Poland

"For many weeks about his loins he woreThe rope that haled the buckets from the well.Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;"

yet the climax of it all is, "Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin."

The Catholic aspects inSt. Agnes' EveandSir Galahad, are no less marked than those ofSt. Simeon Stylites.As a devout breathing of a dying nun, the first of these poems is touching and exquisite. The snows lie deep on the convent-roof, and the shadows of its towers "slant down the snowy sward," while she prays and says:

"As these white robes are soiled and dark.To yonder shining ground;As this pale taper's earthly spark,To yonder argent round;So shows my soul before the Lamb,My spirit before Thee;So in mine earthly house I am,To that I hope to be."

All heaven bursts its "starry floors," the gates roll back, the heavenly Bridegroom waits to welcome and purify the sister's departing soul. The vision dilates. It is mysteriously vague—mysteriously distinct:

"The sabbaths of eternity.One sabbath deep and wide—A light upon the shining sea—The Bridegroom with his bride!"

There is in such verse an indescribably Catholic tone. It is like the heavenly music of faith, which pervades theParadiseof Dante, and which (in spite of the lax lives of the authors) runs through the "Sacred Songs" of Moore, and theEpistle of Eloisa, andThe Dying Christian's Address to his Soul, by Pope. But if Tennyson has proved equal to portraying a Catholic saint, he has also depicted most graphically a Catholic knight of romance. Sir Galahad, one of the ornaments of King Arthur's court, (Idylls of the King., p. 213,) whose

"strength is as the strength of ten,Because his heart is pure,"

goes in quest of the Sangreal—the sacred wine. He hears the noise of hymns amid the dark stems of the forest, sees in vision the snowy altar-cloth with swinging censers and "silver vessels sparkling clean." He sails, in magic barks, on "lonely mountain meres," and catches glimpses of angels with folded feet "in stoles of white," bearing the holy grail.

"Ah! blessed vision!blood of God!My spirit beats her mortal bars.As down dark tides the glory slides,And star-light mingles with the stars. ...So pass I hostel, hall, and grange.By bridge and ford, by park and pale.All armed I ride, whate'er betide.Until I find the holy grail."Poems, p. 336.

A Catholic aspect may sometimes be observed in a single word. "And so thou lean on our fair father Christ," (Idylls, Guinevere, p. 254,) may perhaps sound strange to some ears, and is familiar to Catholics only. "He alone is our inward life," says Dr. Newman, speaking of Christ; "He not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery)semper gignit; he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called,as in nature so in grace, our real Father." (Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 89.) Hence, in the Litany of the Holy Name we say, "Jesu,Paterfuturi seculi," and "Jesu,Paterpauperum."

The Catholic who well understands his own faith will always be very scrupulous about disturbing that of others. If there is anything abhorrent to him, "it is the scattering doubt and unsettling consciences without necessity." (Newman's Apologia, p. 344.) There is a well-known poem inIn Memoriam, (xxxiii.,) which admirably illustrates this feeling. We quote but one verse, as the reader's memory will no doubt supply the rest.

"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,Her early heaven, her happy views;Nor thou with shadowed hint confuseA life that leads melodious ways."

The theory and practice of the wisest Catholics conform to the spirit and letter of this injunction. Their devotional life, too, is perfectly reflected in Tennyson whenever he writes of prayer.There is a depth of feeling in his expressions on this subject which reaches to the fact that prayer is the truest religion—that it is the link which unites man more closely to his Creator than any outward acts, any meditations, any professed creed, and is the spring and current of religious life.

"EvermorePrayerfrom a living source within the will,And beating up through all the bitter world,Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,Kept him a living soul"Enoch Arden, p. 44."Thrice blestwhose lives are faithful prayers.Whose loves in higher love endure:What souls possess themselves so pure?Or is there blessedness like theirs?"In Memoriam, xxxii.

Thus again, in theMorte d'Arthur, which was a forecast ofThe Idylls of the King, we are reminded of the efficacy of prayer in language worthy of being put into a Catholic's lips:

"Pray for my soul.More things are wrought by prayerThan this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voiceRise like a fountain for me night and day.For what are men better than sheep or goats.That nourish a blind life within the brain,If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayerBoth for themselves and those who call them friend?For so the whole round earth is every wayBound by gold chains about the feet of God."

