The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 97

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From D. Appleton & Co., New-York. The Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865. 8vo, pp. 850.

From Hurd & Houghton, New-York. Revolution and Reconstruction. Two Lectures delivered in the Law School of Harvard College, in January, 1865, and January, 1866, by Joel Parker. 8vo, pamphlet, pp. 89.

Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity, Imbecility, and Suicide. By A.

O. Kellogg, M.D., a.s.sistant Physician State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N.Y. 12mo. pp. 204. Pictures of Country Life. By Alice Cary. 18mo, pp.

859.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York. Parts 18. 19, and 20 of D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes; and Vol II. of Catholic Anecdotes.

From P. O'Shea, New-York. Nos. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. and 33 of Darras's History of the Catholic Church.

From A. D. F. Randolph, New-York. The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon.

Mrs. Norton, 12mo, pp. 115.

From J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark, N.J. Jesus and Mary. A Catholic hymn-book. Selected from various sources, and arranged for the use of the children of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Newark, N.J. 12mo, pp. 76, paper.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. III., NO. 17.--AUGUST, 1866.

[ORIGINAL.]

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.

V.

THE REVELATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL ORDER, AND ITS RELATION TO THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF REASON.

Our reason in apprehending the intelligible is advertised at the same time of the existence of the super-intelligible. It is necessary to explain here the sense in which this latter term is used. It is evident that it can be used only in a relative and not in an absolute sense. That which is absolutely without the domain of the intelligible is absolutely unintelligible and therefore a non-ent.i.ty. The super-intelligible must therefore be something which is intelligible to G.o.d, but above the range either of all created reason, or of human reason in its present condition. It will suffice for the present to consider it under the latter category.

Our reason undoubtedly apprehends in its intelligible object the existence of something which is above the range of human intelligence in its present state. The intimate nature of material and spiritual substances is incomprehensible. Much more, the intimate nature or essence of the infinite divine being. All science begins from and conducts to the incomprehensible. Any one who wishes to satisfy himself of this may peruse the first few chapters of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Philosophy." That portion of the first article of the creed which reason can demonstrate; namely, the being of G.o.d, the Creator of the world, in which is included also the immortality of the soul, and the principle of moral obligation; advertises therefore, of an infinite sphere of truth which is above our comprehension. The natural suggests the supernatural, in which it has its first and final cause, its origin and ultimate end. The knowledge of the natural, therefore, gives us a kind of negative knowledge of the super-natural, by advertising us of its own incompleteness, and of the want of any principle of self-origination or metaphysical finality in itself. A system of pure naturalism which represents the idea of reason under a form which satisfies completely the intelligence without introducing the supernatural, is impossible.

What is nature, and what do we mean by the natural? Nature is simply the aggregate of finite ent.i.ties, and the natural is {578} what may be predicated of these ent.i.ties. A system of pure naturalism would therefore give a complete account of this aggregate of finite ent.i.ties, without going beyond the ent.i.ties themselves, that is, without transcending the limits of s.p.a.ce, time, the finite and the contingent. Such a system is not only incapable of rational demonstration, but utterly unthinkable. For, when the mind has gone to its utmost length in denying or excluding every positive affirmation of anything except nature, there remains always the abyss of the unknown from which nature came and to which it tends, even though the unknown may be declared to be unknowable. Those who deny the super-intelligible and the supernatural, therefore, are mere sceptics, and cannot construct a philosophy. Those who affirm a First Cause, in which second causes and their effects are intelligible, affirm the supernatural. For the first and absolute Cause cannot be included under the same generic term with the second causes and finite forces of nature. The more perfectly and clearly they evolve the full theistic conception of pure reason, the more distinctly do they affirm the supernatural, because the idea of G.o.d as the infinite, intelligible object of his own infinite intelligence is proportionately explicated and apprehended. It is explicated and apprehended by means of a.n.a.logies derived from finite objects, but these a.n.a.logies suggest that there is an infinite something behind them which they represent. By these a.n.a.logies we learn in a measure the meaning of the affirmation _Ut Deus sit_. We do not learn _Quid sit Deus_, but still we cannot help asking the question, What is G.o.d, what is his essence? We know that he is the adequate object of his own intelligence and will, and therefore we cannot help asking the question what is that object, what does G.o.d see and love in himself, in what does his most pure and infinite act consist, what is his beat.i.tude? Our reason is advertised of an infinite truth, reality, or being, which it cannot comprehend, that is, of the super-intelligible.

