Part 1 — THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A BASIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION. BY F. RAMIERE, S. J. FROM THE ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.

We have shown what secondary education does for the formation of man, and how powerfully it is aided by philosophy in the accomplishment of its task. Secondary education in the soul of the young man completes the work sketched out by the primary lessons given to the child; it develops his faculties, teaches him their use, invests him with full dominion over himself, and prepares him to carry out, according to his high vocation, the great duty of life. Philosophy is the necessary complement of this education, since it is indispensable for the development of the sovereign faculty, reason, and consequently for the complete formation of the man, and the perseverance of the Christian.

We might dispense with further proofs of the utility of philosophy, although we are still very far from having examined it from every point of view. The man whom primary and secondary education have placed in possession of his faculties is not destined to live alone in the world, and employ those admirable instruments wherewith his Creator has endowed him simply for his own advantage. He is made to live in society; it is to society he owes, after God, his existence, his nurture, his instruction, his development, his physical and moral being, in a word, all that he is. During the period of his education, he has remained almost passive in its hands, and has received everything from it. Arrived at the term of this long career, justice obliges him to set to work to pay back to it the immense debt he has contracted. Moreover, that which in him is but a just duty is at the same time a necessary condition of his dignity and happiness. For, if he does not force himself to utilize his faculties in the interests of his fellows, those faculties will infallibly become for him a source of wasting ennui and cruel torment. If, then, he wishes to become an honorable man, let him see that he become a useful citizen.

For this purpose a multitude of careers open out before him; for there is many a way of serving society; and the most useful of all is not always that whose results are the most immediate, and whose fruits are the most easily gathered.

Undoubtedly the father of a family who improves his land or devotes himself laboriously to the exercise of a mechanical profession accomplishes his whole duty to society; and, if he gives to it virtuous children, he pays it in overrunning measure the debt which he has contracted in its regard. We do not deny that these more humble callings are the most common, and we acknowledge that to fulfil all their conditions it is enough to have learned well that divine philosophy which is contained in the maternal teachings of the church. But a society could never attain a great development, it could scarcely exist, whose members possessed no higher knowledge than that which goes to make a good agriculturist, a diligent workman, or an honest father of a family. Beyond these common callings there are others more choice which present themselves to souls more richly endowed. Some more inclined to the theoretical, rush at the conquest of science; others of a more practical tendency betake themselves to the study of laws and the administration of justice. One studies deep the experience of the past in order to illustrate the present; another would be an orator, and is ambitious of the triumphs of eloquence; a third is a poet, and he believes, and believes rightly, that he makes himself of use enough to his fellows by lifting up their souls to the contemplation and love of the beautiful. Others, again, feel themselves called upon from on high to become the representatives of God before men, and the interpreters to them of his oracular teachings. We have named the principal careers which lie open to the young man whose mind has been cultivated by a liberal education. But to whatever side his choice may bend, he will find philosophy of an almost indispensable utility for the attainment of solid success. After having made him a finished man, it will aid powerfully in making him a true scholar; it will provide the lawyer, the historian, the orator, the poet, with the seeds of truth, which each one of them should cause to fructify after his fashion. In fine, to form the summit of its glory, it will lend to revelation an invincible arm for the defence of its dogmas; and in uniting its light to that flowing from this divine torch, it will form the first and most divine of all sciences—theology. Such in a few words are the various aspects under which we have still to present its utility.

NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE SCIENTIST.

I do not ignore to what I expose myself when I dare affirm that without philosophy there is no true scientist. People will tell me that therein lies a prejudice of the middle ages, the defence of which no one can undertake to-day without denying all the progress which science has made within three centuries. They will sing me the old song of the panegyrists of Bacon. They will point out to me the incomparable advance of the physical sciences in modern times, dating precisely from the day when they shook off the yoke of metaphysics, and when, laying aside the syllogism which clogged their march, they claimed a right to their own process and an independent existence.

I will not stop to discuss the truth of these assertions; but, accepting them all provisionally, I will maintain my thesis, and, with God’s help, will prove it.

What is the legitimate conclusion derived from the fact they oppose to us? It is that the physical sciences are distinct from philosophy, and that the middle ages were perhaps mistaken in identifying them too closely with it. But because metaphysics and physics are distinct sciences, does it follow that the man who pretends to the title of a scientist can content himself with the one and neglect the other altogether? Clearly not. Such a man, on the contrary, condemns himself in despising philosophy to remain imperfect, not merely as a man, but also as a scientist.