In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a reference to the coöperation of human will with divine grace, which equals the precision of a Catholic theologian:

"Full seldomdoesa man repent, oruseBoth grace and willto pick the vicious quitchOf blood and customwholly out of him.And make all clean, and plant himself afresh."Idylls of the King, p. 93.

In the same poem we find lines of a distinctly Catholic tone on the repentant queen's entering a convent, and on a knight who had long been the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:

"So let me,if you do not shudder at me,Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;Wear black and white, and be a nun like you;Fast with your fasts,not feasting with your feasts;Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys.Bid not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;Pray and be prayed for;lie before your shrines;Do each low office of your holy house;Walk your dim cloister, and distribute doleTo poor sick people, richer in his eyesWho ransomed us, and haler, too, than I;And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own;And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayerThe sombre close of that voluptuous dayWhich wrought the ruin of my lord the king."Idylls of the King, p. 260.

The hermitage is thus described:

"There lived a knightNot far from Camelot, now for forty yearsA hermit,who had prayed, labored, and prayed.And ever laboring had scooped himselfIn the white rock a chapel and a hallOn massive columns, like a shorecliff cave.And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry."Idylls of the King, p. 168.

Among Tennyson's earlier poems, the picture of Isabel, "the perfect wife," with her "hate of gossip parlance, and of sway," her

"locks not wide dispread.Madonna-wise on either side her head;Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reignThe summer calm of golden charity;"

and

"Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fedWith the clear-pointed flame of chastity,"Poems, pp. 7, 8,

is worthy of a Catholic matron. The description of St. Stephen, inThe Two Voices, has all the depth and pathos of the poet's happiest mood; and, though neither it, nor some other passages which have been quoted, contain anything distinctively Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity, it is strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are drawing attention:

"I cannot hide that some have striven,Achieving calm, to whom was givenThe joy that mixes man with heaven;Who, rowing hard against the stream,Saw distant gates of Eden gleam.And did not dream it was a dream;But heard, by secret transport led,E'en in the charnels of the dead,The murmur of the fountain-head—Which did accomplish their desire,Bore and forbore, and did not tire;Like Stephen, an unquenched fire,He heeded not reviling tones.Nor sold his heart to idle moans.Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones;But looking upward, full of grace.He prayed, and from a happy placeGod's glory smote him on the face."Poems, p. 299.

We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more. We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency, but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor: "Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so produceda blossom of Catholicism." (French Revolution, vol. i. 10.)

But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist—a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in theIdylls of the King, and, considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one.

[Footnote 43: See hisMansas, and Life, by Toland, p. 17.]

King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally eloquent and edifying. (Idylls of the King.)

The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great name—not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well-meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of theIliadpromises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for theDivina Commedia. The attempts he has made atAlcaics, Hendecasyllabics, andGalliambicsin English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar. (Boädicea, etc., inEnoch Arden and other Poems.) As he does not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her marvellous results.Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says theNational Review, when speaking on this subject—"day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes theEdinburgh Review, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say."

O degli altri poeti onore e lume,Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amoreChe m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]

[Footnote 44:L Inferno, i. 82.]

During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of language also are original, and though he owes much to the early dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of nature is intense, and his observation of her works is microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as "decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (The Flower. Enoch Arden, etc., p. 152.) A concordance toIn Memoriamhas been published, and the several editions of the Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart. They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson, the fire of Dryden, the imagery of Shakespeare, the simplicity of Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any single writer." Perhaps not.But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty ofUlysses; the classical beauty ofTithonusand thePrincess; the luxuriant eloquence ofLocksley Hall; the deep lyrical flow ofThe LettersandThe Voyage; the'cutedrollery of theNorthern Farmer; the idyllic sweetness ofOEnone; the grandeur ofMorte d'Arthur; the touching simplicity ofEnoch Arden; the power and pathos ofAylmer's Field; the perfect minstrelsy of theRivulet, and the songs,O Swallow, Swallow, andTears, Idle Tears; and the sharps and trebles of theBrook, more musical than Mendelssohn.

Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the religious character of his poetry.

When, fixed in righteous wrath, a nation's eyeTorments some crowned tormentor with just hate.Nor threat nor flattery can that gaze abate;Unshriven the unatoning years go by;For as that starry archer in the skyUnbends not his bright bow, though early and lateThe syren sings, and folly weds with fate,Even so that constellated destinyWhich keeps fire-vigil in a night-black heaven,Upon the countenance of the doomed looks forthConsentient with a nation's gaze on earth:To the twinned powers a single gaze is given;The earthly fate reveals the fate on high—A brazen serpent raised, that says, not "live," but "die."Aubrey de Vere.

