind of his friend, Father Cosgrove, " I shall part company
with you as swiftly as I may. I cannot meet worse, whither-
soever I go."
Now, there was but one tie, one condition, that seemed to
bind him to earth; and, so far as Father Cosgrove could see,
that condition would soon end. For he seemed to understand
the moment that Maxwell and Claire met, that they were des-
tined for each other. It was not foresight, nor calculation, nor
worldly wisdom ; but some intuition, belonging to such deli-
cate and detached souls, that created the presentiment that in
this obscure tramp was to be found the chief actor in the fu-
ture destinies of Brandon Hall. And when a little later on he
found that, by a singular chain of circumstances, Maxwell was
absolutely established in a position of confidence under Ham-
berton, nay, was a respected visitor at the Hall, and had been
seen with Miss Moulton on her rounds of visits, on the sea-beach,
or out at sea, he became quite distressed; and with the wordly
imprudence that characterizes such minds, he thought it time
to interfere. He had not the slightest prejudice against Maxwell;
he even liked him ; but Maxwell had become to his imagination
the evil genius of the family, and he felt it his duty to fight
against what he knew to be inexorable Fate.
" I want to say something very particular — very particular
to you," he said one day to Hamberton, closing with that curi-
ous gesture he had of waving one hand in the air.
"By all means," said Hamberton.
1907.] LlSHEEN 73;
"It's a private matter — rather a familiar affair!" said the
priest nervously.
"Never mind; go ahead!" said Hamberton, who already
guessed what was in the good priest's mind.
"I think — I am almost sure — I ought to tell you — there is
a growing intimacy between Miss Moulton and your new steward ;
and you know it is always well to stop these things in the
beginning."
"Quite right. That is, if they ought to be stopped at all!"
"But," said the old priest anxiously, "you do not contem-
plate the possibility of marriage between Maxwell and your
ward ! "
"Why not?" said Hamberton.
"Of course, of course, of course; why not? why not?" said
the old man. "But you know nothing about him?"
"No, certainly not; so much the better," said the cynical
Hamberton. " If I did, I should probably have never brought
him here; or dismissed him summarily. It is only the men you
don't know whom you can trust."
" I don't understand," said the old priest. " I'm very stu-
pid, I shouldn't have spoken — I shouldn't have spoken!"
"Not the slightest harm done, my dear friend!" said Ham-
berton gaily. "What I meant was, that I have never met a
man yet (except yourself) who improved on acquaintance. It
is the unknown I trust, because in the case of the unknown
you can say : This fellow may be a scoundrel. In the case of
those who are known to you, you say : This fellow is a scoun-
drel. Now, I let things go on between my ward and Maxwell,
because I haven't yet found him a rascal. I probably shall and
then—"
"And then it will be too late — too late!" said the priest.
"Not at all!" said Hamberton. "Claire will make the dis-
covery simultaneously, and we shall cashier himl"
The old man shook his head.
" That is not my experience of such things," he said. " Nay;
the greater the — the — offender, the more will a girl cling to
him."
"Claire is made of other metal," said Hamberton. "But
make your mind easy, my dear friend. I know Claire well. She
will marry only a hero — some one who, at least, has shown
himself made of truer metal than passes in ordinary currency.
VOL. LXXXV.— 47
738 LISHEEN [Sept.,
She won't marry a divorc<£; but she won't marry a man who
cannot divorce himself from himself."
" I don't understand/ 9 said the old priest. " I am quite
stupid about these things. I shouldn't have interfered. I meant
well."
"I know you did," said the gruff man of the world, almost
with affection. " You don't want to see any master in Brandon
Hall except its present owner. 1 '
" Not as long as I live," said the priest courteously and
humbly. " When I die, well then — well then — " And he waved
his hand in the air.
" Then, I suppose you will become my Daimon — my Guard-
ian Angel," said Hamberton. "You will watch me night and
day ; and yet I shall elude your vigilance. And why ? Be-
cause I have a right to go out of this world, even if I were
not consulted about coming into it. When I am tired I shall
lie down like a sick child to rest, as some poet has it. I shall
sleep on the bosom of Mother Earth ; and, for the first time,
know what is meant by pax et tranquillitas magna I "
" You will not know peace," said the priest, " for you can-
not go out of life alone; and there is an Avenger beyond the
grave."
"Cannot go out of life alone?" echoed Hamberton. "Oh,
but I shall ! And, as for the rest, doesn't your great poet put
Cato in purgatory ? "
" I don't know ! I don't know ! " said the priest. " I should
not discuss these things. But the good God will guide you,
and prevent you. You shall see his hand when he chooses to
reveal it ! "
"Well, well, say no more," said Hamberton. "But make
your mind at rest about Claire. Hers is a strong nature ; she
cannot be led or deceived."
Although Hamberton threw lightly aside the forebodings of
Father Cosgrove, he was nevertheless very much disquieted by
what he had heard. He lived only for this young girl; and
his one ambition in life was to see her married to some one to
whom she could look up with love and veneration. He was
too much of a cynic to believe that such sanguine anticipations
could be realized — least of all in that remote corner amongst
rude peasants and fishermen. But, like all unbelievers, there
was a strong tinge of superstition in his character. He was a
LISHEEN 739
firm believer in the existence of those mysterious currents of
being, that rush together from remotest poles, and seem to
converge without any guidance but that of Fate. And when
this young fellow, Maxwell, came within his ken, shrouded in
mystery, his character but half-revealed, and yet showing signs
of gentle birth and breeding; and when he saw that there was
a certain attraction there for his ward, whose feelings had been
hitherto undisturbed by contact with the world of men, he be-
gan to think that he was watching the prologue to some drama,
which might eventuate in circumstances more tragic than agree-
able.
He became suddenly aware, as he walked, with head stooped
and slow steps, down towards the beach, of the presence of a
stranger. Hamberton disliked strangers. He had a decided
objection to forming new acquaintances. Fresh faces, fresh
trouble, he thought. The stranger accosted him.
" Mr. Hamberton, I presume ? "
"Yes"; said Hamberton brusquely. "What may be your
business ? "
" It is very brief," said the stranger. " You have a man in
your employment named Maxwell?"
"Yes"; said Hamberton. "What of him?"
" I should like to know his history," said the stranger,
"Where he comes from, and his antecedents."
"Then, why the devil don't you ask himself?" said Ham-
berton, nettled at the sudden possibilities that seemed to loom
up before him.
" I am a police officer," said the man. " I thought to avoid
all unpleasantness by asking you to clear up one or two things."
"You're on Maxwell's track, then?" said Hamberton, with-
out apology. " In a word, he's wanted?"
" Not quite that ! " said the officer. " But our suspicions have
been aroused in a singular manner ; and we want to know some-
thing about him. If you can give me the desired information,
we need proceed no further, and we shall spare him some pain."
Hamberton paused fsr a moment. Then he said:
" Come along here, and we can talk as we proceed. What,
now, do you want to know?"
"First," said the officer, "where this man comes from; his
former occupation ; and the reason he has adopted this mode
of life."
740 LISHEEN [Sept,
" He came here from-Lisheen," said Hamberton. "He was
laborer there with a family named McAuliffe. He has come
here, at my invitation, to act as steward or overseer on my
works."
"We are quite aware of all that/ 9 said the officer. "But
his life previous to his coming to Lisheen ? "
" Of that I know absolutely nothing/' said Hamberton.
"You must question himself."
And he turned away.
As if on second thought, however, he followed the officer,
and said :
" What do you seek Maxwell for ? Is he suspected of
crime ? "
" I'm not at liberty to say," answered the officer. " It is
possible that it may be serious; or that we may make a grave
mistake."
" Very possible, indeed," said Hamberton, turning away.
Nevertheless, he was grievously troubled. It was becoming
pretty clear that his ward was not altogether insensible to the
strange attraction that hung around his steward ; for though the
latter never put himself forward, nor sought his own society, nor
that of Miss Moulton, this very restraint argued in his favor.
It was that reticence of conduct that belongs to superior souls.
Hamberton recognized it ; and was himself drawn towards Max-
well, with whom he would have been even more cordial, but for
that cynical distrust with which he regarded all men. He
thought it his duty, however, under these circumstances, to
speak to his ward.
" Our friend, Maxwell," he said to her in the afternoon of
the day on which he was questioned by the police officer, "is
a puzzle, a mystery ; and, strange to say, our further acquaint-
ance with him seems to throw no light upon his previous his-
tory."
She flushed at once, and he did not fail to notice it.
" Most men," he went on, " become communicative as you
grow acquainted with them, and give them your confidence;
but Maxwell seems to gather himself more and more closely
within the involutions of his call."
" Perhaps, like the needy knife-grinder, he has no story to
tell 1 " said Claire.
"Well, at least, we might know whence he came, and what
I907.] LlSHEEN 74!
he was before he settled down at Lisheen. I think we agree
that he is not a peasant — born or bred."
"That is quite manifest," said his ward. "But I hardly
think we would be justified in probing too closely into his former
life. He was employed out of sheer benevolence by you, Uncle ;
and, if we made no conditions then, we should make none now ! "
"True, little woman," he said. "But, Claire dearest, take
care! Take care! The very mystery surrounding these men is
sometimes attractive!"
" Never fear. Uncle," she replied, " I shall keep watch and
ward over the enemy." ,
" You believe in Maxwell, then ? " he said, " I shall not use
a stronger word."
"Yes"; she said firmly. " At least I believe he is a strict-
ly honorable man !"
"How, then, do you account for his strange interference
against these poor people at Lisheen the day of their eviction.
I could have kept them in their little home but for him?"
"Yes; but you believed then, when he spoke to you and
the sheriff, that he had no ill motive; and that he would make
all right."
"I did. I don't understand it; but I believed then, and I
believe now, that he meant well."
"So do I."
" Father Cosgrove doesn't like him."
"Priests never understand the sheep of another flock."
"Perhaps so; but, Claire!"
" Yes ! "
" Be prepared for a surprise. By the way, when do these
Shakespearean recitations come off?"
"On Thursday evenings."
" And your parts? "
"Lady Macbeth and Desdemona ! "
" And Maxwell is Macbeth and Othello, I suppose ? "
"Yes; that's the programme."
"Not a good one, by any means," said Hamberton, relaps-
ing into his old bitter cynicism and forgetting his momentary
anxiety about Maxwell. "A thoroughly bad selection, I should
say. Othello was an impossible fool, and Desdemona an im-
possible ninny. No woman in the world would have allowed
herself to be murdered in that lamb-like way, without even an
742 LISHEEN [Sept,
effort to save herself. Iago — true to nature, human nature at
its worst almost. But why didn't you select Shakespeare's two
greatest plays — Lear and Timon ? There he held the mirror
up to nature indeed. Mark you, of Lear's three daughters, two
were devils ! Quite correct. In his dethronement and madness,
the mighty king had but two followers — a madman and a fool.
Right again. And Timon 1 Magnificent Timon ! ' Old Timon,
with the noble heart, that, strongly loathing, greatly broke!'
Strongly loathing ! Not half enough. No utter hatred, dislike,
contempt, loathing, could be half strong enough for these base
and vile sycophants that battened on him in his prosperity and
abandoned him when he fell — fell through his own d d be-
nevolence. He should have poisoned these wretches at his
banquet, and then stood calmly over them and watched their
agonizing deaths. . Hot water in their plates ? No ; that was
weak, William, with your permission. Diluted strychnine or
cyanide of potassium would have been better. But that 'Un-
cover, dogs, and lap I' is the noblest half line in all human
literature. Couldn't we have it, Claire? Could Maxwell doit?
There is no part for ladies in Timon ; but could Maxwell do
that, do you think?"
" 'Tis too late now, Uncle," she said. " Some other time."
" Yes ; if there shall be another time."
He stopped and paced up and down his library musing.
Then he suddenly said :
" N'itnporte / If the fellow is a scoundrel, let him have his
deserts. Let every miscreant have his halter, say I ; or what
else is the devil for ? But, Claire, Claire," he said, coming over
and stroking her hair tenderly, " take care, won't you ? I can-
not have you thrown away, little woman. Watch over the cit-
adel, won't you ? Woman's heart is such a traitor."
"Never fear for me, Uncle," she said gaily. "I do not
care so much for Maxwell but that I could cut out his image
if he proves unworthy."
14 Well and bravely said," cried Hamberton. "Every wo-
man should have that fortitude; and half the evils of life would
be spared. And if all comes right, if Maxwell is, as you be-
lieve, and I think, a good fellow, what then ? "
" Wei), then," said Claire, " I shall send him to you."
Hamberton laughed. And then muttering:
"This is too sudden! Ask Papa!" he turned away.
1907.]
Chapter VI.
SHAKESPEAREAN RECITALS.
If Father Cosgrove was grievously troubled these days about
the fate which hung over Brandon Hall and the strangers who
had become so dear to him, the mysterious agent, so he deemed
it, of that fate was no less grievously tormented.
Maxwell had heard from the old Major in reply to his let-
ter about Lisheen. The business details were easily settled.
Colonel Bernards was only too glad to get such a troublesome
place off his hands; and he sold his entire and unencumbered
interest in it to Maxwell for three hundred pounds. But here
arose the difficulty. How now could he carry out bis hidden
design, not only to restore these poor people to their home,
but to make that home a wonder and a surprise to them and
their neighbors forever ? He had become deeply attached to
them; and many a night he remained awake planning a new
frame house, new furniture, new barns, fences perfect, gates of
the most modern pattern, etc. He frequently pictured to him-
self (and found intense pleasure in the fancy) the wonder, the
delight, of these poor people when, on emerging from prison,
and expecting only to see a ruined home and a desolate farm
before them, they would find themselves reinstated in a place
that would be absolutely luxurious by comparison. But how
could he do it ? He dared not show himself at Lisheen. The
story of his supposed treachery to the McAuliffes had gone far
and wide; and he would risk his life if he were seen about the
place. He could have written to his agent; but he didn't care
just yet to reveal his position, except where his secret could
be kept. He thought of consulting Hamberton ; but he shrank
as yet from the revelation. And, let it be said, he wished to
win Claire Moulton for his wife without the adventitious helps
that would arise from a knowledge of his real position. Yet
time was rushing by. In three months the McAuliffes would
be released from prison; and then — his beautiful castle would
topple over and fall.
The good old Major, too, had hinted rather brusquely that
Mabel was not happy. Even his old, blind eyes had seen it.
And he said little things, expressed little regrets, with here and
744 LISHEEN [Sept,
there an "Alas!" and an "If" that signified much. Was
Maxwell sorry and sympathetic? Hardly. For human pride
is flattered when those who have spurned us have had reason
to regret what they have done. Sometimes he would feel a
little savage against the Major, against Mabel, but most of all
against Outram, whom he had always disliked.
" The cad/ 9 he would mutter between his teeth, " I knew
he would break her heart. Poor Mab ! Queen Mab 1 "
He was in one of these moods, when he received a letter
from Outram, demanding back the talisman — the ring with the
strange intaglio, which was to be the pledge, and r in some
wise, the guerdon, of Maxwell's banishment. Outram contended
that, as Maxwell had not kept his engagement to live as a
farm laborer for twelve months, he should now resign the talis-
man, and confess himself defeated in his Quixotic scheme. To
this Maxwell sent the following reply:
Cahercon, April 30, 1
Dear Outram:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter. I thought
that Major Willoughby would have kept my present position
and incognito secret, particularly from you. But, quite possi-
bly, the many troubles, domestic and other, that are now press-
ing on the Major's mind, and disturbing his peace, may have
rendered him forgetful for the moment of the prudence that
should have guarded my secret, especially from you. You are
quite mistaken in supposing that I have not kept my engage-
ment. I have had some grievous hardships ; but I have re-
ceived much illumination also; and I consider myself much a
better man than when last I sat in your company in a Dublin
club. I am still employed here as overseer and time- keeper,
but also as farm servant and laborer. I have served six months
in much the same capacity, but under lower and more menial
conditions. I have suffered much, but made no mistake ; and
shall continue my probation for a better life until the term
agreed upon has expired. And, until then, I shall retain the
bauble you were good enough to lend me. The gods will pro*
tect you.
Yours truly,
Robert Maxwell.
1907.] LISHEEN 745
A letter which made Ralph Outram very uneasy. Cold
and brutal and unfeeling, he felt the web of Fate closing
around him ; and, with the intense superstitions that haunt
such minds, he placed a hope in that little ring and its in-
taglio.
The night for the Shakespearean recitals came round rapid-
ly. Maxwell had drilled some young village lads to take sub-
ordinate parts in the entertainments; but he reserved the main
characters for Claire Moulton and himself. There were many
rehearsals, held in the loft over the marble stores, but now
transformed into a theatre with lights, and an improvised stage,
drop curtains, side scenes and all. The more Claire Moulton
saw him during these rehearsals, although she studied him
closely under the light of a dark suspicion, the more she be-
came convinced that, whatever was his history, two things were
clear: He was of gentle birth and had had a liberal educa-
tion; and he was not only an honorable man, but had a pe-
culiar tenderness in his character, which marked him as one of
Nature's nobility. For if the hall-mark of nobility in the eyes
of the noble is unemotional serenity; the hall- mark of Nature
is gentleness and tenderness towards all, even the most hum-
ble. Yet, she thought sometimes, it is suffering that has made
him thus; but this rather increased, than diminished, her in-
»terest in him, now rapidly growing into something more deep
and tender.
There was a crowded house, for the people gathered in from
all quarters to see the novelty. It would be difficult to con-
jecture what they expected ; but, it is to be feared that if
they thought the programme was intended to be purely educa-
tional, they would not have been too eager to come. "Fun
and frolic," " Panem et Circenses," are still our cry. But, noth-
ing was more foreign to Maxwell's intentions. He had a mis-
sion of elevation, of pushing up these gifted people, who were,
alas! unconscious of their gifts, to higher levels; and he knew
no other way of effecting this than by submitting to them the
masterpieces of the world's literary master.
He was delighted beyond measure at his success. The long
hall looked well in the lamplight. The rude bare rafters were
wrapped in festoons of ivy and long tendrils of woodbine, just
then breaking into leaf. The stage was rude; and the benches
were rude ; but the former was covered with plants and flowers;
746 LISHEEN [Sept,
the latter were filled with an eager, and, as events proved, a
most appreciative and intelligent audience. Hamberton sat in
the front bench, more moody than cynical, for he knew that
behind the mock tragedy on the stage, there was a more real
and terrible tragedy impending.
The proceedings commenced with the singing of one or two
of Shakespeare's lyrics; and then came the murder scene in
Macbeth. The two leading characters were so disguised that
the simple peasantry failed to recognize them ; and this made
the awful scene more impressive. It would have flattered Claire
Moulton exceedingly, at least in her dramatic role, could she
have heard the comments that were made by this impression-
able and emotional audience upon her impersonation of Lady
Macbeth. It was simply marvelous how they caught up the
thread of the story — the weakness and vacillation of Macbeth, his
despair, and the more than masculine determination of his wife.
" She's the divil out an' out," whispered one.
" She'd do it herself, only she thought she saw her father/'
said another.
" Wondher that same shtopped her," said a third.
But there was universal contempt for Macbeth. A mur-
derer was bad enough; but a weak murderer, and one who
would place the guilt on innocent men, was beyond all human
forgiveness.
In the last scene, the murder of Desdemona, rustic feelings
ran very high. The callousness of Othello, and his short, bni-
#
tal answers to Desdemona's plaintive and piteous appeals for
mercy, seemed to wind the people up to a pitch of despera-
tion. Their contempt for the " nigger," their pity for his beau-
tiful wife, and the excellent acting of both, infuriated the peo-
ple, until they quite lost themselves, forgot it was a drama,
and thought they were face to face with a real tragedy. The
women were moaning and crying, the children were yelling
with fright ; and, at the moment, when the Moor went over
and placed the fatal pillow on the lips of the unhappy woman,
there was a general rising of the men, which would have issued
badly for Othello, had not Hamberton risen, and with one
motion of his hand, quelled the emotions of the people. They
sat down quivering with excitement, which was only stilled,
when Othello drove the dagger into his own breast. This ap-
peared to relieve their feelings :
1907. J LlSHEEN 747
" Bad ind to the ruffian. Sure it was only what he de-
sarved."
"Where's the good of his sorra ? They're always sorry
whin it can't be remedied."
" Yerra, shure 'twas only play actin' they wor,"
"Yerra, av coorse ; didn't ye hear the Masther say so?"
" Begor, thin, 'twas quare play acthin*. Didn't ye see him
smother the poor girl ? An' drive the soord into his own
stumac ? "
"Yerra, sure they say 'twas Miss Claire; and that she isn't
dead at all."
"Miss Claire? Be this an' be that, and I thought 'twas
Miss Claire, I'd have settled that chap before he sot a wet
finger upon her."
The realizing, indeed, was but too perfect ; and Maxwell be-
came the butt of that truculent amusement with which crowds
often pursue a victim who has merely assumed a part. If you
wear a lion's skin, you must expect a lion's measure of fear or
reprobation. And in Ireland, where a witty judge has said,
everything is opera bouffe, a man must suffer for whatever part
he assumes in the curious melodrama.
And so Othello, in his white tunic and red-tasselled girdle,
was pursued by a hooting crowd to his own door, when the
recitals were over.
" Ss — ss — ss — sh — sh — sh ! Look at him, the dirty nigger,
who smothered his wife! Begor, what a beauty you wor that
she should take a fancy to you ! 'Twas jealousy, my dear !
Sure he thought no wan as handsome as himself! He'll want
another now to settle her agin ! Bah ! Bah ! Bah ! Ss — ss — ss —
ss ! "
More or less terrified and disgusted, and yet half pleased
with the unconscious flattery of the mob, he murmured to him-
self :
"Clearly, the work of educating these people is no child's
play t " He was hot and fatigued from his exertions, and was
slowly washing off the burnt cork that disguised him, when
Mrs. Donegan, who was his maid-of- all-work, came in and
said :
There are two gentlemen waiting to see you outside!
Let them wait!" he said impatiently.
748 LISHEEN [Sept.,
But they didn't. They came in, without fuss or excitement,
and the foremost said:
" Your name is Maxwell ? Robert Maxwell ? "
"Yes"; said Maxwell brusquely. "What do you want?"
" I've come to arrest you/ 9 said the man, " on a charge,
or rather a suspicion, of being concerned in the murder of a
girl."
The thought of Desdcmona, and the part he had just taken
towards her, was so uppermost in Maxwell's mind, that he was
quite sure the officer referred to her ; and he said angrily :
" You d d fool, don't you know that it was but a Shake-
spearean dialogue. It's bad enough to be hooted by that igno-
rant mob outside; but you should know better."
41 It has nothing to do with that/ 9 said the officer. "The
charge is a more serious one, I regret to say. Come with
us."
"Allow me!" said Maxwell, seeing that the thing looked
serious. " There is some stupid and abominable mistake. You
say I'm charged with murder, or complicity in murder. Where,
and when ? "
" I'd advise you," said the officer, " for your own sake to
say no more. This is my warrant, if you care to see it. We've
been looking for you for some time."
" I tell you there is some infernal mistake somewhere," said
Maxwell. " I never had anything to do with violence except
on the stage. Or, is this all a practical joke ? "
11 Come, come ! " said the officer. " We can't delay. We
have a car waiting. If you use any violence, or show resist-
ance, I shall have to handcuff you ! "
Utterly dazed and bewildered at the sudden turn in his af-
fairs, yet perfectly conscious of innocence, Maxwell swiftly made
his toilet, and called in Mrs. Donegan, bidding her see after his,
affairs during a short absence. Then, turning to the officers, he
said, coldly, but politely :
"You are making a serious mistake for which I shall make
you pay. But I cannot resist you. Please take me before Mr.
Hamberton. I must see him."
Hamberton was in his dining-room at supper when the visitors
were announced. Claire Moulton, still habited as Desdemona,
was with him. They were talking over the events of the even-
907.] LlSHEEN 749
ig ; and laughing at the unconscious flattery of the people
wards Maxwell, when the latter entered, accompanied by the
■fficers.
"You must forgive this unwarrantable intrusion, Mr. Ham-
■ erton," he said, in a voice somewhat unsteady from emotion,
1 but our stage fictions have had a curious ending. These
;entlemen charge me with actual murder,"
Hamberton was silent, looking down at the table, and toy-
ng with his knife. Maxwell gulped down something, and went
"I have not the faintest idea to what they refer, and ihey
efuse to give any information. They seem to think they are
onceding a high privilege in not having handcuffed me. There
5 some stupid mistake somewhere ; but, at least, it has one
;ood result. It solves a difficulty for me; and compels me to
nake a revelation to you, which otherwise I should have no ex-
use for doing."
Hamberton was still silent ; but manifested more interest
lere. Claire Moulton was devouring Maxwell with her eyes.
The latter went on simply and quietly, as if he were telling
ome one else's story.
"My name is Maxwell, Robert Maxwell: I am the landlord
f this district, and therefore your landlord."
Hamberton now stood up. Claire Moulton looked at him
neaningly, and a smile of pleasure and triumph stole over her
eat u res.
"I am a Trinity man," Maxwell continued, "an M.A. of
Trinity ; and I have read long and deeply. That's why I am
it-re. I could have done like all my college associates and com-
leers — killed so many foxes, shot so many brace of partridge or
>heasants, evicted so many tenants, and remained an honored and
espected member of the aristocracy ; but I read, and read, and
inderstood that life has finer issues than these; and that I was
;alled to a more arduous and lofty mission. I read somewhere
hat, sooner or latter, every spirit is tested, and an alternative
>laced before it, to ascend the summit of being, and find in its
:old, clear atmosphere its rightful place ; or to remain deep
iown in the valleys of Paphos, and pursue an easy, voluptuous
existence, sanctioned by the usages of society, but condemned
ay my own conscience. I made up my mind. I was the owner
7 SO US HE EN [Sept.,
of broad acres, and I held the lives and happiness of many toil-
ers and workers in my own hands — "
" Pardon, one moment/' said Hamberton. Then, turning to
the officers of the law, he said :
" You see you have made a grim mistake, my men. Per-
haps, however, you would wait outside, until I clear the matter
up."
" If you can guarantee, sir 1 I fear there is a mistake, and
that this is the ' mad landlord ' some of us have been questing
for. But we must do our duty."
" All right ! That's all right," said Hamberton impatiently.
" But I promise you he won't escape through the window.
Don't you see he's a gentleman?"
And the officers went out.
" Go on, Mr. Maxwell," said Hamberton. "This grows in-
teresting."
" I was saying," said Maxwell, flushed and excited, "that I
held the lives and happiness of many poor earth-diggers and
spade-slaves in my hands; and I could, if I had chosen, un-
rebuked by the customs of the age and society, have extracted
their treasure, and coined it for my own selfish use. But, as
I tell you, I had read wisely or unwisely; and I felt I had
duties towards these serfs, as well as rights over their wretched
labor. I felt that some one was called to raise up their wretched
and teeming population above chronic conditions of starvation
and ignorance; and I knew this could not be done from out-
side. They would suspect the motive of the benefaction; and
they would have reason to suspect it; and my toil would
be in vain. I determined to go down amongst them, to be-
come one of themselves. The idea was floating for a long time
before my mind; but only took shape when I was taunted
about it in a Dublin club. I took fire. I was challenged to
do what every one deemed impracticable, and even insane.
There was one man especially there, a returned Indian, who
was conspicuously contemptuous. I had reason to dislike him,
•
and suspect him. He continued to taunt me. He wore a ring
— an intaglio, to which he attached superstitious importance.
I suddenly conceived an idea. I made a promise to go down
and become a day-laborer amongst the peasantry, and to live
their lives for twelve months; but I demanded that ring in re-
1907.] LISHEEN 751
turn. He would have refused; but he was shamed into it. This
is the ring."
He handed it carelessly to Hamberton, who examined it
closely, and passed it on to Claire, who studied it also, and
then unconsciously retained it.
"It is not much," said Hamberton. "One of those talis-
mans which Arabian Mussulmans wear. It is phosphorescent,
is it not?"
"Yes"; said Maxwell. "Well, at last, he consented; and
I took up my strange role, and came down here to Lisheen. I
had tried several farmers for employment, but met refusals
everywhere. I was too genteel a tramp, I suppose. At last,
footsore and weary and hungry and in despair, I came to Lisheen.
The poor old woman was alone in her kitchen when I entered
and made the usual appeal of a beggar. She took me in, gave
me food and lodging, and such sympathy as a poor, starved
tramp alone can appreciate. Her husband came in, her son,
her daughter. It was all alike. I asked for work, and got it.
Need I say, it was nominal on my part. My limbs ached under
a pressure that was merely pleasant to these athletes of Nature.
Yet, I was not dismissed. They treated me as one of them-
selves, only that they worked, and I was idle. At last, I made
up my mind to depart, and had actually gone, when they forced
me back. The young girl, Debbie, came after me, and ordered
me back. It was .well for me. That night I was down with
rheumatic fever, and was ill for three weeks, during which they
nursed me with infinite solicitude and care. Was I grateful ?
God knows I was. The time has come for proving my gratitude
now. You know all. How they struggled against an impos-
sible rent; how Netterville took his revenge — "
"I understand all," said Hamberton. "But I cannot make
out why you prevented a settlement with the sheriff that day!
You know they resented- it, and the whole countryside with
them."
"I do," said Maxwell, smiling. "But I wanted them to
touch the very bedrock ot trouble, in order to build on it more
permanently; and I wanted to show another example to the
world of what an Irish agent can do. And now you have to
help me. This unfortunate arrest or rather ridiculous and stupid
blunder, has precipitated matters. So much the better. Here
752 LISHEEN ' [Sept.,
are the title-deeds — the fee-simple of that farm at Lisheen, which
I have purchased from the landlord, and made over to the
McAuliffes forever. I want you, knowing your benevolence,
to arrange {or me, whilst I am away, to have that farmhouse
rebuilt on the newest and most modern plans of comfort, re*
taining all its old homely features. I want the byres to have
seven cows feeding in them when these poor people come out
of prison. I want to have ten sheep in the fields. I want all
the fences repaired, new gates hung up, the land tilled and
sown. You can get the Land League to do it. They'll do
anything for you. They'd shoot me. In a word, I want every-
thing done for them that can be done, down to the pot on the
fire, and the hens in the coop, and the pig in her sty ; and I
rely on you to do it. Need I say I shall bear the expense?"
He stopped. Claire Moulton, though in tears, looked smil-
ingly at her guardian.
'"Tis a strange, weird story," said Hamberton, walking op
and down the room. " One of the things that would be im-
possible out of Ireland, and impossible in Ireland, I would say,
if I had not seen it. But, my dear fellow, when you have con-
quered these kingdoms, what do you propose to do ? "
" To sell my property, liberate my slaves, and settle down
here to work for humanity with you ! "
11 Tut, tut, nonsense!" said Hamberton. "You could never
settle down here alone ! "
"Not quite alone, Uncle 1" said Claire Moulton, coming over
and standing near Maxwell. Her eyes were red from weeping
at the singular tale she had heard ; and which Maxwell had
already partly revealed to her. " With your consent, I have
promised Mr. Maxwell to be his wife."
" Hallo ! is that the way the land lies ? " said Hamberton.
" Is that how you have kept your promise to me ? "
" 1 didn't break it, Uncle/' she saW, " until I knew all."
"Of course, of course," said Hamberton. "The old story,
the old story. But I must clear up one thing. Hallo, there ! "
he cried to the officers.
They came in.
