If we turn over the volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, we shall find, on the contrary, some of the brightest names in the annals of literature, piety, and philanthropy; some of the deepest scholars, the most acute reasoners, the most elaborate thinkers recorded in the annals of fame; of men whose works have been and still are the guiding lights of theological and philosophical investigation. There are Bridferth, Eadmer, Lanfranc, Anselm, William of Malmesbury, Thomas à Kempis, Bonaventura, and many others, all distinguished for intellect and piety. Some of them, too, were honored by a personal acquaintance with the subjects of their memoirs, as in the case of Bridferth, the contemporary of Dunstan, of Eadmer of Anselm, of Thomas of Celano and St. Francis. Can it be that these scholars, trained to philosophical investigation—these profound thinkers—these holy archbishops and bishops should connive together to delude posterity with a tissue of lies—of wanton lies, which might have been easily contradicted by contemporary writers, many of whom were bitter enemies both of the writers and their religion? Yet we find no such contradiction.
We have plenty of contemporary history handed down tolerably perfect as regards incidents, dates, accurate reports of great councils, descriptions of battles and sieges, lives of statesmen, warriors, and scholars, with views of both sides, debated, refuted, or confirmed. And are we to believe that in this matter of the lives of the saints only have all contemporary writers, friends and foes, scholars, holy men, great benefactors of their age, conspired successfully together to hand down an enormous fabric of falsehood, and at the same time secure the silence of all contemporary history? This is the great difficulty.
A distinguished English writer, the elder D'Israeli, has endeavored to account for these strange tales in the lives of the saints by suggesting they were written as exercises and religious theses, when each student filled up his outline with all the wonders he could invent to invest his subject with greater glory. That is a theory accepted by many who are already prejudiced toward its acceptation; but it is a frivolous theory, to which we object the improbability of these great men, whose names are already mentioned, being set down, some of them in the maturity of their lives, to write religious exercises of that nature. Is it not rather possible that there may be something in all this history which we can neither understand nor explain?
Let us examine for a moment into what we may venture to call the natural history of miracles. We find the Bible itself is an immense repertoire of miracles from Moses down to the apostles, and it contains no distinct announcement of a withdrawal of that power from the church. It was confirmed by Christ, who endowed his apostles with the same power, and who said one or two things in his addresses to them which, we think, will throw some light upon this vexed question.
It is quite certain that there have never been any miracles wrought in the world by any who did not receive the power from God. We are not prepared to estimate what degree of change was produced in the relations between man and God by the fall; we are certain of this, that a gap was placed between the two, so wide that Christ was sent to bridge it over; that an apostasy ensued, and a disunion so complete that his death alone was able to provide the means of reunion and reconciliation. Then it follows that faith was the only possible mode to man of recovery of what was lost by man; faith before the promise and faith after its fulfilment, and in the proportion of the strength of that faith, and the consequent change of life in the heart and nature of him who possessed it, was the reunion with God promised. But how does this bear on miracles? In this way. Turn to the Bible, and it will be seen that of every man who is recorded to have performed miracles, it is also recorded that he had this immovable faith, and that his life was ordered accordingly.Faith, prayer, and fasting have ever been the elements of the life necessary to miracles, and we are not prepared, nor are we able to estimate what would be the result of such a course of severe discipline as some of the saints went through toward a recovery of that lost union with God. It is a singular fact that, in the life of Christ, we find it was only after his fasting and prayer in the wilderness that he began to perform miracles, as though during that severe trial of temptation, fasting, and prayer the perfect union between himself and his Father had been sealed by the final gift of miraculous power. And thus was it that, when in after times his disciples were unable to cast out the devils, and appealed to him for the reason of their inability, he replied, "This sort goeth not out but by fasting and prayer;" and we are told elsewhere that the disciples of Jesus did not fast. So that we find in the Bible there is a close connection between the active development of the spiritual, and the subjugation of the corporeal life, and the working of miracles.
All the prophets led that life, they were given to prayer, fasting, and solitude. It was the peculiar life of Jesus; retired to the mountains, the deserts, and by-places for prayer, and he attributed the miraculous power to the results of this life. [Footnote 152] Is it, then, possible for a man by strong faith, accompanied by fasting and prayer, in these later days to regain that close, mysterious communion with his Maker which should give him a supernatural power? We reply that we have not the means of answering the question, for the simple reason that we never have an opportunity of seeing it tried. Without wishing to insinuate anything invidious, have we any record in ecclesiastical or other history, of bishops, priests, or men of any class during the last 400 years spending whole nights in prayer, or consecutive days in fasting, such as we read, upon indisputable authority, was the practice in the olden times of the prophets, and the later times of men who devoted their lives to the imitation of Christ? [Footnote 153]
[Footnote 152: In the life of St. Francis we are told that "solitaria loca quaerebat," "una die dum sic sequestratus oraret," "cum die quadam egressus ad meditandum in agro," "dum per sylvam iter faciens."]
[Footnote 153: Our Protestant fasts are a "lucus a non lucendo," consisting of fish of various descriptions, curiously prepared by the protean art of cookery, with very substantial adjuncts, and accompanied by good wine. No miracles were ever wrought upon that diet.]
There are plenty of hints scattered throughout the Bible and Testament that there is a mysterious connection yet to be recovered between man and God, if men will only fulfil the required condition, and we repeat that it is not in our power to estimate the results of such a life as we have mentioned—a life of spiritual discipline, of development of the soul, and subjugation of the body—because we have no examples around us; but we ask, if such life were pursued, what is there to prevent our believing that to some extent the words of our Divine Master, who led that life himself, would yet be verified, and "this sort" would still "go out through fasting and prayer"? Nay, further, we may add in illustration that the phenomena which are recorded as attending the careers of such men as Whitefield, Wesley, and Irving have never yet been explained away by any scientific theory or law; so that, in conclusion, as we find in the Bible an emphatic and reiterated record of miraculous power accorded to persons of a certain habit of life and thought, as our Lord, when on earth, attributed that power to the pursuing of that peculiar life—as in every instance where miracles are attributed to men, they are proved to have led such lives—it cannot be thought too much to suggest that, making great deductions and allowances for exaggeration, there may be some basis of truth underlying that fabric of historical and traditional record of the lives of the saints.