[Footnote 45: 1.Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man. By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.2.History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 6283.Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America. By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.4.History of the American Civil War. By the same. In three volumes. Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]

Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe, a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was, when first published, up to the level of the science to which it is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws; or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle; but the recognition seems to be only a verbal concession, made to the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it, that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations of matter.

It is due to Professor Draper to say, that in this respect he only sins in common with the great body of modern physiologists. Physiology—indeed, all the inductive sciences—have been for a long time cast in a materialistic mould, and men of firm faith, and sincere and ardent piety, are materialists, and, therefore, atheists, the moment they enter the field of physical science, and deny in their science what they resolutely affirm and would die for in their faith. Hence the quarrel between the theologians and thesavans. Thesavanshave not reconciled their so-called science with the great theological truths, whether of reason or revelation, which only the fool doubts, or in his heart denies. This proves that our physicists have made far less progress in the sciences than they are in the habit of boasting. That cannot be true in physiology which is false in theology; and a physiology that denies all reality but matter, or finds no place in it for God and the human soul, is no true physiological science. The physiologist has far less evidence of the existence of matter than I have of the existence of spirit; and it is only by spirit that the material is apprehensible, or can be shown to exist. Matter only mimics or imitates spirit.The continual changes that take place from time to time in physiology show—we say it with all deference to physiologists—that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress. We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance, the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may throw new light on the science—may enable us to see clearer its reach, and understand better its application, but cannot change or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor, the patient research, and the nice observation that has collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert, notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be created; and created it will not be till physiologists have learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free-will and necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper's work is an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is theforma corporis, its informing, its vital principle, and pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole life and action of the human body, from the first instant of conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as an animal, and afterward as united to an immaterial soul. It is body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human life. There is no moment after conception when the wilful destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life.

As we said on a former occasion, or at least implied, man, though the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below him, form no scientific basis of human physiology, for like is not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action that escapes the most powerful microscope, and the most subtile chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity, and, when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds, it may even be useful, and help us to a better understanding of our own bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction, because between man and all animals there is the difference of species.Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative philology; for, however diverse may be the dialects compared, there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order, a true scientific character. Physiological inductions, resting on the comparative study of different individuals, or different races or families of men, may also be truly scientific; for all these individuals, and all these races or families belong to one and the same species. But the comparative physiology that compares men and animals, gives only analogies, not science.

We do not undervalue science; on the contrary, what we complain of is, that our physiologists do not give us science; they give us facts, theories, or hypotheses. Facts are not science till referred to the principles that explain them, and these principles themselves are not science till integrated in the principles of that high and universal science called theology, and which is really the science of the sciences. The men who pass forsavans, and are the hierophants and lawgivers of the age, sin not by their science, but by their want of science. Their ideal of science is too low and grovelling. Science is vastly more than they conceive it; is higher, deeper, broader than they look; and the best of them are, as Newton said of himself, mere boys picking up shells on the shores of the great ocean of truth. They, at best, remain in the vestibule of the temple of science; they have not entered the penetralia and knelt before the altar. We find no fault with Professor Draper's science, where science he has; we only complain of him for attempting to palm off upon us his ignorance for science, and accepting, and laboring to make us accept as science what is really no science. Yet he is not worse than others of his class.

The second work named in our list is the professor's attempt to extend the principles of his human physiology to the human race at large, and to apply them specially to the intellectual development of Europe; the third is an attempt to apply them to the civil policy of America, and the fourth is an attempt to get a counter-proof of his theories in the history of our late civil war. Through the four works we detect one and the same purpose, one and the same doctrine, of which the principaldataare presented in his work on human physiology, which is cast in a purely materialistic mould. They are all written to show that all philosophy, all religion, all morality, and all history are to be physiologically explained, that is, by fixed, inflexible, and irreversible natural laws. He admits, in words, that man has free-will, but denies that it influences events or anything in the life and conduct of men. He also admits, and claims credit for admitting, a Supreme Being, as if there could be subordinate beings, or any being but one who declares himself I AM THAT AM; but a living and ever-present God, Creator, and upholder of the universe, finds no recognition in his physiological system. His God, like the gods of the old Epicureans, has nothing to do, but, as Dr. Evarist de Gypendole, in hisOintment for the Bite of the Black Serpent, happily expresses it, to "sleep all night and to doze all day." He is a superfluity in science, like the immaterial soul in the author'sHuman Physiology. All things, in Professor Draper's system, originate, proceed from, and terminate in, natural development, with a most superb contempt for theratio sufficiensof Leibnitz, and the first and final cause of the theologians and philosophers.The only God his system recognizes is natural law, the law of the generation and death of phenomena, and distinguishable from nature only as thenatura naturansis distinguishable from thenatura naturataof Spinoza. His system is, therefore, notwithstanding his concessions to the Christian prejudices which still linger with the unscientific, a system of pure naturalism, and differs in no important respect from theReligion Positiveof M. Augusta Comte.

