The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 67

As for us, we are well pleased to see that Mgr. Michael does not seem disposed to follow the footsteps of Cyril Lucar.

But another check was reserved for the famous project. The archpriest Joseph Wa.s.silief, chaplain to the Russian emba.s.sy in Paris, after having shown himself rather favorable to the contemplated union, has just laid down, with as much wisdom as firmness, the conditions of the proposed treaty. "However much explanations may be avoided, they will forcibly recur, sooner or later," he justly observes in the _Christian Union_, 24th September, 1865. And, resting on this principle, he pa.s.ses in review the three questions of the procession of the Holy Ghost, the invocation of saints, and prayer for the dead; he then shows that it is not possible to establish _intercommunion_ between the two Churches until they have come to an agreement on all these points; Among other things, he shows that the Church has always, been careful {430} to preserve the entire deposit of doctrine, and that she has not permitted herself to establish a difference between what is fundamental and what is secondary. He concludes with these wise words: "Charitable in our explanations, we are bound to be very candid one with the other. If rigorous discussions on all points of divergence appear to r.e.t.a.r.d the final agreement, they secure its solidity and duration; whilst reservations, though accelerating the agreement, would leave therein a germ of weakness and instability."

We attach the more importance to this declaration because the authority of the archpriest Joseph Wa.s.silief is enhanced by the consideration shown him by the synod. Latterly there was a vacancy in the ranks of that a.s.sembly, which forms the supreme council of the Russian Church. There was question of replacing the chaplain-general of the armies by land and sea. Three names were proposed to the sovereign's choice: that of M. Wa.s.silief was one of the three. He has not been appointed; but, in proposing him, the synod sufficiently testified that it would have wished to see him seated in its midst, raised to the highest dignity to which, in Russia, a member of the secular clergy can pretend.

After the energetic act of the metropolitan of Belgrade and the words of the archpriest Wa.s.silief, it remains for us to quote the _Levant Herald_ an English and Protestant journal published at Constantinople.

In its number of the 20th September, 1865, that paper endeavors to make the Anglican clergy understand that they flatter themselves with a delusive hope if they believe in the possibility of a union, or even of an alliance, between the two communions.

It results from all we have just said that if the Anglo-Americans have entertained the project of Protestantizing the Greek Church, they must perceive that the enterprise is more arduous than they had supposed.

The Russians, on their side, must see that it is not so easy to make the Anglican Church enter into the bosom of theirs. As to establishing the _intercommunion_ between the two churches without having come to an agreement on questions of faith, it is a dream which the archpriest Wa.s.silief must have dispelled once and for ever.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

REASON IN RELIGION.

By Frederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Company, 245 Washington St. 1863. pp. 458.

The author of this work, who is a professor in Harvard University, enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an accomplished scholar and writer, and is looked upon by numbers of intelligent and thoughtful persons, especially in Ma.s.sachusetts, as their most revered and trusted guide in religious matters. On that account whatever he writes is worthy of consideration. In the work before us he has not attempted a systematic treatise on the topic indicated in his t.i.tle, but has thrown together a series of essays touching on it and its kindred topics, indicating difficulties more than aiming at solving them, and suggesting a method by which anxious minds may separate a certain modic.u.m of belief which is practically certain and safe from that which is doubtful, and wait patiently until they can get more truth by the slow progress of science.