"Your prisoner is now ready; and perhaps this young lady
may accompany him. But, sergeant, look here ! There must
have been depositions before a warrant could be issued. On
ft
it
1907.] LIS HE EN 753
whose depositions have you made the (rightful blunder of arrest-
ing this gentleman, who owns half Kerry ? "
" The young girl's who was arrested at Lisheen at the evic-
tion/ 9 said the officer.
"Debbie McAuliffe?" said Maxwell in amazement.
"That's her name, I think, sir 1"
"But, what could have put such an idea in the girl's head?
reflected Maxwell. "I suppose she was angry about the eviction ?
"I suppose so," said Hamberton, looking at Claire. "But
her revenge was rather tragic. And how could she have con-
ceived the idea of murder?"
"I don't know," said Maxwell. "They all took me for an
army deserter, except this girl, who from the first maintained
a different opinion. However, I had better go on and clear
matters up. There's something gained, for they say every de-
cent man in Ireland must go to goal sometime or another.
Au revolt!" he held out his hand to Hamberton. "You un-
dertake to do all I require about Lisheen ? "
"Ye — es"; said Hamberton. "I think it Quixotic; but
everything you have done hitherto is such.
" Well, I have found my Dulcinea 1 " said Maxwell laughing.
" And Claire has found her hero ! " said Hamberton. " But,
what will Father Cosgrove say, I wonder?"
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
VOL. LXXXV.— 48
TWO CATECHISMS.
BY FRANCIS AVEL1NG. D.D.
*T is a curious fact, though one from which our
knowledge of the supreme egotism of human na-
ture should preclude surprise, that most, if not
all, modern attempts to explain the problems of
human life and destiny begin with the altogether
preposterous assumption that the universe exists uniquely for
man's good pleasure, and that in the light of that supposition
all questions must be asked and answered. Doubtless this is
because all investigation of this kind proceeds on a posteriori
lines, reasoning from the observed effects towards their causes.
Man is to investigate nature in order to observe her facts: and,
having observed them, is to interpret their hidden meaning in
terms of intelligible thought. Doubtless, also, the method of
procedure is a natural one. We aim at science, or knowledge.
But science, if the schoolmen were in the right, consists in an
acquaintance with causes. And an acquaintance with causes,
as well as with the nature of causes, is to be sought for in a
careful observation of their manifestation in the " work done "
by them,
But to begin with problems of human life and destiny is
not to begin at the beginning; and to suppose that the meas-
ure of the universe is that supremely wonderful — be it spoken
with all reverence — and yet utterly contemptible power that we
call human intelligence, is to prejudge the issue and jeopardize
any possible results of inquiry. To fix the lines of investiga-
tion beforehand in such a manner that all speculation must run
in the direction of explaining things as existing uniquely far
us, is not only to begin in the middle instead of at the begin-
ning, but to begin with a manifestly absurd and hopelessly false
principle. As a matter of fact, as a very little unprejudiced
reflection will make abundantly clear, God is the beginning, as
well as the end, of any and all reasonable speculation ; and to
start at any other point — or, what is worse, to leave God out
of any speculation with regard to his creatures — is as absurd
1907.] Two Catechisms 755
and as irrational as to attempt to solve a quadratic equation in
which no values whatever are given to the terms.
If I, an individual, become conscious of the existence of but
one thing other than myself, I have a ready inference of God
as a starting point for all my. philosophy. This is not theology.
It is common sense. For it is as difficult to explain the exist-
ence of one single grain of sand on the seashore, or one blade
of grass in the meadow, or one " atom " or " electron " in the
laboratory of the chemist, as to account, not only for the world
in which we live, but for as extraordinary a congeries of worlds
as the maddest mind ever dreamed. The characters of the word
creature are stamped upon every being of which our senses
make us cognizant. The natural and necessary inference of
Creator must be the starting point of all sensible philosophy.
For, after all, no matter to what name or title speculation
with regard to the eternal truths of life and destiny may lay
claim, in the last analysis it must be seen to be a philosophy.
I know of no other kinds of knowledge than two — that which
rests upon the firm foundations of logical demonstration, and
that which comes from without as revelation pure and simple.
To speak of anything that is certainly demonstrated on natural
grounds as faith is a misnomer — though, of course, one may
believe what, on other grounds, is also a matter of ordinary
demonstration. To exalt opinion, pious or otherwise, into faith
is to trifle as much with the accepted signification of terms as
with the — in this case — absolutely vital issues involved.
Sir Oliver Lodge, the Principal of Birmingham University,
is no exception to the general rule that one observes with re-
gard to non- Catholic writers upon these and kindred topics.
His Substance of Faith Allied With Science is, in a sense, a very
valuable contribution to the philosophy of religion. But, to
the Catholic mind at any rate, it is not, and cannot be, what
it claims to be. For there is for us no such thing as faith
apart from the faith of the catechism : " a supernatural gift of
God, which enables us to believe without doubting whatever
God has revealed."
We may believe other things — most of us do. But faith
which is not " a supernatural gift " is not faith in the sense in
which we use the word. We do not confuse "faith" with
4i opinion," or "hope," or "trust"; all of which states have
their own legitimate places in our minds. Faith in the Cath-
756 Two Catechisms [Sept,
olic sense, is not engendered of science, or philosophy, or
knowledge of any kind. It is simply a "gift of God." And
for us the substance of the faith must be, as it always has been,
the body of revealed truths of which the Church is the sole
divinely constituted guardian and teacher. This it cannot be
for non- Catholics, for most of whom it is not even a body of
revealed truth at all.
There are, of course, in Sir Oliver Lodge's Catechism a num-
ber of truths put forward as the reasonable beliefs of an emi-
nent man of science. A not inconsiderable fraction of that num-
ber are taught more briefly, and at the same time more defi-
nitely, in our own Catechism of Christian Doctrine. But the
main point that must not be lost sight of is that, in the one
case, these truths are taught as being the revelation of God, in
the othtr, as the reasonable results of the speculation of man;
or, at least, as not contradicting any certain truths of science.
There is a considerable difference, not necessarily in the matter,
but in the mode of the teaching. The one is faith ; the other,
belief. The substance of the one is clear and definite; although
faith overleaps the barriers of the purely human and plunges
itself into the blinding light of mystery. It loses itself in the
Infinite and performs its highest and most perfect act in its
assent to what it cannot fully comprehend. The assertions of
the other can never be more than hesitating and tentative;
for mere human belief, when it leaves the support of the cer-
tainties of natural knowledge, stumbles and falls. In place of
the clarion note of revelation, there is the dubious crying of
human voices. Where the custodians of the Faith dare to be
categoric, there the prophets of reason first begin to falter.
This comparison I would not urge as against the attempts
of philosophers or men of science " to draw up a statement of
a creed," except where there is the danger of confusing the be-
liefs they advance with faith, such as we know it in revealed
truth. They are not — and, indeed, they do not claim to be—
channels of revelation. Least of all dobs Sir Oliver Lodge pose
as the seer divinely accredited to teach the human race. His
attitude, as I pointed out in a previous paper in The Cath-
olic World, is one of reverence towards an established be-
Hef. It is not the Catholic faith he has in mind, but a certain
ttfflber of detached beliefs — salvage from the great shipwreck
die sixteenth century — which, in a somewhat loose and neb-
1907.] Two Catechisms 757
ulous state, pass current among Protestants generally as Chris-
tianity. His aim, consequently, has been to show that science
has nothing to advance against, and many considerations to
put forward in support of, certain religious convictions which
— call them what you will, prejudices, opinions, beliefs — really
are to a great extent identical with dogmas of the Catholic
Church. This is a praiseworthy and a noble aim, and one that
deserves our respect as well as our attention. If we discover
that we must find fault with the method by which it is attained,
we shall be able to mitigate any severity in our judgment when
we remember precisely what Sir Oliver Lodge has in view.
In the first place, then, we must keep before our mind the
fact that the " substance of faith " with which it is his object
to show the alliance of science is not the substance of faith
in the Catholic sense, but — where it is not merely natural the-
ology — mere opinion or belief.
In the second place we must remember that he is seeking
to give reasons in support of the various articles of his creed.
In other words, he attempts not only to show that his belief
is everywhere a reasonable one, but even to establish it by
means of his science. It is, obviously, always an excellent
thing to be able to give reasons for our beliefs. But it is not
always necessary. The Catholic needs but one reason for the
faith that is in him. God has revealed it. Contributory argu-
ments or proofs, considerations or probabilities, do not make
his faith one whit the more strong; nor do arguments or con-
siderations to the contrary weaken it. It is only when the at-
titude of the mind is one of opinion that it is susceptible of
more or less strength. There may be a hundred shades of
meaning to "I am of opinion that . . ." There is but one
to "I believe," Faith is an assent and, as such, does not vary
in intensity.
And, lastly, we must not forget that, while there is much
in that substance of faith which Sir Oliver Lodge has in view
that is familiar to Catholics, there is a considerable portion
that is not so familiar. Its passage through Protestantism has
robbed much of it of its ancient beauty. It is oftentimes
jejune and little inspiring, not full and rounded and all compel-
ling as it is preserved in the pentecostal shrine of the Catholic
Church. For example, the God of non- Catholic Theists is not
often presented in their writings as the God of a St. Thomas
758 Two Catechisms [Sept,
or a St Bernard. The Incarnation rarely, if ever, means the
same thing to a Protestant and to a Catholic. And the idea
of the spiritual life — excellent and wonderful as the lives of
many non- Catholics have been and are — is not to be found
outside the Church of Christ. The mere fact that the expres-
sion of their several doctrines if so emphasized in practice is a
patent object-lesson of the severance of the Church from all
the sects.
The first question that a theologian would probably ask
himself, were he to undertake the duty of reading a catechism
for its nihil obstat, would probably be : Does the author at
once definitely lead to God ? From the mere fact of my ex-
istence is the reason of that existence inferred?
Were suoh a question asked of a censor of Sir Oliver
Lodge's book, he would be obliged to answer in the negative.
The first question of this catechism is not : Who made you ?
but : What are you ? It is true that in the answer to the sec-
ond question : What, then, may be meant by the fall of man ?
the existence of God is remotely implied. Also, in answers to
other question?, the name of God occurs. But it is not until
we are well through half, the book that any meaning is attached
to that name; and then it is in vague and very indefinite
terms, " . . . our effective movements," we are told, " are
all inspired by thought, and so we conceive that there must be
some intelligence immanent in all the processes of nature, for
they are not random or purposeless, but organized and beautiful."
How different such a method of treatment is from that of
the Explanatory Catechism of Christian Doctrine will be appar-
ent to any one who has attentively read the latter. The whole
of the first chapter is concerned with God, though, naturally
and logically, in the first instance, considered as the Creator of
the individual. The definition comes as the answer to Question
xvii , where it falls into place in the logical sequence of the
catechism — a definition clear and succinct, leaving no possible
opening for misconception or misunderstanding, " God is the
supreme Spirit, who alone exists of himself, and is infinite in
all perfections." But all our catechism is saturated with God.
How else could it be, since its sole meaning and purpose is to
declare the relationship between man and his Creator, and to
show the means whereby that union with God, which is man's
last end, may be attained ?
1907. ] Two Catechisms 759
I again repeat that the comparison is not here put forward
so much as a criticism as in order to show the discrepancy
that must inevitably exist between the teaching of a revealed
religion and the pious beliefs of a merely human origin. Rea-
son, indeed, can take us to God ; but, when we stand before
the God of reason, we recognize that he is not that alone, but
also the God of revelation. Only, we must be content to be
led by reason, and walk in its light. We must neither force
the pace nor kindle little fires of fancy or poetry in order to
see the better. As we shall see later, one truth thrust into
the Catechism of Sir Oliver Lodge will serve to co-ordinate
and rationalize the whole. Truth is there; but it is more or
less in solution. With the addition of the truth that is want-
ing crystallization will take place, and the doctrine put forward
build itself up into a regular and fairly consistent natural the-
ology.
This reflection holds, not only for The Substance of Faith,
but for most of the current "sciences" and "philosophies" of
the day. Though Sir Oliver Lodge does not lay claim to speak
in the name of philosophy, but in that of science, we cannot
blind ourselves to the fact that even the noblest philosophy to
which humanity can rise falls short of revelation ; and, conse-
quently, we need not be surprised if the truths in solution in
bis book need the one solid fact that provides the starting
point of a regular system of perfect truth crystals.
As it stands, the book does not take us very far in the di-
rection of supernatural truth. It does not even carry us on to
the point at which the philosophy of our own schools takes us
in natural theology. And where the considerations centre about
truths of a purely revelational origin, they cannot be said to
be in any sense either scientific or philosophical. Indeed, we
are frankly told in the fourteenth clause of the Catechism (p.
92) that " we should strive to learn from the great teachers,
the prophets and poets and saints of the human race, and
should seek to know and interpret their inspired writings."
In the expansion of this clause we are given to understand
exactly what is meant by the " prophets and poets and saints."
They are not the prophets and inspired poets of those definite
revelational writings that we know as the Sacred Scriptures.
The "saints" are not necessarily those of the Old or of the
New Dispensation, whom we venerate as having, in an alto-
760 Two Catechisms [Sept,
gether remarkable degree, achieved union with God. "Great
men/' we are told, " . . . are the finger posts and loadstars
of humanity ; it is with their aid that we steer our course, if
we are wise, and the records of their thought and inspiration
are of the utmost value to us. This is the meaning of litera-
ture in general, and of that mass of ancient religious literature
in particular, on which hundreds of scholars have bestowed
their best energies ; now translated, bound together, and handed
down to us as the Canon of Scripture, of which some portions
ate the most inspired writings yet achieved by humanity" (Italics
mine.)
Moreover, in literature of the kind of which Sir Oliver Lodge
is here writing, we must use our own powers of criticism and
selection. The truths enshrined in it are not final. A refusal
to accept them is not a blameworthy act. For, " if we are to
form worthy beliefs regarding the highest conceptions of the
Universe, we must avail ourselves of all this testimony; dis-
criminating and estimating its relative value in the light of out
own judgment and experience, studying such works and criticism
as are accessible to us, asking for the guidance of the Divine
Spirit, and seeking with modest and careful patience to appre-
hend something in the direction of the truth."
I have gone carefully through The Substance of Faith for
some definite statement as to the meaning of this " guidance
of the Divine Spirit." One or two of the questions seem to
throw some little light upon it; but they are very vaguely
worded. We are told (Question xiii.) that the grace of God
is a power pervading the universe. We trust and believe that
it is a good and loving power. It is "a loving-kindness in
which we live and move and have our being." Its chief mani-
festation is to be sought " in the Life of Jesus Christ, through
whose spirit and living influence the race of man may hope to
rise to heights at present inaccessible" (p. 132).
Again, forming one of the statements of the creed set down
in this Catechism, are the following words : " . . . the Holy
Spirit is ever ready to help us along the way towards good-
ness and truth." In both cases the expressions sound familiar
and quite orthodox. It is only when we read the whole Cafe-
chism that we discover that neither bears the meaning natu-
rally attributed to it.
As the key-note to our own catechism is God, so in this
1907.] Two Catechisms 761
statement of the belief of a man of science, the key-note is
evolution. And, just as in order to have a well-proportioned
and related conception of Catholic theology, all its doctrines
must be grouped round that central dogma, so, to interpret the
real meaning of The Substance of Faith Allied With Science,
every statement must be related to that with which the volume
opens.
»" Q. What are you t "
" A. I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth / a
descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual processes from lower
forms of animal life, and with struggle and suffering became
man. "
The explanation given of this clause is of the highest im-
portance. The teacher is first warned against giving offence to
those whose early religious teaching is in conflict with " the
doctrine of the ascent of man." Then, if he can conscientious-
ly do so, he is advised to draw a distinction between " the per-
sistent vital or spiritual essence of man" — presumably the soul
— "and the temporary material vehicle which displays his in-
dividual existence amid terrestrial surroundings."
As far as I know, a Catholic may, without prejudice to his
faith, hold one or other of the many forms of the theory of
evolution, provided he does not hold any of those extreme forms
that contradict the teaching of Christianity by dispensing with
God or the soul of man, The doctrine of evolution, as such,
has never been condemned. He certainly will be able to make
some such conscientious distinction as that suggested by Sir
Oliver Lodge; for he will remember the words of his own cate-
chism: "This likeness to God is chiefly in my soul." If he
joins issue, then, with regard to this point, with the able author
of The Substance of Faith, it will be upon grounds other than
theological. He will ask how the observed "facts'* upon which
hypotheses of evolution are based can be made to support the
weight of such a doctrine, in view of the very strong phil-
osophical considerations to be urged against it. He may also
legitimately inquire if a theory of gradual, or per saltum evolu-
tion is the only one that will account satisfactorily for the ob-
served facts. The question is one susceptible of an answer on
natural grounds. It is not primarily theological.
But when Sir Oliver Lodge goes on to say that " the history
and origin of the spiritual part of man is unknown, and can
762 Two Catechisms [Sept.,
only be spoken of in terms of mysticism and poetry" (p. 12),
he does indeed fall foul of the theologians, as well as with a
very large and very important school of philosophers. The
statement, however, serves to emphasize the fact that the pur-
view of the man of science who undertakes to treat of faith is
limited by what is scientifically demonstrable. Beyond that
point he must pick and choose. It is a large assumption to
take for granted that " the history of the bodily and much of
the mental part is studied in the biological facts of evolution/'
though, with a caveat, it might be granted; but, with even a
rudimentary concept of revelation, the former statement is pure
nonsense.
If we can have no more than a "mystical " or a " poetical"
account of the origin and history of the soul, we can have
nothing at all of any real thought-value with regard to the
most important aspect of man. For unguided mysticism and
exuberant poetical fancy, of all other human inventions, are
surely the most untrustworthy. That a man of science should
be able to employ the language of mysticism and poetry at all,
as our author does later on, is certainly, at first sight, sur-
prising.
It is only when we remember the peculiar significance be
attaches to " faith," that we can understand how a student so
careful as Sir Oliver Lodge should opine that we are gradual
incarnations of a previously existing "larger self." He would
have this incarnating process of self " increasing as the brain
and body grow, but never attaining any approach to complete-
ness even in the greatest of men " (p. 79). •
It needs no less a sane, critical — and even a sceptical — phil-
osophy than a God-given revelation to guard against such a
" speculation " (it is particularly labelled as such) as that in-
dulged in in the explanation of clause XII., from which this
quotation comes. A better acquaintance with the scholastic
doctrine of the principle of individuation of spiritual beings
would have sufficed to save Sir Oliver Lodge from the pitfall
into which Origen fell.
" Our body," he says, "is an individual collection (sic.) of
cells, which began to form and grow together at a certain date
and will presently be dispersed ; but the constructing and do-
minating reality, called our 'soul/ did not then begin to exist;
nor will it cease with bodily decay" (p. 78). Precisely what
1907] Two Catechisms 763
our author means by his succeeding dictum that "even our
personality and individuality may be persistent, if our character
be sufficiently developed to possess a reality of its own," it
would be difficult to say; unless it be part and parcel of the
main evolutional scheme into which all, according to modern
popular science, must be forced. How the "not-soul" can be-
come "soul" without losing its identity, is a difficulty that
scientific evolutionists do not attempt to explain ; and how a
personality is to become persistent by its character developing
a reality of its own, most of us, I think, will have to confess
altogether beyond our grasp.
But Sir Oliver Lodge's estimate of the nature of the ego is
made sufficiently clear in the first quotation. The soul is not
here presented as the familiar substantial form, in that closest
of unions in which form and matter constitute one individual;
but rather as one term in the relationship of two distinct be-
ings, each complete in itself. The "soul" not only dominates
the body ; it constructs it. At least so I read the somewhat
vaguely stated passage quoted. Moreover, taken with the second
quotation given, it would seem to be abundantly clear that the
" sout " is the real individual, the real person, and not the be-
ing that we know, man as he is, body and soul together, the
person who is conscious of his own individuality, who says "I
feel " as well as " 1 think," who is as cognizant of the pain of
a burnt finger being his pain as of the agony of grief or sor-
row being his agony. St. Thomas (Sumtna i a , q. lxxv. ; a, 4;
and C. G. ii., 57), with his usual admirable precision, shows
how this view is erroneous. It had been advanced by no less
distinguished teachers than Peter Lombard and Hugh of St.
Victor.
That Sir Oliver Lodge's "speculation," supported as it is
by a stanza of Wordsworth, a reference to Myers' subliminal
consciousness and the Platonic (or Socratic) doctrine of reminis-
cence, is not altogether likely to find favor in philosophical
quarters, he readily recognizes. When the four pages, in which
he discusses the meaning of " certain facts not yet fully incor-
porated into orthodox science, nor fully recognized by phil-
osophy," come to an end, he pulls his readers up sharply with
the confession that "the philosophical doctrine of the 'self'
on this view is a difficult one . . ."; that, as he has given it,
' the form is sure to be crude and imperfect" ; and that " phil-
764 Two Catechisms [Sept,
osophy resents any sharp distinction between soul and body,
between indwelling self and material vehicle. 9 ' The implied
caveat is in place as against the preceeding "speculation";
but it is not itself altogether free from danger. For phil-
osophy, while protesting against the setting up of two distinct
entities — body and soul — does itself draw a very sharp distinc-
tion between the incorporeal and subsistent substance, as
"form," and the material body that it specifies and actuates, as
" matter."
As the key-note of evolution is struck in the first answer,
so it will be found to re-echo through all Sir Oliver Lodge's
catechism.
The old doctrine of the fall of man is explained anew in
its light. There is no fall, properly so called. On the contrary,
at a certain stage in the process of evolution, man became the
possessor of a moral sense. His actions, he perceived, were
good or bad. He could no longer act, as he had done in the
period of his animal innocence, irresponsible. Instead of a fall
from a supernatural state of grace, by reason of which man
suffered both in his body and soul (Council of Trent, Sess. v. 1.);
or, as St. Thomas sums up (Summa, i a 2 ae , q. Ixxxv., a. 3), in*
stead of the loss of original justice and the consequent " wounds"
in the natural powers of the soul — reason, will, etc., there is a
true and real progress towards perfection. The fall is not a
fall, but a rising in the graded scale of being. "The conscious-
ness of degradation," in Sir Oliver Lodge's own words, "marked
a rise in the scale of existence." It is obvious that such a far-
fetched interpretation of the revealed doctrine of the fall of
man, would be quite unacceptable to any who profess to believe
in it. But Sir Oliver Lodge has left out of his consideration
any idea of a state of grace. His attempt, as has already been
pointed out, is not to bring the substance of a revealed faith
into alliance with the results of modern science, but to harmonize
certain scientific theories with certain inherited poetic and mystic
beliefs that seem to have acquired prescriptive rights to con-
sideration. In a process of harmonizing the "belief" suffers a
new interpretation ; and, from being merely a poetic or mystical
account of a half-realized and little understood truth, rises al-
most to the dignity of science itself.
Let us see what we can make of this doctrine of the fall.
It is identical with that taught by Mr. Campbell, whose New
1907.] Two Catechisms 765
Theology, in reality far more widespread than we are accustomed
to think, I examined in a previous issue ol The Catholic
World. If, with Principal Lodge, we leave revelation alto-
gether out of the question and are prepared to admit the im-
plications of the theory of evolution, such a doctrine would be
both consistent and reasonable. A given type animal evolves
up to the point of knowing right from wrong. At that point
it becomes man, who perceives that he is responsible for his
actions. At the moment of transition what is popularly known
as "the fall" takes place. Evolution continues. The type man
struggles upwards towards an ever-increasing perfection. His
whole life-history, as is the life-history of the race, is one per-
petual fall upwards. That there have been lapses — falls down-
wards — in the case of individuals, and even of entire races, no
one denies. But, on the whole, the fall is one long process of
development and progress. The historic fall took place when
brute became man.
Or we may combine his teaching here with that put for-
ward by our author with regard to gradual incarnation. In
this sense, the material vehicle develops and evolves proportion-
ately to the infusion of the "larger self." The latter comes
down, as it were, to penetrate the other more and more; while
the former rises towards a perfection consistent with that in-
creasing penetration. In this view the evolution of the spiritual
part of man is avoided ; but a no less great difficulty suggests
itself — that of the pre-existence of the soul. Neither opinion
could be held by a Catholic, for whom truth revealed as to the
origin, nature, and destiny of man forms part of the substance
of his faith. And, apart from revelation, if we look npon the
soul as the "forma corporis humani" — which seems the only true
philosophical view to take — pre-existence is as unreasonable a
supposition as spiritual (i. e. specific) evolution. The old doctrine,
even in view of " modern scientific " assertions, seems to be the
only true one.
I have gone to considerable length in drawing out these two
points, as they throw much light upon the one idea that runs
through the book, co-ordinating its every part. Each one of
the answers to the twenty questions is framed upon precisely
similar lines. Thus, " good is that which promotes develop-
ment"; " evil that which retards or frustrates " it. Life Eternal
in which " our real existence continues without ceasing, in either
766 Two Catechisms [Sept,
a higher or a lower form, according to our use of opportuni-
ties and means of grace " is " a growing perfection at present
inconceivable by us." There is a loving and a good Power in
the Universe, specially manifested in the life of our Lord,
" through whose spirit and living influence the race of man may
hope to rise to heights at present inaccessible."
To a certain extent such conceptions are not altogether
foreign to us. But read as they stand, and, above all, inter-
preted in the light of that form of evolution which Sir Oliver
Lodge seems to advocate, they make for relativity. The
" Good" is not changelessly good. What may promote de
velopment at one stage may retard it at another. Man is never
man in a true and absolute sense. He is always " becoming."
And the work of the Incarnation is not so much a definitely
personal one as a new factor in a general evolutionary process
by which the race slowly rises to presently inaccessible heights.
Such a position is an almost inevitably logical one for a thorough-
going evolutionist to take up.
When the theory was first given to the English-speaking
world by Darwin some sixty years ago, and, shortly after, was
popularized by Huxley and Tyndal, it met with much opposi-
tion, especially upon the part of the clerical representatives of
orthodoxy. The papers — I believe I am right in instancing the
Morning Post, on the Sunday after the Belfast Address was re-
ported — were full of nothing but pulpit protests against so on-
disguised a heralding of " atheism." There were no epithets
too hard sounding for the newly-propounded doctrine. Little
by little, however, that opposition died away and people — es-
pecially the clergy — began to make use of the new hypothesis
in support of religion. This was a dangerous step to take. In
taking it, they pledged themselves, in a sense, to all that the
theory involves; and if many non-Catholics still refuse to recog-
nize the consequences, others — and these the more logical—
frankly confess that religion and all that it means is a part of
the general growth and development in which all is evolving,
put it down to somewhat obscure emotional or sentimental
factors, and bracket it with other subjects of investigation in a
comprehensive scheme of Sociology.
If the substance of religion be no more than a part of na-
tural knowledge, and a practical way of life based thereon, it is
obviously right to relegate it to such a sphere. A theory that
1907.] Two Catechisms 767
is incapable of covering all the facts to be accounted for is use-
less. And it is claimed that the theory of evolution is the ex-
pression of a general law of development. It ought, in this
sense, to account for anything and everything. Consequently,
while, without prejudice to their faith, Catholics might be evo-
lutionist in the moderate sense explained above, for those who
do not possess* — or who have lost a grasp of — the true mean-
ing of a " revealed religion," there will be no limit to the ap-
plication of this extreme form of evolution as a complete ex-
planation of all that was, or is, or ever may be. This seems to
be the line of thought pursued by most non-Catholics at the
present time.
It is no part of my purpose in this paper to point out that
it is a curiously mistaken line of thought; or that, of the two
methods of " interrogating nature," the metaphysical one, by
which we investigate things as they are, is preferable, for exacti-
tude and results, to the historical one, by which, with the aid
of much guesswork and supposition, we seek to reconstruct a
life- history of things as they have come to be what they are.
What I am here concerned with is a comparison of Sir
Oliver Lodge's teaching with that of our own schools. If he
would grant us a personal God, not 'only, as He indeed is, im-
manent in the nature that He has made, but also supremely
transcendent; if he would allow the spiritual nature of the hu-
man soul that, together with the body that it actuates, is, in
natural conditions, a unique, incommunicable person ; and if, in-
stead of attempting to go beyond the limits of human powers
in the divulgation of mysteries, he would recognize that these
can only come, if they come at all, by way of revelation ;
there would be little to question seriously or to find fault with
in his philosophy. But these three concessions would be much
for him to make, involving, as they do, the entire foundation
of his system. His " God," his " Soul," and his " Religion "
are such as evolution can supply — no more ; and, as such, fall
far short of the " God," the " Soul," or the " Religion " of our
own philosophy.
It all seems so simple to the theist who, like the musicians of
"Abbe" Vogler, knows. The science of which Sir Oliver Lodge
is an acknowledged master, as well as the vague and indefinite
wanderings of the New Theology, await but the admission of
the truth of all truths, as a touchstone to separate false specu-
768 Two Catechisms [Sept,
lation from true, as a centre about which the maay precious
truths they contain may group themselves. Without reference
to God they are nought but meaningless jargon. They ex*
plain nothing. They satisfy no one. With God — " the supreme
Spirit, who alone exists of himself, and is infinite in all per-
fections" — their broken arcs of truth come together into the
perfect round which has truth itself for the centre.
Notwithstanding this fundamental opposition between the
two catechisms, there is much in The Substance of Faith that
is full of the promise of reconciliation. It is only one, it is
true, of many signs that the old, crude materialisms are going
out of fashion; but it is probably the most important of them
all. The method and procedure, indeed, of this " modem
science " are not those of mediaeval philosophy ; and yet there
are distinct indications that Sir Oliver Lodge is neither entirely
unacquainted with the work of the schoolmen, nor altogether
unwilling, to make use of it. Above all — though his arguments
are not those commonly found in our own authors — the earnest
wish to satisfy the blind craving of the heart for its God that
prompted the writing of The Substance of Faith marks a de-
cidedly great advance in the attitude of science and of scientific
men.
" Fecisti nos ad Te" wrote St. Augustine, " et inquietum est
cor nostrum donee requiescat in Te." " Inquietum est cor nostrum?
cries Sir Oliver Lodge ; and sets about using his best in science
to find a haven of rest. He finds a God in nature and a soul
in man. That both fall short of the reality is not his fault,
but his misfortune. He was pledged to a theory that could
light him no further forward on his path.
Still, the true God can be found by reason ; although, as
St. Thomas says, the search is not always an easy one. He
makes himself known by revelation ; and draws aside a corner
of the veil that hangs between us and the Eternal Mysteries.
No other hand than his can lift that veil, or strengthen the
mind of man to accept and believe the truths it shrouds. And
he has given his revelation as a divine treasure to his Church,
to guard, to preserve, and to dispense to all mankind.
Here, utterly and forever, we must part company with all
those who would spin the Faith out of the natural truths of
reason, or accept it upon what merely natural testimony it can
enlist in its support.
1907.] Two Catechisms 769
The attitude of the Church of God is far otherwise. Recog-
nizing that she has a message for the world divinely accredited
to her, it is her one pre- occupation, whatever happens, to pre-
serve that message intact and to give it to the world as she re-
ceived it. After all, it is not her message; but God's.
And so the Catholic Church does not profess to prove her dog-
mas. She knows full well that they are above reason and incapa-
ble of proof by ordinary methods. She does not ally herself, or
seek to ally herself, with science. It would be of no advantage to
her to do so. Her truths and laws are quite true and binding
independently of either science or philosophy. When she makes
use of these, it is to illustrate and defend against criticism —
never to attempt to demonstrate on natural grounds. What
may be, or may not be, true in science is immaterial to her.
