Chapter XVII · (continued 3)

“Yes! yes!” I cried, “she will

I was thrilled by their look of grateful surprise when they found I could understand their language, and their softly-ejaculated benedictions followed me as I bounded away in quest of my mother. I found her busily engaged in household matters, and, seizing her with irresistible energy, literally dragged her into the presence of my new friends, telling her what I knew of them by the way.

When we arrived she inquired tenderly as to the symptoms of the lovely invalid. Finding they had come from St. Regis by water, and had brought her on a bed of boughs in their canoe to Ogdensburg, thence up the Oswegatchie to Black Lake, and thus far up the Indian River, she also was of the opinion that the frail child was exhausted by fatigue, and that rest would revive her.

They had undertaken the journey in the hope that a change would be a benefit to her health. Her father came with them and was at the camp, but the mother preferred a place where her charge could be better sheltered than in a wigwam.

My mother went home, and, gathering comfortable furniture for their room, despatched a man with it; then, preparing some hot wine negus with toasted crackers, she sent them by me to refresh the sufferer while some nourishing broth could be made ready.

From that time I forsook the wigwams and devoted myself to my Wild Rose; who became so fond of me that she could scarcely consent to my leaving her for the nights. Each morning found me at her bedside before sunrise, with my own breakfast as well as hers, that we might partake of it together, and with a profusion of fresh flowers from the abundance of my mother’s flower-garden wherewith to adorn her room. The Indian children had helped me to festoon it with wreaths of ground pine and boughs, until it was an evergreen bower in which we took great satisfaction.

My mother gathered from her her little history. She had been betrothed to a young son of their chief, and they were to have been married the previous fall. The time for the nuptials had been appointed and her bridal dress prepared. The young man was sent by his father on some business to Montreal a few days before the time thus appointed. On the way his canoe was drawn suddenly into a whirlpool in the rapids, dashed to fragments upon the rocks, and he perished. The shock of this terrible calamity was fatal to her health, which had never been robust. From that moment she drooped, and, though quite calm, even cheerful, had been gradually wasting and sinking. They improved the first mild days of spring to try the effect of a change of air and scene, after she had received the last sacraments from their priest in preparation for the worst.

For a few weeks she seemed to revive, and even walked with me once as far as my own home. Her appetite improved, and she relished all that my mother’s care provided for her food.

As I remember her at this distant day, I know she must have been a being of superior beauty and loveliness; but there was nothing about her which so fascinated and impressed my young heart as the spirit of piety that governed all her words and actions, and seemed to flow from the depths of her pure soul

One warm evening in the early summer we sat together for a long time in silence and alone, watching a beautiful sunset over the wild “Rossie Hills,” when her soft voice breathed in her own musical language expressions which subsequent events fixed indelibly in my memory.

“My sweet Lily,” she said, “will often uplift her pale face to the smiles of the glorious sunset when the Rose, who loved to bask with her in their golden gleam, will be blooming in gardens which need them not; for the ‘Sun of Righteousness’ will be their light, and will fill them with glories unknown to earthly bowers, and his Blessed Virgin Mother will smile upon them. But the incense of prayer, like the breath of its own perfume, will ever float from the Rose to the throne of the Eternal that her Lily may be transplanted at last to a place by her side in that happy home where sighing, and parting, and sorrow shall cease for ever! Oh! will she not strive for admittance to the garden of our Lord here, that she may rejoice in the light of his countenance hereafter?”

In a voice broken by my sobs I promised all she asked, and I doubt not her prayers helped me long afterwards in obtaining the grace to fulfil the promise.

The next morning I found her much exhausted, and that she had passed a restless night. Her mother raised her in her arms while she took the broth I brought for her breakfast, of which she was very fond. She seemed weary, and, as her mother lowered her gently to the pillow, she suddenly lifted her eyes to heaven, while a smile of celestial rapture stole over her beautiful face, and exclaimed, “Pray for me, my own mother; for, behold! the bright angel is spreading his wings to bear your Rose to the presence of her Redeemer!”—and was gone. The Indian mother and myself were alone with the lifeless form of our beloved one.

The change, the shock, was so sudden and unlooked for that I stood horror-struck and paralyzed, for the first time, before the dread messenger who had stolen the breath of my sweet Rose. The whole scene was so incomprehensible to me that I could not believe the tones of her dear voice were hushed for ever, but persuaded myself that she had only fallen asleep.