Those who base their philosophy on pure theism, or a modified rationalistic Christianity, are therefore entirely mistaken when they profess to be anti-supernaturalists, and to draw a distinctly marked line between themselves and the supernaturalists. The distinction is only between more or less consistent supernaturalists. Those who are at the remotest point from the Catholic idea, see that those who are a little nearer have no tenable standing-point, and these see it of those who are nearer than they are, and so on, until we come to the Anglicans and the Orientals. But the extremists themselves have no better standing-point than the intermediaries, and in their theistic conception have admitted a principle from which they can be driven by irresistible and invincible logic to the Catholic Church. For the present, we merely aim to show that they are compelled to admit the supernatural when they affirm G.o.d as the first and final cause of the world. In affirming this, they affirm that nature has its origin and final reason in the supernatural, or in an infinite object above itself, which human reason cannot comprehend. That is, they affirm super-intelligible and super-natural relations, of man and the universe. These relations must be regulated and adjusted by some law.

This law is either the simple continuity of the original creative act which explicates itself through con-creative second causes in time and s.p.a.ce, or it is this, and in addition to this, an immediate act of the Creator completing his original, creative act by subsequent acts of an equal or superior order, which concur with the first towards the final cause of the creation. Whoever takes the first horn of this dilemma is a pure naturalist in the only sense of the word which is intelligible.

That is, while he is a supernaturalist, in maintaining that nature has its first and final cause in the supernatural, or in {579} G.o.d; he is a naturalist in maintaining that man has no other tendency to his final cause except that given in the creative act that is essential to nature, and no other mode prescribed for returning to his final cause than the explication of this natural tendency, according to natural law. Consequently, reason is sufficient, without revelation; the will, without grace; humanity, without the incarnation; society, or the race organized under law, without the church. It is precisely in the method of treating this thesis of naturalism that the divarication takes place between the great schools of Catholic theology and between the various systems of philosophy, whether orthodox or heterodox, which profess to base themselves on the Christian idea, or to ally themselves with it. It is not easy to find the clue which will lead us safely through this labyrinth and preserve us from deviating either to the right hand or to the left, by denying too much on the one hand to the naturalists, or conceding too much to them on the other.

Nevertheless it is necessary to search for it, or to give up all effort to discuss the question before us, and to prove from principles furnished by nature and reason the necessity of accepting a supernatural revelation.

The true thesis of pure naturalism or rationalism is, that G.o.d in educating the human race for the destiny in view of which he created it, merely explicates that which is contained in nature by virtue of the original creative act, without any subsequent interference of the divine, creative power. He develops nature by natural laws alone, in one invariable mode. The physical universe evolves by a rigid sequence the force of all the second causes which it contains. The rational world is governed by the same law, and so also is the moral and spiritual world. The intellectual and spiritual education of the human race develops nothing except natural reason, and the natural, spiritual capacity of the soul. Reason extends its conquests by a continual progress in the super-intelligible realm, reducing it to the intelligible, and eternally approaching to the comprehension of the infinite and absolute truth. The spiritual capacity advances constantly in the supernatural realm, reducing it to the natural, and eternally approaching the infinite and absolute good or being. All nature, all creation, is on the march, and its momentum is the impulsive force given it by the creative impact that launched it into existence and activity.