Many of those incidents described so mysteriously are capable of explanation. It is often recorded of these men that they saw visions and heard voices.For instance, it is said of St. Francis that, on one occasion, when he was long praying in a solitary place, the Lord appeared to him as if on the cross, and so visible was this [Greek text] to him that ever afterward, when any thought of Christ's sufferings came into his mind, he could not help bursting into tears; also, that one night the Lord appeared to him, and said, "Francisce, quis potest melius facere tibi dominus aut servus?" And again, on another occasion, "Francisce, vade et repara domum meam." Within the range of our own experience, who is there amongst us who has not had similar visions in the slumbers of the night, or heard similar voices in the day? Have we not had sweet converse with dear departed friends, and heard voices that have long been silent? What bereaved mother has not often heard the cry of her lost infant, or solitary widow seen the form of a lost husband in the phantasms of the night? If such things happen to ordinary men, we submit that we are unable to estimate the result of the mode of life and the severity of spiritual training which those men underwent, because it is foreign to our habits, and not within the range of our experience.
We now proceed to give a brief criticism upon the intellect of St. Francis. He has left very little behind him. Only a few sermons, hymns, letters, and sayings, from which we can glean that he must have been an earnest preacher of the true popular type, driving home his truths by familiar illustrations, the type of that peculiar preaching which rendered his order so popular, and paved the way for their marvellous success. We subjoin a few extracts, which illustrate not only his style, but the design of his order. In one of his epistles he says: [Footnote 154]
[Footnote 154: Ep. ii. Ad universes Christi fideles.]
"Let us not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but simple, humble, and poor; and let us hold our bodies in contempt, because we are all miserable and putrid; as the Lord says through the prophet, I am a worm and not a man. We should never desire to be above others, but subjected and submissive to every human creature, for the sake of God. And upon all who do so, and persevere unto the end, the holy spirit will rest, and make in them his tabernacle and his mansion, and they shall be sons of the heavenly Father, whose works they do, and shall be the brides, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brides are we, since faithful souls are joined to the Holy Spirit; brothers are we of Jesus Christ, when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven; mothers are we, when we bear him in our hearts and bodies through love, and bring him forth by the sacred operation of our example, which ought to shine before others. Oh! how glorious and great to have a Father in heaven! Oh! how holy to have a betrothal of the Spirit! Oh! how sacred, how delightful, well pleasing, peaceful, sweet, loving, desirable above all, is it to have a brother who has laid down his life for the sheep, and has prayed his Father for us, saying, 'Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me. Father, all those whom thou hast given me in the world are thine, and thou hast given them to me, and the word which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received it, and know well that I came from thee, and have believed that thou hast sent me. I pray for them: I sanctify myself, that they may be sanctified as we are. And I will, O Father! that where I am there they may be also, and see my glory in my kingdom.'" [Footnote 155]
[Footnote 155: We translate from the Latin of St. Francis, which is somewhat different from our version.]
A graphic picture of a death-bed scene follows soon after the above beautiful passage in the same epistle.
"The body droops, death draws near, relatives and friends come, and say, 'Arrange thy house.' And behold, his wife and his sons, his relatives and friends, pretend to weep; and he, looking up, sees them weeping, and is moved, and says, my soul and my body, and all my goods, I place in your hands. Verily, that man is cursed who deposits his soul, his body, and all his goods in such hands; or, as the Lord says by the prophet, cursed is that man who places his trust in man. And then they send for the priest, who says to him, 'Dost thou wish to receive absolution from all thy sins?' he replies, 'I do.' Wilt thou make restitution from thy substance for those things which thou hast obtained through fraud and deception?' He says, 'No.' 'Why not?' asks the priest. 'Because I have divided all amongst my relations.' And then his speech begins to fail, and he dies miserably. But let all men know that wherever any man dies in sin, without making satisfaction, which he can, but will not make, such a demon seizes his soul, and drags it from the body with such agony that no one can conceive who has not experienced it. And all his money, power, and knowledge, which he thought he had, are taken from him; and his relations and friends, to whom he has given his goods, take them, and divide them, and then say, Cursed be his soul, who might have given us more, and did not; who might have hoarded more, and did not. Worms destroy his body, demons his soul; and thus he loses both soul and body for the sake of this brief life."
Humility, deep and sincere, was the great characteristic of his life. He was in his own words, "Franciscus parvulus et vester servus in Domino;" "Homo vilis et caducus;" "minus servorum;" "indigna creatura Domini." Being asked, one day, why he wore such scanty clothing in the depth of winter, he replied, "If we are clothed within with the flame of our heavenly country, we shall easily bear this external cold." One of the brethren asked him why he scarcely took anything to sustain nature. "Because," said St. Francis, "it is difficult to satisfy the necessity of the body without indulging the longing of the senses."
On an occasion a brother asked him if he might have a psalter. "When you have got a psalter," replied St. Francis, "then you will want a breviary; and when you have got a breviary, you will sit in your chair as great as a lord, and you will say to your brother, 'Friar, fetch me my breviary.'" There was a competition amongst the brethren as to who should bring in the greatest number of female devotees, when St. Francis checked their ardor by the caustic remark, "I am afraid, my brethren, that when God forbade us wives the devil gave us sisters." Here we must take our farewell of the saint. Willingly would we devote more space to him; but we have much yet to say about his work, especially as it influenced the destinies of our own land. He was a great man, an enthusiast in the highest sense of the word; his character and career remind us forcibly of John the Baptist; his food was locusts and wild honey, his raiment was scanty, he was a voice crying in the wilderness of a wicked world, and his name will last for ever.