Amazed, I watched the poor mother as she calmly recited the prayers for the departing spirit over her child for some time, the only outward sign of her anguish being the tears which flowed in torrents down her cheeks, while every line of her wan features expressed unquestioning resignation to the will of Him who had given and taken her treasure.

The prayers concluded, she tenderly closed the dear eyes, adjusted the slender form, folded the delicate hands over a crucifix on her breast, and entwined the beads, which had so seldom been laid aside by them in life, closely around them in death. When she sat down at length, and, opening her blanket, extended her arms towards me, the first glimpse of the dread reality burst upon me in a flood of crushing agony, and, springing to the open arms which drew me in a close embrace to her bosom, I wept aloud in a paroxysm of frantic, uncontrollable grief. She fondly soothed and caressed me, bestowing upon me those expressions of tender

I was inconsolable, and told her vehemently that, since Heaven had taken the Rose, the Lily would go too, and that it would never lift up its head again; and, indeed, my grief was so violent as to injure my health, and I was soon sent away to new scenes.

My mother assisted in preparing the frail form of the Indian maiden for the grave. Her mother had brought with her the bridal dress of her child, and in that they arrayed the beautiful departed for the bridal of death. Then, enfolding her in a linen sheet, they wrapped her blanket about her and gently laid her down upon the bed of boughs her father had prepared in the canoe for her removal to the graves of their kindred at St. Regis. Then followed the sad leave-taking and the departure.

The dismal forests which clothed each margin of the Indian River seemed to bend over that sombre stream in reverential sympathy as the Indian father and mother, with their faded Rose, floated silently down its dark waters and out of our sight for ever!

* * * * *

Some years had elapsed since this event, and during the interval misfortunes had overwhelmed our family. At the very time of severe reverses in his business my father was taken with a malignant fever and died. My mother, my young brother, and myself were thus left in desolate affliction to battle with adversity as best we might. Our pleasant home was surrendered to creditors, and we sought the forests of Upper Canada, whither a family who had long been tenants on our farm had gone several years before. They had taken up a tract of land under a government grant to settlers, and, when they heard of our great calamity, wrote, urging us to do the same, as they could render great assistance to us if we were near them.

The land we took was covered with very valuable timber, and the first object was to get a portion of it to the Quebec market, that its avails might pay for clearing the land and preparing our new home.

My brother—hitherto the pet of the family, and in danger of being the spoiled child of fortune—set about the task with an energy that surprised every one. He was greatly beloved by the Indian hunters, who knew my father and had received many favors from him in the days of our prosperity. They assisted us in our removal, and remained to help and encourage my brother in the lumbering business, so new to him, under the direction of “Captain Tom,” an old Indian who was very skilful in such operations. We removed late in the fall, taking with us a supply of provisions more than sufficient for the winter, and but little else of worldly gear.

When the spring opened, thanks to our kind neighbors with their oxen, and the good Indians, a quantity of lumber of various kinds had been drawn to the river bank, and as soon as the ice went out they put it into rafts for transportation. These were constructed in separate sections, each with its rude little caboose to shelter the two men who went with it. The sections were then firmly united in one long raft by means of strong withes, in such

A few days before they set out a vicious, drunken Indian called “Malfait,” who had been loitering around all winter, quarrelling with the men and giving no assistance, applied to Captain Tom for whiskey and for permission to go down on the rafts, both which requests were refused. He went away muttering threats, and the old Indian feared he was meditating mischief.

My brother wished to go with Captain Tom on the forward section, as was the custom for the one who conducted the navigation. We gave a very reluctant consent, and our parting with him was saddened by many misgivings.

They proceeded prosperously on their voyage as far as the “Long Sault,” so called, the first dangerous rapid, the chief difficulty in passing which, for experienced navigators, was to avoid being drawn, by an almost irresistible current at one point, into a furious maelstrom called the “Lost Channel,” from which few had ever escaped who once entered it.

They reached the head of the Long Sault late in the afternoon, and anchored there for the night, with the roar of the tumbling waters in their ears. The moon was shining brightly, and they betook themselves to rest early, that they might start betimes in the morning. Very late in the night my brother was awakened from a sound sleep by the old Indian, who laid his hand heavily upon him and told him to keep very calm and not to struggle or make the least effort to shield himself. “For,” said he, “we are entering the Lost Channel; our part of the raft has been cut loose. I have bound you firmly to the same stick of timber to which I am now binding myself. We can only leave ourselves in the hands of the Great Spirit; for no other arm can help us.”