To demonstrate this truth let us define science, and give an exact account of its conditions.

All knowledge does not deserve the name of science. The animal knows after a certain fashion; the infant and the idiot know still more; there is no man so ignorant as not to know an innumerable multitude of things; but neither the one nor the other possesses science. Science is, in relation to a certain order of truths, what philosophy is in relation to man and to God; it is knowledge reasoned out; that which places in a state of explication the wherefore of things, to tell of them their essence and their laws, their causes and their effects, their faculties and their destinations; to connect their consequences with their principles, and draw their principles from their consequences: “the knowledge of things by their causes.” Man is, therefore, a greater scholar in proportion as he is capable of mounting higher in the region of principles, and of embracing in a more general conception a greater number of particular truths. Science indeed is like a luminous mountain composed of many a height, some more elevated than others. As we mount, the horizon expands, and we are able to embrace with the same glance a vaster space. He alone will possess complete science, and he alone consequently will deserve, in its absolute sense, the title of a man of science, who arrived at its loftiest height, and grasping in its infinite simplicity the first principle of all things, shall behold in the splendor of this focus all the rays which burst forth from it and spread abroad to illumine the whole sphere of truth.

But this complete science is not within the reach of mortal man, and in its absolute perfection belongs alone to God.

Fettered by his nature, and fettered still more by the conditions of his earthly existence, man can only aspire to a partial science; and it is left him to choose in this immense sphere that particular ground whereon to pursue his investigations with more profit. The entire field is open to us. “God,” says the Scripture, “has delivered the world to the searchings and the disputes of men.” In bestowing on us the faculty of finding a reason for things, he has authorized us to make use of this faculty in regard to all the truths of the natural order, provided we see on all sides the boundary of the mysterious, which reminds us of our essential infirmity.

But though every science is equally lawful, they are not all equally useful. We may divide them into three classes, which form the three circles of the great sphere of truth. There are the sciences which concern the inferior world, the mathematical and physical sciences; those whose object is humanity, the psychological and moral sciences; thirdly, those which concern the higher world, the science of first principles and of the primal cause of all things. This last, which holds the centre of the great sphere of truth, is called metaphysics; and it is joined to the psychological and moral sciences, which are drawn from the same principles, under the common name of philosophy.

This simple statement of the place which belongs to philosophy in the hierarchy of the sciences is enough to prove our thesis, namely, the necessity of philosophy for the formation of the true savant.

What man, in fact, is truly worthy of this name, unless it be he who is possessed of the necessary science? But I would ask: Does that man possess this science, does he know what he ought to know, who possesses a perfect knowledge of the inferior world, and who ignores himself; who has passed his life away in studying the laws of bodies, yet has never given a thought to his own nature and the destiny of his own soul? Tell me that that man is a great physicist, and I will not gainsay it; but I can never consent to your bestowing on him the title of a man of science. The ancient Greek unites with me in denouncing an error so opposed to the dignity of the human intelligence. “Know thyself.” Such was the precept impressed on all those who went to Delphi to consult the oracle of Apollo. The gate of the true temple of wisdom opens only to those who have put this recommendation into practice. But wisdom is the true science. The true scholar is not he who knows something, but he who knows enough of it. No one thinks of praising unreservedly a statue whose head and bust are scarcely outlined, and whose lower members alone are finished. It is to the whole, it is above all to the principal parts, that we look, when we wish to estimate a work definitely. Reason commands that we act in the same manner when we wish to judge of the absolute value of an intelligence. As there are for a people liberties which are necessary, so is there also for a man knowledge which is indispensable, of his own nature, his origin, and his destiny; and he who is deprived of this, although he possess all sorts of superfluous knowledge, cannot pretend to the title of a man of science.