Any one who looks in this work for metaphysical solutions which are satisfactory or plausible of the great theological problems will be disappointed. The author sees too clearly the want of sufficient data, and the want of a sufficient criterion in his system, to attempt to dogmatize much. We think this {431} course more sensible and honest than the opposite. At the same time, it lays open the defects of his system; but so much the better, and so much the more hope of getting at the truth. He cannot satisfy, however, either the consistent rationalist or the consistent believer in revelation. On the rationalistic side he has received a severe criticism from the _Christian Examiner_. To a Catholic the positively theological part of his work has but little interest. Some incidental topics are handled with considerable acuteness and ability, as, for instance, the quality of sin and evil, the relation between spirit and matter, the compensations of providence, etc. The impartial testimony of such a bold and subtle critic as the author in favor of certain facts and doctrines--_e.g._, miracles, the resurrection, future punishment, etc., is of value. There are half truths, incidental thoughts, scintillations of light, through the book, which show how much the author's merits are his own, and his defects those of the system he was trained in. The style in which he writes has many most admirable and peculiar qualities, fitting it to be the vehicle of the highest kind of thought. Nevertheless, although we do not question the author's scholarship in his own proper field of study, what he says of specially Catholic questions and matters appears to us commonplace, superficial, and sometimes quite gratuitously introduced. Through a want of care in studying up the Catholic question, he has made one or two quite remarkable mistakes. One of these is in speaking of the synod of Valentia as if it were a general council. Another is the statement that Pope Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII.) has not been canonized. These remarks are by the way, for we are not attempting to follow Dr. Hedge over the area covered by his essays for the purpose of controverting his positions.

The real point of interest it a work like this is the author's thesis respecting the source and criterion of religious truth. If we differ here, there is very little use in discussing the particular conclusions or inferences we draw respecting doctrine. While the difference continues, it is better to keep the discussion upon it; if we ever come to an agreement, it will be comparatively easy to proceed with the discussion of specific doctrines.

Although Dr. Hedge does not proceed by a formal a.n.a.lytic method, yet he has a thesis, and states it intelligibly in his chapter on "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." In philosophy he is a Kantian, and in theology he adopts the system condemned in the late encyclical of Pius IX. under the name of "moderate rationalism." According to him, we cannot get the idea of G.o.d, or of spiritual truths, from pure reason. All we know of these truths comes from revelation, and the truths of revelation are subject to the critical judgment of reason, which cannot originate, but can approve or reject, conceptions of spiritual truth.

There are two rather serious objections to this theory. The first is, that it destroys reason by denying to it either the original intuition of G.o.d, or the capacity of acquiring the idea of G.o.d by reflection; without which it has no capacity of apprehending or judging of the conception of G.o.d proposed to it by revelation. The second is, that it destroys revelation, making it identical with the conscience or moral sense; that is, individual and subjective. What is this revelation or inspiration in the spiritual nature of an individual? Is it his reason or intelligence elevated and illuminated? That cannot be; for then reason and revelation are identical, and the proposition that we know nothing of spiritual truths by reason would be subverted. What then is it? We can conceive of nothing in the spiritual nature of man which is not reducible to intelligence or will. It must be will, then. But will is a blind faculty. It is a maxim of philosophy, "Nil volitum, nisi prius cognitum." The will cannot choose the supreme good unless the intelligence furnishes it the idea of the supreme good. You cannot have a revelation without first establishing sound rationalism as a basis. Reason may be indebted for distinct conceptions even of those truths which it is able to demonstrate to an exterior instruction given immediately by Almighty G.o.d through inspiration. But it must have the original idea or intuition in itself which is explicated by this instruction and is its ultimate criterion of truth. If by revelation is understood merely the outward a.s.sistance given to the mind to develop its own idea and attain the full perfection of reason, there is no sense in distinguishing revelation from {432} philosophy, science, or the light of reason itself, since all alike come from G.o.d.

A revelation, properly so called, is a manifestation of truths above the sphere of reason--truths which reason cannot demonstrate from their intrinsic contents. In this case, reason can only apprehend the evidence of the fact that they are revealed, that they are not contrary to any truths already known, and that they have certain a.n.a.logies with truths perceived by reason. But they must be accepted as positively and absolutely true only on the authority of revelation.

You must therefore be a pure rationalist, and maintain that we have no knowledge of any truth beyond that which the educated intelligence of man evolves from its own primitive and ultimate idea; or you must accept revelation in the Catholic sense, as proposed by an extrinsic authority. Dr. Hedge gives us no basis for either science or faith.

There cannot be a basis for faith without one for science; and give us a basis sufficient for science, we will demonstrate from it the truth of revelation.

We conclude by quoting one or two remarkable pa.s.sages, which show that the author instinctively thinks more soundly and justly than his theory will logically sustain him in doing:

"The ma.s.s of mankind must receive their religion at second-hand, and receive it on historical authority, as they receive the greater part of all their knowledge."