She is concerned only with her message. And as long as the
philosophers and the men of science do not interfere with the
contents of that divine message, they may speculate as they
please, and believe what they please, and act as they please, in
obedience to the natural reason that they profess to follow.
That sometimes, in an alien atmosphere, and with methods
thoroughly out of touch with her own, leaders of modern thought
arise to point the way through the darkness towards the glim-
mer of that torch which she holds aloft for the guidance of the
race, even though they fail to realize the goal towards which
they strive, or think it other than it is, cannot but be the great-
est consolation to her children. Let us hope that The Substance
of Faith is a forerunner of the science of the future, as it is
the funeral oration of the materialistic science of the past ; and
trust that it will do its part in helping to lead men of good
will to the light of true faith that shines brightly over the
twilight of human ignorance and human knowledge.
vol. lxxxv.— 49
IN THE MIA-MIAS- OUT BACK.
BY M. F. QUINLAN.
" I have gathered these ■ lories afar,
In the wind and rain,
In the land where the cuttle-camps are
On the edge of the plain."
— A. B. PalitsoH.
BO those who fear draughts, a mia-mia cannot be
recommended as a place of residence. Not that
a mia-mia is quite open to the four winds of
heaven, since it has a roof and one wall. But
while this one wall may shut out one of the
winds of heaven, it gives carte blanche to the rest, who would
seem to take full advantage of the invitation.
Of course the dust may come in too, as it does, in blinding
clouds ; likewise the rain — if it will. But the rain is not happy
out back. It prefers the sea board; or else it pays a visit to
the ranges, in whose heart is hidden music : the murmur of
tired leaves, the wailing of young saplings, the soft voices of
dying streams. In the dry season these creatures of the bills
pour out their souls' needs in the loneliness, until in the heart
of the great mother a wonderful pity awakes, and sending forth
her handmaiden, whom men call rain, she charges her to min-
ister to the sick and dying. And with swift, glad feet — as of
one who brings good tidings — the rain comes to heal these
children of nature; with her own hand she bathes the leaves
with summer showers and gently raises the drooping boughs;
with her own hand, too, she feeds the mountain rills that erst-
while languished, but now, with borrowed life, leap down the
gully, calling with a loud voice to the giant ferns who guard
the silent way.
So the rain comes to the hills. But not out back, for the
rain recognizes but little kinship with the scrub: with the gray,
thirsty land that is strewn with the stunted salt-bush. The
creek may die, an' it please, out back. For the voice of tbe
creek is like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, where
•Pronounced Mi-Mi,
190;.] In The Mia-M/as out Back 771
none may heed. So, too, the river may dwindle into a chain
of gaping water-holes, muddy and brown; but the rain will
show no pity. She keeps her face to the sea, while the far-
stretching plains lie out with parched lips under a fierce burn-
ing sun.
The plains utter no cry. If a man loses his way out back,
he must fend for himself. It is life for life in the scrub, and
the stricken waylarer who has exhausted his water supply must
wrest what he may from the needle- wood tree. But the tree
clings to life as the man does; not voluntarily will she yield
up her store. Life is sweet to me also, says the needle-wood
tree. And even when her root has been severed, the man still
needs time and labor to extract from the fibre a few drops of
moisture, beating it out drop by drop into the hollow of his
hand. Yet it is trifles such as this that make the difference
between life and death in the waste places of the Northwest.
Among the tribes out back, no native goes alone for choice
through the scrub. It is only when he happens to be round-
ing up stray cattle far off on the plains that he is likely to
get " bushed." By nature the black boy is sociable. He dis-
likes solitude. Therefore, in every native settlement the mia-
mias stand close up in groups. Seen in the distance the hud-
dled- up roofs look like so many brown rabbits browsing to-
gether in the open.
At Ulladulla the station camp was about half a mile from
the homestead. Further out there was a bush camp. But the
bush gayloos gave no service, they occupied their camp on suf-
ferance; the station authorities giving them occasional rations
and a still more occasional blanket. For the rest, they lived
their own life, hunting by day, and at night, spearing fish in
the river.
But in the station camp it was 'different. Here, in return
for their weekly rations, the blacks must render personal ser-
vice, for both black boys and gins can ride well, and are clever
in handling cattle. Then again, the gin is able to milk ; and
when she can do nothing else she can always "tail" cows.
But besides this, she can at times give points, not only to a
black boy but to every stock man on the run, for when it
comes to a "cow and calf muster" then the gin comes into
her own. Perhaps there are a thousand cows with a possible
sixty calves to the hundred. They have all been rounded up
772 In The Mia-Mias Out Back [Sept.,
from a wide area on to a small piece of good ground between
two ridges. After the calves have been drafted out for brand,
ing, each must be restored to the particular cow that knows
its own. And what with the lowing and the bleating and the
constant movement of the mob, it is not an easy thing to sort
out individual relationships offhand. The stockman makes vari-
ous attempts, and is frequently wrong. The black boy makes
guesses, and is frequently wrong. But with the black gin she
never makes a mistake; she always knows.
As she sits there astride, garbed like the men in a pair of
breeches and a blue cotton shirt, her quiet, observant eyes miss
nothing. She does not bother about colorings, and she pays
no heed to the babel around her. She and the camp horse are
as one, both immovable, at the outskirts of the mob. First she
watches a certain cow. Then her eyes roam away to a calf in
the distance. Perhaps it is some peculiarity in the leg move-
ment; or maybe it is a sudden turn of the head. At once the
gin will mark the similarity which establishes the relationship;
and, like the dust-laden wind that sweeps along in sudden gusts,
the old camp horse, spurred by this light weight of a gin, will
start in amongst the mob and bring out the missing calf. It is
the maternal instinct of the woman that sees, where men's eyes
are held; it is part of the mother love which is the heritage
of those only who have labored and given birth ; from the high-
est even to the lowest; to the woman as to the brute beast.
But though the black gin may do good work on the camp,
she receives nothing for it beyond a new cotton shirt and a
plug of tobacco. Not that the ordinary black boy is much
better off, for, besides his rations, he may get only a handful
of silver coins with which to celebrate the annual races. The
Christianized native is not satisfied with this dole. What he
wants is the " paper jabber " such as the white man gets ; the
pale slip of paper which, handed over the counter at the dis-
tant bush shanty, produces whisky in gallon measures. Yes;
this is what the enlightened native asks for; the magic paper
that is precious alike to black and white.
As for the grn, she is not thought to require any outside
pleasures. Her place is in the mia-mia. So, when she is not
working for the white man, she is building up the camp-fire
against the home-coming of her lord.
She does not cook his meal. She may only make the fire;
1907.] IN THE M/A-MIAS OUT BACK 773
for the black boy prefers to cook his own dinner. This is not
out of any desire to save her labor, but because beef is scarce,
and the gin is not to be trusted.
The natives' method of cooking is not elaborate. They pos-
sess neither oven, nor stove, nor any cooking utensils; so the
food must be either grilled or baked. First some dry grass is
gathered, and on top of the grass some eucalyptus boughs are
piled, and then set alight. After burning for some time, the fire
is allowed to die down until the surface is covered with soft
white ash. On this ash the piece of beef is carefully laid, when
the red embers beneath are supposed to cook the steak or the
joint, whichever it may be. put, as a rule, the beef is with-
drawn while it is still comparatively raw.
When cooking wood duck or green parroqucts, the bird is
taken just as it falls, and wrapped up in a covering of yellow
clay. This is then placed on the embers and turned over at
intervals. As soon as the bird is cooked, the day wrapping
bursts open, when the feathers are found to adhere to the baked
clay. At this point the bird is trussed, the black fellow's theory
being that every animal must be cooked before it is trussed.
In the same way the gohanna or the snake is laid along the
live embers until it first crackles and finally stiffens, after which
it is broken into joints and the inside taken out.
It is not often in the mia-mia that the rations include flour.
Nor do the natives know how to make the "damper" or the
"Johnnie cakes" that the jackeroo makes when he is mustering
along the boundary. But the black gin will manufacture a sort
of native bread from the nardoo seed. This is crushed and
kneaded into a porridge-like substance, and placed in a soft
lump on the embers until it is heated throughout. It is then
ready for eating. To the white man, the bread of the nardoo
seed is as good as a sunstroke. But the digestion of the na-
tive camp suffers fewer defeats.
Another native delicacy is made from piteAori—a. shrub eight
feet high, with pale green leaves, shaped like those of an ap-
ple tree. These fresh green leaves are cooked in the eucalyp-
tus embers, after which they are scraped up and eaten, embers
and all, The peculiar property of pitchori lies in its power of
intoxication. It is stronger than the white man's grog, and is
proportionately prized by the natives.
As an item of diet, perhaps nothing is more relished than
774 IN THE MlA-MlAS OUT BACK [Sept.,
the flesh of the common rat. Until recent years these vermin
were unknown in the back country, but with the building of
granaries, vast hordes of rats have sprung up as if by some
magic art. Indeed, in the year 1890 a great wave of rats swept
across the empty spaces of the Northwest, providing a new and
toothsome dish for the aborigines, who celebrated the event by
holding big corroborees up and down the country. To this
day, the black fellows out back will speak with bated breath
of this particular " cunja " or rat festival.
"You know 'em cunja?" asks the black man of the white.
" Cunja budgeree — him very good."
But in ordinary years, there are not enough rats to go
round. And as* for, the beef, which is distributed from head-
quarters after every kill, that never does go round. In fact it
rarely goes further than the black boy himself.
For this reason he cooks it with his own hands, and while
he eats, his gin squats immediately behind him in the mia-mia
— this being the custom of the tribes from time immemorial,
when the man faced the open, spear in hand, and the woman
crouched low for protection.
In the mia-mia, the man eats his fill. What is over is for
the gin; and out of her share she must provide for her brood.
Thus the man will demolish the small joint without any difficulty.
When he has finished with it, he flings the bone over his head
to the gin, and when the gin has done with it, she gives it to
the piccaninnies. And when they have — but, before they can
make up their minds to relinquish it, the dog has snatched it.
Not that it is any good to him by now, except to sharpen his
teeth on it. But the dog in the mia-mia is not entitled to
much pity, because what he does not steal from the kitchen
galleys of # the homestead, he wrests from the dogs of the
white man.
Indeed, the lot of the black gin is considerably worse than
that of the mongrel that sits outside the mia-mia. To begin
with, she is regarded as an inferior, and that from start to
finish. She must fetch and carry from her earliest years. For
her there is no period of feminine supremacy ;. not even in
those brief anti-nuptial years does she yield any sway in the
native camp. She has no rights; and fewer privileges. She is
given to one black boy or to another, according as the old
men of the tribe think fit. If she is well-made and clever at
1907.] IN THE MIA-MIAS OUT BACK 775
hunting, she is mated with a good figure of a man, on the
principal of like to like. Should she be maimed, or otherwise
imperfect from the physical standpoint, she will be apportioned
to a weakling. There is no sentiment among the dwellers of
mia-mias.
The native marriage customs are simple to austerity. There
are seemingly but few preliminaries, save the building of a new
mia-mia. But when the black fellow has brought his bride to
her new home, her education in submission is soon developed:
a conjugal beating being the first and the last lesson. This
treatment is considered a wholesome corrective to feminine in-
dependence. So the black boy belabors his gin to ensure wifely
respect, and to keep before her mind the central fact that he
is supreme in the mia-mia. Therefore the gin submits. She be-
longs now, body and soul, to the man who owns her. For this
is the law of the native camp. It is the ruling of the tribes,
where the woman does not count.
There are times, however, when the gin gets more than her
usual share of blows, and her endurance gives out. Then she
will wait for an opportunity, when she will creep out, like some
stricken thing, from behind the mia-mia, and leaving the picca-
ninnies to take care of themselves, she will glide away to take
refuge in the lonely scrub.
But the days are long and the sun is fierce out there in the
silence, besides which there are lurking dangers in the open
spaces, and frequently the gin carries her life in her hand.
Sometimes it is a black snake that stretches its sinuous length
across her path. Like all natives she is in deadly fear of the
serpent whose sting is quick death, therefore she shrinks back,
lest her naked foot should disturb it, for, unlike most snakes,
the black snake will fight from choice, even though its hole be
nigh.
At night things are no better, for now she must creep along
among the shadows, with her fire-stick bent down to the earth.
Should she attempt to sleep, lying down beside a fallen log,
she can hear the weird sound of the dingoes patrolling the
scrub for food. The dingoes will not touch human flesh save
dead flesh, and hers is yet warm. Meanwhile their awful cry
pierces to the marrow of her bones.
Later on, the wind gets up and moans aloud among the
gidya trees. Rising and falling, it comes to her, like the wail-
776 In The Mia* Mi as Out Back [Sept.,
*
ing of some human creature. As she listens, with trembling
limbs and with nerves unduly strained, she thinks she can hear
the cry of the piccaninny way back in the miamia. And the
piccaninny's cry is like no other child's cry. It is a long, low
wail that resembles the note of the wild dog, as it floats across
the stillness of the scrub. Soon she can stand the solitude no
longer — the wail of the piccaninny pursues her. And as she
came, so she returns to the camp.
Nothing has changed at the mia-mia. The piccaninny has
crawled outside and is playing among the dead embers, while
he croons to the jew lizard that blinks its eyes in the sunshine.
Absently she picks up her little one, setting it astride her hip,
as usual, while she bends down to her work. The fire has yet
to be made, and she must gather the wood in haste.
Between husband and wife that day there is neither expla-
nation nor reconciliation. He knew that she would return to
him, since neither black boy nor gin will remain long away from
the camp; for the night has long arms, and the silence is
peopled with fears.
Even the mia- mia is better than the lonely scrub ; and for
the next few days the truant sits there sullen and .cowed.
Should the station manager chance to visit the native camp at
such a time, he will give her a word of greeting.
" Well, Sarah, what was the row about ? "
To which inquiry Sarah will at first only shake her head.
Then very slowly, and in a thin voice of contempt, she will
answer :
" Oh — h — h I Mim all day growl, long night time."
This is the native formula, further than which no self-re-
specting gin will go. To speak of a thrashing would be worse
than crude; it would be unheard-of. But whether this reserve
is due more to a spirit of loyalty or to a lack of suitable Eng-
lish is difficult to determine.
In the heart of the native there is no religious instinct, and
but little parental love. And sometimes in the life of the mia-
mia there arises a question not so much of ethics as of expe-
diency. It may be that there are piccaninnies enough. In
that case the newcomer is doomed.
Under ordinary circumstances the blacks are not communi-
cative on such matters, believing silence to be best. But when
the bush gayloos sit round their camp-fire at night, and their
1907.] In The Mia-Mias Out Back 777
tongues have been loosened by the consumption of pitchori,
their talk becomes less prudent and more crude. It is then
that one learns that the flesh of a new-born child is good to
them; yea! better than that of the wood duck that flies across
the swamp at sundown.
While the black fellow is young, he may have only one
wife. But when she gets on in years, he is given a second,
for of what use is an old wife? No longer can she spear fish
in the creek ; nor has her hand the same cunning in the chase.
Therefore be takes a new wife— one whose eye is clear and
whose arm is strong to throw the nulla- nulla and the boomer- ^
ang. From henceforth it is she who must provide him with
fish and game, until such time as the sun drops below the sky
line and the darkness closes in. Then will his tribe gather
round him, singing low chants of the chase; of those fleet
wild things, whose footpads he has tracked from the distant
horizon even to the shady water- hole where, hiding behind the
mulga trees, he has slain them in his might.
The camp-fire leaps high and the curls of smoke drift up-
wards as the memories of his youth troop by out of the dead
past. And with the low, monotonous chant still ringing in his
ears, his spirit passes away from the limitations of earth into
the Great Beyond where no horizon is, into the Silent Land
whence no man returns, for its gate is held by the hand of
death.
PARIS AND FRENCH POLITICS/
BY ABBE FELIX KLEIN.
BARIS 1 What a name to conjure with I How man;
KV books I have read about it ; and how delighted
|| I was to question those travelers who had been
jj there. It is both Athens and Rome to us; and
until we have seen it our education remains un-
finished, our happiness incomplete. One longs for it as for
paradise, and hence the saying that " good Americans, when
they die, go to Paris, and bad ones while they live." How
often during my walks by the shores of Lake Michigan, the
Lake Shore Drive, the Jackson Park, and along our grand
avenues, have I dreamt of the enchanting city. The boulevards
that we passed going from the St. Lazare station to our little
hotel near the Arc de Triomphe are very gay and so different
from anything that we have at home.
My mother was so glad to see me. She had insisted
upon accompanying my father to Europe, having been over
only twice and never having made any long stay in Paris.
They have spent four delightful months here. My' father has
already finished his inquiry into social questions, the mission
which had been entrusted td him by the University. All doors
have been opened to him, and every facility accorded of study-
ing the many works of both public and private enterprise. He
tells me that, on the whole, charitable institutions are more
numerous over here than with us, but that they are less con-
cerned than we are in teaching the needy to help themselves.
Their methods are more charitable than educational. Still, there
are signs of a marked advance in this matter, for up till now,
as an eminent thinker, Monsieur de Lapparent, has happily ex-
pressed it, the French have been chiefly occupied in the social
army with the ambulance department.
It is very annoying that my father will be obliged to cross
the water again in a few weeks' time. He must be present at
i of Abbi Klein's La D&amttU it
ig07-] PARTS AND FRENCH POLITICS
the "commencement" of the University when he has to make
a speech. I should have profited so much by his companion-
ship. Apropos of " commencement," I astonished the French
by telling them that this is the term we use for the final cere-
mony of the scholastic year, and I must own, with them, that
it is rather a strange one. But I differ from them in thinking
that we are wanting in family affection. I have spent such a
charming afternoon with my parents, and they were longing to
hear so many things about the two dear little sisters who have
remained behind with their French governess ! To hear peo-
ple talk over here, one would think that one could not love
his own when at a distance.
After ? long chat, we had tea, and then took a carriage
from the hotel. My father soon left us, as he had an appoint-
ment with the Director of the Assistance Publique, and it was
ray mother who had the pleasure of showing me Paris. The
weather had cleared and the blue sky was dotted over with
fleecy clouds.
All that I was told about Paris fell far short of the reality.
The vistas seen from the Place de l'Etoile are wonderfully
grand ; all the avenues leading out from it lose themselves in
infinite distance ; and I can understand why royal visitors make
their entry from this side of the city. Within the last few
years the King of Spain, the King of Italy, the King of Eng-
land, and the Czar of Russia have passed this way. The
French apparently admire monarchy in their neighbors. The
enthusiasm they displayed during the visits of these sovereigns
appear to me to be rather unworthy of a democracy. Still, I
ought not to forget that we, in our turn, were quite as snob-
bish as regards Prince Henry, who was merely the brother of
an emperor.
In the middle of the Place de l'Etoile there rises a Trium-
phal Arch under which the body of Victor Hugo rested on the
eve of his public funeral. Napoleon passed under it when re-
turning from his victorious campaigns, and one of the avenues
bears the name of the Grande Armee. It was by this road,
too, that his enemies followed him in 1814, and under which
the Prussians passed in 1871. The triumphal route continues as
far as the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI. was guillo-
tined. In the middle of it stands an obelisk brought from Egypt.
A little farther away one may see the Louvre, the residence
780 Paris and French Politics [Sept.,
of the former kings of France. In front of it stretches a large
garden on the ancient site of the palace of the Tuileries, which
was burnt by the Communists. The memory of these sou-
venirs would be oppressive, were it not that the beauty of
the prospect, the spring-like grace of the trees and flowers,
and the harmonious expanse of the horizon, shed a sense of
soothing indulgence over all this history. It is well that na-
ture and art have draped these bygone acts of humanity with
a softening veil, just as the moss so beloved by Ruskin ren-
ders a ruin poetic and strengthens the crumbling stones. . . .
On this my first day in Europe, it is only natural that I should
feel a thrill of emotion.
The drive down the Champs Elysees does not dampen my
ardor ; it is so lovely that I do not find the name exaggerated.
Just before arriving at the Concorde, we turn to the right,
cross the Avenue Nicholas II. and the Alexandre III. bridge.
These souvenirs of the Czars displease me, but I do not dwell
on them. The two palaces on each side of the avenue are
miracles of ancient art and modern convenience. They date
from the last exhibition; our World Fairs have left no such
traces. Nothing seems impossible to French taste. In order
to show off their motor cars they construct Athenian temples,
and in the evening the colossal pillars are draped and illumi
nated with such fine garlands that they recall the boudoirs of
the eighteenth century, and all is in perfect harmony.
On the other side of the bridge a wide esplanade leads to
the Hotel des Invalides, which is three hundred years old, but
which still looks quite fresh. It is surmounted by a dome simi-
lar to that of the Capitol, but with purer and more harmonious
lines. This dome is covered with gold, but no one could tell
me its cost. In the very centre, under the cupola, is the tomb
of Napoleon, and his body really rests there. What genius,
what power ! And yet, comparing the result and development
of their action, George Washington's memory seems to me far
grander.
We arrive at the Concorde bridge. Behind us is the Palais
Bourbon, where the deputies hold their sittings. Before us is
a large place bordered by other palaces, then a street, still
called Royale, and at the end of it the church of St. Made-
leine, which Napoleon built as a temple to his goddess Victory.
We leave our carriage and ascend the terrace of the Tuileries,
I907. ] PARIS AND FRENCH POLITICS 78 1
In the distance we see the Arc de Triomphe, which resembles
a giant mirror in a drapery of cloud, tinted red and violet by
the rays of the setting sun. All is bathed in a crimson glory,
and the Seine on our left is like a golden stream, while the
hills, wrapped in mist, serve as a background to the blazing
sky.
My mother, less naive, or perhaps more accustomed to the
sight, rouses me from my reverie and reminds me that it is time to
return. We go down to the subway or Metropolitan, and in a few
minutes reach the Etoiie. This railway is admirable. You have
only to show your ticket on entering and as many travelers as
it will hold can take their places. The trains are frequent and
the stoppages short. In fact it is quite American.
But the other means of transport are the most old-fashioned
in the world. The tramways and omnibuses have different prices,
according to the classes, and often the cheapest place is the
best; for instance, the outside of the omnibus, or the impe'riate
as it is called, is the only bearable place in summer. But
elegant people, especially ladies, do not dare to go up, for the
simple reason that the imperials costs three cents and the in-
side six. What is still more astonishing is that, for precisely
similar carriages and places, there are very different tariffs,
and they appear to vary according to the districts. But what
strikes me most in the Parisian omnibuses, is the slowness and
circuitous manner of their routes. Some of them have even
inspired certain songs. "Where," says an old ballad, "are
the snows of former years, and all other vanished things?"
" Where," adds the witty Parisian, pitying those who have em-
barked on so long a journey, " are the unfortunates who took
the Pantheon -Courcelles?"
Another incredibly strange custom is the fashion of distribu-
ting numbers to the travelers, and only allowing them to mount
after they have been called. The first day I imagined this
had something to do with passports. As the whole series must
be gone through, and as many numbers are frequently missing,
one can imagine how much time is lost in that way. More-
over, the same ceremony recommences at each station, and
one often sees fifteen or twenty postulants awaiting their turn.
Very often, too, when the omnibus arrives it is either full or
perhaps has only one vacant place. In fact, their number is
often limited to a dozen persons comfortably seated, when it
782 PARIS AND FRENCH POLITICS [Stpt,
would easily hold double if, as with us, passengers were allowed
to stand. But I see my notes are becoming as tedious as my
subject, so I will break off. . . .
For it is tiresome to write about nothing. As to the sights
of Paris, all I could relate would interest no one. Suffice it,
then, to say that I tired myself out in visiting as many build-
ings as possible. Perhaps Europeans are not far wrong in ridi-
culing our mania for seeing everything.,
On the other hand, if I simply record what I think may
please others, I shall soon be reduced to silence. What am I
to do then ? After all, this is not a manual of geography or
social science. As a rule, you note down what strikes you
whenever you have a leisure moment. Two years ago, when I
visited the Rocky Mountains, my notebook was blank on those
days when I was tired with all the wonderful sights I had seen,
while the leisure days were filled with uninteresting events.
This was perhaps the reason why Smith's Magazine refused to
accept it. So I . must manage otherwise with my travels in
France. But how am I to proceed ? Well, the end will show.
Vive la liberti!
I dined out for the first time with Bernard de Pujol — allow
me to introduce him — I have nothing very good to say about
him, but, since he is modest, he will not mind that. Still it
would be very unjust to say anything harmful. He has excellent
qualities, but he makes no use of them. I love him very much,
however,, because he is gentle, amiable, spiritual, and he loves
me also. At twenty-four years of age — three years older than
I — he is maturer than I am; but at the same time he is less
of a man. I think that he has none of my energy. Although
he reads a great deal he does not work at all — that appears
to him wearisome. He told me he had tried it formerly, but
had not been able to do anything. I have often reproached
him with his inaction; he was not the least angry, nor has it
made any effect upon him. To us this seems quite extraordinary.
Still Bernard is capable of one kind of effort, and that is
traveling. By this means he has escaped being a complete
nonentity.
Having early come into possession, of a large fortune, he
went to Oxford, where, without over- working himself, he adopted
English manners and broader ideas. Later on, he crossed the
ocean and visited nearly all of the States, besides Canada and
1907.] Paris and French politics 783
a part of Mexico. I met him in California and we have traveled
over part of Arizona. He has made short cruises round Scot-
land, Norway, and the Eastern part of the Mediterranean. He
has also been to India. The French are such stay- at-home
folks that these different travels have given my friend a certain
prestige.
But what extraordinary fellows his friends are! There were
several of them at dinner and others came in later. We discus-
sed many subjects. 1 don't want to be severe on them, as it
appears they liked me. Bernard told me how astonished they
were to find that I was cultured and well-bred. They admired my
ideas in general, my notions of art and my knowledge of litera-
ture. The truth is, but of course I do not boast of it, I knew
much more than they did. But what is there so extraordinary
in that? Are we then Indians? One of the rare things which
displease me in France is to see one's country so little known
and so misjudged in consequence. I do not know how it is
with other foreigners, but for my part, I object to this igno-
rance concerning the efforts we make in the way of instruction
of every kind, and for the education of the race. Why Europe-
ans send us their worse subjects, and of these we make good
citizens; and with all this they take us for savages!
But don't let us get excited. Besides, this indignation is not
appropriate to the genial and pleasant tone of the evening I
am speaking of. After discussing various topics, the conversa-
tion turned on women, and, as far as I could gather, on those
of doubtful reputation. From a delicate motive, which earned
my gratitude, Bernard declared laughingly that I was not " tin
type a cd," though he added, what pleased me less, but is per-
haps true, that I must not be judged by the many Americans
who seek in the Old World examples and opportunities of
practising a loose code of morals — vice over here decking itself
in a more alluring and refined guise. Happily they began to
talk of other things, chiefly of carriers and politics.
It has taken me some time to realize what is implied by
their word carriers. Just as a traveler steps into a carriage
when, starting on a journey, so is the young Frenchman made
to embrace a career for the whole of his life, and he has no
more idea of leaving it before his death, than you would be
tempted to quit the train before arriving at your destination.
Only it should be remarked that, except for some untoward ac-
784 Paris and French Politics [Sept.,
cident, during the last part of his career or journey, he is en-
titled to a pension, and this is for him the ideal state. The
soontr he gets his pension, that is, the sooner he gets paid for
doing nothing, the happier he esteems himself. Now, in order to
have a successful career, one must never leave the beaten track;
so weak in this country is the love of initiative and independ-
ence ! Again, there is also a certain way of entering a ca-
reer and advancing in it. An inquiry into the merits of the
respective candidates would be too delicate a matter, this is re-
placed by recommendations ; as there are a hundred candidates
for each post, one chooses those whose patrons are most numer-
ous and most influential. On this account public offices, the
number of which is incredible, are recruited almost entirely
from journalists, deputies, and other politicians. Clans of this
kind may be found among us, but in a far lesser degree, on
account of the little importance we attach to public life and to
its official management.
I asked Bernard's friends what occupation they had, and
nearly all replied that they had none. I again asked what
they intended doing, to which they replied that they did not
know — that they were waiting for a change of government, that
at the present time all careers were closed to young men in
their station. This really surprised me, and I sought for some
explanation. At the risk of appearing indiscreet, I asked them
if the present government hindered them from being architects,
professors, doctors, surgeons, lawyers, engineers, bankers, mer-
chants, or manufacturers? They looked at each other aston-
ished, and did not answer. Bernard began laughing, and, pat-
ting me on the shoulder, exclaimed: "Ah, these Americans!"
And he promised to explain later. Now that I know more
of the ideas of French society, I can understand what effect my
words produced. They were well-bred enough to drop the sub-
ject, but I persistently returned to the charge; and having as-
certained that not even one of the so-called liberal professions
was represented in the group, I asked the reason. There was
a moment's hesitation, and then Bernard explained : " One may
Ira op agriculture/ 9 be said, " and formerly there was the
; but now it is mixed up with politics. There remains the
itic career, but that costs a good deal, and there is not
^very one ; without reckoning that, there is also poli-
700 really cannot understand what all this
I907-] Paris and French politics 785
means, but it is the root of all the mischief." And we began
to discuss politics.
I was delighted to hear this subject discussed, as I had never
yet been able to comprehend from afar what really was passing
in France. I must own that when near it was just as obscure.
This obscurity, it is true, would not be so impenetrable if
I relied simply on the complex ideas which these young fel-
lows developed before me. According to them: " Le mal c'eit
la Repubtique, le remede la Monarchie." All was summed up
in these two aphorisms: "A republic true to its principles can
have neither a strong army nor sound finances, nor real justice,
nor any permanent order; no real republic fulfils the inherent
functions of a government. Everywhere the republic has sown
disorder, impiety, destruction, persecution, terror."
They showed me a catechism entitled the Royalist's Manual,
in which I read this question and answer: "What is Republi-
canism ? Republicanism is a collection of social errors, which
infallibly cause the moral and material ruin of a State." As I
could not forbear exclaiming, they were kind enough to ex-
plain that all this had no connection with the United States
since our Constitution was not really Republican; whereupon I
was so astonished that I think I was at a loss for a reply. I
then substituted facts for principles, thinking that on this ground
we might understand each other better, and said : " Here you
have had more than thirty years of republican government; never
since the revolution has a royalist government lasted as long.
Perhaps it would be better to make the best of it."
To which they replied that the republic was essentially bad,
and there was no possibility of its improvement, which I found
hard to understand, being accustomed to identify a republic
with its representatives, and believing that it could be changed
if they were. But my interlocutors were very far from this
opinion, and it seemed to me that they considered all these
questions rather in the abstract, looking upon the government
and the national representatives rather from a philosophical and
historical standpoint, and without any relation to the actual
state of their country. Besides, they believe that this state of
things will soon undergo a thorough transformation. " La
Republique se meurt," is the standing phrase in which, for the
last thirty years, certain Frenchmen have been pleased to sum
up their political ideas.
vol. lxxxv. — 50
786 PARIS AND FRENCH POLITICS [Sept,
Once persuaded that Bernard's friends desired the overthrow
of the Republic, I asked them how they thought of accom-
plishing it. They owned that they had no idea. I admired
this frankness and tried to lead the way to a more satisfactory
response. " It will/ 9 I said in all good faith, " doubtless be
by gaining over the majority of the nation, and thus getting a
parliament elected which will put a prince upon the throne."
"No"; I was told, " there is no question of sending a royal-
ist majority to the chambers. We know by experience that
majorities are quite incapable of forming anything new. We
must organize a staunch minority and await one of those stormy
crises of which the Republic is so prodigal, for its principle is
anarchy and division. Then the machinery for the restoration
of the Monarchy will be forged of itself. It will be one man
or a group of men, some delegate or other of the public power.