But we advance to investigate the doings of the order in England. At the second general chapter held by St. Francis, at Porzioncula, in the year 1219, when the brethren were divided into parties and sent out on their missions, England was one of the first mission stations assigned. France was the first, then came England, chiefly, it is thought, through the influence of an Englishman, one William, who was a follower of St. Francis. The honor of leading this mission was assigned to Brother Angnello [Footnote 156] de Pisa, who was made minister-general of the order in England.
[Footnote 156:Angnellussic, in Eccleston MSS., and in Monumenta Franciscana.]
His authority was as follows: "Ego Frater Franciscus de Assisio minister, generalis praecipio tibi Fratri Angnello de Pisa per obedientiam, ut vadas in Angliam et ibi facias officium ministeriatus. Vale. Anno 1219. Franciscus de Assisio." [Footnote 157]
[Footnote 157: Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica, p. 5.]
They were also fortified with letters recommendatory from Pope Honorius, addressed to all "archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other prelates of the church," enjoining them to receive the bearers as Catholics and true believers, and to "show them favor and courtesy." The actual date of their landing in England is disputed. Eccleston in his MSS., "De Primo Adventu Minorum," gives the year 1224, but the more probable date is 1220, which is given by Wadding, the annalist of the order, and confirmed by Matthew Paris, who under the year 1243 speaks of the Friars Minors, "who began to build their first habitations in England scarcelytwenty-fouryears ago." As they had no money of their own, and lived upon what was given them, they were transported to England from France by the charity of some monks of Fécamp. They were nine in number, four clergymen and five laymen. The former were Angnellus, a native of Pisa, Richard de Ingeworth, Richard of Devonshire, and William Esseby. The laymen were Henry de Cernise, a native of Lombardy, Laurence de Belvaco, William de Florentia, Melioratus, and James Ultramontanus. They landed at Dover and proceeded to Canterbury, where they were hospitably received and staid two days at the Priory of the Holy Trinity. Then four of them set out for London to present the apostolical letters to Henry III., who received them very kindly, which, as they did not want any money, he would be most likely to do.
The other five were housed at Canterbury at the Priests' Hospital, where they remained until a place could be procured for them; such accommodation was found in a small chamber beneath the school-house, where they remained shut up all day, and at evening, when the scholars had gone home, they entered the room, kindled a fire, and sat round it. The four monks who went to London were kindly received by the Dominicans, with whom they staid a fortnight, until one John Travers hired a house for them in Cornhill, which they divided into cells by stuffing the interstices with straw.
The citizens, at the instigation of one Irwin, who afterward became a lay brother, removed them to the butchery or shambles of St. Nicholas, in the Ward of Farringdon-within, close to a place called Stinking-lane, where they built a convent for them. The foundations were laid at Christmas, 1220, and it was five years in course of building. The different portions were built by different citizens. William Joyner built the choir, William Walleys the nave, Alderman Porter the chapter-house, Bartholomew de Castello the refectory, Peter de Haliland the infirmary, and Roger Bond the library; even in those days the citizens, when they did anything in the way of charity, did it royally. Two brethren, however, were sent on to Oxford, where they were also kindly received by Dominican friars, according to Eccleston; but a story is told in the annals of the order of the two brethren who were making their way toward Oxford, when they came to a sort of manor-house, about six miles from Oxford, which was a cell of Benedictine monks, belonging to the abbey of Abingdon.
Being very hungry and tired, they knocked at the gate; and the monks, from their strange dress and extraordinary appearance, taking them for masqueraders, admitted them, hoping for some diversion. But, when they found they were a new order of friars, they turned them out of doors; but one, more gentle than the rest, went after them, brought them back, and persuaded the porter to let them sleep in the hay-loft. Both versions may be right, as the circumstance occurred outside Oxford; and Eccleston's account commences with their advent in that city when they were received by the Dominicans, with whom they remained for about eight days, until a rich citizen, Richard Mercer, let them a house in the parish of St. Ebbs. Then the two brethren go on to Northampton, where they were received into an hospital. They procured a house in the parish of St. Giles, over which they appointed one Peter Hispanus as guardian.
Then they went to Cambridge, where the townspeople gave them an old synagogue, adjoining the common prison; but afterward, ten marks being given them from the king's exchequer, they built a rough sort of oratory on a plot of ground in the city. After that another settlement was made in Lincoln, and gradually in many other cities; so that in thirty-two years from their arrival they numbered 1242 brethren in forty-nine different settlements. Their first convert was one Solomon, of good birth and connections.
When only a novice, he was appointed procurator of his house; that is, he had to go out to beg for it. The first place he went to was the residence of a sister, who gave him some bread, with the following remark: "Cursed be the hour when I ever saw thee!" So strict was their poverty, that one of the brethren being ill, and they having no means to make a fire, got round him, clung to him, and warmed him with their bodies, "sicut porcis mos est." [Footnote 158]
[Footnote 158: Eccleston de Adventu Minorum.]
They walked about barefooted through the snow, to the horror of the spectators. Brother Solomon injured his foot so severely that he was laid up for two years; and whilst ill the Lord appeared to him, accompanied by the apostle Peter. And by way of contrast, we are told shortly after that the devil appeared to one Brother Gilbert de Vyz, when he was alone, and said to him, "Do you think to avoid me? At least you shall have this," and threw at him a fistful of vermin, and then vanished: "et projecit super eum plenum pugillum suum pediculorum et evanuit," so states Master Eccleston.