To this first motive for the necessity of philosophy derived from its object we are able to add another deduced from the very idea of science. Science, we have said, is the knowledge of things by their principles. Its perfection consists in attaching particular truths to truths which are more general, which comprise them, and which enable the intelligence to catch them at a single glance. But this unity, which forms the perfection of the sciences, and which each of them establishes among the particular truths which constitute their several objects, it is the province of philosophy to establish among the sciences themselves. Metaphysics, in fact, which is the principal part of philosophy, has for its special object not the study of particular truths, but of those general principles which throw a light upon the other sciences. It is then their necessary complement, and their indispensable crown. Set in the very centre of the great sphere of knowledge, it is to the other sciences the polar star, whereon they must turn their eyes in order to see their way. It points out to each one of them the relation of the truths which constitute their special object with the primary truth which is their common centre. The geometrician and the physicist, who occupy themselves exclusively with the relations of numbers and the laws of bodies, are like explorers voyaging in regions where the disc of the sun is never seen, placed without the power of tracing to their luminous focus the rays of truth which their studies permit them to catch.

But far beyond this, philosophy alone can make the geometrician or the physicist acquainted with the inner essence of the objects which form the special material of their studies. Geometry analyzes the relations of magnitudes, but it does not seek to give an account of the very idea of magnitude: natural philosophy evolves from experiments the laws of bodies; but it cannot, by induction at least, which is its special process, arrive at a knowledge of the essence of bodies. Philosophy alone scrutinizes, as far as it is possible for human reason so to do, the mystery of that inner essence by which each thing is what it is. Philosophy is therefore necessary for the completion of the special sciences, and to furnish scholars with the knowledge of their different objects.

Lastly, a fourth and still more incontestable motive for the necessity of philosophy for the formation of the true scientist is deduced from the scientific education of the intelligence, which philosophy alone is capable of undertaking. One of the most important parts of philosophy is logic; that is, the science of reasoning, and of the different processes by means of which the human intelligence can find truth. These processes are not only those which philosophy avails itself of, but also those which obtain among the other sciences. It belongs to philosophy, and to philosophy alone, to study their nature, to fix their laws, to prevent their wandering. The other sciences borrow these processes from it; they make use of them; but they would depart from their object if they studied them in themselves. One cannot, then, dispute the utility of philosophy for the formation of the scientist, without maintaining an evident absurdity; to wit, that it is useless for the workman to obtain a knowledge of the instrument he uses in the exercise of his craft. Who can fail to see that, without a profound knowledge of the different intellectual processes, the scientist is exposed to a double danger—on the one hand, to the danger of deceiving himself in the use of the special process which is proper to him; on the other, to the danger of exaggerating its importance, and not holding in sufficient estimation those processes equally legitimate which are in use among other sciences? The first of these dangers is to be feared, above all, in the inductive sciences. Induction is a mode of reasoning perfectly legitimate in itself; but of all the intellectual processes it is the one which is most easily abused, and which, pushed beyond its just limits, may lead to the gravest of errors.

The mathematical sciences which work by equation are not equally exposed to the danger of diverging from their track, but they threaten with a still greater peril the mind of the scholar whom the study of philosophy has not set on his guard against the too exclusive influence of this process. Equation, as its name indicates, does not pass from one truth to another, but from a like to a like, from the expression of a relation of number or magnitude to another simpler expression of the same relation. It is not, then, surprising that this process offers to the mind an exactness far more easy of comprehension than that by means of which we are enabled to grasp moral truths and give ourselves a reason for our own nature. The philosophic mathematician will take this difference perfectly into account, and his progress in the science of numbers will hinder him in no wise from seizing upon substantial truths. But the man who all his life long has occupied himself with nothing save the study of mathematics is very much exposed to becoming incapable of comprehending that which is not demonstrated by equation; and he will experience a greater estrangement and inaptitude for the science of God and of himself in proportion as he advances further in the science of the inferior world.