It matters little whether he be a soldier or a civilian, he will
act either by calculation or conviction, to save France if he
has any sense of honor, and if he has not, well, then, for other
motives."
It was impossible for me to know If Bernard's friends
were jesting or not. I had heard so much of French irony I
But he declared in a low voice that they were speaking seriously,
and that if I appeared to doubt them they might take it amiss.
In order to be perfectly frank, I said that we held other views
about the respect due to our laws, especially about that due
to our Constitution ; and I continued my queries. But on the
whole they did but repeat what I have just written. This makes
it easier for me to accustom my mind to such novel idtas. I
appeared, as indeed+I was, so interested that Bernard told me
to take away a copy of the Royalist Manual, in which I should
find the substance of the whole conversation. I must own that
I have found it useful in writing down the notes which precede.
Any American who desires to read it will find himself trans-
ported as far from his native country as if he had passed from
the Falls of Niagara to the Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne.
The next time I saw Bernard I could not help reverting to
the same subject. According to his usual habit of divining
what I meant rather than of listening, he exclaimed, almost
before I bad finished my sentence:
"I see what you are driving at. It vexes you that my
should have conceived such an idea of the Republic as
1907.J Paris and French Politics 787
makes it impossible for the same word to suit your form of
government. Weill they are not the only ones."
" What ! You also ? You who 1 have seen for yourself — "
11 1? It is all the same to me! I simply wish to say that
over here Republicans as vfell as Monarchists, and Democrats
as well as Conservatives, think that in the United States you
understand nothing whatever about either a Republic or a
Democracy."
11 Indeed ? "
44 And I could easily make you see this, or rather, hear it.
But for that purpose it would be necessary to take you to some
meetings; and that would rather bore me. You wish it, you
young tyrant ? # Very well, I will do so ! "
Two days afterwards he took me to a lecture on 4< Religion
and Democracy," given by the citizen Busch, at the Social Sci-
ence Institute.
I was deeply interested. The lecturer, one of the most in-
fluential men of the party in power, gave us a very compre-
hensive synthesis of the role played by Christianity in the evo-
lution of democracy. The first part of his discourse admirably
set forth the idea that the Gospel, by insisting upon the value
of the soul and the conception of one God, the Universal Fa-
ther, has favored, beyond all words, those two sentiments on
which true democracy reposes — belief in equality and respect
for the individual man.
In the second part, which was unfortunately very short, he
affirmed, almost without attempting to prove it, that the Roman
Church, after having rendered incontestable services to democ-
racy, had become during the last century its most formidable
enemy, and that if the societies of the present day wished to
progress, if they wished even to live, they must first completely
extirpate every Catholic, nay, to speak frankly, every Christian
idea.
After the lecture a discussion took place, which is not worth
repeating at length I was, however, extremely surprised to
hear the lecturer — whose moderation had been great when he
was the only speaker — give utterance, one after the other, to the
most intolerant assertions. Thus he declared faith to be an abdi-
cation of intelligence, prayer an offence to human dignity, reli-
gious discipline slavery, the celibacy of priests a monstrosity, in-
compatible with an aptitude for teaching and even with the simple
788 Paris and French Politics [Sept.,
rights of a citizen. Finally, M. Busch replied to a questioner
who asked whether one could, in the primary school, once more
base moral instruction on the belief in the existence of God:
"Well, no; one must have the courage to say so, a belief in
God is incompatible with the spirit of democracy."
Bernard nudged me in triumph:
"Well! Well! Did I not tell you so?"
I do not know how I, a young foreigner, had th.e audacity
to do it, but irritated by these absurd allegations, as well as
by the mocking air of my friend, I burst forth indignantly :
" There are, however, democracies in which the people be-
lieve in God, and where even the chief members of the gov-
ernment render public homage to him. In the United States,
for example, and I have a right to speak — "
" That is not a true democracy," answered M. Busch, with-
out allowing me to finish.
A part of the audience overwhelmed him with applause;
and I was forced to consider myself refuted because, the hour
being late, the meeting was at once closed.
Bernard did not crow over me. He contented himself with
asking if his friends were so very wrong in refusing the name
of democracy and republic to the United States. I replied that
all that had been said only revealed the fact that neither they
nor Citizen Busch had the least idea of what a democracy was,
adding: "Besides, the lecturer did not even once mention the
Republic."
" Come, come ! " said Bernard, " I see that that experience
was not enough for you. Are you free on Sunday at four
o'clock ? "
" Yes."
" It is not to take you to Bostock's, alas ! But into a sec-
ond veritable den of ideas. I will write to Paul Hortis."
M. Paul Hortis received us with a most winning smile. As
the meeting had not yet begun, he pointed out several impor-
tant personages who were seated on either side of a long table.
Round them was gathered an audience of about fifty people,
composed of very thoughtful-looking women and some professors
and students, two or three pastors, and as many Catholic
priests. There were also present M. Busch and two other
deputies, one a former Minister and leader of the Socialist
party, three members of the Institute, and several celebrated
I907.] PARIS AND FRENCH POLITICS 789
professors belonging to the different faculties. It appears it
was an assembly of a rather abnormal kind in France, where
persons holding different opinions seldom meet together, and
Bernard explained that many amongst the audience were known
for their frankly religious attitude, whilst others were notori-
ous for the violence of their anti-clericalism.
Religion, here also, seemed the order of the day. Certainly
they speak of nothing else in France.
M. Hortis began with a summary of the preceding discourse,
the subject of which was the " Church and the Republic." He
reported with impartiality what each one had said. Two pro-
fessors of the Catholic Church had maintained that the Church
has no antipathy to the republican form of government — they
themselves adhered to it with all their hearts, and the majority
of their students, both priests and laymen, were of their opin-
ion. An anti-clerical member of the French Academy had, on
the contrary, demonstrated that the Church was a terrible dan-
ger to the institutions of the country. The ideas expressed
were so totally unfamiliar to me that for fear of misrepresent-
ing them I will now copy my notes, word for word, as I took
them down:
"The Church has irrevocably judged and condemned you,"
said M. A. F., addressing the Minister? ol the Republic, "and
she is hastening the moment to execute her sentence. Von are
her vanquished ones, her prisoners. Day by day does she in-
crease her army of occupation, day by day does she extend
her conquests. She has taken the bulk of your business; she
raises entire towns and besieges factories; she has, as you well
know, her secret correspondence with your government, your
ministry, with the heads of your tribunals, and with those in
command of your army. . The temporal government of
the popes, which was a shame to humanity, is that which your
Church openly labors to establish among you. She wishes
to make France a province of the Universal Pontifical States."*
Without being very familiar with the "ins and outs" of af-
fairs in this strange land, I think there must be a certain
amount of exaggeration in the fears of this M. A. F.
Paul Hortis, having ended his official report, requested M.
Beauleroy, a political economist, to speak on the regime of
Separation in the United States. I then heard statements sin-
e France. L 'Eglht tl ti Rtpnbliquc. pp. 118-119.
790 Paris and French Politics [Sept,
gularly flattering to my self-esteem. M. Beaulcroy, whilst re-
joicing that they had separated the Church from the State in
France, expressed his regret that they had not shown the spirit
of justice and liberty which presides amongst us in the rela-
tions of the public powers with the different sects. He plainly
showed us what he called " the confiscations and the narrow-
ness of the French Law/ 9 in taking from the Religious Asso-
ciations the property they had received from charity and edu-
cation, not even leaving them the ownership of the buildings
for Public Worship, and subjecting even the language of their
preachers to the supervision of the civil authorities.
These words excited many murmurs and interruptions on
all. sides.
Some one cried out : " But we cannot leave the Republic
defenceless before the attacks of Rome."
" The Republic itself has nothing to fear from liberty," re-
plied M. Beauleroy, " and the proof is that in the United
States—"
" We are not in the United States," several voices shouted
out.
"Come, come"; said M. Paul Hortis mildly, "and we are
not in the chamber either We have asked M. Beauleroy, who
has just come from America, to tell us about the legislation of
Public Worship in that country. We can think what we like
about it, but we must hear what he has to say."
This call to order met with nothing but approbation, and
the meeting resumed its attitude of courteous attention.
M. Beauleroy entered into the minutest details of the sys-
tem of absolute freedom enjoyed by our religious sects. There
was nothing new to me in all this, but the audience appeared
very much surprised on hearing that our religious societies can
engage in teaching and charitable works without any restraint
(as if this were not natural !) and that we even exempt from
taxation not only churches but the different sects, the semi-
naries, orphanages, and Salles des Patronages^ almost all more
or less connected with religious propaganda.
The astonishment increased when he said that if our tribu-
nals have to judge between individuals or groups of the same
sect about certain conflicts of half-temporal, half-spiritual order,
they refer the matter to the general discipline of the individual
churches, in the same way that they would, in the case of any
1907.] Paris and French Politics 791
other society, refer the matter in question to the articles of
the Statutes. But surprise bordered on indignation when the
lecturer pointed out that the choice of the directors of the So-
cieties for Public Worship was left entirely to the option of
the different churches, the State confining itself to granting the
persons a suitable charter or, in some cases, allowing them to
do without one. He showed, by way of example, how the
Catholic parishes are, as regards temporal matters, sometimes
owned and administered by the bishop alone, but more fre-
quently by a council of five persons, consisting of the bishop,
his vicar general, the rector, and two laymen nominated by
them.
In spite of the praiseworthy efforts of M. Hortis, this ex-
planation provoked another tempest, in which I beard these
extraordinary words; uttered simultaneously by many voices:
"But those are not republican laws."
"There now you have it," cried Bernard, "there you are.
And now, my dear fellow, if you are not enlightened, I resign
my office. The United States a Republic, a Democracy ? . . .
What humbug young man ! In our days such fables are no
longer believed in France."
He was so pleased that I could not silence him, and I un-
derstood nothing of the end of the debate. In any case I had
heard enough to bewilder me, and I could not help, when
leaving M. Hortis, exclaiming rather rudely : " In politics the
French are mad."
"And what about yourselves ?" replied Bernard. "We are
not the only ones." 1
THE RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P.
VIII.— THE DEMONIC THEORY.
1HE demonic theory of spiritism seems, as stated
tn our last article, to be the one which will best
satisfy one who does not close his eyes absolute*
; v to the possibility of other spirits beside human
ones. It gives the simplest explanation of the
phenomena. The reality of these cannot be denied by those
who examine the reports which have been made on them by
persons eminently trustworthy, and accustomed to scientific
observations; as we have sufficiently shown, and which will be
shown much more abundantly to those who will take the trou-
ble to go more thoroughly into the literature of the subject.
And to shut one's eyes to the possibility of non human
spirits certainly seems unreasonable. No reason can be given
for it, except that of not introducing more causes than are
necessary to account for the observed effects. But if we ex-
clude the existence of such spirits, the explanation of the phe-
nomena is continually involved in difficulty. The subliminal
theory evidently fails to cover the ground. Some agency other
than that of living human beings is required, to account for
the exterior marvels which attest the communications, though
the subliminal theory may account fairly well for the communi-
cations themselves.
And if we confine this agency to that of departed human
souls, and believe them capable of effecting these marvels, which
the living human being fails to produce without invoking thtm,
the general result of the communications contradicts us. Sure-
ly, unless all the departed are in a conspiracy to deceive us,
there would be some few at least who would be able to over-
come the malign influence of the rest, and give us some true,
and therefore consistent, account of the real circumstances of
life after death. But we find no such account; only, as has
been shown, a maze of inconsistent statements. And, more-
.
1907.] Recent Results of psychical research 70:3
over, even the most seemingly trustworthy of our informants
are detected as impostors and liars, as some of the communi-
cating spirits even confess themselves to be.
The supposition, therefore, that the information received by
the evocation of spirits really comes from a great number of
malignant ones, like the devils whose existence is made known
to us by Holy Scripture and by the Church, is, in face of all
the evidence, hardly an unnecessary or superfluous cause; it
is indicated, at any rate, as a partial explanation by the phe-
nomena themselves. At the very least, it is entitled to a hear-
ing; it cannot fairly be shut out of court.
Admitting it, everything straightens out well. In the first
place, it is a natural explanation of the extraordinary attesting
marvels, if we accept the Christian teaching as to the nature
and power of these malignant spirits. This is that they are of
an order of being superior to our own. By nature, or as they
were created, they had powers like those of the great angels
now before and around the throne of God; and these powers
they would have retained, had they remained faithful to their
Creator. As it is, they are not, of course, allowed to exert
their full power; and, indeed, they cannot injure us at all, if
we use the means given us to resist them. But if we invite
them, and ask them to show their power, they may be allowed
to do so, even to the extent of much harm to us.
It seems to be probable, as we have seen, that, particularly
in the circumstances of a seance, an emanation occurs, espe-
cially from the medium or sensitive, which an exterior spirit
can make use of, and more use in proportion to its natural
power. Granting, therefore, as all reasonably must, the possi-
bility that some uninvited and non-human spirits of superhuman
power may avail themselves of the opportunity thus given
them, some extraordinary phenomena may naturally be ex-
pected, more naturally than they would be if the operators
were simply departed human souls.
The very fact, then, of the marvels of levitation, materiali-
zation, etc., seems to indicate something apart from human
agency. It seems hardly to be expected that the disembodied
soul of man should be able to do so much more than his em-
bodied soul can accomplish without the help of the body.
It may be remarked, in passing, that it is evident that the
similarity of a materialization to the body previously occupied
794 RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH [Sept,
by a departed soul is no proof that it was formed by that
soul. One might as well say that a statue made by a sculptor,
or a portrait by a painter, must be a likeness of the artist
The principal argument in favor of the ordinary spiritistic
theory is, of course, that of the " proofs of identity " so often
urged. These simply postulate that no one except the spirit
who is supposed to be communicating could be aware of many
circumstances in the life of that spirit when on earth. But the
subliminal theory disposes, as has been said, of a good deal of
this argument. And the cases which it will hardly cover pre-
sent no difficulty to the demonic theory. For there is a great
probability, if we once admit the existence of devils, that some
of them will be aware of many events in the life of any de-
parted human being from whom a communication is desired.
Of many events; but not of all, even of the principal ones.
And it is just here that the demonic theory seems to have a
very notable advantage over the ordinary spiritistic one. The
departed soul itself would naturally retain a memory of all the
principal events of its life on earth. Its memory might not be
spontaneous ; it might not be able at * once to give its com-
plete autobiography, even in these principal events ; but it
would revert to them, with a little help in the way of sugges-
tion, and revert to them immediately. But we find these spirits,
who claim to be departed souls, sometimes entirely ignorant
of facts which the real souls which they claim to be would
surely at once remember; as in the case of the soi-disant Mr.
Myers, given in our last article.
Indeed, the behavior of the spirits evoked at seances some-
times almost irresistibly suggests the working of a sort of de-
tective bureau. A puzzling question being asked, or informa-
tion being evidently expected which is not at their command,
they "ring off," as it were, under the plea of "unfavorable
circumstances," and work on the trail which has thus been
given them. They endeavor to find other spirits who may
know something about the deceased, and thus supplement their
own information. The next time they are, of course, better
prepared. This may not be the true or the only explanation
of the tortuous course which they so often pursue, but it cer-
ainly seems a plausible and a sufficient one.
Of course the demonic theory, as far as the evidence of the
omena is concerned, does not exclude the assistance of such
I907-] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 795
departed human souls as may be able and willing to co- operate
with the demons. The operation of the two kinds of spirits
might be (indistinguishable. But this assistance does not seem
necessary to account for the phenomena. So, as far as it is
concerned, the tables may well be turned on those who would
shut out the demonic theory on the ground that it introduces
more causes than are necessary to account for the observed
effects. If they can be accounted for by the action of malig-
nant non-human spirits, why bring in the departed human
soul at all ? It may be said that we know of the existence of
the human soul in this world by actual experience. But we do
not know of its existence after death any better than we know
of the existence of devils. Christians know both by faith ; but
the non-Christian does not know of either in this way. For
him, both hypotheses, that of the soul's survival of bodily death,
and of the existence of non-human spirits, are equally tenable,
except so far as the experimental evidence may incline in favor
of one over the other. If it does so incline to one more than
to the other; if one accounts satisfactorily for all the phenomena,
whereas the other labors under difficulties in so accounting,
the principle of not introducing more causes, etc., shuts out the
latter.
Now this seems to be the case with the demonic and the
ordinary spiritistic theories. The former accounts better, as has
been remarked above, for the extraordinary phenomena of ma-
terialization, levitation, etc., as unemboditd spirits of a nature
superior to our own are, of course, naturally more powerful,
except so far as they are restrained by a power greater than
their own. It accounts also better for all the apparent "proofs
of identity," since the proofs which are given are such that
these non-human spirits could easily produce them; and it also
explains their failures, which are very difficult to explain if the
communicating spirits are really the departed souls which they
pretend to be.
It must be acknowledged that in some cases, where it seems
quite evident that the spirit communicating is not the particular
one it represents itself to be (as in the one which we have
mentioned of Dr. " Phinuit," of Marseilles), a certain stupidity
is shown that does not indicate the superior intelligence which
the demonic theory would call for. In such cases it may seem
mure plausible to presume that the spirit is merely a human
796 Recent Results of Psychical Research [Sept,
one, and not intelligent, even at that. The same may be said
of such attempts as those to personate Mr. Moses and Mr.
Myers. And there are, in some seances, instances of a tendency
to foolishness and trifling, like that of a "Poltergeist " performance,
where objects are thrown around, but apparently with no in-
tention of serious injury to any one. Still, this is in line with
the nature of demons, as recorded' in the lives of the sainti
To discuss the phenomena of diabolical obsession and posses-
sion would open up too wide a field for our present limits, bat
they are well attested, and are sometimes quite similar in
character to those just mentioned. And as to the matter of
attempts to deceive, like those of " Phinuit," the ruling passion,
we may say, of the diabolic nature is deception ; the devil is
known as the father of lies. And even the most intelligent
person, if animated by such a desire, will be sure to carry it
so far as to be sometimes even easily detected.
Again, it may be urged that the very fact of the inconsistent
statements made by the spirits is against their being made by
demons, who hardly need to base their statements on personal
experience. It might be held that a departed human soul does
not necessarily know much more about the life which it has
entered than it did before entering it; but this explanation of
the inconsistency in spiritistic communications would hardly
serve for spirits corresponding to the Christian idea of the fal-
len angel. It would seem that such spirits ought to be able
to get together and give a consistent set of teachings; false, of
course, but not contradictory in its various parts. But, if we
look at the matter more closely, even this is hardly to be
expected from spirits such as Christian doctrine represents the
devils to be. For Satan's kingdom, according to this doctrine,
is not one of harmony and order; on the contrary, it is one of dis-
sension and animated by the desire of rebellion by which it
was first formed; the idea of getting together and agreeing on
anything is foreign to it. All its members desire to conceal or
obscure the truth ; but each wishes to do it in his own way.
And indeed, with the best intentions — so to speak — it is not
easy to concoct a consistent system of falsehood. In court, the
most ingenious system of false witness is likely to break down
under cross-examination. And if a great number of false wit-
nesses are employed, the difficulty of making all their testimony
agree increases immensely.
1907.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 797
So, after all, these objections to the demonic theory, if
examined, rather tell in its favor; at any rate, they are very
far indeed from being conclusive against it.
But now let us look at some other evidence, which is almost
conclusive for it, as it points to it almost unavoidably in some
cases, and therefore (on the principle of the exclusion of un-
necessary causes) would make it the probable explanation of all.
This evidence is that continued indulgence in spiritistic
practices, especially when the habit of mental passivity (always
recommended lor success in them) has been assiduously cul-
tivated, sometimes culminate in phenomena quite undtstinguish-
able from the well-known ones of diabolic possession. It is
true that they differ from the latter in the pretence by the in-
vading spirits that they are departed human souls; but in the
phenomena themselves there is really no difference. In the
ordinary case of diabolic possession, no such pretence is made;
and the reason for this is plain, namely, that there is no use in
concealing their true character from those who are aware of the
existence of the diabolic world. But when dealing with people
who are not so aware, but who do believe in the survival of
the human soul alter death, they very naturally desire to avoid
recognition, as it would put those whom they try to injure on
their guard. We believe that Father Ravignan said that the
masterpiece of the devil, in these times, is to have his exist-
ence denied.
Some cases of this kind are described in a work called The
Dangers of Spiritualism, published by Sands & Co., of London,
and B. Herder, of St. Louis, in 1902. In one of these cases
(p. 96), it may be remarked that the spirit cast suspicion on his
own pretence by saying that he and his comrades " have access
to every fragment of a person's past history, to every secret
thought and feeling, and they can, consequently, simulate any
personality, living or dead. The most striking evidence, it
maintained, is no proof of identity " This spirit proceeded to
prove this by writing out through the medium (who was talk-
ing at the time about an entirely different matter) the follow-
ing statement :
tha
cha
Merely to shew you that I can write absolutely as I like and
that there is absolutely no reason why, when the handwriting
changes, the spook should change at the same time, because
798 Recent Results of psychical Research [Sept.,
one spook can write in any way he chooses and simulate any
writing he likes and humbug anybody. If I tell you I am
Julius Caesar, my writing is manly ; if I am Tomi Atkins, I
am very ungrammatticle ; if I am a lady, my handwriting is
small ; if I am a decided woman, my writing is strong ; for a
boy, I write copperplate ; for a litel girl at an infantskoole,
I write badly ; and for a decided man, I write showy.
It seems plain enough that no real departed soul could thus
weaken his own credentials.
The motive of those who protest against the demonic theory
is probably that they hope to obtain by spiritism some real and
true information as to human life beyond the grave, and that
this theory of course destroys that hope. If they were con-
vinced that the spiritistic process of evocation gives us no such
definite or certain information, they would probably be willing
to accept the view that it only evokes demons, or at any rate
some unknown sort of spirits, who either will not or cannot
enlighten those who consult them. This is practically all that
we insist on in advocating it; as to the actual existence and
probable agency of the fallen angels in producing the phenom-
ena, it can hardly be expected that those not enlightened by
faith will at once be ready to admit these points. We are sorry
to do anything to deprive them of what may seem to them an
argument for religion ; to say that spiritism does not demon-
strate a future life for us ; but sooner or later they will have
to acknowledge that such is the case. And even if the com-
municating spirits were actually what they pretend to be, we
have our Lord's word in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, that
no real religious result would be attained ; for in this parable
Abraham says to the rich man: "If they hear not Moses and
the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from
the dead."
People may indeed believe the supposed messages obtained
by spiritism; for they are certainly, as a rule, pleasing to hu-
man nature, promising continual progress and happiness for all;
but a religion of this kind is, we may say, worse than none at
all; for even the atheist has some fear that there may be a
God to be feared, and eternal penalties for sin ; so to abandon
spiritism is not a loss, but a gain, religiously and morally.
In fact, what are the moral results of the spiritistic creed;
1907.] Recent Results of psychical Research 759
what is the practical outcome of believing that the messages of
spiritism really are from departed human souls ? It is worth
while to take up this question, and not as one of mere expe-
diency. Of course, if the truth is really injurious, it is expe-
dient not to know it ; but this does not apply to matters of
religion. If the creed of spiritism is injurious to those who
embrace it, the reason why it is injurious is that it is not true.
Some pretty strong testimony as to its effects is given by
"a prominent worker of twenty-seven years' standing and ex-
perience in the movement " in The Light of Truth of June 8,
1907. He says:
• I can never lose my knowledge of the truth of its basic prin-
ciples, but the plain facts are that spiritualism has not bene-
fited spiritualists — or, perhaps, I should say professed spirit-
ualists. They have not been made honorable by it. They
have not been made honest by it. They have not been made
truthful by it. Sad but true. The fraudulent element has
disgusted everybody, and it is too glaring to be ignored even
by the most obtuse among us. The demand is for sensation
— not reason ; for the marvelous — not the true.
Another says:
I certainly think the cause has advanced but very little ; in
fact, to-day I fail to see or recognize that spirituality in the
ranks we used to have forty years ago.
Another :
When I was younger than I am now, I thought the knowl-
edge of this great truth would reform the world. I am wiser
now, and believe that the spiritual forces are disintegrating
rather than constructive, so far as organization goes. . . .
I made great sacrifice of time an4 money, and you know
something oi the misrepiesentation, slander, and abuse that
were heaped on me.
■
Certainly these are strange results to come from a revela-
tion made — with Divine permission and sanction, we may pre-
sume — by departed human souls to lead others into the clear
light and peace which they claim now to enjoy. They are ta-
ken from a "symposium" solicited by the editor as to the
spiritistic outlook. They, and other similar ones, were not in
tended for the profane eye. They seem to show the spiritistic
8oo Recent Results of psychical Research [Sept.,
world to be a kingdom of disorder, like that of the one from
which we maintain that its teachings come.
We do not undertake to show, or indeed mean to assert,
that belief in spiritism as a religion has, necessarily, an immoral
effect on those who have accepted it. Indeed its most usually
accepted doctrines are not immoral, any more than those of
liberal Protestants in general are. But, in a certain sense, it is
pretty clear to Catholics, and to " orthodox " Protestants also,
and indeed to any one with a fair amount of worldly experi-
ence, that they tend to immorality. For they teach that even
the vicious may progress to a more Virtuous state after death,
though their progress during life has been all the other way.
This doctrine may have no bad effect on a cultured and intel-
lectual man or woman, with no marked vicious propensities;
but it is certainly very dangerous for a young person with
strong sensual passions. The natural effect of telling such a
person that there will be plenty of time after death to be con-
verted from sin is evidently to make him postpone his conver-
sion till that time.
The " spiritual affinity " idea is hardly an essential feature
of spiritism; still, it is widely spread, and the immoral effects
of it are quite obvious.
And the dangers to those who, either as regular mediums,
or simply privately and in an amateurish way, surrender them-
selves to spirit influence, are also sufficiently plain. It is a
perilous thing to make oneself passive to an unknown influence
of any kind ; and the actual experience of those who have
done so in this matter is a pretty strong indication that the
influence is, in most cases, at any rate, injurious, and sugges-
tive of demonic origin, even when it does not go so far as to
resemble, if not to really be, diabolical possession.
Dr. Raupert, in his important work, Modern Spiritism, gives
a good deal of attention to the subject of its moral effect.
Every one interested in the matter should read his words. We
have not space to give them all, but will select a few passages.
He gives the conclusions of a number of persons who speak
from experience. One says:
They (the spirits) tormented me to a very severe extent,
and I desired to be freed from them. I lost much of my
l confidence in them, and their blasphemy and uncleanness
1907.] Recent results of psychical research 801
shocked me. But they were my constant companions. I
could not get rid oi them. They tempted me to suicide and
murder, and to other sins.
I am afraid that what I have to say will offend many who
are less acquainted with the phenomena than myself, . . .
but I write that the experienced may more fully comprehend
the dangers attendiug it. I am frequently asked if I still be-
lieve in the phenomena of spiritualism. I answer : Yes. I
should deem it more than a waste of time to write about what
does not exist. ... I have heard much of the improve-
ment of individuals in consequence of a belief in spiritualism.
With such I have had no acquaintance. But I have known
many whose integrity of character and uprightness of purpose
rendered them worthy examples to all around, but who, on
becoming mediums, and giving up their individuality, also
gave up every sense of honor and decency. A less degree of
severity in this remark will apply to a large class of both
mediums and believers. There are thousands of high-minded
and intelligent spiritualists who will agree with me that it is
no slander in saying that the inculcation of no doctrines in
this country (America) has ever shown such disastrous moral
and social results as the spiritual theories. . . For a
long time I was swallowed up in its whirlpool of excitement,
and comparatively paid but little attention to its evils, believ-
ing that much good might result from the opening up of the
avenues of spiritual intercourse. But, during the past eight
months, I have devoted my attention to a critical investiga-
tion of its moral, social, and religious hearings, and I stand
appalled before the revelations of its awful and damning reali-
ties, and would flee from its influence as I would from a mi-
asma which would destroy both body and soul. . . . With
but little inquiry I have been able to count up over seventy
mediums, most of whom have wholly abandoned their con-
jugal relations, others living with their paramours called
" affinities," others in promiscuous adultery, and still others
exchanged partners. . . . Many of the mediums lose all
sense of moral obligation and yield to whatever influence may
for the time be brought to bear on them.
Another spiritist of many years' standing writes:
I must admit that I have lately had many misgivings with
regard to the advisability oi any but the sanest and strongest-
VOL. LXXXV. — 51
802 Recent Results of psychical Research [Sept.,
minded dabbling in spiritism. Since . . . I have bad
one very nasty experience, so I feel in honor bound to stop
indiscriminate propaganda till I have thought it over.
A medical man, Dr. L. S. Forbes Winslow, writes :
The mediums often manifest signs of an abnoxmal condition
of their mental faculties, and among certain of them are found
unequivocal instances of a true demoniacal possession.
Professor Barrett also says:
It is, of course, as true now as then (the times of the He-
brews) that these practices are dangerous in proportion as
they lead us to surrender our reason or our will to the dic-
tates of an invisible and oftentimes masquerading spirit.
Note the word " masquerading/' No one knows better than
Professor Barrett the facts in these matters.
The advocates of the ordinary spiritistic theory, which main-
tains that the communications come from departed human souls,
will, we think, confess, as a rule, that remarks like these which
Dr. Raupert quotes are true. The explanation or apology which
they give is that low grade or poorly-developed spirits will in-
trude themselves, and thus spoil, to a great extent, the good
effects of the teaching of the higher ones. The " Imperator"
of Mr. Moses himself gave this, saying that an evil or lying
spirit had thus come in while he was absent. But we have seen
that there are some pretty good grounds for suspicion as to the
character of " Imperator " himself. He maintained that they
were all departed human spirits; Mr. Moses does not seem to
have thought of doubting his word. But if others were evil
and lying spirits, why not he ?
Of course this ordinary spiritistic theory cannot be absolutely
disproved, except to theologians, unless we resort to the exor-
cisms of the Church, under which these evil and lying spirits
can be forced to tell the truth. But the demonic theory is the
most simple explanation, at any rate for Christians. For we
know that the Almighty has allowed the fallen angels to tempt
and torment those who rashly expose themselves to them, and
we know that they have no scruple about falsehood. Their in-
terference accounts for all the lying that pervades the whole
business ; and for the immoral effects, as cited above.
rigo7.] RECENT RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 803
Whereas, if we believe that the messages of spiritism come
from human souls, there is a difficulty in supposing that they
would be allowed to mix lies to such an extent in a revelation
which all ordinary spiritists who believe in God at all must be-
lieve bim to have sanctioned in order to give us a more con-
vincing knowledge as to the reality of a future life, and to re-
pair the damage which has come to the world in modern times
^for the loss of faith in it.
It seems hardly necessary to say anything more to Catho-
lics about the matter. For, setting aside arguments such as we
have given for the benefit of those who may need, or may be
impressed by them, the fact of this business is nothing new in
the history of the Church.
This practice of the evocation of spirits, known as necromancy
(from the supposition made, externally at least, that the spirits
are those of the dead), is of very old standing. It was evidently
in vogue in the times of the Jews of the earliest days, as we
see from Deuteronomy (xviii. 10-11), where we read: "Neither
let there be found among you any one . . . that consulteth
pythonic spirits . or that seeketh the truth from the
dead." The ordinary Protestant version has "a consulter with
» familiar spirits, ... or a necromancer."