The Duke of Argyle, in hisReign of Law, which we reviewed last February, a man well versed in the modern sciences, sought, while asserting the universal reign of law, to escape this system of pure naturalism, by defining law to be "will enforcing itself with power," or making what are called the laws of nature the direct action of the divine Will. But this asserted activity only for the divine Being, therefore denied second causes, and bound not only nature, but the human will fast in fate, or rather, absorbed man and nature in God; for man and nature do and can exist only in so far as active, or in some sense causative. The passive does not exist, and to place all activity in God alone is to deny the creation of active existences or second causes, which is the very essence of pantheism. Professor Draper and the positivists, whom he follows, reverse the shield, and absorb not man and nature in God, but both God and man in nature. John and James are not Peter, but Peter is James and John. There is no real difference between pantheism and atheism; both are absurd, but the absurdity of atheism is more easily detected by the common mind than the absurdity of pantheism. The one loses God by losing unity. and the other by losing diversity, or everything distinguishable from God. The God of the atheist is not, and the God of the pantheist is as if he were not, and it makes no practical difference whether you say God is all or all is God.

To undertake a critical review of these several works would exceed both our space and our patience, and, moreover, were a task that does not seem to be called for. Professor Draper, we believe, ranks high among his scientific brethren. He writes in a clear, easy, graceful, and pleasing style, but we have found nothing new or profound in his works. His theories are almost as old as the hills, and even older, if the hills are no older than he pretends. His work on the Intellectual Development of Europe, is in substance, taken from the positivists, and the positivist philosophy is only a reproduction, with no scientific advance on that of the old physiologers or hylozoists, as Cudworth calls them. He agrees perfectly with the positivists in the recognition of three ages or epochs, we should rather say stages, in human development; the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positivist. In the theological age, man is in his intellectual infancy, is filled with sentiments of fear and wonder; ignorant of natural causes and effects, of the natural laws themselves, he sees the supernatural in every event that surpasses his understanding or experience, and bows before a God in every natural force superior to his own. It is the age of ignorance, wonder, credulity, and superstition. In the second the intellect has been, to a certain extent, developed, and the gross fetichism of the first age disappears, and men no longer worship the visible apis, but the invisible apis, the spiritual or metaphysical apis; not the bull, but, as the North American Indian says, "the manitou of bulls;" and instead of worshipping the visible objects of the universe, as the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean and rivers, groves and fountains, storms and tempests, as did polytheism in the outset, they worship certain metaphysical abstractions into which they have refined them, and which they finally generalize into one grand abstraction, which they call Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, Theus, Deus, or God, and thus assert the Hebrew and Christian monotheism.In the third and last age there is no longer fetichism, polytheism, or monotheism; men no longer divinize nature, or their own abstractions, no longer believe in the supernatural or the metaphysical or anything supposed to be supramundane, but reject whatever is not sensible, material, positive as the object of positive science.