In good faith, can we see progress in this? Is it not, on the contrary, a degradation, not only from the moral, but also from the intellectual point of view? Has not the absence of a sound philosophy stood as much in the way of that man’s scientific elevation as of his moral greatness? Though he may have become a more able manipulator of formulas, he surely has not become a greater savant. Nothing, on the contrary, is more calculated to cramp and mutilate the faculties of the soul than this exclusive concentration on one of the collateral objects of its activity. In the same way as a limb which is never set in motion wastes away and becomes paralyzed, so the powers of the soul cannot cease to act without losing their vigor. Such is the state to which a too exclusive study of what are called the exact sciences reduces certain minds: these are the minds whose higher faculties have been wasted. All their activity is turned to one side; the eye of their intelligence is so constructed for the lesser light of equation, that, when they rise from the subterranean world of geometrical abstractions to enter into the region of moral realities and into the world of souls, they are dazed, and can see naught but darkness. True it is that they are much enamored of their blindness, and attribute it to excess of light. Fain to acknowledge that their formulas, the only legitimate arguments according to them, are powerless to solve the great moral problems, they suppress those problems with the declaration that it is folly in human reason to trouble itself with them, and that for him who wishes to ascertain truth and possess certainty it is enough to study the relations of numbers and the laws of bodies. Such is true science in the eyes of the disciples of Auguste Comte. These men are perfectly logical. They adopt the only means to ensure their title to be really scientific men without the aid of philosophy; they suppress philosophy altogether, and suppress consequently its object, that is, the human soul and God, the beginning and the end of things. With adversaries of this stamp I refuse to dispute. I can only appeal to their conscience against the disdain which their lips affect for the formidable questions whose suppression they in vain decree. They exist in spite of them; and wherever they go they carry about in themselves the problems which they refuse to examine. As for those for whom God and the soul have still a meaning, I believe I have said enough to compel them to admit that no one has a right to the title of a wise man so long as he ignores the science which learns all that reason can know of those grand objects, and that the other sciences when separated from it are often more hurtful than useful to the real improvement of the intellect.

I might go still further; and, coming back to the concession which I appeared to make in favor of the loud-voiced preachers of the exact sciences, I stand on perfectly firm ground in denying that the excessive importance which a very great number of minds bestows on them, and the exclusive study to which they give themselves up, are for the sciences themselves a condition of progress. What this study can produce is able practitioners, who will solve successfully problems whose data somebody has already furnished them; the artisans of science, who may build up with skill the edifice whose plan they find traced out beforehand; watchful pilots, who by the aid of their compass and marine chart may guide their ship safely into port. But the geniuses capable of discovering new lands, of opening up to science new horizons, you will never find among the minds who have only learnt to navigate by the compass of equation. Not by the aid of formulas are great discoveries made; they are the effect of that sort of divination which those intelligences possess which are accustomed to raise themselves in all things to the most general principles, and grasp in the variety of phenomena the analogy of laws. If Kepler had only proceeded by the aid of formulas, he would never have discovered the laws of worlds; and Leibnitz would undoubtedly have been a far less distinguished geometrician had he not been an equally eminent philosopher.

We may, then, affirm that the study of philosophy—which is necessary to enlarge the mind of the scholar—is of immense utility in the advancement of the sciences, even of those very ones which seem to have the least connection with this queen of sciences.

II. NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE JURISCONSULT.

If it is thus with the sciences whose objects are distinct from that of philosophy, what shall we say of jurisprudence, which treats of the rights and duties of the members of human society? Here the connection is much more direct, since the object which we are about to indicate is precisely that which moral philosophy treats of. Between the two sciences there is no other difference than this: while moral philosophy treats only of essential rights and duties, that is to say, of those which result from the very nature of man, and depend on the necessary will of the Creator, jurisprudence has for its more particular object those rights which are derived immediately from the civil authority, and which have been established by a positive law. But who does not see that this second species of rights and duties presupposes the first and leans upon it for its necessary support? In order to proceed rationally to the study of the acts of civil authority, and take into account the duties which it imposes, we must know whence proceeds this authority, from whom does it hold the right of making laws, what is its mission, and how far does its power extend. We must know also what is law, what are its conditions, when it begins and when it ceases to compel, what are the causes which dispense with its observance, what the objects to which its provisions should extend. Where shall we seek the solving of these questions, and of many others which form the necessary preliminary of all rational jurisprudence, unless from philosophy? Open the most celebrated treatises; the Treatise on Laws by Domat, for instance, and see if he is ashamed to borrow from the metaphysicians their principles and their definitions. By how many eminent jurisconsults has the Treatise on Laws of Suarez been used? How often have his general theories, though altogether removed from the different special legislations, served, nevertheless, as the connecting clue to lead them out of the labyrinth of their provisions, and furnished the most precious indications for the determination of the rights which they only defined imperfectly?