Planting themselves on this thesis, its advocates profess to have _a priori_ principle by which they prove the all-sufficiency of nature for the fulfilment of its own destiny, and reject as an unnecessary or even inconceivable intrusion, the affirmation of another divine creative act, giving a new impact to nature, superadding a new force to natural law, subordinating the physical universe to a higher end, implanting a superior principle of intelligence and will in the human soul, and giving to the race a destination above that to which it tends by its own proper momentum. They refuse to entertain the question of a supernatural order, or an order which educates the race according to a law superior to that of the evolution of the mere forces of nature; and in consequence of this refusal, they logically refuse to entertain the question of a supernatural revelation disclosing this order, and of a supernatural religion in which the doctrines, laws, inst.i.tutions, forces and instruments of this order are organized, for the purpose of drawing the human race into itself.

This is the last fortress into which heterodox philosophy has fled.

The open plains are no longer tenable. The only conflict of magnitude now raging in Christendom is between the champions of the Catholic faith and the tenants of this stronghold. It is a great advantage for the cause of truth that it is so. The controversy is simplified, the issues are clearly marked, the opportunity is favorable for an {580} unimpeded and decisive collision between the forces of faith and unbelief, and the triumph of faith will open the way for Christianity to gain a new and mighty sway over the mind, the heart, and the life of the civilized world. This stronghold is no more tenable than any of the others which have been successively occupied and abandoned. Its tenants have gained only a momentary advantage by retreating to it.

They escape certain of the inconsistencies of other parties and evade the Catholic arguments levelled against these inconsistencies. But they can be driven by the irresistible force of reason from their position, and made to draw the Catholic conclusion from their own premises.

We do not say this in a boastful spirit, or as vaunting our own ability to effect a logical demolition of rationalism. Rather, we desire to express our confidence that the reason of its advocates themselves will drive them out of it, and that the common judgment of an age more enlightened than the present will demolish it. It is our opinion, formed after hearing the language used by a great number of men of all parties, and reading a still greater number of their published utterances, that the most enlightened intelligence of this age in Protestant Christendom has reached two conclusions; the first is, that the Catholic Church is the true and genuine church of Christianity; and the second, that it is necessary to have a positive religion which will embody the same idea that produced Christianity.

The combination and evolution of these two intellectual convictions promise to result in a return to Catholicism. And there are to be seen even already in the writings of those who have given up the positive Christianity of orthodox Protestantism, indications of the workings of a philosophy which tends to bring them round to the positive supernatural faith of the Catholic church. It is by these grand, intellectual currents moving the general mind of an age, that individual minds are chiefly influenced, more than by the thoughts of other individual minds. Individual thinkers can scarcely do more than to detect the subtle element which the common intellectual atmosphere holds in solution, to interpret to other thinkers their own thoughts, or give them a direction which will help them to discover for themselves some truth more integral and universal than they now possess. Therefore, while confiding in the power of the integral and universal truth embodied in the Catholic creed to bear down all opposition and vanquish every philosophy which rises up agamst it, we do not arrogate the ability to grasp and wield this power, and to exhibit the Catholic idea in its full evidence as the integrating, all-embracing form of universal truth. It is proposed in an honorable and conciliatory spirit to those who love truth and are able to investigate it for themselves. Many things must necessarily be affirmed or suggested in a brief, unpretending series of essays, which admit of and require minute and elaborate proof, such as can only be given in an extensive work, but merely sketched here after the manner of an outline engraving which leaves out the filling up belonging to a finished picture.

To return from this digression. We have begun the task of indicating how that naturalism or pure rationalism which affirms the theistic conception logically demonstrable by pure reason, can only integrate itself and expand itself to a universal Theodicy or doctrine of G.o.d, in a supernatural revelation.

If the opposite theory of pure naturalism were true, it ought to verify itself in the actual history of the human race, and in the actual process of its education. The idea of the supernatural ought to be entirely absent from the consciousness of the race. For, on the supposition of that theory, it has no place in the human mind--and no business in the world. If una.s.sisted nature and reason suffice for {581} themselves they ought to do their work alone, and do it so thoroughly that there would be no room for any pretended supernatural revelation to creep in. The history of mankind ought to be a continuous, regular evolution of reason and nature, like the movements of the planets; the human race ought to have been conscious of this law from the beginning, and never to have dreamed of the supernatural, never to have desired it.