The evocation of spirits ; it is to the result of this evocation
that our whole argument is directed. It would not "be con-
demned if the truth were to be learned by it; and if the spirits
evoked were really what they claim to be, the truth would
I sometimes be so learned.
As to the spontaneous apparition of the dead, that is quite
another matter. .That the truth does sometimes come to us in
this way is as certain as that it does not come in the other
way. Sometimes, we say ; for even here there is need of care.
Demons, even in this way, may pass themselves off for departed
spirits, as they may for angels of light. But there seems to
be no real or conclusive proof, either in modern times or an-
cient, that a single departed human soul has ever been evoked.
Even the case of Samuel (I. Kings xxviii.) is not considered to
the contrary by many Catholic commentators; they explain it
i the evocation of a phantasm in his likeness, produced by
the devil.
(TO BE' CONTINUED.)
THE NEW SYLLABUS.
SACR^E ROMANS ET UNIVERSALIS INQUISITIONIS
DECRETUM.
Feria IV., die 3 Julii, 1907.
L&mbntabiu sane exitu aetas nostra freni impatiens in rerum
summis rationibus indagandis ita nova non raro sequitur ut, dimissa
humani generis quasi haereditate, in errores incidat gravissimos.
Qui errores longe erunt perniciosiores, si de disciplinis agitur sacris,
si de Sacra Scriptura interpretanda, si de fidei praecipuis mysteriis.
Dolendum autem vehementer inveniri etiam inter catholicos non ita
paucos scriptores qui, praetergressi fines a patribus ac ab ipsa Sancta
Ecclesia statutes, altioris intelligentiae specie et historicae considera-
tionis nomine, eum dogmatum progressum quaerunt qui, reipsa,
eorum corruptela est.
Ne vero huius generis errores, qui quotidie inter fideles spar-
guntur, in eorum animis radices figant ac fidei sinceritatem cor-
rumpant, placuit SSmo D. N. Pio divina providentia Pp. X. ut per
hoc Sacrae Roman ae et Universalis Inquisitionis officium ii qui inter
eos praecipui essent, notarentur et reprobarentur.
Quare, instituto diligentissimo examine, praehabitoque RR. DD.
Consultorum voto, Emi. ac Rmi. Dni. Cardinales, in rebus fidei et
mo ruin Inquisitores Generales, propositiones quae sequuntur repro-
bandas ac proscribendas esse indicarunt, prouti hoc generali Decreto
reprobantur ac proscribuntur :
I. Ecclesiastica lex quae praescribit subiicere praeviae censure
libros Divinas respicientes Sciipturas, ad cultores critices aut
exegeseos scientificae librorum Veteris et Novi Testamenti non
extenditur.
II. Ecclesiae interpretatio Sacrorum Librorum non est quidem
spernenda, subiacet tamen accuratiori exegetarum iudicio et cor-
rect ioni.
III. Ex iudiciis et censuris ecclesiasticis contra liberam et
cultiorem exegesim latis colligi potest fidem ab Ecclesia propositam
contradicere historiae, et dogmata catholica cum verioribus christi-
anae religionis originibus componi reipsa non posse.
IV. Magisterium Ecclesiae ne per dogmaticas quidem definitiones
genuinum Sacrarum Scripturarum sensum determinare potest.
V. Quuni in deposito fidei veritates tantum revelatae contine-
antur, nullo sub respcctu ad Ecclesiam pertinet iudicium ferxe de
assertionibus disciplinarum humanarum.
1907.] The New syllabus 805
VI. In definiendis veritatibus ita collaborate discens et docens
Ecclesia, ut docenti Ecclesia; nihil supersit nisi communes discentis
opinationes saiicire.
VII. Eccltsia, cum proscribit errores, nequit a fidelibus exigere
ullum internum asseusum, quo iudicia a se edita complectantur.
VIII. Ab onmi culpa immunes existimandi sunt qui repro-
bationes a Sacra Congregatione Indicis aliisve Sacris Romania Con-
gregationibus latas nihili pendunt.
IX. Nimiain simplicitatem aut ignorantiam pra? se ferunt qui
Deum credunt vere esse Scripturae Sacrae auctorem.
X. Inspiratio librorum Veteris Testament! in eo constitit quod
scriptores Israelite religiosas doctrinas sub peculiari quodam
aspectu, gentibus parum noto aut ignoto, tradideruut.
XI. Inspiratio divina 11011 ita ad tot am Scripturam Sacram
extenditur, ut omnes et singulas eius partes ab omni errore
praemuniat.
XII. Exegeta, si velit utiliter studiis biblicis incumbere, in
primis quamlibet praeconeeptam opinionem de supernatural! origine
Scriptura? Sacne seponere debet, eamque non aliter interpretari
quam cetera documenta mere bumana.
XIII. Parabolas evangelicas ipsimet Evangelists ac christiani
secundie et tertia; generationis artificiose digesserunt, atque
ita rationem dederunt exigui fructus prtedicationis Cbristi apud
IudEEOS.
XIV. In pluribus narrationibus non tam qua; vera sunt Evange-
lists retulerunt, quam quae lectoribus, etsi falsa, censuerunt magis
proficua.
XV. Evangelia usque ad definitum constitutumque canouem
continuis additionibus et correctionibus aucta fuerunt ; in ipsis
proinde doctrins Cbristi non remansit nisi tenue et incertum
vestigium,
XVI. Narrationes Ioannis non sunt proprie historia, sed mystica
Evangelii contemplatio; sermoiies, in eius evangelio contenti, sunt
meditationes theologies circa mysteriuui salutis historica veritate
tdestitutae.
XVII. Quartum Evangelium miracula exaggeravit non tantum
ut extraordinaria magis.apparerent, sed etiaui ut aptiora nerent ad
significandum opus et gloriam Verbi Incarnati.
XVIII. Ioannes sibi vindicat quidem rationem testis de Christo;
re tamen vera non est nisi eximius testis vitse Christiana;, seu vita;
Christi in Ecclesia, exeunte primo sseculo.
XIX. Heterodox! exegeUe fidelius expresserunt sensum verum
Scripturarum quam exegetae catholici.
tXX. Revelatio nihil aliud esse potuit quam acquisita ab homine
: ad Deum relationis conscientia.
806 THE NEW SYLLABUS [Sept.,
XXI. Revelatio, objectum fidei catholicae constituens, non fuit
cum Apostolis completa.
XXII. Dogmata quae Ecclesia perhibet tamquam revelata, non
sunt veritates e coelo'delapsae sed sunt interpretatio quaedam factorum
religiosorum quam humana mens laborioso conatu sibi comparavit.
XXIII. Existere potest et reipsa existit oppositio inter facta
quae in Sacra Scriptura narrantur eisque innixa Ecclesiae dogmata;
ita ut criticus tamquam falsa reiicere possit facta quae Ecclesia tam-
quam certissima credit.
XXIV. Reprobandus non est exegeta qui praemissas adstruit, ex
quibus sequitur dogmata historice falsa aut dubia esse, dummodo
dogmata ipsa directe non neget.
XXV. Assensus fidei ultimo innititur in congerie probabilitatum.
XXVI. Dogmata fidei retinenda sunt tantummodo iuxta sensum
practicum, idest tanquam norma praeceptiva agendi, non vero tan-
quam norma credendi.
XXVII. Divinitas Iesu Christi ex Evangeliis non probatur; sed
est dogma quod conscientia Christiana e notione Messiae deduxit.
XXVIII. Iesus, quum ministerium suum exercebat, non in eum
finem loquebatur ut doceret se esse Messiam, neque eius miracula eo
spectabant ut id demonstraret.
XXIX. Concedere licet Christum quern exhibet historia, multo
inferiorem esse Christo qui est objectum fidei.
XXX. In omnibus textibus evangelicis nomen Filius Dei aequi-
valet tantum nomini Messias, minime vero significat Christum esse
verum et naturalem Dei Filium.
XXXI. Doctrina de Christo quam tradunt Paulus, Ioannes et
Concilia Nicaenum, Ephesinum, Chalcedonense, non est ea quam
Iesus docuit, sed quam de Iesu concepit conscientia Christiana.
XXXII. Conciliari nequit sensus naturalis textuum evangeli-
corum cum eo quod nostri theologi docent de conscientia et scientia
infallibili Iesu Christi.
XXXIII. Evidens est cuique qui praeconceptis non ducitur opin-
ionibus, Iesum aut errorem de proximo messianico adventu fuisse
professum, aut maiorem partem ipsius doctrinae in Evangeliis Sy-
nopticis contentae authenticitate carere.
XXXIV. Criticus nequit asserere Christo scientiam nullo cir-
cumscriptam limite nisi facta hypothesi, quae historice haud concipi
potest quseque sensui morali repugnat, nempe Christum uti hominem
habuisse scientiam Dei et nihilominus noluisse notitiam tot rerum
communicare cum discipulis ac posteritate.
XXXV. Christus non semper habuit conscientiam suae dignita-
tis inessianicye.
XXXVI. Resurrectio Salvatoris non est proprie factum ordinis
historic!, sed factum ordinis mere supernaturalis, nee demonstratum
I907.I THE NEW SYLLABUS 807
nee demon st rabile quod conscientia cbristiana sensim ex aliis deri-
vavit.
XXXVII. Fides in resurrectionem Christi ab initio iuit non tam
de facto ipso resurrectionis, quam de vita Christi immortali apud
Deum.
XXXVIII. Doctrina de morte piaeulari Christi non est evangel-
ica sed tantum paulina.
XXXIX. Opiniones de origine sacra inentoruni, quibus Patres
Tridentini irabuti erant qua?que in eoruin canoues dognialicos procul
dubio influxum babuerunt, longe distant ab iis qua? nunc penes bis-
toricos rei cbristiana? indagatoies merito obtinent.
XL. Sacramenta ortum babuerunt ex eo quod Apostoli eorumque
cessores ideam aliquam et intenlioneni Cbristi suadentibus et
moventibus circumstantiis et eventibus, inlerpretati sunt.
XLI. Sacramenta eo tantum spectant ut in mentem hominis re-
vocent prseseutiam Creatoris semper beneficam.
XLII. Communitas cbristiana necessitates baptismi iiiduxit,
adoptans ilium tamquam ritum necessarium, eique profession is chris-
tians obligationes adnectens.
XLIII. Usus conferendi baptismum infantibus evolutio fuit dis-
ciplinaris, qus una ex causis exstitit ut sacramentum resolveretur in
duo, in baptismum scilicet et pcenitentiam.
XLIV. Nihil probat ritum sacramenti confirm at ion is usurpatum
fuisse ab Apostolis: formalis autem distinctio duoium sacTarnento-
rum. baptismi scilicet et confirmations, haud spectat ad historiam
christianismi primitivi.
XLV. Non omnia, qua? narrat Paulus de institutione Eucharis-
tiae (I. Cor. xi. 23-25), historice sunt sumenda.
XLVI. Non adfuit in primitiva Ecclesia conceptus de christiano
peccatore auctoritate Ecclesia? reconciliatio, sed Ecclesia npnnisi ad-
modum lente huiusniodi conceptui assuevit. Imo etiam postquam
pcenitentia tanquam Ecclesia? institutio agnita iuit, non appellabatur
sacrameuti nomine, eo quod haberetur uti sacramentum probrosum.
XLVII. Verba Domini : Accipite Spiritum Sanctum ; quorum rc-
misctitis peccala, remiltuntur eis, et quorum retinueritis, relenta su?it
(Io. xx. 22-23) minime referuntur ad sacramentum pecnitentiae,
quidquid Patribus Tridentinis asserere placuit.
XI, VIII. Iacobus in sua epistola (v. 14-15) non intendit pro-
mulgare aliquod sacramentum Christi, sed commendare pium ali-
quem niorem, et si in hoc more forti cernit medium aliquod gratia?,
id non accipit eo rigore, quo acceperunt theologi qui notionem et
numerum sacramentorum statueruut.
XLIX. Ccena cbristiana paulatim indolem actionis liturgies?
assumente, hi, qui Ccena? pr:eesse consueverant, characterem sacer-
dotalem acquisiverunt.
808 The new Syllabus [Sept,
L. Seniores qui in christianorum ccetibus invigilandi munere
fungebantur, instituti sunt ab Apostolis presbyteri aut episcopi ad
providendum necessariae crescentium communitatum ordinationi,
non proprie ad perpetuandam missionem et potestatem Apostolicam.
LI. Matrimonium non potuit evadere sacramentum novae legis
nisi serius in Ecclesia ; siquidem ut matrimonium pro Sacramento
haberetur necesse erat ut praecederet plena doctrinae de gratia et sac-
rament is theologica explicatio.
LII. Alienum fuit a mente Christi Ecclesiam constituere veluti
societatem super terram per longam saeculorum seriem duraturam ;
quinimo in mente Christi regnum coeli una cum fine mundi iamiam
adventurum erat.
LII I. Constitutio organica Ecclesiae non est immutabilis; sed
societas Christiana perpetuae evolutioni aeque ac societas humana
est obtioxia.
LIV. Dogmata, sacramenta, hierarchia, turn quod ad notionem
turn quod ad realitatem attinet, non sunt nisi intelligentiae christians
interpretationes evolutionesque quae exiguum germen in Evangelio
latens externis increments auxerunt perfeceruntque.
LV. Simon Petrus ne suspicatus quidem unquam est sibi a
Christo demandatum esse primatum in Ecclesia.
LVI. Ecclesia Romana non ex divinse providentiae ordinatione, sed
ex mere politicis conditionibus caput omnium Ecclesiarum effecta est.
LVI I. Ecclesia sese prsebet scientiarum naturalium et theologi-
carum progressibus infensam.
LVIII. Veritas non est immutabilis plusquam ipse homo, quippe
quae cum ipso, in ipso et per ipsum evolvitur.
LIX. Christus determinatum doctrinae corpus omnibus tempori-
bus cunctisque hominibus applicable non docuit, sed potius incboa-
vit motum quemdam religiosum diversis temporibus ac locis adap-
tatum vel adaptandum.
LX. Doctrina Christiana in suis exordiis fuit iudaica, sed facta
est per successivas evolutiones primum paulina, turn ioannica de-
mum hellenica et universalis.
LXI. Dici potest absque paradoxo nullum Scripturae caput, a pri-
mo Genesis ad postremum Apocalypsis, continere doctrinam prorsus
identicam illi quam super eadem re tradit Ecclesia, et idcirco nullum
Scripturae caput habere eumdem sensum pro critico ac pro theologo.
LXII. Pnecipui articuli Symboli Apostolici non eamdem pro
christianis primorum teraporum significationem habebant quam
habent pro christianis nostri temporis.
LXIII. Ecclesia sese praebet imparem ethicae evangelicae effica-
citer tuendae, quia obstinate adhaeret immutabilibus doctrinis quae
cum hodiernis progressibus componi nequent.
LXIV. Progressus scientiarum postulat ut reformentur concep-
1907.] The New syllabus 809
tus doctrinas christians de Deo, de Creatione, de Revelatione, de
Persona Verbi Incarnati, de Redeiuptione.
LXV. Catholicismus hodiernus cum vera scientia componi ne-
quit nisi transformetur in quemdam christianismum non dogmati-
cutn, id est in protest an tismum latum et liberaleni.
Sequenti vero feria V die 4 eiusdem mensis et anni, facta de his
omnibus SSmo. D. N. Pio Pp. X. accurata relatione, Sanctitas Sua
Decretum Emorum. Patrum adprobavit et confitmavit, ac orones et
singulus supra receusitas propositiones ceu reprobatas ac proscriptas
al> omnibus baberi maudavit. Petrus Pai.omiiei.i.i,
S. R. U. I. Notartus.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
DECREE OF THE HOLY ROMAN AND UNIVERSAL IN-
QUISITION.
Wednesday, July 3, 1907.
With truly lamentable results our age, intolerant of all check in
its investigations of the ultimate causes of things, not infrequently
follows what is new, in such a way as to reject the legacy, as it
were, of the human race, and thus tall into the most grievous errors.
These errors will be all the more pernicious when they affect sacred
disciplines, the interpretation of the Sacred Scripture, the principal
mysteries of the faith. It is to be greatly deplored that among
Catholics also not a few writers are to be found who, crossing the
boundaries fixed by the Fathers and by the Church herself, seek
out, on the plea of higher intelligence and in the name of historical
considerations, that progress of dogmas which is in reality the cor-
ruption of the same.
»But lest errors of this kind, which are being daily spread among
the faithful, should strike root in their minds and corrupt the purity
of the faith, it has pleased his Holiness Piux X-, by Divine Provi-
dence Pope, that the chief among them should be noted and con-
demned through the office of this Holy Roman and Universal In-
quisition.
Wherefore, after a most diligent investigation, and after having
taken the opinionof the Reverend Consultors, the Most Eminent and
Reverend Lords Cardinals, the General Inquisitors in matters of
faith and morals, decided that the following propositions are to be
condemned and proscribed, as they are, by this general Decree,
condemned and proscribed :
1. The ecclesiastical law, which prescribes that books regarding
the Divine Scriptures are subject to previous censorship, does not
extend to critical scholars or students of the scientific exegesis of the
Old and New Testament.
2. The Church's interpretation of the Sacred Books is not indeed
810 The New Syllabus [Sept.,
to be contemned, but it is subject to the more accurate judgment and
to the correction of the exegetes.
3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against
free and more scientific (culHorem) exegesis, it may be gathered that
the faith proposed by the Church contradicts history and that the
Catholic dogmas cannot really be reconciled with the true origins
of the Christian religion.
4. The magisterium of the Church cannot, even through dog-
matic definitions, determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scrip-
tures.
5. Since in the deposit of the faith only revealed truths are con-
tained, under no respect does it appertain to the Church to pass judg-
ment concerning the assertions of human sciences.
6. In defining truths the Church learning (discens) and the
Church teaching (docens) collaborate in such a way that it only re-
mains for the Church docens to sanction the opinions of the Church
discens.
7. The Church, when it proscribes errors, cannot exact from the
faithful any internal assent by which the judgments issued by it are
embraced.
8. Those who treat as of no weight the condemnations passed by
the Sacred Congregation of the Index or by the other Roman Con-
gregations are free from all blame.
9. Those who believe that God is really the author of the Sacred
Scripture display excessive simplicity or ignorance.
10. The inspiration of the books of the Old Testament consists in
the fact that the Israelite writers have handed down religious doc-
trines under a peculiar aspect, either little or not at all known to
the Gentiles.
11. Divine inspiration is not to be so extended to the whole
Sacred Scriptures that it renders its parts, all and single, immune
from all error.
12. The exegete, if he wishes to apply himself usefully to bibli-
cal studies, must first of all put aside all preconceived opinions con-
cerning the supernatural origin of the Sacred Scripture, and inter-
pret it not otherwise than other merely human documents.
13. The Evangelists themselves and the Christians of the second
and third generation arranged (digesserunt) artificially the evangeli-
cal parables, and in this way gave an explanation of the scanty fruit
of the preaching of Christ among the Jews.
14. In a great many narrations the Evangelists reported not so
much things that are true as things which even though false they
judged to be more profitable for t*heir readers.
15. The Gospels until the time the canon was defined and con-
stituted were increased by additions and corrections ; hence in them
1907.] The New Syllabus 81 1
there remained of the doctrine of Christ only a faint and uncertain
trace.
16. The narrations of John are not properly history, but the mys-
tical contemplation of the Gospel ; the discourses contained in his
Gospel are theological meditations, devoid of historical truth con-
cerning the mystery of salvation.
17. The Fourth Gospel exaggerated miracles not only that the
wonderful might stand out hut also that they might become more
suitable for signifying the work and the glory of the Word Incarnate.
iS. John claims for himself the quality of a witness concerning
Christ ; but in reality he is only a distinguished witness of the
Christian life, or of the life of Christ in the Church, at the close of
the first century.
19. Heterodox exegetes have expressed the true sense of the
Scriptures more faithfully than Catholic exegetes.
20. Revelation could be nothing but the consciousness acquired
by man of his relation with God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of Catholic faith, was not
completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas which the Church gives out as revealed are not
truths which come down from heaven, but are an interpretation of
religious tacts, which the human miad has acquired by laborious
efforts.
23. Opposition may and actually does exist between the facts
which are narrated in Scripture and the dogmas of the Church which
rest on them ; so that the critic may reject as false facts which the
Church holds as most certain.
24. The exegete is not to be blamed for constructing premises
from which it follows that the dogmas are historically false or doubt-
ful, provided he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves.
25. The assent of faith rests ultimately on a mass of probabilities.
26. The dogmas of faith are to be held only according to their
practical sense, that is, as preceptive norms of conduct, but not as
norms of believing.
27. The Divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the Gospels ;
but is a dogma which the Christian conscience has derived from the
notion of the Messias.
28. Jesus, while he was exercising his Ministry, did not speak
with the object of teaching that he was the Messias, nor did his
miracles tend to prove this.
29. It is lawful to believe that the Christ of history is far inferior
to the Christ who is the object of faith.
30. In all the evangelical texts the name Son of God is equivalent
only to Messias, and does not at all signify that Christ is the true and
natural Son of God.
8 12 The New Syllabus [Sept.,
31. The doctrine concerning Christ taught by Paul, John, the
Councils of Nicea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, is not that which Jesus
taught, but that which the Christian conscience conceived concern*
ing Jesus.
32. It is not possible to reconcile the natural sense of the Gospel
texts with the sense taught by our theologians concerning the con*
science and the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ.
33. It is evident to anybody who is not led by preconceived
opinions that either Jesus professed an error concerning the im-
mediate Messianic coming, or that the greater part of his doctrine
as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.
34. The critic cannot ascribe to Christ a knowledge circum-
scribed by no limits except on a hypothesis which cannot be historic-
ally conceived, and which is repugnant to the moral sense, viz., that
Christ as man had the knowledge of God and yet was unwilling to
communicate the knowledge of a great many things to his disciples
and to posterity.
35. Christ had not always the consciousness of his Messianic
dignity.
36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the
historical order, but a fact of the merely supernatural order, neither
demonstrated nor demonstrable, which the Christian conscience
gradually derived from other facts.
37. Faith in the Resurrection of Christ was in the beginning not
so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection, as in the immortal life
ot Christ with God.
38. The doctrine of the expiatory death of Christ is not Evangeli-
cal but Pauline.
39. The opinions concerning the origin of the sacraments with
which the Fathers of Trent were imbued, and which certainly in-
fluenced their dogmatic canons, are very different from those which
now rightly obtain among historians who examine into Christianity.
40. The sacraments had their origin in the fact that the Apostles
and their successors, swayed and moved by circumstances and events,
interpreted some idea and intention of Christ.
41. The sacraments are merely intended to bring before the mind
of man the ever-beneficent presence of the Creator.
42. The Christian community imposed (induxit) the necessity of
baptism, adopting it as a necessary rite, and adding to it the obliga-
tions of the Christian profession.
43. The practice of conferring baptism on infants was a disciplin-
ary evolution, which became one of the causes why the sacrament
was divided into two, viz., baptism and penance.
44. There is nothing to prove that the rite of the sacrament of
confirmation was employed by the Apostles ; but the formal distinc-
1907.] THE NEW SYLLABUS 813
tion of the two sacraments, baptism and confirmation, does not be-
long to the history of primitive Christianity.
45. Not everything which Paul narrates concerning the institu-
tion of the Eucharist (I. Cor. xi. 23-25) is to be taken historically.
46. In the primitive Church the conception of the Christian
sinner reconciled by the authority of the Church did not exist, but
it was only very slowly that the Church accustomed itself to this
conception. Nay, even after penance was recognized as an institu-
tion of the Church, it was not called a sacrament, for it would be
held as an ignominious sacrament.
47. The words of the Lord: Receive ye the Holy GAost : whose
sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins ye shall re-
tain they are retained (John xx. 22-23) do not at all reter to the
sacrament of penance, whatever the Fathers of Trent may have
been pleased to say.
48. James in his Epistle (v. 14-15) did not intend to promul-
gate a Sacrament of Christ, but to commend a pious custom,
and if in this custom he happens to distinguish (cernil) a means of
grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was received by
the theologians who laid down the notion and the number of the
sacraments.
49. The Christian supper gradually assuming the nature of a
liturgical action, those who were wont to preside at the Supper ac-
quired the sacerdotal character.
50,' The elders who filled the office of watching over the gather-
ings of the faithful, were instituted by the Apostles as priests or
bishopsto provide for the necessary ordering (ordinationi) of the in-
creasing communities, not properly for perpetuating the Apostolic
mission and power.
51. It is not possible that matrimony could have become a sacra-
ment of the new Law until later in the Church ; for in order that
matrimony should be held as a sacrament it was necessary that a
full theological development (explicalio) of the doctrine of grace and
the sacraments should first take place.
52. It was foreign to the mind of Christ to found a Church as a
Society which was to last on the earth for a long course of cen-
turies ; nay, in the mind of Christ the Kingdom of Heaven, together
with the end of the world, was about to come immediately.
53. The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable;
but Christian society, like human society, is subject to perpetual
evolution.
54. Dogmas, sacraments, hierarchy, both as regards the notion
of them and the reality, are but interpretations and evolutions of the
Christian intelligence which, by external increments, have increased
and perfected the little germ latent in the Gospel.
814 The New Syllabus [Sept.
55. Simon Peter never even suspected that the primacy in the
Church was entrusted to him by Christ.
56. The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not
through the ordinance of Divine Providence but through merely
political conditions.
57. The Church has shown herself to be hostile to the progress
of natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is not any more immutable than man himself, since it
is evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determinate body of doctrine applicable
to all times and to all men, but rather inaugurated a religious move-
ment adapted or to be adapted for different times and places.
60. Christian doctrine in its origin was Judaic, but through suc-
cessive evolutions became first Pauline, then Joannine, and finally
Hellenic and universal.
61. It may be said without paradox that there is no chapter of
Scripture, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse,
which contains a doctrine absolutely identical with that which
the Church teaches on the same matter, and that, therefore, no
chapter in Scripture has the same sense for the critic afad for the
theologian.
62. The chief articles of the Apostolic Symbol had not for the
Christians of the first ages the same sense that they have for the
Christians of our time.
63. The Church shows itself unequal to the task of efficaciously
maintaining evangelical ethics, because it obstinately adheres
to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled witl\ modern
progress.
64. The progress of science requires a remodelling (ut refor-
mentur) of the conceptions of Christian doctrine concerning God,
Creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, Redemp-
tion.
65. Modern Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true science
unless it be transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity, that is,
into a broad and liberal Protestantism.
On the following Thursday, the fourth day of the same month
and year, an accurate report of all this having been made to our Most
Holy Lord Pope Pius X., his Holiness approved and confirmed the
Decree of the Most Eminent Fathers, and ordered that the proposi-
tions above enumerated, all and several, be held by all as condemned
and proscribed.
Peter Palombeuj, Notary of the H. R. U. I.
THE FALLACY OF UNANIMITY.
BY VINCENT McNABB, O. P.
GENERALIZATIONS still make havoc with accurate
thinking. A philosopher who could take an ab-
solutely intellectual view of our present scientific,
philosophic, and religious state would be most
pained by the careless brandishing of these pests of
thought. One of the most common and most harmful of them
is the supposed unanimity of science, philosophy, higher criti-
cism, theology.
An impartial onlooker, such as we have imagined, would be
sorely tried to bring down something like contempt upon him-
self by innocently putting the question: "What is science, phi-
losophy, higher criticism, theology ? "
He would have to await an answer longer than most men would
think; he might even have to go through life without one.
He would certainly have to live his life and think his thought
without meeting an answer that every one would accept. All
this would distress his fine philosophic soul. But he would be
still more vexed to find that though hardly two men would
agree what science, philosophy, higher criticism, and theology
are, they would be quite agreed about what these lour could
prove.
His keenest distress of mind would be caused by the com-
mon fallacy of the unanimity of scientists, philosophers, higher
critics, and theologians. In an age when men — some of them
professors, and not all of them from Germany — are found
denying that two and two need be four, to rely upon the una-
nimity of any group of specialists is indeed trust upon trust.
General statements like this of unanimity, especially from
the younger men, are usually coupled with that subtle, elusive
phrase " modern methods." So many fallacies have lurked be-
hind this phrase, that our unbiased onlooker, had he the power
he has the will, would prohibit every book which is de-
fended without being defined. No matter how reactionary his
n-imprimatur " would look, his philosophic soul would rest
816 The Fallacy of Unanimity [Sept.,
content in the thought that it was not modern methods but the
lack of them that he barred.
For to his way of thinking the methods that have made
modern science, of which he is so enthusiastic an admirer, are
observation and induction ; not indeed careless but careful ob-
servation, not headlong but scrupulous induction. In history
it is wonderful what almost infinite pains a true scholar will
take to verify a date or an event, a person, a name, or even
the quarterings of an escutcheon. Nor will an array of evidence
tempt the trained historian into those broad and infallible
theses that appear perennially in our debating clubs.
To our unbiased philosopher, then, it would seem equally
the duty of scholarship to make accurate observation of pres-
ent phenomena. A -priorism should be banned as far as possible
from the observation of facts; and from the conclusions drawn
from the observation, even in such a simple matter as the
scientific, philosophic, or biblical views of the men of our day.
An article written to delight the mind of our philosopher
appears in the Expository Times for December. Professor W.
E. Addis, of Oxford, has published a volume on Hebrew Reli-
gion to the Establishment of Judaism under Ezra. The author
assures us that his book is within " the limits set by sober and
moderate scholarship/' He continues:
Much is certain. On many questions of capital moment-
such as the dates at which the documents composing the
Pentateuch were written down, the date and authorship of
most of the prophetic books — there is practical unanimity
among men whose knowledge entitles them to judge. This
agreement has been slowly attained ; it has been severely
tested by discussion ; nor is there the slightest ground ior
thinking that it will ever be seriously disturbed (p. n).
Now be it borne in mind that our philosophic critic has no
theory. He neither attacks nor defends Professor Addis. He
defends accurate observation and induction. He is at once
put on the watch by this appeal to the " men whose knowl-
edge, etc." To him it is a modern form of the old fallacy
somewhat brutally formulated: "When logic fails, take to
abuse." He sees in it an abandonment of defence and an ap-
peal to the schola hominum proborum.
That he is not alone — though he would not mind being
1907. J The Fallacy of Unanimity 817
alone in this view — may be shown from the criticism of Pro-
fessor Orr, D.D., of Glasgow, in the Expository Times, whose
words may be left to speak for themselves :
Mr. Addis but speaks in the usual fashion on these "as-
sured" critical results; yet I humbly submit that nothing
could be more misleading than just this allegation of " una-
nimity " and finality in regard to the results of either the liter-
ary or the historical criticism.
It would be easy to mention names, recent and contem-
porary, some of them of no mean weight, that do not accept
the current literary datings or the theories connected with
them ; but let these pass.
" Competent scholars" (a phrase of Mr. Addis') is too
often simply a synonym for the scholars who accept these re-
sults. I retrain from emphasizing also the stampede ot the
archaeologists, many of whom, as Say re, Hommel, Haldvy,
were originally adherents of the Wellhausen school. They,
too, are put out of court. But I rest my dissent on two facts.
The first is that in Old Testament scholarship, itself under
the influence of the new so- called historical-critical movement,
there is taking place a profound change of opinion, which
threatens very soon to make the Wellhausen school, alike in
its historical construction and in many of its critical results, as
obsolete as the school of Bauer already is in New Testament
criticism. I give but one instance. Hugo Winckler is a
scholar of sufficiently radical tendency, whose ability and in-
fluence on contemporary thought Mr. Addis will not despise.