My brother was paralyzed with terror as the maddened waters seized the raft as if it had been a child’s plaything, tore the heavy timbers apart, and bent and shivered many of them like saplings. The one to which he and the Indian were attached was often uplifted, by the force of the raging torrent, its full length, to be thrown violently down and swallowed in the depths of the foaming flood. The shock of these concussions soon benumbed his faculties, and his last conscious act was to recommend his soul to the mercy of God, before whose awful tribunal he supposed he was about to appear.

When he began to recover his senses, it was like waking from some frightful dream. He was too much bewildered to realize for some time that he was in a comfortable Indian lodge, with a kind old squaw in attendance upon him. She would not allow him to ask any questions or agitate himself, assuring him that all was well, and he should know the whole at a proper time. As soon as he was able to hear it she gave him the history.

On the day before their arrival at the Long Sault her son, with a party of Indian hunters who had been up the St. Lawrence and were returning to St. Regis, had fallen in with Malfait, and, from inquiries made by him, suspected that he was watching, with no good purpose, for rafts that he expected would come down the river. He suddenly disappeared, St. Louis to the foot of the rapids, to give aid if it should be needed.

They discovered the timber to which my brother and his faithful friend were lashed, and, releasing them, brought their insensible forms as speedily as possible to her lodge on the shore of that lake, with very little hope that they would ever revive. The old Indian, however, soon began to show signs of life, and, when he was able, recounted what had happened. He had no doubt that Malfait came in the night, detached the raft, and steered it into the rapids to satisfy his malice against him.

As soon as he was strong enough to go, her son went with him down the river to look after the remainder of the raft, leaving his young friend in good hands, though still unconscious of the tender care he was receiving.

They found the rafts in Lake St. Peter below Montreal, and her son returned. She then sent him with some others to gather the timber of the wrecked raft. They collected all that could be found on the shore of the lake, to be taken when the rafts should come down next year.

“And now, my son,” she continued, when she had brought the narrative to this point, “I am known here as Margaret La Lune, but to your mother and sister as the mother of the Wild Rose of St. Regis. You may have heard them speak of her, though you were too young at the time of their acquaintance to know about it yourself. It was to her care the Great Spirit committed you in your extremity, that she might be allowed to make some return for their kindness to her and her sweet child, which she has never forgotten, and has ever since endeavored to repay by giving all the help in her power to navigators on these perilous waters. It was in one of these attempts that my husband lost his life some years ago. Great was my joy when I learned from your Indian friend that I had rescued one so dear to them from a grave in the rushing flood.”

My brother remained with her until the return of Captain Tom. He delivered the lumber to the merchant in Quebec to whom it was consigned—who had long known the sterling qualities of the faithful old Indian—and informed him of the situation in which he left his young employer. The merchant advanced money to him to pay off the men and to bear his own and my brother’s expenses home, sending by him a statement of the balance left and subject to my brother’s order. The money for their expenses was all that Captain Tom or his Indians could ever be persuaded to accept for their valuable services at that time and in after-years. Their only reply to my brother’s persuasions was, “We remember

You may well imagine our surprise and gratitude when we heard from my brother’s own lips the story of all that had befallen him, and of the devotion of our excellent Margaret. She was absent when he went down the next year for the last time, and he did not see her.

Our affairs prospered beyond our expectation. We brought willing hands and courageous hearts to the strife with adverse fortunes, and, by the blessing of God upon our efforts, did not fail in time to retrieve them. My mother died a few years after my marriage with a son of our former tenant, whose sister my brother afterwards married. She divided her time between the two homes, tenderly beloved and cared for by her children and grandchildren, and honored by all who knew her.

You now understand the reason for my great surprise and affectionate meeting with Margaret at the depot, which must have seemed strange indeed to the witnesses. In our short chat I promised to go to pass some time with her upon my return home, and am not without hope that I shall persuade her to go with me to see the children and grandchildren who have often heard of her and of the fidelity with which her people treasure up the memory of kind acts.