Philosophy ought to have been, from the first, master of the situation, and to have domineered over the whole domain of thought.

The reverse of this is the fact. The history of the human race, and the whole world of human thought, is filled with the idea of the supernatural. The philosophy of naturalism is either a modification and re-combination of principles learned from revelation, or a protest against revelation and an attempt to dethrone it from its sway. It has no pretence of being original and universal, but always pre-supposes revelation as having prior possession, and dating from time immemorial. Now human nature and human reason are certainly competent to fulfil whatever task G.o.d has a.s.signed them. They act according to fixed laws, and tend infallibly to the end for which they were created. The judgments of human reason and of the human race are valid in their proper sphere. And therefore the judgment of mankind that its law of evolution is in the line of the supernatural is a valid judgment. Revelation has the claim of prescription and of universal tradition. Naturalism must set aside this claim and establish a positive claim for itself based on demonstration, before it has any right even to a hearing. It can do neither. It cannot bring any conclusive argument against revelation, nor can it establish itself on any basis of demonstration which does not pre-suppose the instruction of reason by revelation.

It cannot conclusively object to revelation. The very principle of law, that is, of the invariable nexus between cause and effect, which is the ultimate axiom of naturalism, is based on the perpetual concurrence of the first cause with all secondary causes, that is, the perpetuity of the creative act by which G.o.d perpetually creates the creature. There is no reason why this creative act should explicate all its effects at once or merely conserve the existences it has produced, and not explicate successively in s.p.a.ce and time the effects of its creative energy. The hypothesis that the creative power can never act directly in nature except at its origin, and must afterwards merely act through the medium of previously created causes in a direct line, is the sheerest a.s.sumption. Some of the most eminent men in modern physical science maintain the theory of successive creations.

There may be the same direct intervention of creative power in the moral and spiritual world. Miracles, revelations, supernatural interventions for the regeneration and elevation of the human race, are not improbable on any _a priori_ principle. The artifice by which the entire tradition of the human race is set aside, and a demand made to prove the supernatural _de novo_, is unwarrantable and unfair. The supernatural has the t.i.tle of prescription, and the burden of proof lies only upon the particular systems, to show that they are genuine manifestations of it, and not its counterfeits. The existence of a reality which may be counterfeited is a fair postulate of reason, until the contrary is demonstrated, and something positive of a prior and more universal order is logically established from the first principles of reason. We are not to be put off with a.s.surances like a fraudulent debtor's promises of payment, that our doubts and uncertainties, will be satisfied after two thousand or two hundred thousand years. Exclude the supernatural, and natural reason will have, and can have nothing in the future, beyond the universal data and principles which we have now and have had from the beginning, with which to solve its problems. The {582} connection between mind and matter, the origin and destination of the soul, the future life, the state of other orders of intelligent beings, the condition of other worlds, will be as abstruse and incapable of satisfactory settlement then as now. If we are to gain any certain knowledge concerning them, it must be in a supernatural way. And what conclusive reason is there for deciding that we may not? Who can prove that some of that infinite truth which surrounds us may not break through the veil, that some of the intelligent spirits of other spheres may not be sent to enlighten and instruct us? [Footnote 125]

[Footnote 125: That is, who can prove it from reason alone, without the evidence of Revelation itself that it is already completed?]