More than ever has it become necessary in our days to establish solidly, in the minds of those who are destined to make laws or watch over their execution, these fundamental notions on the origin, the end, and the extent of civil authority, and on the conditions of its exercise. For one must be blind not to comprehend that from the ignorance and reversing of these notions springs the overturning of modern societies. Strange it is that public order, which has never had to withstand such radical attacks as in these our days, should find its worst foes, not in those who deny the legitimacy of law, but, on the contrary, in the very men who have exaggerated beyond measure the power of the law. What in effect is that system but socialism, according to which we must recognize no other right, no other duty, save such as emanate from the social will; which extends to everything the power of the law; and which, grinding under this pitiless roller every natural right and every relation of property and family, leaves nothing to subsist before the state, save isolated individualities? Since the hand of God first founded human society, never has an error so fatal to its existence sprung up. Yet this error, since we must confess it, has had for its upholders, through many ages, a great number of jurisconsults, who have done their best to establish the principles on which it leans, detesting all the while the consequences which it deduces from them. In place of borrowing from a sound philosophy the true notions with regard to the mission of civil authority, they are pleased to give it an extension without limits, not perceiving that they thereby impose on it an overwhelming responsibility, and that in lessening the rights which should give it equilibrium, they weaken at the same time its solidity. Alas! how many “men of order,” how many grave jurisconsults, are in our days completely socialistic in their ideas, and yet fail to perceive that their doctrines only furnish that party, whose criminal efforts they oppose with all the force that is in them, with arms which are only too powerful!

Philosophy is not only useful to the jurisconsult in furnishing him with the general notions on the origin, end, and exercise of legislative power; in addition, it throws a light over the detail of laws, atones for their deficiencies, fixes their uncertainties, reconciles their opposition, and by discovering the motives of their provisions, determines the limits within which they ought to be restrained.

The written law, in fact, is not enough for itself. Its end is not to promulgate all duties. There are a great number, and they are the most essential, which are anterior to it, and which the finger of God has graven on the soul of every man coming into this world, and which his Eternal Word promulgates in the depth of every conscience. It is on this unwritten law that human society leans; it is only in virtue of the rights and duties of which it is the source that men have been able to unite themselves into different groups and establish civil societies. Unless they had been previously submitted the one to the other by some obligation, they would never have bound themselves by any contract; their agreements would have been determined by convenience; they would never have believed in duties. The civil law presupposes, then, a law anterior and superior to it, by which all the necessary relations of men are defined with a sovereign authority, since it is the authority of God himself, and with an irresistible clearness, since it is the very light of reason. The mission of the human legislator consists merely in adding to the essential duties, which the natural law prescribes for all men, those which result from the constitution of the different groups which form civil societies. It is the natural law which bids man love his fellows and co-operate for their happiness; the civil law, supporting itself on this general obligation, determines the particular services which the citizens owe one another for the common defence of their interests. The natural law establishes the family, and promulgates the essential rights of parents and children; the civil law surrounds the exercise of these rights by the guarantees necessary to certify their existence, to ward off the dangers which threaten them, to ensure their stability, and prevent their conflict. The natural law lays the foundation of property, in bestowing on each man the fruit of his labor, and commanding him to provide for his own future and that of his children; but it belongs to the civil law to determine the necessary forms for the authentication of the acquisition and transfer of property, and to prevent this right, which is so necessary to social order, from becoming a source of disorder.

We see, then, that in all its provisions the civil law presupposes the natural law, of which it is but the complement and final determination. The rights which it establishes are real rights beyond doubt; they are sacred and inviolable rights, which divine justice, the protector of all order, takes under its guarantee, and for which it reserves a sanction as eternal as for the rights of which it is the immediate source: but nevertheless these are but secondary rights, which are only binding so long as they are conformable with the rights which are preordained, and lose all their force from the moment that they become contrary to them; for there is no such thing as right against right, as Bossuet has so well said. Whence it follows that no man can acquire a complete and sure knowledge of civil legislation, unless he has first of all made a serious study of that part of philosophy which is called natural right.