But, even since Mr. Addis wrote, Winckler has published a
remarkable address,* delivered at Eisenach, which has for its
aim to assail the very foundations of the Wellhausen histori-
cal-religious theory, and demonstrate that the view of the re-
ligion of Israel expounded by this school is undermined by
newer knowledge. On this subject it is difficult not to give
him one's assent and, in any case, he explodes effectually the con-
ceit of settled results . . . .
Next I have referred to the disintegration of the older the-
ories in the critical schools themselves. The assertion of the
practical unanimity as to the dates at which the documents
composing the Pentateuch were written down can only be ta-
ken with qualification, which practically nullify its value.
The original simple hypothesis of a J. E. D. P. has finally
disappeared and given place to imaginary processional series
• " Religionsgeschichte und geschichtliche Orient."
VOL. LXXXV.— 52
818 The Fallacy of Unanimity |Scpt
of Js. Es. Ds. Ps. Rs. (Ji, J2,J3, etc.) . . . Has Mr.
Addis ever seriously set before his mind what is implied, say,
in a J and an E school, each retaining its peculiarities, con-
tinuing to subsist, and, like the waters of the Rhone and
S&one, peacefully flowing on side by side unchanged after the
fall of the Northern Kingdom, presumably therefore in Judah,
possibly even through the Exile ?
The P document is in even worse case (Pi, P2, P3, P4, etc.)
Graf was no tool, yet Graf held to the end that the Priestly
Document had never a separate existence.
I respectfully urge that it is time there was an abating of this
habitual speech about " assured results " which nobody is at
liberty to challenge. An instructive example comes at the
present moment from New Testament criticism in the notable
work which Professor Harnack has just published in defence
of the Lucan authorship of the third Gospel and the Acts.
Here again was a matter which criticism thought it had finally
settled in the negative. It is refreshing to hear Harnack on
the point, "despite the contradictions of Credner, B. Weiss,
Klostermann, Zahn, etc., the untenableness of the tradition of
Luke's authorship is held to be so thoroughly established that
hardly any one to-day thinks it worth his while to prove it,
or to pay any attention to the arguments of opponents. So
speedily does criticism forget, and in so partisan a spirit does
it stiffen itself up in its hypotheses.*
«
Our philosopher, with no thesis to defend except that of
accurate thinking, might not altogether sympathize with the
vigorous thwacks and thuds of these thorough- going foemen.
Yet he might be tempted to envy them their power of honest
cudgelling in case any one should hereafter deliberately employ
for attack or defence the fallacy of unanimity.
* Expository Times. December, pp. 119-121.
THE CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION.
1HE Fourth Annual Meeting of the Catholic Edu-
cational Association, which was held in Mil-
waukee on July g, 10, and II, has been gener-
ally regarded as one of the great educational
events of the year. There has been more no-
tice taken of the proceedings than in any previous year, and
the public — Catholic and non-Catholic— has taken an interest
in the meetings which shows that the movement is looked upon
as one of importance and deep significance. The Educational
Association is merely an annual conference of those who have
a direct interest in Catholic education, but its growth and its
working, nevertheless, have an interest for those who are out-
side the educational field.
The Catholic Educational Association may be said to be
the spontaneous result of a need that Catholic educators had
felt for many years. A meeting of seminary rectors and pro-
fessors in 1898 was followed, in 1897, by the formation of the
Conference of Catholic Colleges and Universities of the United
States. The Parish School Conference was organized in Chi-
cago, with eight members, in 1902. The Seminary, College,
and School Conferences formed an association at St. Louis in
1904, and since that time annual meetings have been held,
each one exceeding in interest and importance the one which
preceded. It may be said, without exaggeration, that the meet-
ing in Milwaukee was the most important general conference
of Catholic educators that has ever taken place in the country.
A brief outline of the proceedings and the papers read will
give a better idea of the workings of the Association than any
description.
The proceedings opened with Pontifical Mass, celebrated by
Archbishop Messmer. The Archbishop spoke a few words of
cordial welcome, and declared that our schools were public in
every proper sense of the word.
The Association met in the new Marquette University,
which had been placed at the disposal of the Association by
the Jesuit Fathers. Nothing was left undone by the Arch-
820 The Catholic Educational Association [Sept.,
bishop and clergy of Milwaukee and Father Burrows, the rec-
tor of Marquette University, to ensure the success of the gath-
ering.
The opening session was devoted to routine business, and
after this was transacted, the assembled delegates listened to
brief addresses from Archbishops Quigley and Blenk, and from
Bishop Eis.
On the evening of Tuesday a general meeting was held,
and papers were riad on special phases of Catholic educational
work. A paper on Educational Work Among the Deaf Mutes
was read by Rev. F. A. Moeller, S.J. Educational Work
Among the Negroes was discussed by Rev. J. A. St. Laurent,
and there was an interesting discussion in regard to the views
which he expressed. The third paper of the evening was read
by Rev. Charles Warren Currier, on Educational Work Among
the Indians. The programme of this evening was a new fea-
ture, but it proved to be an interesting one, and it showed
how the Church has valiant workers working bravely, often
under the most serious disadvantages, in all parts of the edu-
cational field.
On the following evening there were papers on a subject
in which all have a pressing common interest, namely, " Edu-
cational Legislation in Relation to Catholic Educational Inter-
ests." Brief papers were read from representatives of five
states : New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and California.
Catholic interests have often suffered from adverse legisla-
tion, and in many of the states there are laws that have an
unfavorable effect.
The general opinion seemed to be, that we Catholics can pre-
vent unjust legislation, and can secure many things we desire,
if we are united and active. Such unfavorable legislation as we
complain of often comes, not so much from hostility, as from
the fact that we are passed over or ignored; and the reason
why we are ignored, in many cases, seems to be that we have
not made ourselves felt. Our own apathy is our greatest danger.
On the last evening a public meeting was held in one of
the theatres of the city, and there was a lecture by Professor
Monaghan, of Washington, and a programme of music.
In the Association at present there are three departments,
and each department held its separate meetings for the discus-
sion of subjects of special interest. The first session of the
1907.] The Catholic educational association 821
College department was a joint meeting with the Seminary de-
partment for the purpose of discussing the " Teaching of -Latin."
This, is a subject in which the colleges and seminaries have an
important interest in common, and much can be gained when
workers in both fields come together for the purpose of dis-
cussion.
Papers were read by such educational leaders as Dr. Shahan,
Dr. Dyer, and Father J. A. Conway. It is a complaint of
some that the teaching of Latin is not as satisfactory as could
be desired, and nothing but good can result when those who
have most to do with the subject come together and discuss
the problem.
The attendance of Catholic students at non- Catholic colleges
was a subject of lively interest. The paper on the subject was
written by Rev. J. Farrell. It was followed by an able discus-
sion by Rev. R. J. Meyer, S.J., and by others who were present.
It is accepted by all that the Catholic college is an essen-
tial part of our educational work, and that it cannot be de-
stroyed without impairing the integrity of the whole educational
system. It is conceded that everything must be done to
strengthen the colleges and to secure for them the patronage
they need. It is conceded also, as was stated by Bishop Car-
roll in the Cleveland meeting, that since these annual meetings
of Catholic educators the efficiency of the Catholic college and
of the whole educational system has been greatly improved.
But there can be no doubt that there is a grave responsi-
bility resting on those whose duty it is to look after the stu-
dents who, for various reasons, attend the secular institutions.
It becomes a question of means, and the Catholic chaplain is
one of the means proposed. No doubt each bishop in the
country will deal with the problem as seems best to him.
The matter rests with the bishops, and in dealing with it
we may feel very sure that they will exercise great caution in
guarding against anything that would injure the cause of Catho-
lic higher education.
It seems probable that the Catholic body in the future will
not draw many of its leaders from the ranks of Catholic young
men now attending secular institutions; and the important
work in hand is to study our own problems and strengthen our
.own educational work in all its departments. The reasons why
Catholic students attend secular institutions were discussed at
822 THE CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION [Sept.,
the Cleveland meeting, and the continued study of this subject
must be productive of good results.
Other papers were read on " Supplementary English Catho-
lic Authors for College Classes" and "The Classical Course as
a Preparation for the Professions and for Business/ 9
The papers of the Seminary department were of special
rather than general interest. A paper on the " Fostering of
Vocations to the Holy Priesthood," by Rev. F. X. Stein-
brecher, was of great interest to pastors.
The attendance at the session of the School Department was
large, and the interest shown was very great. The first paper
was read by Rev. P. C. Yorke, on "The Educational Value of
Christian Doctrine."
The discussion was conducted by Father Finn, Drs. Pace and
Shields, and others.
If the Catholic Educational Association had done no other
good, it has justified its existence by the clear manner in which
this idea has been presented to Catholic educators, namely,
that Catholic education has no reason for existence unless it
has its own individuality, and that its only salvation is in being
true to its own standards and ideals. The Catholic system has
everything of value that can be found in any other system,
and it has also the greatest educational element which is not
found in other systems — religion.
The paper on " The Pastor and the School from the Teacher's
Foint of View," by Brother Anthony, of St. Louis, was a tact-
ful presentation of an important subject. "The Function of
Community Inspection" was treated by Brother Michael, of
Dayton. Both of these papers, by practical teachers, were well
received. An excellent paper on " The Catholic Church, the
Patron of Learning," was read by Rev. Walter J. Shanley.
In the afternoons, on Tuesday and Wednesday, meetings of
the teachers of Milwaukee were held, and papers written by
teachers of the schools wete read on the following subjects:
"The Course of a Properly Graded School"; "Text- books in
Parochial Schools "; "Supervision in Parochial Schools"; "The
Cultivation of Singing in Parochial Schools."
There was also held a meeting of diocesan superintendents
of parish schools, and inspectors of schools.
Undoubtedly the most important incident of the meeting
was the conference of the Most Rev. Archbishops with a com-
1907.] The Catholic Educational Association 823
mittee of college representatives on the state of Catholic higher
•education in the country. Naturally this was not a part of
the Association proceedings, and the meeting of the Associa-
tion was selected as the occasion for the conference. The
Committee was selected by the Association to meet the Arch-
bishops, and this action of the Archbishops is an indication of
the interest which they have in the movement.
It can be seen from the foregoing account that the Catholic
Educational Association is nothing more than an organization
designed to facilitate the meetings of Catholic educators and
to promote the general interests of Catholic education. It is
purely voluntary, and its decisions have no binding force on
any one.
Its annual meetings are coming to be looked on as grand
annual educational rallies. Its development will be in two direc-
tions: It will unite Catholic educators in the study and pursuit
of their general common interests. We are all interested in
having a sound Catholic educational public opinion; we all de-
sire that our system should be thoroughly Catholic in all its
departments, and not a weak imitation of secular systems ; and
we all feel the need of inspiration and stimulus that come
from the consiousness of the strength of our system and from
meeting those who are working along with us. The growth of
the Association will also be in special directions.
The special meetings are likely to multiply in the future.
There may, for instance, be a meeting of the rectors of Catho-
lic colleges; there might easily be a meeting of the teachers
of classical languages, or of teachers of science. These and
many other features will no doubt take place, as occasion calls
for them, and the form of organization permits of an indefinite
development in this direction. The Association promotes these
meetings of Catholic educators and publishes results. It fur-
nishes the arena in which the battles of Catholic education may
be fought out.
The adoption of a permanent constitution at Milwaukee was,
perhaps, the most important business proceeding of the meet-
ing. This constitution was provisionally adopted at St. Louis;
it has been amended several times, and was tried for four years
as a working basis of union. It was carefully revised and
amended by Archbishop Messmer and the Executive Board,
and was unanimously adopted by the Association as the per-
824 The Catholic Educational Association [Sept
manent constitution. The chief feature is an Executive Board
in which all departments have equal representation, and the
management of the affairs of the Association is in the hands
of this Board.
It is sometimes said that the aim of the Association is the
unification of our educational system. Unification is a word of
vague import when applied to Catholic education. Unification
of control is scarcely meant, because each bishop in his own
diocese will govern as he deems prudent. But a common un-
derstanding leads to unity. While we suffer from too much in-
dependence and too much individuality, it would be much re-
gretted if our unification were to lead to monopoly or to the
obliteration of all individuality.
No such result is possible. There may be State monopoly
of education, and the public system of education may become
mechanically perfect, with consequent loss of vitality ; but Cath-
olic education will never be devoid of healthy individualism.
Catholic education is one in principle, one in its ideals. It
inherits glorious traditions, its standards should be uniform and
thoroughly Catholic. It should be clearly held in view by all,
that the divisions of Catholic education are not distinct units
which stand by themselves, with no relation to other parts, but
they are parts of one great system, the expression of the one
great idea of education vitalized by religion. The divisions of
our system are necessary to each other, and they stand or fall
together. The object of the Association is best stated in the
words of the Constitution recently adopted:
The object of this Association shall be to keep in the minds
of the people the necessity of religious instruction and training
as the basis of morality and sound education; and to promote
the principles and safeguard the interests of Catholic education
in all its departments.
To advance the general interests of Catholic education, to
encourage the spirit of co-operation and mutual helpfulness
among Catholic educators, to promote by study, conference, and
discussion the thoroughness of Catholic educational work in the
United States.
To help the cause of Catholic education by the publication
and circulation of such matter as shall further these ends.
There is ample room in the field of Catholic activity for an
association which is adapted to promote these ends.
flew Books.
The Disciple of a Saint* by Vicia
THE DISCIPLE OF A SAINT. Scudder, is a striking and indeed
By Vida D. Scudder. in many ways a wonderful book.
Beautiful, strong, original, it offers
to the reader both abundant suggestion and valuable instruc-
tion. The author's brilliant, swift, unlabored style makes the
reading of each page a literary refreshment; her keen obser-
vation, correct and penetrating " psychology," fine idealism, and
rich artistic expression, bespeak for her work serious critical at-
tention.
The romantic interest of the story is slight and will appeal
but little to the superficial novel reader. Touching very deli-
cately and very gravely on the history of a love in which, for
certain deep mystical reasons, human passion and religious as-
piration struggle in bitter rivalry, the writer devotes herself
mainly to pictures of those natural beauties that charm the
lovers of the Italian spring; to impressive scenes drawn from
the history of Avignon, Naples, and the Tuscan cities; to
flashes from old Siena that awaken the modern pilgrim's recol-
lections of Belcaro, the Fonte Gaja, the "Sponsse Christi
Katherinae Domus " ; to sketches that illuminate the shifting
phases of fervor, depression, doubt, and final resolution in the
soul of a sincere and hyper- sensitive Christian. Her selection
of topics and her unquestionably happy literary touch are cal-
culated to please every uncontentious reader.
Praising the many fine qualities of Miss Scudder's work, the
critic may, nevertheless, find it necessary to admit that some
of the sentences are too thought-cumbered to be easily intelli-
gible; that there are passages — such as Bernabo's death-scene —
in which, for some unimaginable reason, the author fails to ex-
hibit her usual acute sense of fitness; and that in the critical
moment at the grotto of Baia, we are dismissed, dramatically
half- aroused and philosophically utterly unsatisfied.
Perhaps, too, despite the author's deft allusions and unmis-
takable accuracy, the historian will not be content. Of course
a tale differs from an essay, and it is true that there is justi-
fication in fact for every assertion made by the author. She
* The Discifle efa Saint. Being the Imaginary Biography of Raniero di Landoccio dei
Pagliaresi. By Vida D. Scudder. New York : £. P. Dutton & Co.
826 NEW BOOKS [Sept,
does not make false pictures. Yet the cautious, scientific in-
stinct, here as everywhere, must fret uneasily at the large privi-
lege assumed by the novelist ; for strong colors, decided lines,
and massed shadows, needed for the purpose of the artist, may
easily create a false impression in the mind of the observer.
With all, their faults, those fourteenth century popes could have
said much in their own defence, and if the pontifical court
bred or tolerated men like Robert of Geneva and William of
Noellet, it qould likewise claim some credit for such as Cardi-
nal Legate Martin and Legate Gaufridus.
Withal it must be said that Miss Scudder pictures not un-
fairly the terrible spiritual crisis of a memorable age. Ned's
meditation on Mount Ventoux— the most significant page of
all the book — urges upon us most masterfully that eternal tor-
ment of honest men, the question as to the relation of the
visible church to the gospel ideal. This problem is here put
in a way to be long remembered. Little wonder that the an-
swer given further on is but half satisfactory. No skill of
words will ever avail to explain that difficulty which each man,
with such help as God affords him, must puzzle out as best he
can for himself. Neri will dwell long in memory as the fine
picture of a soul pressed hard by problems very like those
which the critical mind of the modern Catholic presents to his
own believing heart. Miss Scudder has spoken of the Trecento
without ever removing her finger from the pulse of the genera-
tion that inhabits Europe and America to-day. If her own
philosophy remains still largely hidden from us, and if the
analysis of Neri's mental processes must be called painfully in-
adequate, yet we have to be grateful for a book that at least
partially comforts and consoles.
So many words of criticism in a review of such proportions
as this present one are hardly justified. The book before us
is quite unusual in its excellence, and is vastly superior to what
the readers of the " best sellers " want or understand. Special-
ist in " Catheriniana," Miss Scudder gives the admirers of the
saint a fine, splendid, inspiring piece of interpretation ; close
student of religious phenomena, she presents very boldly an im-
portant spiritual problem ; learned, discriminating, honest, she
leaves us with a principle or two to help us to a tentative so-
lution. Her volume must make its way and do its work
among people who read slowly and to learn, people who pray
1907.] New books 827
over their problems and their trials, people who welcome grate-
fully books that sympathize with poor, puzzled humanity in its
struggling towards ultimate peace.
A friendly hand has collected some
LYRICS. of the best poems and songs* of
By G. H. Miles. George Henry Miles in order to
secure for him a permanent niche
in American literature. Miles, who died nearly forty years ago,
narrowly missed distinction. He had a fine literary taste, and
enough originality to have deserved, if not to have commanded,
success, had he but supplemented it with severe, persevering
labor. This collection contains one poem of genuine beauty
and freshness, and several others so good that one almost feels
angry with the author who, obviously, could have made them
much better with the expenditure of a little careful filing. A
graceful biographical and critical introduction by Mr. Churton
Collins will serve to acquaint the present generation with the
amiable and gifted man who, in the preceding one, adorned
the chair of English in Mount St. Mary's College, Emmets -
burg. Two or three of the poems indicate that Miles, like his
•contemporary Father Ryan, was a staunch Southerner. The
introduction contains a critical letter from Oliver Wendell
Holmes to Fields, the first publisher of some of these poems.
Holmes, while pointing out bluntly enough the chief defect of
the poems — unconscious imitation of greater pens — accurately
marks and handsomely acknowledges their many excellences.
41 Talent, certainly ; taste very fine for the melodies of language ;
deep, quiet sentiment. Genius? If beardless, yea; if in sable-
silvered — and I think this cannot be a very young hand — why
then ... we will suspend our opinion." Miles also tried
his haijd, with no great success, at dramatic composition.
When Edwin Forrest, in his endeavors to raise the standard of
dramatic art in America, offered a prize of one thousand dol-
lars for the best original tragedy that should be offered in
competition, Miles, who had already written many plays, sub-
mitted one entitled Mohammed. Forrest, who acted as judge,
wrote to Miles that among all the plays presented he did not
find one that could be put upon the stage; "but, as your
* Said the Rose. And other Lyrics. By George Henry Miles. New York : Longmans,
Green & Co.
828 • * NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
tragedy of Mohammed has been considered superior to all the
others, I hereby enclose you a cheque for one thousand dollars."
Apart from the merit of the contents tfe warmly welcome this
little volume, as evidence that Catholics have a place, however
modest it may be, in American poetry.
The deserved fame of Bishop Mori.
SERMONS. arty who was, in his day, and it
was the day of Father Tom Burke,
famous as an eloquent preacher in Ireland, conferred a great
vogue on the two volumes of his sermons which were pub-
lished some decades ago. Although the general average of
the collection was high, and some were masterpieces, there
were many which seemed to have been included rather for the
purpose of swelling out the work than from any claim they
had to a permanent place in homiletic literature. A new edi-
tion • in a single volume has just appeared, containing the
best of the original collection. The former bishop of Kerry
was a man of learning and cultivation, of apostolic zeal and
piety. His discourses are solid, practical, eloquent, and ele-
gant.
Another serviceable volume is that of Father Hickey, O.S.B.f
The sermons are brief, very brief, in fact rather suggestions
that may be amplified at the discretion and according to the
bent of the preacher who takes them as the germ of his dis-
course.
A new volume \ of plain sermons, by
PLAIN SERMONS. the Reverend Thomas Dolan, com-
By Fr. Dolan. prises twenty-five discourses on the
chief dogmas of the Church, and the
main points of moral teaching. These sermons are particularly
strong in warning Catholics against such evils as liberal Catholi-
cism, disrespect for authority, the spirit of criticizing doctrines or
doctors, and mixed marriages. We wish they contained equally
strong denunciations of public and private dishonesty, intemper-
ance, and religion on false pretenses. And can any one account
for the remarkable fact that Catholic sermon books never have
a word to say on conscience, character, sincerity, truthfulness,
• Sermons by the Most Reverend Dr. Moriarty, Late Bishop of Kerry. New York : Ben-
xiger Brothers.
t Short Sermons by the Rev. F. P. Hickey, O.S.B. New York : Benziger Brothers.
\ Plain Sermons. By Rev. Thomas S. Dolan. St. Louis: B. Herder.
1907.] new books 829
and similar fundamental matters ? A sermon on the function
and education of conscience is surely as important as exhorta-
tions to make an Easter- duty or to avoid marrying Protestants.
The sermon in this book on the Virgin Mother starts out with
saying that " ever and anon the omnipotent arm of God/ 9
raised in vengeance over sinners, " is drawn powerless to the
side of the Almighty by a creature." Both theology and Eng-
lish usage forbid us to think that an omnipotent arm can ever
fall powerless for any reason whatsoever. Taken as a whole,
however, this volume, with its uncompromising conservatism
and its vigorous style, will, we are sure, do good service to
many priests.
Although the day may never come
THE INQUISITION. when there will be agreement among
historians in the interpretation of
the facts and their estimates of the men and measures of the
Inquisition, yet the indefatigable industry with which the study of
its records is pursued offers ground to hope that we may at least
reach a finality of knowledge regarding the facts. Two new
volumes on the subject from two of the best known historical
students in the Church of France, have just appeared almost
simultaneously. One is by the Bishop of Beauvais, who has
already published some works on the topic. * The other, f which
has rapidly reached a second edition, is from the pen of a
scholar inferior to the other only in hierarchical rank.
The work of Mgr. Douais consists of two parts. The first
is devoted to the historic origin of the Inquisition. His precise
point is to discover the motives and circumstances which gave
birth to the Inquisition as an institution. After clearing the
ground in an introductory chapter touching the ancient persecu-
tion of heretics, he defines the question : " How are we to ex-
plain historically, I do not say the pursuit of heretics by two
or three delegated judges, about 12 10, or 12 15, in some iso-
lated spot of Christian territory, for this was conformable to the
ancient principle of the persecutio hereticorum, but that exceptional
delegation given from 1231 to numerous judges, and, soon, over
almost every country in Europe, Imperial lands, Kingdoms,
and grand fiefs, to carry out the Inquisitio hereticce pravitatis t
»
* L Inquisition. Ses Origines. Sa Procedure. Par Mgr. Douais. Paris: Plon-Nourrit
ct Cie.
t L' Inquisition. Essai Historique et Critique sur le Pouvoir CoerciHf dt VBglise. Par £.
Vacandard. Paris: Bloud et Cie.
830 New Books [Sept,
What was the reason for the institution of a commission with
extraordinary powers and an almost universal jurisdiction over
persons of every country?
The first theory which the author examines is that the clergy,
placed in a precarious position, through the laxity of morals,
and the indifference of bishops to growing heresies, established
the Inquisition as the only means of saving clerical preponder-
ance in Christendom. This theory he rejects for very good
reasons. The next, which he also condemns, as incompatible
with the facts, is one that has found favor with many Catholic
as well as non- Catholic writers — the Inquisition was instituted
to put a stop to the rapid growth of heresy which was alarm-
ing the rulers of the Church. Nor does be admit the other
equally widespread view, that the Inquisition was the inevitable
natural outcome of the normal development of the ecclesiasti-
cal legislation regulating the repression. of heresy. His opinion
is that the Inquisition originated from peculiar factors in the
politico- religious situation during the reign of the Emperor
Frederic II. The Emperor, in pursuance of his own ambitious
design of dominating the Church and the Papacy, was in-
sidiously arrogating to himself the office of persecuting and
punishing heresies, and was thereby establishing himself as a
competent judge in matters of doctrine. Gregory IX. saw
clearly the consequences that would result from Frederic's
policy if he were allowed to proceed in the course he had
adopted. Consequently, to checkmate the imperial designs,
Gregory established an ecclesiastical commission to attend to
the work of extirpating heresy, and thus the civil power was
deprived of any excuse or pretence for interfering in what
appertained strictly to the spiritual authority.
In the second part of his work the author gives an account
of the procedure of the Inquisition. He draws largely upon
the Directorium of Eymerie and the Practica of Bernard Gui.
His object is to extenuate, as far as possible, the harsher
features of the great tribunal and its methods. If his purpose
were less obvious, the book, which displays the result of wide
study, would be more likely to do a real service to the cause.
For example, a good deal of special pleading is devoted to
creating the conviction that the ecclesiastical authority really
left it to the option of the secular power whether or not the
punishment of death should be inflicted on the condemned
1907.] NEW BOOKS 831
heretic — a view which must vanish before the light of some of
the documents cited by Abbe Vacandard.
In the preface of his volume, the Abbe Vacandard, after
intimating that the study of the history of the Inquisition is a
task which apologists can scarcely undertake with a light heart;
promises that he will treat the subject with perfect sincerity.
For, with Newman, he believes that where history registers facts
that are regrettable, the cause of the Church is injured, not by
frankly facing them, but by vainly attempting to suppress or
whitewash them. He deprecates, too, the policy adopted by
many apologists of having recourse to the 7« quoque argument
to defend the Inquisition — "You, who reproach us with the
Inquisition, are you not yourselves responsible for other Inquisi-
tions?" M. Vacandard observes:
When one has spoken thus, one has done nothing except,
by a false manoeuvre, to throw criticism off the scent, to ad-
mit, by implication, that the cause of the Church is not defen-
sible. The blame we would throw on adversaries whom we
wish to reduce to silence falls back upon those friends whom
we would defend. Because the Inquisition of Calvin and the
Terrorists merits the condemnation of history, it does not
therefore follow that the ecclesiastical Inquisition goes scathe-
less. The awkward comparison instituted between the one
and the other, prompts, on the contrary, the thought that
both merit equal blame.
The best defence of the Inquisition, he holds, consists in ex-
amining and judging it, not with regard to the condemnable
conduct of others, but with regard to the principles of morality,
justice, and religion.
The writer keeps his promise to the reader, and exposes the
facts with frank sincerity. And he is able to show that, though
indeed the truth convicts some individuals of having proceeded
to extreme measures, and the age itself of a spirit at variance
with the milder manners of to-day, yet, on the whole, the In-
quisition was a providential and beneficent institution. From
the merely critical point of view, the volume is of high quality.
It traces closely and clearly, though necessarily with brevity,
the particular question which the author proposes to himself;
that is, the origin and development of the employment by the
Church of coercive power in matters of faith, from its first in-
troduction till it reached its full expansion in the Middle Ages.
832 New Books [Sept,
Up till the middle of the fourth century, and even beyond
that period, the author shows, the doctors of the faith who
treat of the means to be employed for the diffusion of Chris-
tianity and the defence of orthodoxy are hostile to the employ,
ment of force.
Not only do they reject absolutely the penalty of death and
lay down the principle which is to prevail in the subsequent
ages — 7 he Church abhors the shedding of blood — but they fur-
thermore proclaim that faith is entirely free, and conscience
is a domain in which violence ought not to have any entry.
He traces the subsequent union of Church and State with
the resulting imperial legislation for the repression of heresies.
At the close of this section, he takes occasion to correct the
false light in which Mr. H. Lea has placed the action of Pope
Leo I. in the case of the Friscillian heresy. The course of
events in the following periods, up to the time of Innocent III,
is carefully sketched in such a way as to make it clear that,
up to the times of the Cathari and the Albigenses, the Church
insisted on rigorous measures only in the case of persistent
disturbers of the public peace whose conversion was hopeless.
He demonstrates also that, on account of the anti- social na-
ture of the doctrines of the Cathari, their extirpation was nec-
essary no less for the defence of civil society than for the pre-
servation of orthodoxy.
It is in the chapter devoted to the introduction of torture
by Innocent IV., in the processes of the Inquisition, that M.
Vacandard most conspicuously redeems his promise of sincerity.
His review of this epoch he sums up as follows:
The impression which results is this : the Church, forget-
ting her traditions of early toleration, borrowed from the Ro-
man code, which had been reinstated by the legists, laws and
practices which savor of ancient barbarism. But once this
criminal cpde was adopted, she strove to attenuate its rigors
in application. If this preoccupation is not always visible—
and it is not in the sentences pronounced against impenitent
heritics — at least it is so in many other circumstances, notably
in the employment of torture, for which she laid down this
rule : Cog ere ciira metnbri diminutionem et mortis periculam.
The question of the responsibility of the ecclesiastical pow-
:
1907.] New Books 833
er for the infliction of the death penalty is treated both by
M. Vacandard and by Mgr. Douais, Both cite, in a great meas-
ure, the same authorities ; but their respective presentations of
the case differ as the address of a counsel for the defence dif-
fers from a judge's charge. The work closes with a long and
careful critical appreciation of the doctrines and facts exposed
in the body of the work. The last words are:
In the matter of tolerance, the Church has no need to seek
for lessons outside her proper history. If, during several cen-
turies, she had treated her own rebellious children with much
greater severity than she did those who were strangers to her,
this, after all, has happened from a want of consistency. To
extend, as she does to-day, to every one marks of her maternal
tenderness, and to lay aside henceforth all material constraint,
it was not necessary that she should seek inspiration from for-
eign example ; it was necessary for her only to revive an in-
terrupted tradition, the tradition of her first doctors.
This able work furnishes an effective foil to the fierce attack
of Mr. Lea's History of the Inquisition; and we are glad to
learn that an English version of it will shortly appear.
Only a finished artist could con-
FATHER GALLWEY. vey, in a gossipy little sketch of
less than a score small pages,* a
set of very definite impressions of a man whose life extended
over eighty years. When we have read Mr. Fitzgerald's trib-
ute to his old teacher and life-long friend, we fee] almost a
sense of personal acquaintance with the " dark-eyed, sallow or
ivory-skinned, almost Italian-looking " Stoneyhurst professor,
" with black glossy hair partly curled, a frail chest, and rather
stooped," who was to be a fashionable director and a famous
preacher for thirty or forty years in England. And the octo-
genarian is, in a few strong, clear lines, depicted as vividly as
the young professor. Father Gallwey delivered a great number
of eloquent funeral discourses in his day. None of them are
more eloquent and none of them half so touching as this trib-
ute paid to his memory by his distinguished pupil. The suc-
cessful author's appreciation of the preacher is worth the at-
•PatktrGaUvity. A Sketch. With Some Early Letters. By bis Old Pupil, Percy Fitt.
gerald, F.S.A. New York: Beniiger Brothers.
VOL. LXXXV.— 53
834 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
tention of the occupants of the pulpit who would willingly learn
what are the qualities of the sermon which impresses the pews.