The second convert was William of London; then followed Jocius of Cornhill, a clerk, who went to Spain, labored, and died; John, another clerk; Philip, a priest, who, being a good preacher, was sent to Ireland, and died there. Then came several magistrates, amongst whom were Walter de Burg, Richard Norman, Vincent of Coventry, Adam of Oxford; but one of the greatest accessions was in the person of Adam Marsh, better know as Adae de Marisco, who was destined to found that distinguished school at Oxford which boasts such names as Scotus, Occam, Roger Bacon, and others. Adam was called Doctor Illustris. After him came John of Reading, abbot of Ozeneyae, and Richard Rufus. Then came some military men, Dominus R. Gobion, Giles de Merc, Thomas Hispanus, and Henry de Walpole.
As their numbers continued to increase, people built churches and convents for them in all parts of the country. The master of the Priests' Hospital at Canterbury built them a chapel; Simon de Longeton, archdeacon of Canterbury, helped them; so Henry de Sandwyg, and a certain noble lady, Inclusa de Baginton, who cherished them in all things, as a mother her sons: "quae sicut mater filios sic fovit eos in omnibus."
Angnellus now set out upon an inspection of the different settlements, and, after pausing for a time at London, came on to Oxford, where, as things were promising and converts gradually coming in, he founded a community, over which he placed William Esseby as guardian of the house, which Ingeworth and Devonshire had hired. Adam of Oxonia joined the company, and then Alexander Hales, whom St. Francis, it is thought, admitted in the year 1219, as Hales passed through France on his way to England. Angnellus then conceived the idea of having a school of friars at Oxford, and built one near their house. He then addressed himself to Doctor Robert Grostete, one of the most distinguished lecturers in the university, to beg him to instruct the brethren. Grostete consented, and the school was soon thronged with ardent Franciscan converts, who listened with delight to the lectures of that man who, as bishop of Lincoln, was destined to such a glorious career.
And now Angnellus was instant in encouraging the brethren to attend the lectures, and make progress in the study of the Decretals and canon law; and as he found them very diligent, he thought he would honor them with his presence at one of their meetings and see how they progressed; but when he arrived there, he was horrified, to hear that the subject under discussion by these young monks was whether there was a God!!Utrum esset Deus! Frightened out of his propriety, the good man exclaimed: "Alas! alas! simple brethren are penetrating the heavens, and the learned dispute whether there may be a God!" [Footnote 159] It was with great difficulty they calmed his agitation. He only submitted upon their promise that, if he sent to Rome for a copy of the Decretals, they would avoid such mighty questions, and keep to them.
[Footnote 159: "Hei mihi, hei mihi, fratres simplices coelos penetrant et literati disputant utrum sit Deus." See Wood, Antiq. Oxon, lib. i. p. x.]
The first Franciscan who taught in the school was William Eton, under the direction of Grostete, who was not a Franciscan: he was succeeded by Adam de Marisco, who is sometimes called the first of the order who taught; he was, however, the first who taught alone, the others teaching under the direction of Grostete. Sixty-seven distinguished men filled this chair, some of whose names have been immortalized.
The influence of the study of Aristotle was telling vitally upon the theology of the schools. At first his writings were studied through very imperfect translations made from the Arabic, with Arabic commentaries—then a mixture of Neo Platonism was infused, and the devotees of scholastic theology at Paris fell into such errors that the study of his works was prohibited by the synod of that place in the year 1209. Six years afterward this prohibition was renewed by the Papal Legate; but as men began to find that there was a great difference between the philosophy of Aristotle, filtered through Arabic commentators and Arabic translators, and Aristotle himself, a revival took place in favor of the Stagyrite, and Gregory IX., in 1231, by a bull modified the restriction. New translations were now made and purged from errors.
A new era in scholasticism commenced; the two rival orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, began to apply the Aristotelian method to theological questions; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas [Footnote 160] taking the lead in the former order, in opposition to the teaching of Alexander Hales.[Footnote 161] the Franciscan, who lectured at Paris. Bonaventura [Footnote 162] endeavored to amalgamate scholasticism with mysticism; but at length appeared John Duns Scotus, [Footnote 163] who lectured at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne, a Franciscan, and worthy opponent of the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. We must not omit another distinguished member of the Oxford school who flourished at the same time, Roger Bacon, [Footnote 164] perhaps the most distinguished man of the age.
[Footnote 160: Doctor Angelicas.]
[Footnote 161: Doctor Irrefragabilis.]
[Footnote 162: Doctor Seraphicus.]
[Footnote 163: Doctor Subtilis.]
[Footnote 164: Doctor Mirabilis.]
He taught at Oxford. He, however, saw the prominent errors of the disputation of the times, and has left on record, in the preface to his Opus Majus, the following criticism, which is worthy of attention: "There never was such an appearance of wisdom, nor such activity in study in so many faculties, and so many regions, as during the last forty years; for even the doctors are divided in every state, in every camp, and in every burgh, especially through the two studious orders, (Dominicans and Franciscans,) when neither, perhaps, was there ever so much ignorance and error. The mob of students languishes and stupefies itself over things badly translated; it loses time and study; appearances only hold them, and they do not care what they know so much as what they seem to know before the insensate multitude."
Again, in lib. ii., he says: "If I had power over the books of Aristotle, I would have them all burnt, because it is only a loss of time to study in them, a cause of error and multiplication of ignorance beyond what I am able to explain." We must give Roger Bacon the credit of speaking more particularly of the wretched translations in use, though his view of Aristotelian philosophy was strangely confirmed centuries afterward by his still greater namesake, Lord Bacon, who said, after many years of devotion to Aristotelianism, that it was "a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man." Thus were ranged under two scholastic standards the two great orders of mendicant friars, the Dominicans and the Franciscans; the former being called Thomists, and the latter Scotists. A fierce doctrinal controversy then raged between them, the animosity of which was heightened by a jealousy which had always existed on the part of the Dominicans from the time when St. Francis rejected their founder's overtures to unite the two orders.