But it is clear that this moral and practical part of philosophy does not subsist alone; it is only the consequence of principles established in the speculative and metaphysical part; it is, then, philosophy in its entirety which he ought to study with the most laborious attention who destines himself for the teaching or the practice of jurisprudence. There alone will he find the final reason of human laws: thence will he draw those great principles to which he ought to go back at all times when he wishes to solve one of those difficult cases which the civil law has not foreseen, or for which she has furnished insufficient data. It will often happen that two laws appear in opposition, and right will clash against right. To whom shall we turn to reconcile these apparent or real antinomies, which are found in the letter of the law? To whom, unless to the supreme lawgiver, of whom the framers of laws are but the interpreters; to the spirit of the law, to that eternal reason whose oracular decisions philosophy records? Unhappy the jurisconsult who, before investing himself with the toga of the magistracy, or taking upon himself the defence of the rights of his fellows, shall not have entered into the sanctuary where these luminous oracles are expounded by the mouth of sages, and who persuades himself that the letter of the code is enough to enable him to acquit himself of his difficult functions! The letter is a useful instrument undoubtedly, an instrument necessary even, indispensable; but it is nothing more than instrument. To hit its mark it requires to be ably handled. Philosophy alone gives this power and freedom in the management of the written law, because it alone shows its end, mechanism, and motives. Guided by its light, the true jurisconsult will advance with confidence, and apply the law with intelligence; he will resolve it into its different parts, take in his hands the links that bind them together, and show their connection with the different problems, whose complexity rendered their solution more difficult. The superficial jurisconsult, on the contrary, unaided by the torch of philosophy, will always grope upon the earth when he seeks to penetrate the inner mechanism of laws and the essence of things; as the law cannot foresee the diversity of particular cases, he will ever be embarrassed in the application of its general provisions; a slave to the letter, he allows himself to be guided by, instead of guiding it, as every good workman ought to guide his instrument. If he strives to free himself from it, and lift himself above it, it is only to wander at haphazard in the region of guesswork. So he goes on, pushed from one extreme to another, not fleeing a servile application of the written law, more or less opposed to its spirit, and always uncertain, only to lose himself in conjecture more uncertain and more dangerous still; in place of being the defender and the minister of justice, he will too often be its executioner, and will verify but too faithfully the truth of that saying: “The letter without the spirit can only be a principle of death.”

III. UTILITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE HISTORIAN.

History is not a science properly so-called, since it only occupies itself with contingent facts, and does not pretend to deduce those facts from first principles by any necessary connection. Differing from the physical world, where phenomena seemingly the most accidental are the effect of constant laws, the moral world is the product of human liberty, acting under the control of the Divine Providence in all the spontaneity of its expansion. History, which presents us with the faithful tableaux of this world, must refuse therefore to admit into its process that severe order which constitutes science; and if at times in the recital of human acts it can point out to us the accomplishment of the moral law, far more frequently does it show the most flagrant and persistent violation of it.

Must we say, then, that history ought to resign itself to presenting to the mind a mere disconnected and aimless chaos of facts, and that it cannot seek to cast on its recitals the light of principles, and give to them that order and that unity without which there is nothing truly beautiful? Who dare say this? To what purpose would the study of history serve us if it were nothing else than an incoherent tableau of the caprices of human liberty? In place of being one of the most useful studies for the formation of the mind and heart of a young man, it would be nothing but an idle pastime and dangerous food for curiosity. Instead of illumining the present by the light of the past, it would only serve to transmit to the present generations the consequence of the scandals of the generation which went before; in place of pointing out a God still working in the world and thus becoming a school for religion, it would be simply a school for atheism, in permitting us to see in the moral world nothing but human liberty abandoned to itself, a worthy emulation of that blind and impious science which in the physical world would show us nothing save a nature self-produced, self-acting by its own power.

History, then, is a study truly worthy of man; with a power to charm his intellect and make a beneficial impression on his heart, only so long as it marches ever under the light of principles, and keeps its eyes ever fixed on the moral laws, to show where they agree or where they clash with the facts with whose recital it is charged. That is to say, history cannot fulfil its mission without calling in philosophy to its aid; and, however able a writer may be in the narration of facts, he can never merit the title of historian if he is not a philosopher.

Not that I wish to bring myself forward here as the defender of the philosophy of history, as understood by the greater portion of modern historians. I know well that this pretended science, so vaunted in our days, is one of the deadliest engines of war which impiety has set in action in its attack on the church. The philosophy of history thus understood is to true history, such as St. Augustine and Bossuet taught, what the philosophy of the sophist is to the philosophy of reason. I cannot help, therefore, repudiating with all my power this word, if they persist in giving it the sense which Voltaire, who first introduced it, gave, or the still more impious sense which the pantheistic school gives it. I maintain that there is no philosophy of history if you understand thereby the fatalist development of human activity, after certain fixed formulas as necessary as those which govern the movements of matter; such a philosophy of history is nothing else than a denial of the human soul and of God, the legitimizing of all crime, the exciting of all the worst passions, the overthrow of all society, that is to say, the destruction of all philosophy and of all history.