"We want a teacher conscious of G.o.d's inpresence, claiming attention as a voice out of the heavens. We want a doctrine which shall announce itself with divine authority; not a system of moral philosophy, but the word and kingdom of G.o.d. Without this stamp of divine legitimacy, without the witness and signature of the Eternal, Christianity would want that which alone gives it-weight with the ma.s.s of mankind, and the place it now holds in human things." (pp.

64, 242.)

Well spoken! spoken like a philosopher, like a Christian, like a Catholic! Apply now Kant's and Dr. Hedge's principle of _practical reason_. They say, Mankind feel the need of a G.o.d, therefore there is and has always been a G.o.d. So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive, dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic Church is the true Church of G.o.d.

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, ETC.

Edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. London: Longmans & Company. 1864.

This is the most superb work on spiritual subjects in our English Catholic literature. Mr. Lewis has made his translation in such a manner as to merit the highest encomium from the late Cardinal Wiseman, who has written the preface to the edition. The paper, typography, and mechanical execution are in the highest style of English typographical art. The fathers of St. Charles deserve the thanks of the entire English-speaking Catholic and literary world for this costly and n.o.ble enterprise which they have achieved.

It is needless to say that the works of St. John of the Cross are among the highest specimens of genius and spiritual wisdom to be found in the Spanish language or any other. St. John was a poet of the first order, and an equally great philosopher. In this view alone his works are worthy of profound study. The base of his doctrine is the deepest philosophy, and its summit is ever varied and enlightened by the glow of poetic fervor. It is philosophy and poetry, however, elevated, purified, and hallowed by sacred inspiration, and derived not merely from human but from divine contemplation. As a book for spiritual reading and direction, it is most proper for a certain cla.s.s of minds only, who have difficulties and inward necessities for which they cannot find the requisite aid in the ordinary books of instruction. It is also the best guide for those who have the direction of persons of this character.

We learn that the Messrs. Appleton have in press, and will soon publish "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," by the Most Rev. H.

E. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, which has just been issued by the Longmans, of London.

---------- {433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 10--JANUARY, 1866.

Translated from Le Correspondant

LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET. [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: "_Oeuvres de Leibnitz, publiees pour la premiere fois d'apres les Ma.n.u.scrits's, avec des notes et une introduction,_" par A. Foucher de Carcil. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Tomes. I. et II.]

Every friend of letters must greet with sincere pleasure the literary enterprise of M. de Careil in undertaking a complete edition of the writings of Leibnitz, a large part of which has. .h.i.therto remained unpublished and even unknown, and especially to make that great genius live anew for us in all his fulness and integrity. No greater literary undertaking ever seduced the imagination of a young erudite, is better fitted to attract the sympathy of the European republic, or more difficult of execution. For it was precisely the peculiarity of Leibnitz that, while he labored to embrace with a firmness of grasp never equalled the whole of moral and physical nature, all things real, ideal, or possible, in one and the same system, he uniformly abstained from giving, in his writings, to that system its full and entire development. Possessing the amplest and most complete mind that ever lived, he took no care to give to any of his works the seal of completeness and perfection. The inventor of so many methods, mathematical and metaphysical, he never arranged his ideas in a methodical order. He leads his readers, with a rapid and firm step, through a labyrinth of abstract conceptions and boundless erudition, but he suffers no hand but his own to hold the guiding thread. He has left us numerous tracts and fragments of great value indeed, but no work that reveals the unity of his system, and gives us a summary of his doctrines. There is no _summa_ of the Leibnitzian science and philosophy. We might say that, by a sort of coquetry, while he sought to know and explain everything in nature, he took care that the secret of his own heart should not for a moment escape him.