In the year 1400 England maintained and included sixty convents; and at the time of the dissolution, the Franciscans alone of the mendicant orders had ninety convents in England, besides vicarships, residences, and nunneries.
To a generation of men who had heard no preaching, or, if any, nothing they could understand, the enthusiastic discourses of these men were like refreshing showers on a parched soil; for in the thirteenth century the sermon had fallen into such disuse that an obscure and insignificant preacher created a great sensation in Paris, although his preaching was rude and simple. Both doctors and disciples ran after him, one dragging the other, and saying, "Come and hear Fulco, the presbyter, he is another Paul." [Footnote 165] The Franciscans diligently cultivated that talent, and from the general favor in which they were held by nearly all classes of the community, especially by the common people, we may conclude that the style they adopted was essentially a popular and engaging style, in direct contradistinction to the scholastic discourses delivered at rare intervals from the pulpits of the churches. Then a Franciscan mingled amongst the poor; he too was poor, one of the poorest, and the poor saw their condition elevated to an apostolic sanctity; his raiment was coarse like theirs; his food also as coarse, for it was their food shared often with him at their own tables; they sat at his feet and listened to him, not in trembling servitude, as at the feet of one whom they had been taught to regard with superstitious awe, but as at the feet of a dear brother, one of themselves, who had hungered with them and sorrowed with them.
[Footnote 165: Vide Jacobi, a Vitriaco Hist. Occident, c, 6.]
Then the Franciscan preached everywhere—at the street corner, in the fields, on the hill-side; his portable altar was set up, the sacrament administered to the people, and the gospel preached as in the old apostolic times, by the river-side, in the high roads and by-ways, under the bare heavens. No wonder that they won the hearts of the degraded populations of the countries in which they settled, that the poor ran to them and flocked round them, and that the good and great were soon drawn over to their side; it was the revival of apostolic simplicity, and as the excited crowds were swayed under their fervent eloquence, and myriads of tearful eyes were turned up to their gaze, it was like the miracle in the wilderness, the rock had been smitten, and the waters gushed forth.
A number of years ago, when the census enumerators were going through Canada, they found an old lady in Quebec, who, to the question what religion she professed, replied that she believed in the transmigration of souls. To what particular form of the doctrine she clung; whether she believed, with the sages of the Ganges, that the soul begins its life in the mineral or vegetable world, and must pass through no fewer than eighty-eight progressive stages before it rises to human consciousness; or, with the priests of the Nile, that the spiritual part of a man has lived for three thousand years in the forms of lower animals before it gets a human body; whether she was a Pythagorean, or a Neo-Platonist, or a Cabalist; whether she refused animal food for fear of eating unwittingly the flesh of some deceased friend or relative, and could not see a roast chicken without thinking of a cannibal; these are curious questions which we fear will never be answered. Plato believed in ten grades of migrations, each of a thousand years, in which souls were purified and punished before their return to an incorporeal existence with God; and the more virtuously they lived, the fewer grades they had to pass through. For a good, honest philosopher, about three grades were thought sufficient. Porphyry taught that bodies themselves are punishments imposed upon souls for offences committed in a previous state of which we retain no consciousness. A gross, sensual, very material body indicated a very criminal career in the previous existence. A virtuous life led by degrees through the states of heroes, angels, and archangels; and an archangel, if he behaved himself, might hope to be absorbed, in the course of time, into the divine essence itself; while for the wicked there was a similar but descending scale of transformations into devils of various degrees of moral blackness. The Cabalists held that God created originally a certain number of Jewish souls, some of which are still on earth in human form, while there are always many others doing penance for their sins in the bodies of animals. So they were careful, we trust, in their treatment of dumb beasts, not knowing but any pig or jackass they encountered might be a Jew in disguise. A conscientious Cabalist would not dare turn a dog out of doors, for fear he might be kicking his grandfather, and ought to shun fish, flesh, and fowl as religiously as he would object to dining off a blood relation. The great Christian philosopher, Origen, himself believed in the transmigration of the souls of men into the bodies of the lower animals; and adopted this doctrine as the readiest way of explaining why there are so many imperfections in animated nature; the divine Creator purposely made animals imperfect, because he meant that bodies should be the instruments of punishment and expiation for sinful souls. The Gnostics, and Manichaeans, and some other heretical sects, had the same idea, and it was also a part of the doctrine of the ancient British Druids, as it is at the present day of the Druses and other tribes of Asia, as well as of some of the African nations. Fourier allowed the soul no fewer than eight hundred and ten lives, each of them averaging a hundred years in duration, and it was to pass one third, or twenty-seven thousand of all these years, on our earth. When all the transmigrations had been accomplished, the soul was to lose its separate existence, and become confounded with the soul of the planet. But the French philosopher did not stop here.The body of the planet was to be in its turn destroyed, and its soul to transmigrate into a new earth, rising by successive stages to the highest degrees in the hierarchy of worlds.
Which of these many systems of metempsychosis was the one embraced by the eccentric old lady of Quebec we have, as we said before, no means of deciding, nor perhaps, since she appears to have founded no school of disciples, is the problem worth investigation. We can imagine what a singular position the solitary adherent of that old pagan creed must have occupied in the society of the quaint French city; how pious Catholics must have stared at her with mingled awe and horror as a relic of the times of Pythagoras and Plato, or perchance as an Indian Buddhist some centuries old, whom Time in his flight had forgotten to gather into his garner, where all her kith and kin had been laid asleep for ages. It was certainly a very uncomfortable belief, and, if it ever became general, it would play the mischief with family relations. Just think of the possibility of a man's being his own grandmother or his own posthumous son! It may have had its conveniences, but, upon the whole, we are glad it has died out.