In his younger days, he was a pleasant companion, fond of
jesting and always in good spirits. He certainly possessed
the gift of humor, a rare thing now. Of a Sunday afternoon
the congregation was well sprinkled with Protestants, who
relished his manly, outspoken style, and for whose benefit he
often dealt with controversial topics. There was no compro-
mise, no smoothing down or smoothing away ; he was almost
harsh, calling a spade a spade, telling them in plain words
that they were mere heretics, and that there was but one
Church. I have known several who came regularly to listen
to him.
His preaching was of a high and remarkable sort — elo-
quent, fluent, solid, and illuminating. No one ever heard
him without improvement, so deep, so new and striking was
all that he said. There was no glitter or tinsel, simply be-
cause there, as in other places* he was in " deadly earnest, 1 '
and merely wanted to do his Master's work. He had a sort
of grim humor, too, in which he indulged when he thought
it would be of profit. Who will forget the little black Bible
which, at one time, he invariably carried with him into the
pulpit? People were always glad to see that little black-
bound Bible ; for his knowledge of the Scriptures was — as
was said of Samuel Weller's — " extensive and peculiar " ; it
was really extraordinary. The convincing way in which he
expounded and illustrated one text by another, turning back-
wards and forwards, and finding what he wanted without de-
lay, was wonderful. He had, indeed, the whole Scripture by
heart, and his simple but profound exegesis settled the faith
of all who listened to him on even a firmer foundation.
The series of letters, most of them half a century old, are
not of much general interest.
This remarkable book • will in-
THE CRISIS IN PUBLIC AND crease the fame which its author
PRIVATE MORALS. has already acquired as one of
By Bureau. the most penetrating and profound
of French students of modern so-
ciological conditions. In his present work he takes up the
problem presented by the acknowledged decadence in both pub-
• La Crise Morale des Temps Nouveaux. Par Paul Bureau. Paris : Bloud et Cie.
1907.] New books 835
lie and private life, df moral standards, which is causing alarm
to thoughtful men elsewhere than in France, although in that
dountry, if we may accept M. Bureau's picture as faithful, it
is more acute than it is with ourselves. While his description
of affairs is sombre enough to gratify the pessimist, M. Bu-
reau's purpose is not to promote or confirm discouragement,
but to inspire active co-operation for reform.
In the first part of his work he puts the question, why is
it that amid the magnificent spectacle of material, intellectual,
and, in many respects, social progress, in the modern world,
nevertheless man seems to have lost the power to adjust his
social life to the demands of the age ? Then, in three* lurid
chapters, he describes the extent to which disorder and de-
cadence have spread in private and collective life, and the
rapidity with which profoundly immoral views of marital and
parental life and the relations of the sexes have spread, not
merely theoretically, but practically.
What are the causes of the present moral crisis? To an-
swer this question M. Bureau examines the trend and influence,
first of the modern spirit; and secondly of the traditional one
— les enfants de la tradition. To each party he gives credit for
a measure of beneficent influence and valuable contributions to
the progress and amelioration of human conditions. Each one
he convicts, too, of having, through an exclusive devotion to
its own principles or prejudices, and a resulting misunder-
standing of and hatred for the other, contributed to the pres-
ent crisis, so alarming to serious men of all shades. Where is
the remedy to be sought? Some progress towards a solution
of the problem has been made ; a certain measure of agree-
ment has been established among all parties. But, argues M.
Bureau, there is one point upon which profound disagreement
still exists, and it is, precisely, the point which, above all
others, must be satisfactorily settled, before any general ameli-
oration in present conditions can be hoped for: that point is,
the origin and the authority of the moral precept.
Two chapters are employed to demonstrate the failure of
evolutionary ethics or the ethics of human solidarity to establish
the authority of the moral law, without the acknowledgment of
which the decadence in morals must continue. to grow. But
elsewhere there are signs of renovation. It is becoming obvious
to all that there can be no protection for stable social bonds
836 New books [Sept,
except in the religious sentiment. Concurrently Catholics, les
infants de la tradition, are awakening to their mistakes, and,
especially, they are beginning to see the adjustments which
they must make in order to exercise their legitimate influence
on modern life. The author offers an effective answer to the
two favorite objections against religious belief: (1) The au»
tonomy of man is inconsistent with a belief in a moral ruler of
the world ; (2) Religious belief has been made an instrument to
strengthen the hands of royal and aristocratic tyranny in the
oppression of the people. What hope is there for a speedy
acceptance of the religious idea on which alone the needed
moral regeneration can be founded ?
No one can say what length of time- must yet elapse before
the immense majority of the citizens of progressive societies
shall accept one and the same moral doctrine, and establish
among themselves that union of minds which other epochs
have known. We must, however, desire that this moment
may not be far distant, lor until it arrives, individual moral-
ity must continue to decline. As Renan has said, it is the
austere traditions of our fathers, maintained through many
ages, which have accumulated the intellectual and moral
capital which we are now engaged in spending. Every year
this capital diminishes, and it is not inexhaustible.
This is a book' which will repay study; its lessons and con-
clusions have application beyond the country from which they
have been drawn.
For some books a short notice,
THE MASTER TOUCH. however laudatory in its general
By W. Q. terms, would be something of an
injustice. The purpose and the
power of such books are one with the entire work. We have
just finished reading such a book. It is a small volume* of
but sixty- four pages, yet every page of it has its own lesson,
its own beauty, its own appeal. A whole philosophy of life is
summed up in The Master Touch, and we have seldom read a
more practical, a more appealing allegory than' this story of
John's life and death by W. Q. For all who have the taste to
enjoy good writing, and the heart to feel the value and worth
of life, this little volume will be a treasure. Two selections
head the work which will give an idea of its motive:
• The Master Touch, By W. Q. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
1907.J New books 837
Surely a wonderful and endearing mercy it is to have been
created even into this sinful world.
Let us thirst after the Presence of our Jesus till our hearts
ache with thirsting, yet let us not so thirst for his glorious
Presence in Heaven as to forget, or overlook, or make light
of, his dear Presence which we already have upon earth.
The following passage is taken from the last pages of the
book. John has suffered a long term of unjust captivity. He
was glad to welcome anything that would relieve the awful
monotony of the black days and the still blacker nights.
" Where was God ? Was there a God at all ? "
In the bitterness of his soul John doubted it. . . . Pres-
ently something soft fell with a flutter through the grating,
and, putting out his hand, John felt the quivering body of a
little bird. He took it in his hands and kissed it with his
lips. How long it was since he had had anything to kiss.
He felt the tremulous beating of its little heart.
" O God ! O God ! " he cried. " Oh, do not let it die ! "
Then he laughed aloud. ''One minute I say, like the
fool, ( There is no God,' and the next minute, when I want
anything, I cry to him as if he were present and could hear
me, even in this awful place."
The weird echo of his mocking words and laughter had
scarcely died away, when a clear light shone in his cell — a
light clear and steady, far brighter than lightning flashes —
so that his eyes were for an instant dazzled. Then he dis-
tinctly saw a Hand — a Hand held out to him as if to ask an
alms, and what had John to give ?
He saw, as in a flash, the moorland pathway leading from
the forest to his mother's door stretched clearly before him,
the fragrance of a lily — the lily which that same Hand had
once demanded of him — filled the air.
What had he now to give ? Only a little, trembling, half-
fledged bird ; only one priceless treasure, and he had prayed
that God would spare its tiny life to him. Clearly God did
not ask much, but all.
But this time John had learnt his lesson. He recog-
nized the Hand that was able to keep what he could only lose.
Without an instant's hesitation he laid the little robin in the
outstretched palm, and it withdrew once more into the In-
visible. . . . Days passed. Each morning John rose
up from his hard pallet and praised God. Each night when
he laid down to rest he praised him anew. His prayers were
838 New Books [Sept.,
no longer half-despairing petitions. They could scarcely be
said to be petitions at all. They were acts of praise and adora-
tion. Each day the captive awoke with an object in life. He
had his God to worship and adore, and this occupation, which
he carried out faithfully, kept his mind clear and healthy.
Thus, day by day learning conformity to the higher will, he
rose step by step towards a fuller, nobler life.
Two temptations seem to beset the
ST. BERNARDINE OF SIENA, biographers of a saint: one is to
By Thureau-Dangin. idealize the subject, forgetting en-
tirely his defects and exaggerating
out of all proportion the influence he exerted upon the com-
munity in which he lived ; and the other is to attribute to Di-
vine intervention every extraordinary event associated in any
way with his career. It is the yielding to these tendencies,
perhaps more than any other cause, that has brought the lives
of the saints into disfavor with a large portion of the reading
public. The volume * before us, because it contains but few
evidences of* these imperfections, merits special commendation.
The author of the Life of St. Bernardine of Siena pictures to
us a strong, noble character, possessing human faults and weak-
nesses, yet highly spiritual, and impelled for the most part by
supernatural motives. Though by no means neglecting the mi-
raculous in the saint's life, the author hesitates to characterize
as undoubted miracles coincidences whose counterpart may be
seen in the lives of sinful men. Written in a bright, entertain-
ing style, and translated, as it is, into pure English, the work
reaches the same high standard of excellence as does the Life
of St. Philip Neri by Cardinal Capecelatro, and the series of
the lives of the saints edited by M. Henri Joly. It deserves
to be widely read.
Religious communities, and readers
8T. JOHN OF THE CROSS, of spiritual books in general, will
be pleased to know of a new edi-
ct The Ascent of Mu Carmel } \ with a preface by Father
■Mum on the development of mysticism in the Carmelite
resent publication is a reprint of the edition of
Graphical errors here and there corrected. St.
«- By Paul Thureau-Dangin. Translated by Baroness G. Von
feft ^ ft Co,
B» $t. John ol the Cross. Translated by David Lewis.
fcltanKnaaasu Loudon: Thomas Baker.
1907.] New Books 839
John is too distinguished a master of the spiritual life and his
work too well known, to need any introduction from us at the
present day. Suffice it to say that this classic of the spiritual
life, so much in demand and so eagerly sought for, has now
been put within easy reach of librarians and superiors, a favor
which will be deeply appreciated by those who desire to see
the wider spread of the fine mystical ideals inseparably con-
nected with the names of St. John and St. Teresa.
For the last three centuries the
- FATHER BAKER'S book known as Sancta Sophia has
SANCTA SOPHIA. been imparting precious spiritual
lessons, and in particular most
valuable instructions on the prayer of contemplation to the
English- reading world. In the minds of many, the book as it
stood in the Cressy edition could hardly be improved upon.
At the same time we must recognize that a wider circle of
readers might be attracted by an edition somewhat more mod-
ern in form. One of Father Baker's spiritual disciples, of the
order of St. Benedict, recently undertook to perform this use-
ful and indeed very difficult piece of work ; and the result lies
before us in the shape of a handsome volume • reproducing
the treatises of Sancta Sophia y but so amended and revised that
the substance of Father Baker's teaching is now embraced
within a comparatively small compass, and placed at a price
within the reach of all. The average reader will be much bet-
ter able to digest the teaching of this great book when reading
it with the help of the careful editing done by Father Weld-
Blundell.
The second and concluding volume
HISTORY OF THE INDEX, of Dr. Putnam's history of the In-
By Putnam. dexf carries down the narrative
of that Congregation from 1700
almost to the present day. In reviewing the former volume
we remarked that Dr. Putnam tries sincerely to be impartial,
and evidently conceives of the historian's office in a high and
conscientious manner. That encomium we have no reason to
qualify, now that we have gone thrpugh his work as a whole.
* Contemplative Prayet. Ven. Father Augustine Baker* s teaching thereon: Jrom "Sancta
Sophia." By Dom B. Weld-Blundell, O.S.B. New York : Benziger Brothers.
t The Censorship of the Church of Rome, and Its Influence on the Production and Distribu-
tion of Literature, By George H. Putnam. Vol. II. 1700-1900. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons.
840 New Books [Sept,
It is fairly clear that he is not in sympathy with the practical
operation, if indeed with the underlying principle, of the Index.
But his endeavor is not to thrust this view of his upon us, but
rather to set down along with evidence which appears to be
damaging, such expressions of Catholic apologists as tend to
put the Index legislation in a favorable light. We do not
mean to say that the book is free from hints and phrases to
which the majority of Catholics would object. But, looking at
the matter impartially, we are bound to credit Dr. Putnam with
the desire to be a just and equitable historian.
The volume before us gives an extensive selection from* the
catalogue of condemned books, and contains a very thorough
statement of recent legislation pertaining to the Index. The
author concludes his account of the modern Index with names
so recently in the public mind as Houtin and Loisy. We must
again express the hope that Catholic scholars will soon under-
take for the English-reading world a history of the Inquisition
and of the Index. Our present literature is utterly barren in
both these fields ; and we cannot gracefully point out the short-
comings of non- Catholic works until we can boast of better
from ourselves.
The series of articles — of which
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE this volume • is a reprint— published
CONGO. by Professor Starr in the Chicago
By Starr. Tribune, last spring, concerning the
Congo question, enabled the people
of America to pierce the fogs which religious and national preju-
dices, combined with political interests, were rapidly raising
around the topic. Inspired by reading the lurid literature which
the Congo Reform Association at Boston had scattered broad-
cast, Professor Starr resolved to see for himself. He went to
the Congo and traveled thousands of miles on the lower Congo
and two of its greater tributaries. In order that he might pre-
serve his independence, and anticipate future imputations on
his impartiality — a wise precaution, as the issue proved-rhe
paid his own expenses throughout the entire journey. He
visited government posts, missions, trading stations, native vil-
lages; conversed with state- officials, missionaries, traders, native
chiefs, plantation workers, and, everywhere, investigated per-
sonally the conditions of the natives and the methods of the
whites. He saw much to criticize — and he criticizes freely
* The Truth About the Congo. ^ Yiote*«H YTt&w\^^»\axt. Ottawa: Forbes & Co.
1907.] NEW BOOKS S41
and frankly. But of the frightful outrages, such as he had ex-
pected to meet everywhere, he says there was aimost nothing.
I found at many places a condition of the negro population
far happier than I had dreamed it possible. The negro of the
Congo — or Bantu, if you please — is a born trader. He is
imitative to a degree. He is acquisitive, and charmed with
novelties. He is bright and quick, remarkably intelligent.
. . . In disposition variable and emotional, he quickly
forgets his sorrows. I saw hundreds of natives who where
working happily, living in good houses, dressing in good
clothes of European stuff and pattern, and saving property.
This number will rapidly increase, I have no doubt.
This general statement is supported by detailed descriptions
of the conditions which he noted, Apart from its controversial
import, the book is a fascinating story of travel, and conveys
a vivid picture of life among both the natives and the white
residents of the Congo. What Professor Starr asks, is the
motive underlying the fierce assault upon the Congo administra-
tion? His answer is that the agitation may be traced ultimately
to Great Britain's desire to grab the Congo for herself. In
proof of his conviction, he quotes from British officials and from
missionaries and civilians imbued with British sentiments. "Of
course," said one subject of King Edward on board an Atlantic
steamer, "the Belgians will lose the Congo. We have got to
have it. We must build the Cape-to. Cairo road. You know
we wanted the Transvaal. We found a way to get it; we have
it. So we will find some way to get the Congo " These words
of a young man voice, thinks the Professor, the sentiments of
older ones, who are too wary to speak out so boldly.
Ought the United States to interfere? If the interest attach-
ing just now to this question is very much less than it was
when Mr. Starr published his five peremptory reasons against
interference, the change is due in no small measure to Mr.
Starr's arguments, which forcibly struck the temperate American
public, and produced an effect which the professional politician
was not slow to observe. Briefly, Mr. Starr's reasons for not
interfering are as follows: First, it is not our business to police
Central Africa; second, American intervention in the Congo,
which would be playing England's game, would be resented
by France and Germany; third, if the Congo were divided
842 NEW BOOKS [Sept,
among the European powers, the blacks would continue to
suffer; would we then still continue our noble efforts in their
behalf? fourth, " we should not interfere unless we wish to
present a glaring example of national inconsistency. Distance
lends enchantment to the view. We are solicitous about the
Bantu in their home under the rule of Leopold II. ; we have
12,000,000 or more of them in the United ' States. The Bantu
in the Congo we love. We suffer when he is whipped; shud-
der when he is put upon a chain-gang; shriek when he is
murdered. Yet here he may be whipped, put on a chain-gang,
murdered, and if any one raise an outcry, he is a sentimentalist
Our negro problem is a serious and difficult one. We do not
know how to treat it. But it is at our door, and we can study
it and find out some mode of treatment. But the years pass
and we do nothing. With this example constantly before us,
one would suppose that we would hesitate in meddling with the
equally complicated problem, regarding conditions of which we
know little or nothing, on the other side of the globe." Lastly:
With our own record in the Philippines, emblazoned as it is
with the official histories of Major Waller and General "Jake"
Smith, we cannot bring clean hands to the reform of the Belgian
administration in Africa. Besides, if we desire to do philan-
thropic work on the Dark Continent, why have we neglected
the golden opportunity offered to us by Liberia, a nation for
which we are peculiarly responsible ? Just now it too is attract-
ing British attention. Great Britain " does not now need our
help in pulling chestnuts from the fire there, and there has been
a strange silence and ignorance in this country regarding it as
a new sphere for English influence. If we assist England in
expanding her African possessions at the expense of the Congo
Free State, Liberia will be the next fraction of Africa to suc-
cumb to English rule. England's methods of procedure are
various. It might be a useful lesson for our politicians and
statesmen to study with care Liberia's prospects. We are still
young in the business of grabbing other people's lands." Be-
sides the service he has done in elucidating the truth about the
Congo, Professor Starr, by coming out to oppose arrogant pre-
judice, has given a valuable example of a kind of courage very
much needed in this country, where we too easily accept at their
own valuation busybodies who masquerade as philanthropists
and reformers.
1907.] New Books 843
This compact pamphlet* of about
FREEDOM THROUGH THE seventy pages is a reply from the
TRUTH. chaplain of the Episcopal bishop of
By Johnson. Vermont to a publication entitled,
Freedom in the Church, by another
Episcopalian clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Allen. The purpose of Dr.
Allen, as interpreted by his opponent, is to vindicate for the
clergy liberty to hold whatever views they please regarding the
articles of the Apostles 9 Creed, provided they retain belief in
the Trinity : " The other articles of the Creed, such as ' con-
ceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,' are
comparatively unimportant." Under the criticism to which it
is here subjected, Dr. Allen's attempt to show that the Church
of England varied its teaching on the Incarnation appears very
feeble His citations from the Fathers are frequently inaccurate,
and, still oftener, his interpretations of them are perversities or
blunders. While we cannot, everywhere, agree with the Rev. Mr.
Johnson's own reading of facts and authorities, our sympathies
are with him in his endeavor to defend the dogmatic principle
against the movement which, under the name of reasonable
liberty, would plunge revealed religion into the all- corroding
rationalism of to-day. Though Catholic theologians would dif-
fer from him in the signification of the term Church in the
following passage, they would willingly approve of its tenor as
an advice to those who are unnecessarily disturbed regarding
the results of criticism on certain elements of the Old Testa-
ment.
It is (therefore) worth while to realize that the truths of the
Apostles' Creed are not in any way affected by these Old
Testament discussions. The evidence for our Lord's resur-
rection and for his birth ot a Virgin Mother remains what it
has always been. The traditional belief about the Gospels of
St. Mark and St. Luke and St. John, and St. Paul's Epistles,
has the support of all the evidence it ever had ; only that evi-
dence has been brought out more vividly through recent dis-
cussions. The Church may still, with the same confidence as
of old, ask of each person that comes to Holy Baptism : " Dost
thou believe all the articles of the Christian Faith as contained
in the Apostles' Creed ? " And he may still answer undoubt-
ingly: "I do."
* Freedom Through the Truth. By Rev. George B. Johnson, A.M. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co.
jForeign periodicals.
The Tablet (6 July): That Stephen Langton recognized the
Bishop of Rome not only as a primus inter pares but
also as the absolute ruler of Christendom, is the theme
of an editorial.
(20 July) : The Roman correspondent writes of the ex-
posure of the Secret League of Catholics in Germany.
Some of its tenets were decidedly modern ; its aim being
the practical exercise of the lay apostolate for the sound
and circumspect progress of Catholicity. M. Briand's
recent bill receives a lengthy notice. The real purpose
of the bill, we are told, is not to simplify the procedure
of transferring ecclesiastical property by hastening the
solution of legal difficulties, but rather mere spoliation.
(27 July): The new Syllabus is in every way a remark-
able document. " Even though it be not an exercise of
her infallibility, Roma locuta est. Both the liberal and
conservative schools, although imbued with the most
laudable motive of best serving the Church, have caused
great distress amongst a large number of souls. To put
an end to such a deplorable state of things an authori-
tative utterance was a necessity. In the Syllabus the
authoritative utterance is found. The Decree, however, is
not infallible, yet it is binding on Catholics " in the sense
that they must acquiesce in the teaching therein con-
tained with an assent at once full, perfect, and absolute."
The Month (Aug.): A brief word of "respectful announcement
and adhesion " is given the new Syllabus. It does not,
as was prophesied by certain critics, " declare war on
the most certain acquisitions of modern, investigation,
and render the position of Catholic scholars henceforth
impossible." The writer continues: " Now that the Holy
Office has brought all these propositions together, and
enabled us to see in them what they purport to be, an
interpretation of the general scheme of Catholic faith
and practice, can we, whilst recognizing in the Syllabus
a fair and singularly moderate statement of some well-
known theories, help feeling that the interpretation is
one which is quite irreconcilable with Catholicism as we
received it from our forefathers and find it in our past
1907. ] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845
history, and one which, so far from justifying, under-
mines and discredits the whole tone and character of
our spiritual life ? " Apropos of the Garibaldi Cen-
tenary, Fr. Thurston illustrates the fanatical attitude of
the patriot toward Catholicism. "As to his own reli-
gious convictions, he sometimes, as Mr. Trevelyan points
out, called himself an atheist; sometimes in his speeches
and manifestoes he shrouded himself in a sort of nebu-
lous Christianity." His visit to England in 1864 had
the effect of disillusioning many of his worshippers in
that country. The University of Oxford and the
Reformation is the subject of further treatment by the
Rev. Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B.
The National Review (August): Thirty pages of the present
number are devoted to current events of the month and
as many topics treated. Among the more interesting
are: The Hague Conference; Free Trade and Socialism;
The Crusade Against the Lords and the British Foreign
Policy. J. T. Garvin gives an estimate of Mr. Cham-
berlain's power and popularity in English politics.
Gallio expresses the opinion that the English people are
not convinced of the necessity of tariff reform, but that
the country is going for the measure "with a landslide
that will more resemble a herd of cattle in panic than a
country's solemnly recorded judgment." In " Teuton
and Turk " an account is given of Germany's attempt to
gather strength by entering into defensive alliances. The
policy began with Von Moltke. A. M. Low is of the
opinion that our relations with Japan are sure to grow
more and more embittered unless the agitation for exclu-
sion is speedily suppressed. He thinks that the Kaiser's
attitude ot late towards Americans points to more friendly
relations between the United States and Germany, but
that a treaty of alliance between the two countries is
hardly possible in the near future. Under the title
" The Problems and Perils of Socialism," J. Strachey de-
fends the British Constitutional Association against the
charge that the organization has been " too negative, too
abstract, and too theoretical, and therefore not practical
in its attitude towards current political questions." He
admits that they made insistence on certain great prin-
846 Foreign Periodicals [Sept,
ciples a thing of prime importance, but he considers this
to be eminently practical. There is danger of the na-
tion forgetting fundamental principles, and because of
this forgetfulness allowing the foundations of social and
political institutions to be swept away. . The principles for
which the Association stands, he says, are " liberty and
individualism as against State servitude and Socialism."
Expository Times (July) : Rev. J. Hugh Beibitz, in the leading
paper, sketches and compares the four modern views on
the Atonement as exposed respectively by Archdeacon
Wilson, Dr. Dale, Dr. Moberley, and Albrecht Ritschl.
He finds these theories weak in different respects and
somewhat obscure as to the meaning of the Cross, of
Christ's sacrifice, and of man's reconciliation to God.
An article of a homiletic character, entitled "See-
ing Christ," by the late Dr. Field, gives an explanation
and commentary on John xvi. 16. Rev. Herbert W.
Horwill, writing on the exegesis of Christian Science,
takes Mrs. Eddy and her book Science and Health se-
verely to task. After giving several instances, one more
astounding than the other, of this " spiritual " interpre-
tation of the Scriptures, the writer is aptly reminded of
those days when the giants of biblical criticism were
innocent of the historical sense. Mr. K. T. Frost has
an article on " The Siege of Jericho and the Strategy
of the Exodus."— There is a short appreciation of the
late Gaston Frommel and his place among contemporary
writers on ethics and religious psychology.
(Aug.) : The first number of The Oxford and Cam-
bridge Review is noticed at some length. Rev. J.
Dick Fleming writes an estimate of Ritschl, taking as a
basis that theologian's three dominant ideas: the rela-
tivity of knowledge, the worth of judgments, and the
Christian consciousness. Prof. Sayce reports the work
done by the American Assyriologists, Professors Hilprecht
and Clay, in the discovery and deciphering of cuneiform
tablets. — —Rev. J. G. Skemp has an article on "The
Humanism' of Christ." Mr. Oesterley has a study
of the biblical account of the " Burning Bosh. 9 ' He re-
jects the literal acceptation of the story and argues that
it is largely legendary.
907.] Foreign Periodicals 847
r he Church Quarterly Review (July): An article on* " The New
Theology/' apropos of the wide discussion provoked by
Mr. R. T. Campbell's book bearing that title. The wri-
ter sees abundant reasons for believing that a new the-
ology is necessary, and would engage in no quarrel with
any system simply on the ground of its novelty. "We
know more of what Christianity means each time a new
system of philosophy comes to assist in interpreting it.' 9
But Mr. Campbell is neither philosopher nor theologian.
He is only a popular preacher meddling with the phi-
losophy of religion. And the result is a " repellent "
book. The underlying defect in the work, according to
the writer, is that Mr. Campbell first caricatures the old
theology, presenting it in its cruder forms, and then kills
it with irreverent ridicule. The system he substitutes is
no improvement. If his words mean what they say, his
new theology is pantheistic, and then deistic. But he is
not consistent with himself. He forgets his role as phi-
losopher, lapses into preacher, and contradicts himself.
The writer finds more worth in W. L. Walker's What
About the New Theology f and in P. T. Forsyth's articles
on " The Newest Theology," etc., in The British Weekly.
An interesting article on " William Archer Butler,"
first professor of mental and moral philosophy in the
University of Dublin, and " one of the greatest preachers
in the Church of Ireland." Born of a Protestant father
and a Catholic mother, he was brought up a Catholic,
but became a member of the Established Church. He
was remarkable in several characters — poet, preacher, lec-
turer, controversialist, pastor. He sympathized to a de-
gree with W. G. Ward's Ideal of a Christian Churchy
and admired Newman immensely, but took issue with
him on the ground of the "Development" theory.
The Examiner, Bombay (13 July): Contains the first install-
ment of a history of the Bombay mission. The sketch
is a general outline which may be filled in later ; and
which it is hoped will arouse thfe interest of those who
are in a position to work out the subject for themselves.
The time from 1530, when the first Portuguese mission-
aries appeared, is divided into five periods: The first
embraces the efforts of the missionaries along the west
848 Foreign periodicals [Sept,
coast of India. The remaining four cover the events
4 which mark the life of the Church in the island of Bom-
bay from 1534 to the present time.— An account is
given of the recent mission to colored Catholics in St.
Augustine's Church, Washington, D. C, by priests from
the Apostolic Mission House. Sixty converts were re-
ceived by Rev. Father Doyle. Commenting on this fact,
the writer shows the adaptibility of the Church to the
negro's love of ceremony and enthusiasm in his religious
life.
Le Correspondant (10 July): Mgr. Le Roy, writing of the state
of affairs in the Congo, claims that intellectually and
morally this state has progressed as no other has in his-
tory. The administration has had its faults, but it has
been equal to the occasion, and will welcome comparison
with that of any other African colony. The attacks made
upon Catholic missionaries have their birth in the Prot-
estant missionary journals and the anti-religious sheets
of Belgium. These reports are without foundation.
Ernest Daudet contributes an article on the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle of 1818. France for the past eight
years, with a zeal that is admirable, has been, taking
every means at her disposal to stem the tide of tuber-
culosis. Heretofore all attention has been directed to
the adult already infected. Professor Grancher has lately
come forth with the idea that if tuberculosis is to be
successfully checked, predisposed children must be pre-
• served from it during infancy. He advises the institution
of schools in healthy places to be given up entirely to
children who are delicate and predisposed to pulmonary
diseases. M. Paul Gaultier writes on the art of Ver-
sailles.— Auguste Boucher contributes his usual monthly
criticism of the policy and deeds of the French govern-
ment.
(25 July): In an article, ''France, Austria, and Italy in
1870," M. Henri Welschinger labels as false the state-
ment contained in a recent work, Rome and Napoleon IIL %
that, the Third Empire was ruined by its defence of the
temporal power. A. Feugere contributes a new lot of
unedited letters of Beranger. Lucien de Valroger, writ-
% oil "Parliamentary Tyranny," shows that the people
f.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 849
of France are entirely at the mercy of their legislators.
They have no court of appeal in the event of their rights
being violated. They have no court to test the legality
of legislation. M. Valroger urges the drafting of a con-
stitution in which the inviolable rights of fcitizens will be
recognized. He also urges the institution of a court, after
the fashion of the Supreme Court of the United States,
to test the constitutionality of a law before it is pro-
mulgated. Mgr. Battifol reviews Abb6 Calvet's Life of
Abbe Gustave More/, late professor in the Catholic Insti-
tute of Paris. In "The Polish Question in Prussia"
General Bourelly discusses the social, political, economic,
religious state of the Prussian Poles in the beginning of
the twentieth century.
Revue Benedictine (July) : " The Unpublished Commentary
of the Latin Bishop Epiphanius on the (Synoptic) Gos-
pels," by Dom G. Morin, is worthy of perusal by those
interested in the study of biblical exegesis. "The
Conceptions of Martyrdom Among the Irish," by Dom
Gougaud, shows that the Irish had an idea of martyr-
dom peculiarly their own. Red martyrdom signified the
shedding of blood for the faith ; white, a life vowed to
chastity ; green, penitence. The author thinks Provi-
dence may have given them this conception of martyr-
dom because their peculiar tribute to the faith has been
endless sorrow and suffering rather than actual blood-
shed. Dom Ildefonse Schuster concludes his account
of the restoration of the Abbey of Farfa. He gives
among other noteworthy facts of eleventh century his-
tory, a short life of Hugh of Farfa, who took a prominent
part in the revival of monastic discipline and morality.
ue du Monde Catholique (1 July): "The Study of Christ
From the Viewpoint of Jewish History," is continued
through this and the following number by M. l'Abbe
Barret. M. TAbbd J. Chauvel discusses the question
of life on other planets, and the relation of this question
to certain biblical texts and dogmas. " The number
of Huguenots expatriated by the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes," writes Abbd Rouquette, " has been greatly
exaggerated." Documents are cited to substantiate -his
contention.
VOL. LXXXV.— 54
856 Foreign periodicals [Sept,
(15 July): A r^sum^ of press appreciations of Pope Leo
XIII. is given by Mgr. Justin Ffevre. It is the first of
a series of articles whose aim is to determine the popu-
lar estimate of the late pope's character and ability.