Hence it becomes important to bring together and arrange in their natural order his scattered members, so as to give them the cohesion they lack, to combine his several personages, the philosopher, the moralist, the geometrician, the naturalist, the erudite, the diplomatist, and the courtier, in one living being, and present the giant armed at all points as he came forth from the hands of his Maker. Hence also the difficulty {434} of the task. It requires to accomplish it the universality of tastes, if not of faculties, possessed by the model to be reconstructed. It presents one of those cases in which to reproduce nature it is almost necessary to equal nature, and to resuscitate is hardly less difficult than to create.

Only a Cuvier is able to collect and put in their place the gigantic bones and powerful fins of Leviathan.

_Ab Jove principium_. M. de Careil begins with theology. These two volumes placed at the head of his edition are taken up with writings some of which had already been printed, others had remained in ma.n.u.script, but all subjected to a careful revision and enriched by learned notes, which pertain exclusively to matters of religion. If the ancient cla.s.sification, which gave to theology the precedence of all other matters, had not every claim to our respect, we might, perhaps, permit ourselves to find fault with this arrangement of the works of Leibnitz, which will cause, I am sure, some surprise to the learned public. His theological writings were his first neither in the order of time nor in the order of merit. He did not open his brilliant career with religious discussions, nor was it by them that he was chiefly distinguished, or left his deepest trace. He made in theology, no discoveries as fruitful as the infinitesimal calculus, and gave it no problems that have fetched so many and so distant echoes as his theories of optimism and monadology. Why, then, open the series with those writings which did not begin it, and which do not give us its summary, and give the precedence to works, merely accessory and of doubtful value, over so many others which earlier, more constantly, and more gloriously occupied his laborious life?

There is still another objection to this distribution of matters which M. de Careil has made. The theological writings of Leibnitz consist almost exclusively in his correspondence, and are parts of the negotiation for the reunion of the different Christian communions of which, for a brief time, he was the medium. Correspondences are admirable means of gaining an insight into the private and personal character of men whose public life and works are already known, but taken by themselves they are always obscure and difficult to be understood. The reason is, that people who correspond are usually mutual acquaintances, and understand each other by a hint or half a word. They are familiar with contemporary events, and waste no time in narrating them, or in explaining what each already knows. Facts and ideas are treated by simple allusions, intelligible enough to the correspondents, but unintelligible to a posterity that lacks their information. The correspondence of Leibnitz, which M. de Careil publishes, is far from being free from this grave inconvenience.

Leibnitz appears in it in the maturity of his age, and the full splendor of his renown. He speaks with the authority of a philosopher in full credit, and of a counsellor enjoying the confidence of an important German court. His correspondents treat him with the respect due to an acknowledged celebrity, and even a power. In the course of the discussion he is carrying on he introduces many of his well known metaphysical principles, but briefly, as ideas familiar to those whom he addresses, and less for the purpose of teaching than of recalling them to the memory.

His manner of writing, of rushing, so to speak, _in medias res_, takes the inexperienced reader by surprise, and appears to conform to the adventurous habits of dramatic art much more than to the sound rules of erudition, which proceeds slowly, with measured step, marking in advance the place where it is to plant its foot. Few among us are sufficiently acquainted with the facts in detail of the life of Leibnitz, or know well enough the secret of his opinions, to be able to render an account to {435} ourselves of the part we see him--a lay-citizen--playing among emperors, kings, princes, and prelates, or the relation that subsists between his system of monads and scholastic theology. Hence it often happens that we neither know who is speaking, nor of what he is speaking. This frequently causes us an embarra.s.sment to which M. de Careil is himself too much a stranger to be able sufficiently to compa.s.sionate it. He has lived ten years with Leibnitz in the Library of Hanover, his habitual residence, and he knows every lineament of the face of his hero, and--not the least of his merits--deciphers at a glance his formless and most illegible scrawl.

We are not, therefore, astonished that in his learned introductions and his notes, full of matter, he makes no account of difficulties which we in our ignorance are utterly unable to overcome.