But the false philosophy of fatalism and pantheism is not the only one, thank God, which can be applied to history. There is also a true philosophy of history, which shows us God glorifying himself in the reparation of the disorders of the moral world after a manner as admirable in its kind as is the maintenance of the order of the physical world. If he showed his power and wisdom, when with sovereign hand he caused the splendors of the heavens to radiate from the womb of chaos with the harmony of the stars and the life of nature, how much wiser and more powerful does he not seem to us when we behold him making use of a chaos a thousand times more rebellious, the chaos of the passions and perverseness of humanity, in order to produce the most beautiful of all his works—the manifestation of his truth and the triumph of his goodness!

It is this sovereign action of the Divine Providence, irresistibly shaping to its own end the will of man without infringing an iota on his liberty, that the true philosophy of history purposes to contemplate. It is part of this principle that God, sovereignly wise, who could not call into being the least atom without giving it an end worthy of himself, could not for a stronger reason produce the masterpiece of his hands, the rational soul, without giving it an end, and without urging it unceasingly to the realization of that end. That which is true of the individual is true of society, and is truer still of all humanity.

This end being attainable by visible means, and, on the other hand, being conformable to the nature of God and the nature of man, it ought to be possible to discover it by means of a study of facts, which constitute history, and by means of a profound observation of those two natures, which constitute philosophy. Philosophy furnishes the data a priori; history possesses itself of these data and verifies them by experience. The result of this double revision is one of the most attractive branches of knowledge for the mind, and most capable of enlarging the soul, the knowledge of the divine economy, and of the secret resorts by which Providence governs the affairs of this world.

The divine government operates in three different spheres, to which respond three degrees of the philosophy of history.

The first sphere of action chosen by Providence is the conscience of each man. Undoubtedly we are not to look in this world for the definite accomplishment of individual destinies. God has reserved for a more durable life the full award of his law. Meanwhile it has often been his will to anticipate this eternal award by a temporary one, which, in this life, may avenge his justice for the outrages of crime. Thus, there are some lives most obscure; there are, for a still stronger reason, brilliant lives which leave their mark on the memory of the human race. It is not often possible to discover this award. To arrive at it, history will borrow from philosophy the moral laws which ought to regulate the conduct of individuals; and she will look for the confirmation of these laws in the prosperity or misfortune which have accompanied their observance or their neglect. Such is the study which constitutes the first degree of the true philosophy of history, and which makes this science an excellent school for morality.

But history mounts still higher by the aid of philosophy; its mission, in fact, is not merely to recount the life of certain individuals, who by their talents, their virtues, or their crimes have left a deep trace in the memory of generations: above all, it is the tableau of the destiny of peoples which it is called upon to paint; it is social events which, above all, form the interest of its pictures. Therein each people appears like a moral personality, with its infancy, its growth, its maturity and its decrepitude; its special character, its qualities and faults, its good points and its crimes, its prosperity and its misfortune. The life of each people is, then, a grand drama, wherein not one of the elements of the most moving interest is wanting; but this drama must have its moral, and, in order to give it one, history must have recourse anew to philosophy. Philosophy will not fail it; she will furnish it with the social laws, that is to say, those by which societies are constituted, governed, and developed. The application of these laws, which she deduces from the nature of man, she invites history to seek in the facts. If her theories are true, it is impossible that their accomplishment should not confer happiness on society, and their violation misfortune. History ought therefore, again, from this point of view to be the counter-proof of philosophy; and it ought to become so after a manner still more complete than when it occupied itself with the destiny of individuals. In truth, this destiny, playing its part chiefly on the invisible theatre of conscience and carrying it on into after-time, often escapes the application of history. Societies, on the contrary, having an existence temporal in its duration and public in its most important events, ought to show forth in their history with great clearness the award of the laws which the Creator has imposed upon them, and which philosophy establishes a priori by its deductions. The study of this award must purchase, then, at the price of very great difficulties, the precious advantages which it promises. It is this which constitutes the second degree of the philosophy of history, and which makes this science the best school of politics.