The professor develops this system with less science than its inventor or reviver, M. Auguste Comte and his European disciples; but as well as he could be expected to do it, in respectable English. He takes it as the basis of hisHistory of the Intellectual Development of Europe, and attempts to reconcile with it all the known and unknown facts of that development. We make no quotations to prove that we state the professor's doctrine correctly, for no one who has read him, with any attention, will question our statement; and, indeed, we might find it difficult to quote passages which clearly and expressly confirm it, for it is a grave complaint against him, as against nearly all writers of his school, that they do not deal in clear and express statements of doctrine. Had Professor Draper put forth what is evidently his doctrine in clear, simple, and distinct propositions, so that his doctrine could at once be seen and understood, his works, instead of going through several editions, and being commended in reviews and journals, as scientific, learned, and profound, would have fallen dead from the press, or been received with a universal burst of public indignation; for they attack everything dear to the heart of the Christian, the philosopher, and the citizen. Nothing worse is to be found in the old French Encyclopedists, in theSystème de la Natureof D'Holbach, or inl'Homme-Plant, andl'Homme-Machineof Lamettrie. His doctrine is nothing in the world but pure materialism and atheism, and we do not believe the American people are as yet prepared to deny either God, or creation and Providence. The success of these authors is in their vagueness, in their refusal to reduce their doctrine to distinct propositions, in hinting, rather than stating it, and in pretending to speak always in the name of science, thus: "Science shows this," or "Science shows that;" when, if they knew anything of the matter, they would know that science does no such thing. Then, how can you accuse Professor Draper of atheism or materialism; for does he not expressly declare his belief, as a man of science, in the existence of the Supreme Being, and in an immaterial and immortal soul? What Dr. Draper believes or disbelieves, is his affair, not ours; we only assert that the doctrine he defends in his professedly scientific books, from beginning to end, is purely physiological, and has no God or soul in it. As a man. Dr. Draper may believe much; as an author, he is a materialist and an atheist, beyond all dispute: if he knows it, little can be said for his honesty; if he does not know it, little can be said for his science, or his competency to write on the intellectual development of Europe, or of any other quarter of the globe.

But to return to the theory the professor borrows from the positivists. As the professor excludes from his physiology the idea of creation, we cannot easily understand how he determines what is the infancy of the human race, or when the human race was in its infancy. If the race had no beginning, if, like Topsy, "it didn't come, but grow'd," it had no infancy; if it had a beginning, and you assume its earliest stage was that of infancy, then it is necessary to know which stage is the earliest, and what man really was in that stage. Hence, chronology becomes all-important, and, as the author's science rejects all received chronology, and speaks of changes and events which took place millions and millions of ages ago, and of which there remains no record but that chronicled in the rocks; but, as in that record exact dates are not given, chronology, with him, whether of the earth or of man, must be very uncertain, and it seems to us that it must be very difficult for science to determine, with much precision, when the race was, or what it was, in its infancy. Thus he says:

"In the intellectual infancy of the savage state, man transfers to nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that everything he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. The tendency isnecessarilyto superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and, therefore, worthy of his veneration." (Intellect. Devel. p. 2.)

We beg the professor's pardon, but he has only imperfectly learned his lesson. In this which he regards as the age of fetich worship, and the first stage of human development, he includes ideas and conceptions which belong to the second, or metaphysical age of his masters. But let this pass for the present. The author evidently assumes that the savage state is the intellectual infancy of the race. But how knows he that it is not the intellectual old age and decrepitude of the race? The author, while he holds, or appears to hold, like the positivists, to the continuous progress of the race, does not hold to the continuous progress of any given nation.

"A national type," he says, (ch. xi.,) "pursues its way physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of the individual represented by infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death respectively."

How, then, say scientifically that your fetich age, or the age of superstition, the theological age of the positivists, instead being the infancy of the nation, is not its last stage next preceding death? How determine physiologically or scientifically that the savage is the infant man and not the worn-out man? Then how determine that the superstition of which you have so much to say, and which, with you, means religion, revelation, the church, everything that claims to be, or that asserts, anything supernatural, is not characteristic of the last stage of human development, and not of the first?

Our modern physiologists and anti-Christian speculators seem all to take it for granted that the savage gives us the type of the primitive man. We refuted this absurd notion in our essay onFaith and the Sciences. There are no known historical facts to support it. Consult the record chronicled in the rocks, as read by geologists. What does it prove?Why, in the lowest and most ancient strata in which human remains are found, along with those of extinct species of animals, you find that the men of that epoch used stone implements, and were ignorant of metals or unable to work them, and, therefore, must have been savages. That is, the men who lived then, and in that locality. Be it so. But does this prove that there did not, contemporary with them, in other localities or in other quarters of the globe, live and flourish nations in the full vigor of the manhood of the race, having all the arts and implements of civilized life? Did the savages of New England, when first discovered, understand working in iron, and used they not stone axes, and stone knives, many of which we have ourselves picked up? And was it the same with Europeans? From the rudeness and uncivilized condition of a people in one locality, you can conclude nothing as to the primitive condition of the race.