We once heard an accomplished theologian maintain that, however philosophically absurd that doctrine might be, and however inconsistent with the spirit of Catholic teaching, there was yet no dogmatic decision which forbade a man's holding it, if he chose to be such a fool. A man might be a good Catholic and still believe that one of God's ways of punishing sin was to imprison the offending soul after death in the body of a beast; this might be a sort of purgatory. Perhaps he was right; but so we might say there is no article of faith which forbids us to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, that the earth is flat instead of round, that the Rocky Mountains are five thousand miles high, or that King Arthur was the first President of the United States. There is a sort of transmigration, however, in which reputable Catholic theologians are not altogether unwilling to believe; and this brings us to the statement of a fact which, for all that it is admitted by the mass of authorities on such subjects, will, no doubt, sound paradoxical to a great many of our readers; that is, that dumb beasts, if they have not borrowed the souls of human beings, have, at any rate, souls of their own. In our loose way of talking about things, we are but too apt to speak of the soul as one of the distinguishing prerogatives of man, and reason as another; whereas the fact is that man shares both these in common with the brute kingdom. Every animal has a soul, though not an immortal soul; and all the higher animals—probablyallanimals—are gifted to a greater or less extent with reason. Deny souls to beasts, and you reduce them to a level with the vegetable creation, in which life and motion are merely the necessary operations of external laws which the plant has no power either to further or obstruct. Nor need we fear that, by admitting they have souls, we raise them too near an equality with ourselves. The divine gift of immortality, the power of knowing and loving God, the right to participate in his everlasting glory—these are distinctions which must separate us by an immeasurable gulf from all inferior creatures. If beasts have no souls, it will puzzle us to define the exact difference between a dead dog and a live one.
But we have wandered away, from our speculations about metempsychosis, and are apparently in danger of forgetting the proposition which we set forth in the last paragraph, namely, that there is a certain kind of transmigration of souls in which many good theologians seem very much inclined to believe. It is an open question whether the souls of animals pass from body to body; whether, for instance, when a dog dies, its soul is annihilated, or is transferred to the body of another brute just that moment born; whether the souls of the lower orders of creatures have only the brief life which appears to be granted them, or whether their existence may not be prolonged to the end of this world.It certainly accords with what we know of the divine economy, in which everything has its permanent use and no created object seems ever to be destroyed, to suppose that, after a soul has performed its functions in the body of one beast, it may be designed by Almighty God to perform similar functions in the body of another. The plant which springs up, and blossoms, and withers, returns to life in other forms; a part of it is consumed as food and passes into the tissue of animals; a part crumbles away into vegetable mould and is assimilated by the parent earth; a part, dissolving into the constituents of the atmosphere, serves to nourish and increase other plants. The animal body itself, which decays and is changed to dust, is destined to live again in other shapes. Modern science has discovered that not even a motion is lost. The blow of the hammer which is struck upon the anvil is perpetuated in one form or another through all time. The heat of the fire which blazes for an hour and is then extinct was not created at the moment the fire was kindled, and will not be lost when the fire goes out. The sum of all the forces which act in nature is constant, unchangeable. Heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, may be expended and apparently lost, but it is only to manifest themselves in other ways. Nothing, in a word, seems to be destroyed, and, so far as our knowledge enables us to judge, God has never annihilated any material object which he has once created. And if matter is thus preserved through various changes, processes of decay and processes of renovation, why should not spirit be likewise kept in existence? The soul of man, after it leaves this body, has still eternal functions to perform in another world, either of punishment or of reward. What objection is there, then, to believing that the incorporeal part of the brute has permanent use in this world as long as the world endures?
Perhaps when we have learned to look upon the brute soul as something rather more honorable than we have been wont to regard it; as something which it is quite possible (we won't say probable) God may have designed to last till the very end of time, and not as the creature of one short day, we may be prepared to recognize in its true dignity the brute's power of reason, which seems naturally to follow from the possession of a soul. It is a common fallacy to distinguish the intelligent faculty in man as reason, and in dumb animals as instinct. The truth is, reason and instinct are two things quite different in kind; neither takes the place of the other, and each of them belongs both to man and to beast. Without aiming at strict philosophical accuracy, we may define reason as the faculty by which we weigh the relations of things, and freely and deliberately choose what we deem eligible, and reject what we consider hurtful. Instinct is an innate force or impulse inciting us under certain circumstances to act in a certain way. For example, if a man walking on a plank should feel it unexpectedly shift under his feet, he would catch at the nearest object, or endeavor to balance his body by stretching out his hands. These acts would be acts of instinct, done on the impulse of the moment, before reason had time to consider whether they ought to be done or not. Max Müller has some excellent remarks on this subject in his Lectures on the Science of Language. Instinct, he observes, is more prominent in brutes than in man; but it exists in both, as much as intellect is shared by both. "A child takes his mother's breast by instinct; the spider weaves its net by instinct; the bee builds her cell by instinct. No one would ascribe to the child a knowledge of physiology because it employs the exact muscles which are required for sucking; nor shall we claim for the spider a knowledge of mechanics, or for the bee an acquaintance with geometry, becausewecould not do what they do without a study of these sciences.But what if we tear a spider's web, and see the spider examining the mischief that is done, and either giving up his work in despair, or endeavoring to mend it as well as may be? Surely here we have the instinct of weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, by judgment." Brutes indeed have all the faculties which pertain to reasoning beings. They have sensation, perception, will, memory, and intellect. They see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, just like ourselves. They experience sensations of pleasure and pain, a dog that is fondled or chastised behaving exactly as a child would behave under the same circumstances. They are able to compare and distinguish; they show signs of shame and pride, of love and hatred. To admit all this, and deny that they have souls and reason, is merely to dispute about terms.