Lastly, history mounts a degree still higher: beyond the moral individualities which we call peoples, she discovers an individuality much more vast and much more lasting—humanity, the immense body whose members are all peoples, and in which each individual plays his rôle, like a living molecule which influences in its part the destinies of the whole. As each nation has its character and as it were its own style of feature which distinguish it from other nations, so humanity is distinguished from the other species of rational beings wherewith the Creator has peopled the universe, by prerogatives and by infirmities which no other shares with it. It also has had its infancy, its growth, its ripe age; and everything leads us to believe that it will one day have its decrepitude. It also, in fine, has its mission, which it accomplishes in the course of ages, and at the term of which its development will cease.

This common destiny of humanity constitutes, together with its common origin, the unity of this vast body. It permits us to lift ourselves up even to the divine thought, which, in sowing this innumerable multitude in the immensity of the ages, proposed to itself a plan as harmonious in its unity as when it launched into space this immense variety of globes and atoms which compose the universe. Behold herein the true unity of the human race, whose substantial unity, as seen by the pantheist, is nothing but an absurd parody.

It is here, in fact, that we find ourselves face to face with the two philosophies of history—the false and the true. Both wish for unity, because unity, which is the essence of God and the law of the world, is also the last want of our mind and the last end of science. But the first of these philosophies only establishes unity in the world by destroying its diversity, which is an essential condition of beauty and of life. In its eyes individuals are nothing but unreal phenomena, which appear, only to vanish; space alone is something; it alone remains while all the rest passes away. And as it would be too absurd to give space a separate reality, independent of that of individuals, to make humanity something existing outside of man, it is forced to conclude, in the final analysis, that this humanity, which alone truly exists, is nothing in itself but a form which is developed by some fatality in time and space; and all of us who persuade ourselves that we each have our own existence are in reality but the varied expressions of this form, the passing vibrations of an ideal fluid, the fleeting tints of a cloud. Behold the philosophy of history according to pantheism!

How much greater, how much more consoling, how much more beautiful is the true philosophy of history—that of which St. Augustine and Bossuet have made themselves the eloquent interpreters! And in the meantime, in the midst of all these varied existences, in the midst of these actions so divergent, in the midst of these liberties so often at war, she finds a perfect unity, the unity of the divine thought—bringing back to its end all these divergencies, and making of their very opposition so many means thereto. But what is this thought, what is this one end, which God is working in the world, and for the realization of which, willingly or unwillingly, all these individuals and peoples labor? For a reply to this mighty question, it has pleased God not to abandon us to uncertain conjecture. He hath spoken from the beginning of the world; and in proportion as the human race has developed has he manifested more clearly its destiny—a destiny thrice divine since it has God for its principle, God for its term, and God again for its means; it is the divinization of man by Jesus Christ the God-man, the conquest of eternal happiness by God himself, by the fulfilling of the earthly ordeal in the image of God Incarnate.

Such is the divine thought which it has pleased God to reveal to us from his own mouth. The incarnation of the Son of God is, therefore, the pivot around which roll the events of history—as the divinization of men in him is the term where these events ought to meet. The glory of the Word Incarnate: such is the closing scene to which all the catastrophes of this drama ought infallibly to lead up—a drama whose every historic period forms a scene, whose plot borrows a most captivating interest from the apparent triumph of human passions. Jesus Christ: such is the word which unlocks the great enigma of the ages—Jesus Christ: behold the Sun, whose dawn and coming form the natural division of the ancient and modern world, whose presence and whose absence make the day and the night in the moral order, and whose final triumphs over the mists and vapors, which to this day have striven against him, will give to the earth the unity and the happiness for which it sighs.

But one may stop me, and tell me that I am no longer treading on philosophic ground. I am happy to confess it. For the same reason that in seeking the final explanation of his individual destiny man is compelled to have recourse to his Creator, so must he abide his final explanation alone of the destiny of the world. Reason tells him that in the existence of humanity God pursues one end, and that this end should be the manifestation of his divine attributes. It can tell him no more. As for the mode of this manifestation, it rests entirely with the will of God; and it would consequently be a presumption on the part of philosophy to pretend to determine it, since its power does not stretch beyond necessary truths. We acknowledge, therefore, that, without the aid of faith, the science of history cannot reach its third degree. Therein we detract in no wise from philosophy; for, if it must necessarily borrow from revelation this fact of the free end of God, as it borrows from history the knowledge of the free actions of men, it is no less true that by its processes these different facts meet together to form the most harmonious of all the tableaux, and the most inspiring of all the poems which human thought has ever conceived—the divine epic of humanity.

TO BE CONTINUED.