The infancy of the race, if there is any justice in the analogy assumed, is the age of growth, of progress; but nothing is less progressive, or more strictly stationary, in a moral and intellectual sense, than the savage state. Since history began, there is not only no instance on record of a savage tribe rising by indigenous effort to civilization, but none of a purely savage tribe having ever, even by foreign assistance, become a civilized nation. The Greeks in the earliest historical or semi-historical times, were not savages, and we have no evidence that they ever were. The Homeric poems were never the product of a savage people, or of a people just emerging from the savage state into civilization, and they are a proof that the Greeks, as a people, had juster ideas of religion, and were less superstitious in the age of Homer than in the age of St. Paul. The Germans are a civilized people, and if they were first revealed to us as what the Greeks and Romans calledbarbarians, they were never, as far as known, savages. We all know how exceedingly difficult it is to civilize our North American Indians. Individuals now and then take up the elements of our civilization, but rarely, if they are of pure Indian blood. They recoil before the advance of civilization. The native Mexicans and Peruvians have, indeed, received some elements of Christian civilization along with the Christian faith and worship; but they were not, on the discovery of this continent, pure savages, but had many of the elements of a civilized people, and that they were of the same race with the savages that roamed our northern forests, is not yet proved. The historical probabilities are not on the side of the hypothesis of the modern progressivists, but are on the side of the contrary doctrine, that the savage state belongs to the old age of the race—is not that from which man rises, but that into which he falls.

Nor is there any historical evidence that superstition is older than religion, that men begin in the counterfeit and proceed to the genuine,—in the false, and proceed by way of development to the true. They do not abuse a thing before having it. Superstition presupposes religion, as falsehood presupposes truth; for falsehood being unable to stand by itself, it is only by the aid of truth that it can be asserted. "Fear made the gods," sings Lucretius; but it can make none where belief in the gods, does not already exist. Men may transfer their own sentiments and passions to the divinity; but they must believe that the divinity exists before they can do it.They must believe that God is, before they can hear him in the wind, see him in the sun and stars, or dread him in the storm and the earthquake. It is not from dread of the strange, the powerful, or the vast, that men develop the idea of God, the spiritual, the supernatural; the dread presupposes the presence and activity of the idea. Men, again, who, like the professor's man in the infancy of the savage state, are able to conceive of spirit and to distinguish between the outward manifestation and the indwelling spirit, are not fetich worshippers, and for them the fetich is no longer a god, but if retained at all, it is as a sign or symbol of the invisible, Fetichism is the grossest form of superstition, and obtains only among tribes fallen into the grossest ignorance, that lie at the lowest round of the scale of human beings; not among tribes in whom intelligence is commencing, but in whom it is well-nigh extinguished.

Monotheism is older than polytheism, for polytheism, as the author himself seems to hold, grows out of pantheism, and pantheism evidently grows out of theism, out of the loss or perversion of the idea of creation, or of the relation between the creator and the creature, or cause and effect, and is and can be found only among a people who have once believed in one God, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. Moreover, the earliest forms of the heathen superstitions are, so far as historical evidence goes, the least gross, the least corrupt. The religion of the early Romans was pure in comparison with what it subsequently became, especially after the Etruscan domination or influence. The Homeric poems show a religion less corrupt than that defended by Aristophanes. The earliest of the Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, are free from the grosser superstitions of the latest, and were written, the author very justly thinks, before those grosser forms were introduced. This is very remarkable, if we are to assume that the grossest forms of superstition are the earliest! But we have with Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, no books that are of earlier date than the books of Moses, at least none that can be proved to have been written earlier; and in the books of Moses, in whatever light or character we take them, there is shown a religion older than any of the heathen mythologies, and absolutely free from every form of superstition, what is called the patriarchal religion, and which is substantially the Jewish and Christian religion. The earliest notices we have of idolatries and superstitions are taken from these books, the oldest extant, at least none older are known. If these books are regarded as historical documents, then what we Christians hold to be the true religion has obtained with a portion of the race from the creation of man, and, for a long series of years, from the creation to Nimrod, the mighty hunter or conqueror, was the only religion known; and your fetichisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, idolatries, and superstitions, which you note among the heathen, instead of being the religion of the infancy of the race, are, comparatively speaking, only recent innovations. If their authenticity as historical documents be denied, they still, since their antiquity is undeniable, prove the patriarchal religion obtained at an earlier date than it can be proved that any of the heathen mythologies existed. It is certain, then, that the patriarchal, we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the various religions or superstitions of the world have been developed.

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