HAMMOND ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.[114]

The wonderful relativity of psychology to the purely somatic phenomena comprised under the term physiology, while not having altogether escaped the observation of earlier thinkers, did not assume the significance it now possesses till modern science compelled mere psychicists to recognize the invaluable services this new handmaiden bestowed on their favorite pursuit. It had been too much the vogue to frown down attempts at chemical explanations of vital processes as verging towards materialism, and thus materialism was in reality strengthened, since the opponents of modern physiology had shut their eyes to facts as stubborn and undeniable as the soul itself whose cause they were championing. This antagonism was unfortunate; for, though of short duration, it gave rise to the impression in the popular mind that the old science dreaded the new light, and that recent discoveries tended rapidly to overthrow the time-honored belief in the distinct substantiality of the soul. To this same arrogant rejection by pedantic orthodoxists of facts that seemingly conflicted with accepted views, may be ascribed the sneering and triumphant manner of many scientists who fail to take account of the slowness with which men reconcile themselves to truths not hitherto Ecole de Médecine at Paris, to the effect that the science of physiology demands in advance the rejection of any principle of activity in man not amenable to its methods and instruments of research, on the ground that man in his totality is the true objective point of this science, and the admission of aught in him which it cannot determine is equivalent to stating that man is more than he is. According to this authority, therefore, the notion of a soul, viewed as a spiritual substance, distinct and different from the body, hampers science and circumscribes the field of its inquiry. But if the vast strides made by physiology within the last decade have been the occasion of some pernicious speculation, and have seemed to give countenance to materialism, this has been the case only when the science transcended its own data and soared into the region of conjecture. Its legitimate fruits are manifest in the flood of light it has thrown on the most intricate questions of psychology, and the elucidation of points which, but for it, would have remained for ever in obscurity. Indeed, it may be said to have created a new branch of psychical science, and to have brushed away many cobwebs that clouded the psychology of the schools. The volume before us represents the latest expression of the physiology and pathology of the nervous system, and is characterized by unusual closeness of observation and accuracy of expression, while evincing a proneness to theorize on points concerning which the author is least at home. Dr. Hammond has been a close student at the bedside and an indefatigable worker with those instruments of research which have almost built up his science, but for all an indifferent thinker, as we shall shortly endeavor to prove. It is true that no authority is more frequently invoked, and with good reason, to determine questions relative to mental aberration and unusual conditions of the nervous system; but when he abandons the ophthalmoscope, the cephalohœmometer, the œsthesiometer, and assumes the abolla of the philosopher, he evidently misses his rôle. He is undoubtedly a physiologist of the first rank and a respectable authority on minute nervous histology, but as a theorist he is a failure. Accustomed to dogmatize on facts coming within the scope of the senses, he applies the same procrustean rule of reasoning to purely intellectual processes, and speedily flounders in a quagmire. His mind has tipped the balance in the direction of material things, and has not been able to regain its equilibrium.

As a repertory of interesting facts, gleaned in the course of a long and varied experience, his book is invaluable. It bristles with information aphonia), but from a lesion of that portion of the brain which presides over the memory of words and the co-ordination of speech. Many instances are adduced in proof that this inability results from the impairment of a given portion of the cerebral substance; and from the constant recurrence of the same effects from the same lesion the inference is drawn that a very restricted portion of the brain is concerned in connecting thoughts with words, co-ordinating these, and arranging them in articulate sounds. Authorities, indeed, are not agreed as to what special brain lobe this faculty is to be ascribed, but the fact is borne out by unquestionable evidence that some portion of the anterior convolutions controls and regulates the power of speech. The point of interest is that the function is localized and depends on the minute physical texture of the nerve substance through which it is carried on. Dr. Hammond justly claims the credit of having first observed that the form of aphasia called amnesic (forgetfulness of words) depends on some lesion of the vesicular or gray matter of the brain, since it is unaccompanied by paralysis, while the form called ataxic (inability to co-ordinate articulate sounds) is connected with the corpus striatum which presides over motion, and so we find this latter form always associated with paralysis.

No summary of this chapter can do it justice, so pregnant is it with facts and abounding with varied suggestion. We would remark, however, that Dr. Hammond has failed to call attention to the remarkable confirmation which the condition of amnesic aphasia offers in support of the inseparable connection between thought and some symbol of expression—a circumstance which Trousseau, in his learned work on Clinical Medicine, has noted at length. Trousseau says: “A great thinker as well as a great mathematician cannot devote himself to transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision. Now, an aphasic individual suffers from verbal amnesia so that he has lost the formulæ of thought.” This fact of aphasia curiously coincides with Vicomte de Bonald’s theory of the divine origin of language, which is based on the supposed impossibility of having a purely intellectual conception without an accompanying formula or word to circumscribe and differentiate it, and that accordingly language, in such relation, must have been communicated.