An interesting little book has just been published in England on The Reasoning Power in Animals, by the Rev. John Selby Watson, and we purpose giving our readers a few illustrative anecdotes from this work, together with some instances that have fallen under our own observation, confirmatory of the principles we have stated in the preceding pages.
Seneca denied memory to beasts. When a horse, he says, for instance, has travelled along a road and is brought the same way again, he recognizes it; but in the stable he remembers nothing of it. This, however, cannot be proved. Almost every one has seen a dog dreaming, and acting over in his dreams what he has done in his waking moments. If he thinks of events and places in his sleep, why should he not think of them awake? And if a dog can think of them, why cannot a horse? The stories of the memory of elephants are numberless. One of these animals was being exhibited some years ago in the west of England, when a practical joker among the spectators dealt out to him in small quantities some gingerbread nuts, and, after he had secured the elephant's confidence, presented him with a large parcel weighing several pounds. The beast swallowed it at once, but, finding it too hot, roared with pain, and handed his bucket to the keeper, as if asking for water, and, as soon as he had quenched his thirst, hurled the bucket with great force at the joker's head, fortunately missing his aim. A year afterward the elephant returned to the same place, and among the spectators was the joker, again provided with sweet cakes and hot cakes. He gave the elephant two or three from the best packet, and then offered a hot one. But no sooner had the animal proved the pungency of it than he seized the coat-tails of his tormentor, and whirled him aloft in the air, until, the tails giving way, he fell prostrate to the ground, half dead with fright. The elephant then quietly inserted his trunk into the pocket containing the best nuts, and, with his foot on the coat-tails, leisurely despatched every one of them. When he had finished, he trampled the hot nuts to a mash, tore the coat-tails to tatters, and flung the rags at the discomfited joker. The old story of the elephant revenging himself by spirting dirty water over a tailor who had wounded him with a needle is too well known to be repeated. A similar story is related in Captain Shipp's Memoirs. The captain had given an elephant cayenne pepper with bread and butter, and six weeks afterward the animal remembered it and punished Captain Shipp by drenching him with dirty water.
Dogs have excellent memories, and every child is familiar with narratives of their recollecting murderers and leading to their detection. The celebrated story of the dog of Montargis, who killed the assassin of his master; of the dog who pointed out to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, two soldiers who had slain his master, as related by Plutarch; of the dog of Antioch, commemorated by St. Ambrose; and of a dog who, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, in the thirteenth century, fought a public combat with a suspected murderer, a sort of wager-of-battle, in fact, in which the dog proved his case, are examples of this memory.Benvenuto Cellini had a watch-dog that drove away a burglar who tried one night to break into the house, and some time afterward recognized the thief in the street and seized him. A lady removing from Poitou to Paris left a spaniel behind her. Ten years afterward she sent some clothes packed by herself to the person who had charge of the dog. The little creature no sooner smelt them than he gambolled round them and showed every mark of excessive joy.
The horse has an excellent memory both for persons and places. He never forgets a road he has once travelled. A horse accustomed to be employed once a week on a journey with the newsman of a provincial paper always stopped at the houses of the several customers, sixty or seventy in number. There were two persons on the route who took one paper between them, and each claimed the privilege of having it first on the alternate Sunday. The horse soon became accustomed to this regulation; and, though the parties lived two miles apart, he stopped at the door of each in his regular turn. Here was certainly a very remarkable exercise of memory. A wonderful example of the use of the same faculty is seen in the facility with which animals that have been carried away from home find their way back. The writer had a Newfoundland slut which was sent away with one of her pups a considerable distance by railroad, shut up in a box-car. A fortnight afterward Jet and her offspring were found at their old home, foot-sore and half starved. How they had made their way back over roads which they could only have seen in occasional glimpses from the door of the car always remained a mystery. But far more wonderful instances of canine memory than this are on record. A terrier that was taken from Arundel to London in a close cart, and tied up in the evening in a yard near Grosvenor square, was found at Arundel, sixty miles distant, the following afternoon. A Scotch dog having been taken to Frankfort, and having there seen its master drowned in the Oder, after having made ineffectual efforts to save him, found its way from Frankfort to Hamburg, from Hamburg to Hull, and from Hull to Edinburgh. Lord Lonsdale sent two hounds from Leicestershire to Ireland, and at the end of three weeks they reappeared in Leicestershire. A Mr. Edward Cook, having lived some time with his brother at Togsten in Northumberland, came to America, bringing with him a pointer dog, which, while shooting in the woods near Baltimore, he lost. Some time afterward Mr. Cook's brother, who continued to reside at Togsten, was aroused one night by the barking of a dog, which, on being let in, proved to be the lost pointer. He remained there until his master came back from America. By what vessel he had made his way across the Atlantic was never ascertained. The persistency with which cats will return to places from which they have been sent away is well known. Lord Brougham, in his Letters on Instinct, mentions one that was taken to the West Indies, and on the return of the ship to London, found her way through the city to Brompton, whence she had been taken. Mrs. Lee tells the following story in her Anecdotes of Animals:
"When living at Four Paths, Clarendon, Jamaica, I wanted a cat, and had one given to me which was nearly full-grown. It was brought from Morgan's Valley estate, where it was bred, and had never been removed from that place before. The distance was five miles. It was put into a canvas bag, and carried by a man on horseback. Between the two places there are two rivers, one of them about eighty feet broad and two and a half deep, and over these rivers there are no bridges. The cat was shut up at Four Paths for some days, and when considered to be reconciled to her new dwelling she was allowed to go about the house.The day after obtaining her liberty she was missing, and upon my next visiting the estate she was brought from, I was quite amazed to learn that the cat had come back again. Did she swim over the rivers at the fords where the horse came through with her, or did she ascend the banks for a considerable distance in search of a more shallow place, and where the stream was less powerful? At all events, she must have crossed the rivers in opposition to her natural habits."