But we are convinced that the knowledge the editor has acquired by his invaluable labors would have been far more available to his readers if he had condensed it into a detailed biography, such as he only could write, than as he gives it, scattered at the beginning of each volume, or in a note at the foot of each page. An historical notice, comprising the history of the intellect as well as of the life of Leibnitz, an exposition of ideas as well as of facts, and the arrangement of the didactic works according to the order of their subjects and their importance, followed by the fragments and correspondence, the order adopted by nearly all collectors of great polygraphs, would, it seems to us, have been much better, and simply the dictate of reason and experience. Introduced by M. de Careil into the monument he erects not by the front, through the peristyle, but by a low, side door, we run at least great risk of not seizing the whole in its proportions.

I confess that I have also a personal reason for regretting the arrangement adopted by M. de Careil. I had occasion formerly, among the sins of my youth, to examine, with very little preparatory study I admit, and in doc.u.ments by no means so abundant and so exact as those which are now placed within our reach, the negotiations pursued by Leibnitz for the union of Christian communions, which take up the whole of these two volumes. From that examination, along with that of a small tract naturally attached to it, I came, on the religious opinions of the great philosopher, to certain conclusions which I set forth in the 32d number of the first series of this periodical, which M. de Careil, even then deeply engaged in this study of Leibnitz, has felt it his duty, in a discussion marked by great urbanity, to combat.

It is my misfortune to persist in those conclusions, and more strenuously than ever in consequence of the new light which seems to me to be furnished by this publication, and to which I cannot dispense myself from briefly recurring. In so doing I fear that I shall appear to some readers to have sought or to have accepted too readily an occasion for resuming a discussion of little importance, and which probably few except myself remember. M. de Careil, I hope, will do me the justice to acquit me of a thought so puerile. n.o.body would have been more eager than myself to admire, in the picture he presents us, the figures which naturally occupy the foreground; but if the eye is forced to pause at first on some insignificant detail, it perhaps is not a defect of taste in the spectator; may it not be a defect of skill in the artist?

I.

These reserves made, we proceed to examine, with some care, the changes rendered necessary, by this new and complete edition, in the opinion previously adopted by the biographers of Leibnitz in regard to the religious negotiation of which he was for a moment the accredited medium, and in which we find mingled the great name of Bossuet.

Several important {436} points are much modified by the doc.u.ments now brought to light for the first time.

We learn, in the outset, that the negotiation for the union of the Protestant communions with the Holy See was far more important than is commonly thought, and was continued for a much longer time. The earliest doc.u.ments in relation to it published by M. de Careil date from 1671, whilst the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet suppose that the first overtures were made only in the year 1690, a difference of twenty years; and it appears from these doc.u.ments, hitherto perfectly unknown, that it was precisely during those twenty years that success came the nearest being obtained, and that the highest influences were employed to obtain it.

During this period, from 1670 to 1690, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century was at its apogee, and nearly all the German sovereigns were animated by a strong desire to effect the religious pacification of their subjects. The wounds caused by the Thirty Years'

War were hardly closed by the peace of Westphalia, and every one felt the mortal blow which religious dissension had struck to the Germanic power by breaking the old unity of the empire. Beside, all eyes were turned toward France, where religion and royalty seemed to move on together in perfect harmony, and displayed an unequalled splendor.

France, under her young monarch, Louis XIV., was at once the object of envy and of dread; and the re-establishment of religious unity in Germany, torn by mutually hostile communions, seemed to the sovereign princes the only means of resembling France, and at the same time of resisting her power.

When, therefore, Rogas Spinola, confessor to the empress, the wife of Leopold I., at first Bishop of Tina, afterward of Neustadt, a man of mild temperament and sound sense, became the intermediary agent of the general desire for peace, and after having sounded the leading Protestant theologians, went to Rome to ascertain the extent of the concessions to which the maternal authority of the Church could consent, he was warmly supported not only by his own sovereign, the emperor, but also by fourteen other reigning sovereigns of Germany, some of them Catholic and others Protestant. Such was the strange religious confusion in the German States that in more than one the sovereign was Catholic and the nation Protestant, or the sovereign was Protestant and the nation Catholic. In the former condition was the Elector of Hanover, John Frederic of Brunswick, of whom Leibnitz was librarian and private secretary. This prince could not fail to enter with zeal into a plan which promised to fill up the gulf between him and his Protestant subjects.