One of the ablest advocates of naturalism, Mr. William R. Alger, has admitted that it is possible, and oven maintains that it has already taken place. In his erudite work on the "History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," he maintains the opinion that Jesus Christ is a most perfect and exalted being, who was sent into this world by G.o.d to teach mankind, who wrought miracles and really raised his body to life in attestation of his doctrine, although he supposes that he laid it aside again when he left the earth. He distinctly a.s.serts the infallibility of Christ as a teacher, and of the doctrine which he actually taught with his own lips. Here is a most distinct and explicit concession of the principle of supernatural revelation. To those who heard him he was a supernatural and infallible teacher. In so far as his doctrine is really apprehended it is for all generations a supernatural and infallible truth. It has regenerated mankind, and Mr. Alger believes it is destined, when better understood, to carry the work of regeneration to a higher point in the future. It is true, he does not acknowledge that the apostles were infallible in apprehending and teaching the doctrine of Christ. But he must admit, that in so far as they have apprehended and perpetuated it, and in so far as he himself and others of his school now apprehend it more perfectly than they did, they apprehend supernatural truth and appropriate a supernatural power. Besides, once admitting that Christ was an infallible teacher, it is impossible to show why he could not do what so many philosophers have done, communicate his doctrine in clear and intelligible terms, so that the substance of it would be correctly understood and perpetuated. Miss Frances Cobbe, admitted to be the best expositor of the doctrine of the celebrated Theodore Parker, in her "Broken Lights," and other similar writers, give to the doctrine and inst.i.tutions of Christ a power that is superhuman and that denotes the action of a superhuman intelligence. Those who prognosticate a new church, a new religion, a realization of ideal humanity on earth, cannot integrate their hypothesis in anything except the supernatural, and must suppose either a new outburst of supernatural life from the germ which Christ planted on the earth, or the advent of another superhuman Redeemer.

Dr. Brownson while yet only a transcendental philosopher on his road to the Church, exhibited this thought with great power and beauty, in a little book ent.i.tled "New Views." The dream of a new redemption of mankind in the order of temporal perfection and felicity was never presented with greater argumentative ability or portrayed in more charming colors, at least in the English language; and never was any thing made more clear than the necessity of superhuman powers for the actual fulfilment of this bewitching dream. [Footnote 126]

[Footnote 126: That is, bewitching to those who do not believe in something for more sublime, the restoration of all things in Christ, foretold in the Scriptures.]

Whether we look backward or forward, we confront the idea of the supernatural. This is enough to prove its reality. There are no universal pseudo-ideas, deceits, or illusions. That which is universal is true. We have {583} therefore only to inspect the idea of the supernatural, to examine and explicate its contents, to interrogate the universal belief and tradition of mankind, to study the history of the race, and unfold the wisdom of the ancients, and the result will be truth. We shall obtain true and just conceptions of the original, universal, eternal idea, in which all particular forms of science, belief, law, and human evolution in all directions, coalesce and integrate themselves as in a complete whole including all the relations of the universe to G.o.d, as First and Final Cause.

We must now go back to the point where we left off, after establishing as the first principle of all science and faith the pure theistic doctrine respecting the first and final cause, or the origin and end of all things in necessary being, that is, G.o.d. We have to show the position of this doctrine in the conception of supernatural revelation, and its connection with the other doctrines which express the supernatural relation of the human race and the universe to G.o.d.

The conception of the supernatural in its most simple and universal form, is the conception of somewhat distinct from and superior to the complete aggregate of created forces or second causes. In this sense, it is identical with the conception of first and final cause. It may be proper here to explain the term Final Cause, which is not in common use among English writers. It expresses the ultimate motive or reason for which the universe was created, the end to which all things are tending. When we say that G.o.d is necessarily the final cause, as well as the first cause, of all existing things, we mean that he could have had no motive or end in creating, extrinsic to his own being. All that proceeds from him as first cause must return to him as final cause.