A farmer living on the borders of the New Forest in Hampshire, bought a mare near Newport, in the Isle of Wight, and took it home with him, crossing to the main-land in a boat. During the night the animal escaped from the enclosure in which the farmer had fastened it, and made its way home again, swimming across the strait. The nearest distance from the Hampshire coast to the Isle of Wight is five miles. A cow which had been sent to grass at a place twenty-one miles from her owner's residence remained there contentedly all summer; but, as soon as the grass began to fail, travelled home to her old pasturage. A cow was separated from her young calf and driven twelve miles to Smithfield to be sold, but early the next morning she was found at home, having escaped from the market and made her way through all the intricacies of London. Dr. John Brown, in one of his inimitable dog-papers, gives an instance of a dog finding his way home from a distance, under circumstances which almost seem to justify his notion that the canine race have an idea of humor. A Scottish shepherd, having sold his sheep at a market, was asked by the buyer to lend him his dog to take them home. "'By a' manner o' means take Birkie, and when ye'r dune wi' him just play so,' (making a movement with his arm,) 'and he'll be hame in a jiffy.' Birkie was so clever, and useful, and gay, that the borrower coveted him; and on getting to his farm shut him up, intending to keep him. Birkie escaped during the night, and took the entire hirsel (flock) back to his own master! Fancy him trotting across the moor with them, they as willing as he."
There are some well-authenticated instances of animals finding their way home by roads they never travelled before which are difficult of explanation. In March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N., was shipped at Gibraltar on board the Ister frigate, bound for Malta. The vessel having grounded off Point de Gat, the animal was thrown overboard to give it a chance of swimming ashore—a poor one, for the land was some distance off and the sea running very high. A few days afterward, however, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented himself for admittance, and proceeded to a stable which he had formerly occupied. He had not only swum ashore, but, without guide, compass, or travelling map, and with no previous knowledge of the route, had travelled from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, through a mountainous and intricate country intersected by streams; and he had done it in so short a time that he could hardly have made single false turn. What directed him on this wonderful journey it is impossible to conjecture, unless we suppose that he had the good sense to follow the line of the coast; and that he should have known that such a course would lead him home certainly argues a very large share of the reasoning faculty. In point of fact, however, there is a curious and incomprehensible instinct for finding the way which belongs not only to the lower animals, but to man himself in the savage state. The migrations of birds afford familiar examples of it, swallows especially, returning year after year to build their nests in the same place. Two or three years ago six swallows were taken from their nests at Paris, and conveyed to Vienna, where a small roll of paper with a few words written on it was affixed to the wing of each; and they were let go one morning at a quarter past seven. Two arrived at Paris a little before one; one at a quarter past two; and one at four.The other two did not return at all, having perhaps met with some mishap. A falcon was taken from the Canaries to Andalusia and returned in sixteen hours, a distance of six hundred miles. Salmon are supposed to return in all cases to the river where they were bred. Crabs may be carried two or three miles out to sea, and they will find their way back to their old haunts. Mr. Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, relates an extraordinary story of a tortoise which was captured at the Island of Ascension in the South Atlantic, and carried with several others to England. It had lost one fin, and was consequently named by the sailors the Lord Nelson. The voyage was very long, and most of the turtles died, and as the Lord Nelson seemed sickly when they drew near port, the sailors, in order "to give it a chance," threw it overboard in the English Channel, after it had been branded in the usual way, with certain letters and numbers burnt upon its under shell with a hot iron. Wonderful to relate, the same turtle was taken at the Island of Ascension two years afterward, having found its way three thousand five hundred miles through the watery waste to that little speck in the midst of the ocean. The unerring certainty with which bees fly in a straight line to their hives is proverbial, and bee-hunters discover the nests by catching two of the insects, carrying them to some distance apart, and letting them go. Each will at once take a straight line toward the nest, and by observing these lines and calculating where they ought to intersect, the honey is found. This instinct is the more remarkable as bees are very near-sighted, not being able, it is supposed, to see more than a yard before them. We have mentioned that savages have something of the same instinct, finding their way for long distances, not always by their acuteness of observation, but by an indescribable faculty which is like nothing so much as the instinct of birds. Mr. Jesse tells a story of a traveller in Australia, who lost his way in the interior, and was guided by one of the natives more than a hundred miles in a straight line to the place he wanted to reach. The savage, he was assured, could have led him almost as well blindfold, for he travelled as accurately when the sun was obscured as when it was visible, and was not assisted by marks on the barks of trees, or any of the other familiar landmarks of the wilderness. Our own frontiersmen have the same faculty to a greater or lesser degree. We ourselves, on two occasions, after a long day's hunt in the far West, in which we followed the game through so many twists and turns as to lose all idea of the points of the compass, were conducted by a trapper twelve or fifteen miles back to camp, on a perfectly dark night, across an utterly trackless prairie. There was neither tree, nor hill, nor footprint to mark the way, but our course was as straight as the bee flies. The trapper could not explain how he did it: it was by a species of instinct. The Newfoundland slut Jet, mentioned on a preceding page, once found her way to the writer's house, under circumstances which indicated the exercise of reason much more unmistakably than the instances just cited. The family were about moving from one house to another some two miles distant; but as the new dwelling was not ready for occupation when the lease of the old one expired, the furniture was stored in the neighborhood, and we all went away for a few weeks, leaving Jet behind. When we came to take possession of the new house, we found Jet there before us, although nothing belonging to us had yet been carried to the premises, and, so far as we knew, she had never been there in our company. Another dog belonging to us had been there, however, once or twice with one of the servants, and Jet perhaps had learned the secret from him. But it certainly showed great mental acuteness in the animal that she should not have followed the furniture, knowing apparently that it was only stowed away for a time, but, by putting this and that together, should have found out where her master meant to establish himself.