Studi Religiosi (May-June) : L. Visconte contributes an article
on the psychological aspect of religious conversion ;
tracing the lines along which such a study should be
conducted ; and gives his conclusions as a result of his
study of the subject in its various forms. A second
article shows that spurious acts of the martyrs compiled
during the Middle Ages extravagantly supplied the de-
ficiency to be found in the very few authentic narratives
of the Acts of the Martyrs of the first two or three cen-
turies. Domenico Battaini continues his study of the
Catholic Revival in England. And S. Minocchi writes
on Biblical Cosmogony.
La Democratic Chretienne (July): Two chapters whose theme
is social morality are quoted from M. Paul Lapeyre's
Science and Life. The development of moral forces is
described and the importance of authority in every de-
m partment of life made clear. M. YAbb6 Paul Six
makes answer to the charge that conflict exists between
social and religious works. The responsibility of the
Church in general, and of the priest in particular, to de-
vote himself to the social apostolate is pointed out by
the writer. Joseph de Maistre, in his attitude toward
Catholic socialism, is the object of discussion by M.
l'Abbe Calippe.
La Revue Apologetique (June): M. G. Lahousse begins a mar-
shaling of evidence, external and internal, for the Jo-
hannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel. The "Su-
pernatural Order " receives careful definition from the
pen of M. Jacques Laminne. He considers it well to in-
sist on this as a fundamental consideration, that the
distinction between natural and supernatural rests in the
final analysis on the distinction between the world and
God. M. H. M. Villard champions the cause of de-
votion to the Sacred Heart. "The Catholic Renais-
sance in England " is concluded in this issue.
Etudes (5 July): P. Adhemar d'Ales, continuing his sketch of
the role played by tradition in the preservation and dis-
1907.] Foreign Periodicals 851
cernment of doctrine, treats of the Reformation period
and the subsequent controversial era. A very interest-
ing account, based chiefly on the private correspondence
of the bishops concerned in the affair, of the compulsory
resignation of the French episcopate, incidental to the
establishment of the Napoleonic Concordat, is begun
by P. Dudon.— — P. Joseph de Tonqu&lec criticizes ad-
versely the idea of truth, necessary or free, as he finds
it exposed by some advocates of la nouydle philosophic,
chiefly M. Le Roy. P. Cros describes the growth of
the legend concerning the "first miracle of Manresa" —
the restoration to life of a drowned hen by St. Ignatius.
Under the title, " L'Angleterre Religieuse," a writer
discusses how the various Christian bodies in England find
themselvts united by their respective activities in the edu-
cation question, the temperance campaign, and various
charitable works.
(20 July) : P. Alexandre Brou defends the missionary or-
ders, especially the Jesuits, from the charge that they be-
trayed the cause of the Gospel in several countries,
especially in Japan, inasmuch as they failed to establish
seminaries for the training of a native priesthood.
"La Crise Religieuse d'Israel," deals with the enormous
lapse from Judaism going on among the Jews every where
to-day, which, the writer argues, is principally owing to the
efforts of various Christian missionary organizations.
P. Dudon concludes his account of the resignation of
the French bishops ynder Napoleon; and he pays an
eloquent tribute to those men who so loyally effaced
themselves at the order of the Holy Father. P. Adhemar
d'Ales replies to a letter, which is reproduced, of P.
Laberthonniere, who protests against the tone of a criti-
cism published in the Etudes (June 20) by P. Adhemar
d'Ales on the book of MM. Chevalier and Legendre,
the preface to which was written by P. L. Laberthon-
niere.— —The work of M. de Lamarzelle, in which he con-
trasts the principles of the social democrats with the
Christian democracy expressed in the teachings of Leo
XIII. and Pius X., is briefly reviewed with high com-
mendation.
Revue Pratique cT Apologctique (1 July): H. Lesetre discusses
852 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
•
the question of faith. Following the accustomed method,
he decides that faith can be lost; that in the majority
of cases its loss is culpable; that prayer can regain it
• Ph. Ponsard, concluding his series, gives an exposi-
tion of the advantages and disadvantages, in college life,
of study circles, of the St. Vincent de Paul conferences,
and of college patronages. It is the conviction of E.
Mangenot that the four Gospels are unanimous in their
testimony concerning the burial of Jesus. His arguments
are directed chiefly against M. Le Roy and M. Loisy.
As a complement to an article by Vincent McNabb,
which appeared in the Journal of Theological Studies of
April, 1907, E. Vacandard makes a few reflections on
the virginal conception as witnessed to by St. Mark.
E. Terrasse defines fanaticism and compares it with the
religion of Christ.
(15 July): In his final contribution to the study of the
boyhood of Christ, A. Durant investigates the Scriptural
accounts concerning the dreams of Joseph and of the
Magi; the journeys of the Magi; the massacre; and
finally the genealogies of Christ. M. Salembier opens
a series of articles on " The Great Schism of the West."
His first installment is a detailed historical narrative of
the schism. V. Ermoni gives an account of the history
of religions. He finds the various theories on this sub-
ject reducible to three main heads: the cosmological, the
sociological, and the anthropological. These he states and
criticizes at length. Father Tyrrell defends himself
against the sharp criticism of M. Lebreton who, in the
February 1st number of this review, insinuated that
Father Tyrrell had " no more respect for the ecumenical
definitions of the Church than for theological conclusions,"
and accused him of fideism — a doctrine carrying with it
exclusion from the Church. Father Tyrrell defends his
position, denies that he is a fideist % and maintains his
Catholicity sine addilo. Immediately following this is
a response by M. Lebreton, in which he vindicates his
position. He admits that his "accusations are grave,"
but proceeds to verify them by appealing to Father
Tyrrell's own writings.
(1 Aug.): A. Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute,
1907.] Foreign Periodicals 853
of Paris, gives a brief Commentary on the recent Syllabus.
He is struck with the moderate tone of the Papal con-
demnations. No error is condemned by Pius X. save such
as were already reprobated by the Catholic conscience.
And as for • Catholic scholars, their way is now made
clearer and more sure. The text is given of a letter
sent to the Pope by the Catholic Institute of Paris
in regard to the Syllabus. This letter states that, al-
though the professors of the Institute are scattered on
their summer vacations, the rector and the deans of the
various faculties deem it their duty to send to Rome at
once the cordial approval with which their university
receives the Syllabus. Later another letter is to be
sent expressing the same support and. signed by the en-
tire teaching corps. E. Terrasse answers those who
maintain that a good life is religion enough. '
Razon y Fe (July) : V. Mirtteguiaga discusses at some length
the "Proposed Law upon Oaths and Affirmations."
" The Restoration of Studies Down to the Time ' of
Charlemagne," receives attention from R. Ruiz Amado.
G. Portillo briefly summarizes the ecclesiastical his-
tory of Spain in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The Social Movement, which is now receiving the
sympathy of many Spanish clerics, is the subject of
treatment by N. Noguer.
Die Kultur (July) : The first article is a transcript of a lecture
delivered at a meeting of the " Leo-Gesellschaft " in
Vienna, by Dr. Otto Willmann, on the subject of " The
Division and Union of Labor in the Pursuit of Knowl-
edge." He gives a brief outline of the methods of ad-
vance in science, speaking particularly of the special-
izing tendency of the present age. Dr. E. Eichmann,
of the University of Prague, reviews at some. length the
relations of Pope Pius X. and France. He shows that
the Pope has followed the only reasonable course, and
can await with perfect confidence the verdict of history
on his policy. Dr. Heinrich Swoboda discusses the
question of " The Large City and the Care of Souls."
Dr. R. F. Kaindl gives a study of the manner of
showing honor to the dead, particularly with regard to
monuments and epitaphs.
Current Events.
The few statesmen and the many
France. politicians who have the control
of the destinies of the various Eu-
ropean nations have been taking a holiday ; so that when, for
example, it became necessary for France to deal with the out-
break in Morocco, there were in Paris only two members of
the Cabinet, upon whom tell the duty of taking action. No
doubt schemes are being concocted in this quiet interval, the
putting into effect of which it will be interesting to chronicle.
In the meantime, we have to confine ourselves to events of no
great importance in themselves, the Moroccan outbreak, to which
reference has just been made, being by far the most conspicuous.
The series of strikes by which France was so long disturbed
has come to an end. Bakers and waiters have resumed their
ordinary work, and even the two millions of wine growers are
heard of no more. How successful the legislative remedies have
proved it is perhaps too soon to judge; but that the people
affected have been willing to accept those measures is a proof
both of their good will and of the wisdom of the government
in dealing firmly with the crisis.
The insubordination of some of the rank and file of the army
in the coiyse of the wine growers' movement was and still is
a cause of grave anxiety. The resignation of the General Com-
mander-in-Chief of the army and of two or three members of
the Supreme Council of War, which has since taken place, seems
to show that the relations between the government and the
army from top to bottom are not so harmonious as the well-
being of the State demands. The reason for which these high-
est officers resigned was, as far as can be ascertained, that they
would not be responsible for the safety of France on the Ger-
man side. A change in the period of service in the army, by
which this period is being reduced from three to two years, is
just coming into effect, and the carrying out of this change in-
volved, as the government thought, the sending home of cer-
tain recruits whom the Commander-in-Chief wished to retain
for some two or three months. As with the wine" growers, so
with the generals, the government resolved to govern, and was
doubtless- right in so doing.
1907.] Current. Events '855
The public attention has been much occupied with baloons,
not only in France but also in Germany, to say nothing of
England, owing to the sad accident which took place there.
In France even the Premier has made an ascent in the new
steerable balloon called the Patrie. So completely under con-
trol is this balloon that the War Office has definitely de-
cided to adopt it as an engine of war and to make a fleet of
airships on the same model. It has been sent to the frontier
to watch the proceedings of the Germans. But although the
Patrie can be controlled, it is only by the competent, a com-
petence which is the result of a long course of training. This
fact has given the French a certain confidence that they have
outstripped the Germans. However, news has come from Ber-
lin that the German army has also a balloon which, too, is per-
fectly under control, able in fact to go at the rate of 12^
hours against the wind. So that in a future war baloon may
meet baloon.
The limit of agressive measures against the Church has not
been reached. Before the adjournment of the Chamber a bill
was introduced by M. Briand for the definite distribution of
the Church property which is now under sequestration under
the Separation Act of December, 1905. This bill provides that,
after the payment of any obligations to which the property
may be subject, the balance is to be handed over to charitable
institutions. The aged and infirm among the clergy are not,
however, to be deprived of the pensions now accorded to them ;
the pensions which they now enjoy will be paid until their
death. All works of art, documents, books, and manuscripts,
are to become the property of the State, and to be deposited
in museums, libraries, and archives. Even these harsh propos-
als, however, do not seem to have deprived the government of
the support of the people, if the elections for the departmental
Councils, which have recently taken place, may be taken as a
trustworthy indication. In those elections all the opponents of
the Republic were badly beaten. But it is, perhaps, to be hoped
that among the supporters of the Republic there may be some
friends of the Church and opponents of the anti Church policy
of the Cabinet.
The social legislation, which figured so largely in the prom-
ises of the government, has not been so prominent in their
achievements. An Act passed in 1905 provided for the reduc-
856 Current Events [Sept.,
tion of the hours of labor of pick- workers in the galleries of
mines to eight per day, to be reached by gradual stages. This
will come into full operation on the 1st of January, 1910. A
bill, extending the advantages of this law to all pitmen with-
out exception, has been introduced, and this not by the gov-
ernment, but by a private member. To the income tax pro-
posals of the government an unyielding opposition is still be-
ing offered. While it finds supporters among the Socialists, its
opponents declare that the enforcement of one of. its provi-
sions, requiring a complete declaration of private resources,
would lead to civil war. Many capitalists, it is said, are send*
ing their money to be invested abroad.
The relations of France with foreign Powers remain sub-
stantially unchanged. An appointment made by the Egyptian
government, by which an Englishman was substituted for a
Frenchman, has called forth some criticisms to the effect that
England was not acting in the spirit of the entente cordiale. A
Russian paper has published a letter in which an attack was
made on the French government both for its internal and its
external policy. Mo great importance, however, is to be at-
tached to this publication, as is shown by the warm reception
which was given to General Brun, the chief of the army staff,
on his visit for the purpose of conferring with the Russian
army authorities.
The events in Morocco have not changed the attitude of
Germany to France, the right of France to intervene being so
clear. The visit of the Japanese ships has offered an oppor-
tunity of celebrating, with feasts and speeches, the conclusion
of the agreement between the two countries. And so, to all
appearances, there is no reason to fear a disturbance of the
present peaceful conditions.
Very little worthy of record has
Germany. taken place in Germany. Further
trials for breaches of duty on the
part of Colonial officials are expected. These will perhaps be
deferred until the return of Herr Dernberg, the business-like
head of the Colonial Department, who, emulating -Mr. Cham-
berlain, is now personally inspecting the African possessions of
the German Empire. The desire to find an outlet for the ever-
increasing population is very keen and is doubtless the motive
for this visit.
1907.] Current Events 857
The conciliatory policy, lately adopted by the Prussian gov-
ernment towards the Danes living on the border-land in North
Schleswig, has not met with the approbation of the stalwart
agrarians of German blood in that district. Like so many stal-
warts under other governments, their vaunted support of the
powers that be is conditional on these powers doing the will
of the stalwarts. The recently appointed President of Schleswig-
Holstein had a somewhat cruel experience of the way in which
discontented loyalists can act when they are not pleased. At a
banquet, at which he and a number of " autochthonous " Ger-
mans were present, he called the Danes living in the province
fellow-countrymen to whom the kiss of brotherly love should
be given. The " autochthonous " made not the least response
to this invitation, maintaining absolute silence during the speech,
and at its conclusion broke out in the defiant war-song which
apostrophizes the lofty citadel of German nationality, and with
the command not to waver in " safeguarding until the dawn of
a brighter day what has been so hardly won." Speeches were
made in the same sense. " We will rely upon ourselves, since
we cannot rely upon the government." The same selfish . re-
actionary spirit is being manifested in the Eastern Marches,
where there is a growing agitation in favor of the compulsory
expropriation of the Polish landlords. It is said that this ac-
tivity is due to the fear entertained by the junkers that their
supremacy is threatened by the new political spirit of the age
with its liberal aspirations.
On the French frontier, too, the peace of the inhabitants is
said to have been disturbed. Young Frenchmen working in
Lorraine have been given the option of leaving the country or
of becoming naturalized as German subjects, and lessons in
French in the schools have been forbidden. Of the former,
however, a semi-official denial has been given, which is not,
however, credited in France; and of the latter a modification
has been made.
The meeting of the Kaiser and the Tsar could not be without
political significance, for the monarchs were accompanied by
the Ministers who are in charge of the foreign affairs of each
country.
In the semi-official statement, which has been published at
St. Petersburg, it is declared that both sides — the German and
the Russian — were agreed that neither in Europe nor in the
858 Current Events [Sept.,
Far East was peace in any way threatened, that no alteration
in the existing alliances of Germany or Russia with other Pow-
ers had been made, and that everything which had taken place
at the meeting could only have a most beneficial influence on
the peaceful course of events in Europe and Asia. The action
of France in conjunction with Spain in Morocco, it was de-
clared, could not give rise to complications. Whether the new
project of Austria for the revival of the alliance of the Three
Emperors called the Dreikaiserbund was discussed we are not
told. A singular feature of the visit was that during it the
Kaiser himself conducted public worship — it is not said that
he preached — and at the service the Tsar was present.
So little has been heard of the
Austria-Hungary. proceedings of the new Reichsrath,
that it is to be presumed that
useful work for the good of the country is being done. The
only event which has excited the attention of the outside
world is an attempt which was made by a Ruthenian repre-
sentative to give his speech in Russian. As there are already
eight languages available in which to address the house, the
rest thought that the limit had been reached, and he was silenced.
The visit of King Edward to the Emperor of Austria is
also felt to be not without political significance, inasmuch as
the King is accompanied by the Under Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, while the Emperor will have Baron von Aehrenthal
with him.
As to Hungary, perhaps the most significant thing is the
absence of news. Nothing seems to have been done to termi-
nate the twelve-year-long discussion for the conclusion of an
economic agreement with Austria, nor have any steps been
taken for the introduction of the universal suffrage measure
which is the raison d'etre for the present Cabinet's existence.
The proceedings of the Hungarians are in many ways a puzzle.
They pose as lovers of liberty, and yet, as we pointed out last
month, they treat with the utmost severity smaller and weaker
races like the Croats. Another piece of legislation is even
more remarkable. The magnates object to the emigration of
peasants to this country, inasmuch as it is depriving them of
the supply of cheap labor which they want for the cultivation
of their estates. The natural and just course would be for
1907.] Current Events 859
them to have made it worth the while of the peasants to stay.
The course actually adopted was to pass a bill through the
Chamber binding the peasants to remain* in the employment
of the landlords. Fines and even imprisonment are inflicted
for a number of small offences, such as for leaving the farm
without permission. The fines and imprisonment are suspended
so long as the peasant remains in the employment of his master,
but are inflicted in the event of his leaving. But fines and
imprisonment are not the only punishment meted out to the
unfortunate laborer. The Bill, as it passed the Chamber, gave
the power to agricultural employers to inflict cotporal chas-
tisement upon laborers under 18 years of age. The House
of Magnates was not satisfied with, this : they made an effort
to extend this provision to the families of laborers so far as
they are minors ; and while the Lower House required that
the victuals given to laborers should be of first* class market
qualities, the magnates were willing to allow only average
market quality. These proposals met with the condemnation
of the press, as rather too mediaeval in character and as a
btutal expression of the power of the stronger. We hope that
this criticism may have put the promoters of such legislation
to shame.
It is not often that praise can be
The Near East. given to any action of the Turkish
government, and the praise to which
it is entitled for its recent note to the Greek government is of
a very modified character ; for, of course, of all the evils exist-
ent in Macedonia, Turkey is, on account of its bad govern-
ment, the root and cause. However, for some time back, the
proceedings of the Greek bands in Macedonia have been of
such an atrocious character as to have become absolutely in-
tolerable. These bands have been organized for the deliberate
purpose of exterminating the Bulgarians — men, women, and
children. Village after village has been surrounded and burned,
the women have been outraged and murdered, the children
slaughtered. It has become impossible over a wide district for
a man to work in the fields. This extermination of every
other nationality has been adopted as the means of pushing
the ethnological frontier of Greecfe farther to the north and the
east. No fewer than ten bands of 400 men have been engaged
860 Current Events [Sept.,
in this w,ork of devastation.. The government cannot be ig-
norant; in fact, the bands are commanded by officers of the
Army. The worst of it is that these proceedings are consid-
ered patriotic by the Greek people as a whole, and it is feared
that the government dare not take efficient steps to put an
end to the evil. The remonstrance of Turkey, especially as it
is said to have been backed up by the representations of other
Powers, may strengthen it to do its duty. There are fears,
however, that, as it has benefited in the past by wrong- doing
almost as bad, it will hope for an equally ill-omened success
in the future. The condition 'of the whole of Macedonia is bad
in the extreme — far worse, it is said, than 'is known, except by
those who make personal investigations. The truth does not
appear in the newspapers. Murders and outrages are of every-
day occurrence. Efforts are being made to induce the Pow-
ers to take effective action ; but those who know how much
mutual jealousy and selfish interests count for in politics, are
not very sanguine. The selfishness of the individual is great,
but that of nations is greater.
The ministry of Signor Giolitti is
Italy. having, when compared with the
run of ministries in Italy, a long
tenure of office. It is not, however, thought that it deserves
the confidence of the people, nor that it is really popular. Im-
portant questions have been evaded rather then solved, although
the greatly needed Railway Service Law has been passed, as
well as an Act making Sunday a day of rest. That the govern-
ment retains its position is, however, due more to the apathy
of Parliament and of the country than to the merits of ministers.
In fact, in one important respect, they have scandalously neglected
their duty. In Rome gross insults are offered to the Holy
Father, such as would not be tolerated in London or go un-
punished. Pictures are exhibited so defamatory in character
that they would be torn down even by Protestants, and the
police take no steps either to stop their exhibition or to pun-
ish the authors. It is hard to understand the state of things
in the country. Stories have been circulated which even papers
opposed to the Clergy declare to be, to a large extent, wholly
false, and when not wholly false, greatly exaggerated. Riots have
taken place in several places in consequence. The government,
1907.] Current Events 861
however, has, in this matter, acted with more energy and greater
regard to duty.
The arrest' of a former Minister, Signor Nasi, at the instance
of the government, has caused something like an insurrection in
Sicily, where he enjoyed great popularity. The disturbances,
however, were due rather to the chronic state of discon-
tent which exists in that island — a discontent due to its
poverty and to the neglect of the government to keep its
promises to take measures for setting things right.
The chronic state of anarchy exist-
Morocco. ing in Morocco has been rendered
more evident by the outrages which
have taken place at Casablanca. The active measures taken by
France and Spain to punish the evil-doers, which might have
been an occasion for the interference of other Powers, had they
been so minded, have been recognized as just and necessary,
and so complications seem unlikely to arise.
It is doubtful whether the people
Russia. of Russia will escape peacefully
from arbitrary rule. M. Stolypin
remains in office, and perhaps this may be taken as a sign that
hope may even yet be entertained. A third Duma is to meet;
but when all power is in the hands of an autocrat, who glories
in being an irresponsible ruler, what are any number of Dumas
worth ? It is looked upon as certain that agreements have
been reached with both Japan and England which will settle
for a long period all matters in dispute between them.
About the most important event
The Hague Conference. which has happened for a long
time in the world — the assembling
of the Peace Conference at the Hague — a great deal ought to be
said. But the limitation of the space at our command prevents
anything like justice being done to the subject. We cannot
refrain, however, from expressing the opinion that no subject
deserves more studious and careful, perhaps it may be said
prayerful, attention.
THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION.
HOW many members are needed to form a Reading Circle? This ques-
tion has been asked by many of our correspondents. In reply we state
that the Columbian Reading Union will not make any rules concerning the
number of members or the private management of any organization affiliated
to it. Our work is to gather information and publish lists of books which
will be of assistance to all interested in the diffusion of good literature.
Reading Circles can be organized in different ways, either in connection with
parish or public libraries, or on an independent basis. It makes a consider-
able saving of expense if the books to be used can be borrowed from a library.
Obvious advantages may'be obtained by those associated with Catholic circu*
lating libraries. The books selected are purchased by the parish library, and
are made accessible without extra cost to the members of the Reading Cir-
cles. In many places the same plan could no doubt be applied to public li-
braries. There is no fixed way of starting a Reading Circle, except that some
one or more persons must agree to talk about the matter. Five members are
enough to make a beginning, although a much larger number should be en-
rolled wherever it can be so arranged. Very few rules are necessaiy.
Send the name of your Reading Circle for the* register of the Columbian
Reading Union, 415 West Fifty-ninth Street, New York City, and state the
books and subjects selected for the coming year.
• • r
Good reference works,, of which there are many, should be familiar to
Catholic teachers and students — especially, of course, to those attending
courses in .secular institutions. We will mention a few useful books: Janss-
en's History, Parson's Studies and Lies and Errors of History \ Dom Gas-
quet's Eve of the Reformation, etc., Montalembert's Monks of the West* New-
man's historical essays, Gairdner's historical works, Dr. Shahan's Middle
Ages, etc., Lingard's History of England \ Summer-School Essays, Vols. 1.
and II., Pastor's History of the Popes, Conway's'^WtficW Box, Litem r\- \ Ssiex-
tijic, and Political I'iews of Dr. Brownson. This list might be extended in-
definitely. Works like the Cambridge Modem History and The Historians'
History should not be used without books of rebuttal on the same she It ; bet-
ter, on the shelf below — nearer to the hand. The best refutation of the
errors and extravagances of historical writers, Catholic or non-Catholic, by
the way, is often to be found in reviews and magazines. It remains to be
said that evcrv careful student should have an index of his own. One need
not be the possessor of a book to know its general contents. Nowadays most
historical works are provided with an adequate index, thus immediately put-
ting the student on the track of desired information. Another point for
young students to remember is that the titles of many books convey no idea
of the richness of their contents. The Eve of the Reformation, for instance,
besides illuminative studies on subjects like Erasmus, The Printed English
Bible, etc., contains a great amount of miscellaneous lote. Christian S*k\\\s
1 907. J The Columbian Reading Union 863
and Scholars is, unfortunately, out of print, and the publishers are unable at
present to promise a new edition. Perhaps Dom Gasquet would agree to
revise it, and bring it up to date.
• • •
Among the books that should have a large circulation are : The Student's
Handbook of British and American Literature. Price $1.25 (The John Mur-
phy Company). Murray's Lessons in English Literature. Price 45 cents
(The John Murphy Company). Phases of Thought and Criticism. By
Brother Azarias (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) And Books and Reading (Cath-
edral Library Publishing Company). The latter was prepared especially as
a guide for members of Catholic Reading Circles, and was first published in
the pages of The Catholic World. * Selections from Cardinal Newman.
By Lewis E. Gates, Harvaid University (Henry Holt & Co.) Maynard's
English Classic Series (Maynard, Merrill & Co.), also contains a volume with
appreciations of Newman's place in literature, supplemented by a brief biog-
raphy and useful notes and comments on the text.
Where all is so excellent, it was manifestly a difficult matter to make
choice of what is characteristic out of the forty volumes of Newman's writings
and to confine oneself within due limits. The selections are varied, judi-
ciously made, and likely to interest those to whom Newman would be prob-
ably not much more than a name. They embrace his historical sketches and
character studies, some extracts from his sermons, and his masterpiece, "The
Second Spring," is given entirely ; hence they lend themselves to the purpose
of analysis, while they instruct, appeal, etc., and carry on the interest of the
reader.
We confess to some disappointment at not finding some selections from
the Idea of a University, in which volume Newman gives us his own ideas
of style and composition, and exalts both the dignity and the worth of speech,
written and spoken. ,
Newman is surely coming to his own, to his place as the master mind in
thought and word of the English people in the nineteenth century. For this
volume is but one of the many proofs, now so common, of the interest he con-
tinues to exercise as a thinker, a prophet, an'd a saint.
No more meritorious work could be done in the department of letters
than to make him known to the young as the ideal craftsman — one whose
language was the fitting and true expression of his own beautiful and wonder-
ful personality.
• • •
The third edition of an interesting book chiefly concerned with the
reputation of false history from Protestant sources, is entitled The Boyhood of
Patrick Lynch, edited by Charles Blake, Providence. Love of historic truth
is the dominant motive of the author, who evidently indicates his own
relation to the Catholic Church in these words from the Piozzi letters of
Dr. Johnson :
"I would be a Papist if I could," said Dr. Johnson. "I have fear
enough, but an obstinate rationality prevents me. I shall never be a Papist,
unless in the near approach of death, of which I have a very great terror. I
wonder that women are not all Papists."
864 Books Received \ Sept., 1907.]
In another place the following opinion is expressed: "Finding the
*
Catholic Church too good for me . . . and the others too bad, I gave up
going to any church, except to witness a revival, and hear the boy pieacher
or the wickedest man in New York."
To all who read this notice we recommend prayers for the learned
champion of the despised creed boldly professed by Patrick Lynch in presence
of a strong Protestant ascendancy, amid conditions which pttvaiicc titty \cais
ago in New England. May the light of faith remove from his giltcd mind
whatever darkness may yet remain as a heritage frcm non-Catholic an-
cestors! M. C. M.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Fr. Pistet & Co.. New York :
The Roman V'esferal for the Entire Ecclesiastical Year. For the use of Catholic choirs
and school children. By Rev. John B. Jung. Fifth edition. Pp. 508. Trice 75 cecss.
•' Boh" /ngerso/I's Fgoscfky and Other Ptems. By Rev. James McKeman. Pp. c-5. Ftsce
40 cents. De Sacramento Exttemcr Unctionis Tractotus Dogmaticus. Auctorc lesepho
Kern. S.J. Pp. XU.-396. Price $150. Tributes of Protestant If riters to the 7'mta jwJ
Beauty of Cathoiicity. By James J. Tracy. Fourth edition. Pp. xviii.-3S3. Price $1.
Forty-Ftze Sermons. By Rev. James McKernan. Pp. 291. l>rice $iT Coufue.-zs ef
Our Holy Faith ; or. Testimonies of Distinguished Converts. Bv James J. Tracy. Th::\i
edition. Pp. XVU.-473. Price $1. Ailer Aicore. A 1 ale of the Times in Ireland. By
Richard Baptist O brien, D.D. Fourth edition. Pp. xi.-357. Price $1. The /.»v
Around L's. A Collection of Stories. By Maurice Francis Egan. Fifth edition. Pp.
\ii.-409. Price $1. Kyriale sen Ordinartum Missa? Jux-ta Edtttonem I'tticauam A. SS.
PP. Pio X. Flvulgatam. Pp. 63. Price $5. The Princess of Gau-Sar .Mary Mag-
dalen). By Andrew Klarnian. Pp. 421. Price $150 net.
Bbnziger Brothers, New York:
Patron Saints Jor Catholic Youth. By Marv E. Mannix. Vol. III. Pp.100. r/.u^rated
Price 00 cents. Hound the ll'or/J. A Series of Interesting Illustrated Arv.c'.o or x
Great Variety of Subjects. Vol. III. Pp. 21S. Price $5 cents I he Feu />*«->?.
By Otto von Schachmg. Pp. 171. Price 45 cents. The Mystery »••* C'czer.r. }<\
George Barton. Pp.232. Price S5 cents. J he Ho*'y House of Adsratwu. Ccsvpvled
by Right Rev. William "Stang. D.D. Pp. 194. Price 50 cents net,
P. J. Kenepy & Sons. New York:
Home for Good. By Mother Mary Loyola. Edited by Father Thurston. S.J. Pv. v •
326. Price $1 25 net. Postage 13 cents.
Convent ok the Good Shepherd. New York:
In the Footprints of the Good She/herd. AYw Yori — /Sjrr-/jo?. By Katherir.e 1 CvT.-
way. Pp. xiii.-aoo.
The Lamp Publishing Company. Garrison, N. Y. :
The Prince of t'te Apostles. By Father Pauljair.es Francis and Father Spencer \tc*.
Pp. xx. -223. Price, cloth. $1 25: paper. 75 cents.
C. M. Clark Publishing Company. Boston. Ma*s. :
Christy of Pathg/iu. By James Riley. Pp. 343.
B. Herder. St. Louis. Mo.:
Pio/totheca Ascett*a Mjtstica — Manua/e l'it*r Sfiriluatis continens LuJfi ici F.'.\>t3 c~//»j
Sfirituaiia Selecta. Pp. x v. -373. Price $1.10 net.
••Messenger" Office. Dublin. Ireland:
Temperance Cate.hism. By Rex. J. A. Cullen. S.J. Pp. i\x. Paper.
New /eai and Taui.et Publishing Company. New Zealand:
The Church and the World. By Very Rev. T. le Menant des Chcsnais. S.M. Sec. r.»:
edition. Pp. 355.
Australian Catholic Truth Society. Melbourne:
George Leicester . Priest. By E. H. Hickey. Pamphlet. Pp. 22. Price x jerr>. A
Mat J of Many Sorrows, by a Sister of Mercy. Pamphlet. Pp. 10. I*isce 1 j*er.ny.
P. Lethiki i.eux. Pans:
Theoiofia* Moralis Flementa. I>isfosuit A. J. J. F. Hainc. Fifth edition. 4 Vo's. Vc 1 ..
I., pp. 5t^> ; Vol. II.. 550; Vol. 111. 52S ; Vol. IV.. 571. Fhu'osofht* XatmraSss.
Secunda Pars. Auctore'k. P. Fr. Ed. Hugon, O.P. Pp. 34a.
HH^