From this it appears that the conception of nature in any theistic system implies the supernatural; because it implies a cause and end for nature above itself. The supernatural can only be denied by the atheist, who maintains that there is nothing superior to what the Theist calls second causes, or by the Pantheist, who either identifies G.o.d with nature, or nature with G.o.d. A Theist cannot form any conception of pure nature or a purely natural order, except as included in a supernatural plan; because his natural order originates in a cause and tends toward an end above and beyond itself, and is not therefore its own adequate reason. As we have already seen, reason, by virtue of its original intuition of the infinite, is advertised of something infinitely beyond all finite comprehension. By apprehending its own limitation, and the finite, relative, contingent existence of all things which are, it is advertised of an infinite unknown, and thus has a negative knowledge of the supernatural. By the light of the creative act in itself and in the universe, it apprehends the being of G.o.d as reflected in his works and made intelligible by the similitude of created existences to the Creator. It apprehends that there is an infinite being, whose created similitude is in itself and all things; a primal uncreated light, the cause of the reflected light in which nature is intelligible. Therefore it apprehends the supernatural. But it does not directly and immediately perceive what this infinite being or uncreated light is, and cannot do so. That is, by explicating its own primitive idea, and bringing it more and clearly into the reflective consciousness, and by learning more and more of the universe of created existences, it may go on indefinitely, apprehending G.o.d by the reflected light of similitudes, "_per speculum, in aenigmate;_" but it must progress always in the same line: it has no tendency toward an immediate vision of G.o.d as he is intelligible in his own essence and by uncreated light. Therefore, it has only a negative and not a positive apprehension of the supernatural. G.o.d dwells in a light inaccessible to created {584} intelligence, as such. There is an infinite abyss between him and all finite reason, which cannot be crossed by any movement of reason, however accelerated or prolonged. Therefore, although there is no science or philosophy possible which does not proceed from the affirmation of the supernatural, that is, of the infinite first and final cause of nature, yet it is not properly called supernatural science so long as it is confined to the limits of that knowledge of causes above nature which is gained only through nature. Its domain is restricted to that intelligibility which G.o.d has given to second causes and created existences, and which only reflects himself indirectly. Therefore, theologians usually call it natural knowledge, and in its highest form natural theology, as being limited within the bounds above described. They call that the natural order in which the mind is limited to the explication of that capacity of apprehending G.o.d, or of that intuitive idea of G.o.d, which const.i.tutes it rational, and is therefore limited to a relation to G.o.d corresponding to the mode of apprehending him. The term supernatural is restricted to an order in which G.o.d reveals to the human mind the possibility of apprehending him by the uncreated light in which he is intelligible to himself, and coming into a relation to him corresponding therewith; giving at the same time an elevation to the power of intelligence and volition which enables it to realize that possibility. This elevation includes the disclosure of truths not discoverable otherwise, as well as the faculty of apprehending them in such a vivid manner that they can have an efficacious action on the will, and give it a supernatural direction.

In this sense, rationalists have no conception of the supernatural.

None have it, except Catholics, or those who have retained it from Catholic tradition. When we ascribe to rationalists a recognition of the supernatural, we merely intend to say that they recognize in part that immediate interference of G.o.d to instruct mankind and lead it to its destiny which is really and ultimately, although not in their apprehension, directed to the elevation of man to a sphere above that which is naturally possible. Therefore they cannot object to revelation on the ground of its being an interference with the course of nature or not in harmony with it, and cannot make an _a priori_ principle by virtue of which they can prejudge and condemn the contents of revelation. But we do not mean to say that they possess the conception of that which const.i.tutes the supernaturalness of the revelation, in the scientific sense of the term as used by Catholic theologians. Even orthodox Protestants possess it very confusedly. And here lies the source of most of the misconceptions of several abstruse Catholic dogmas.

It is in the restricted sense that we shall use the term supernatural hereafter, unless we make it plain that we use it in the general signification.

We are now prepared to state in a few words the relation of the conception of G.o.d which is intelligible to reason, to the revealed truths concerning his interior relations which are received by faith on the authority of his divine veracity. How does the mind pa.s.s through the knowledge of G.o.d to belief in G.o.d; through "_Cognosco Deum_" to "_Credo in Deum_"? [Footnote 127]

[Footnote 127: "I know G.o.d." "I believe in G.o.d."]