It is likewise corroborative of the view taken by Max Müller, who says (Science of Language, 79): “Without speech, no reason; without reason, no speech.” And again: “I therefore declare my conviction, whether right or wrong, as explicitly as possible, that thought, in one sense of the word—i.e., in the sense of reasoning—is impossible without language.”

The latest disclosure of science, therefore, so far from conflicting on

It is in the chapter on Insanity that Dr. Hammond first betrays the crudeness and shallowness of his philosophy. On page 310 he says: “By mind we understand a force developed by nervous action, and especially the action of the brain.” And again: “The brain is the chief organ from which the force called mind is evolved.”

In this definition the author is guilty of having used a term more obscure and ambiguous than the definiendium itself; for no two scientific men agree in their view of force. Dr. Mayer, of Heilbronn, says: “The term force conveys the idea of something unknown and hypothetical.” “Forces are indestructible, convertible, and imponderable objects.” Dr. Bray, in his Anthropology, says: “Force is everything; it is a noumenal integer phenomenally differentiated into the glittering universe of things.” Faraday says: “What I mean by the term force is the cause of a physical action,” and elsewhere, “Matter is force.” Dr. Bastian, on Force and Matter, declares force to be “a mode of motion.” Herbert Spencer says of it: “Force, as we know it, can be regarded only as a conditioned effect of the unconditioned cause, as the relative reality, indicating to us an absolute reality by which it is immediately produced.” Another writer (Grove) calls forces the “affections of matter.” Now, the word mind conveys, even to the most illiterate, a precise and definite notion. Every one knows that it is the principle within him which thinks and underlies all intellectual processes; but when Dr. Hammond informs him that it is a “force,” and he finds that a bewildering confusion of opinions, expressed in the obscurest terms, prevails concerning the nature and essence of “force,” he finds that he has derived “Fumum ex fulgore.” Even the term “evolves” is unfortunate; for the word occurs in a great variety of connections. If force is an entity, it cannot be evolved; it is produced. Of thought, indeed, it might be said that it is evolved from the mind, since it represents the latter in a state of active operation, and has no separate entity of its own; but mind, being known to us as something in all respects distinct and diverse from matter, cannot, except by a lapse into the grossest materialism, be said to be evolved from the brain. Had Dr. Hammond present to his mind a definite idea when he penned the word, he might have easily found a clearer substitute. Carl Vogt knew well what meaning he intended to convey when he said: “Just as the liver secretes bile, so the brain secretes thought.” There is candor, at least, in this statement, and none of that shuffling timorousness which shame-facedly glozes materialism in the formula: “Mind is a force evolved from the brain.”

Having satisfied himself that there can be no question as to the accuracy of this definition, our author places mind in contrast with “forces in general” by designating it a compound force. What he means by “forces in general” it is hard to say; for if mind is a force, it possesses the generic properties which ally it with other forces, and must therefore be one of the “forces in general,” since that is a veritable condition of its being a force at all. But this is a minor error. The expression “compound force,” used principium, and each directed to its proper object-term or class of object-terms, in which case it is not one force merely, however much Dr. Hammond may insist upon calling it compound, but a series of forces, each possessed of a distinct entity and an individual identity. The doctor evidently did not study the scope and import of the word when he thus loosely employed it, else he would have perceived that whatever is compound is some one and the same thing made up of parts, and not a collection of individuals.

We will now see in what manner he distributes and assigns to duty the sub-forces comprised under the general term “compound force.” For aught we know, Dr. Hammond may have once been familiar with the researches of Stewart, Reid, Brown, and Hamilton, not to mention Locke, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Malebranche; but he certainly labored under some form of amnesia when he devised the following scheme of psychology: He declares that the sub-forces into which the compound force called mind is divisible are fourfold, viz.: perception, intellect, emotion, and will. He defines perception to be “that part of the mind whose office it is to place the individual in relation with external objects.” This definition supposes that the whole mind is not concerned in the act of perception, but that, while one part of it is quiescent, another may be engaged in perceiving. This view of perception has the questionable merit of originality, differing as it does from the definition given by every author from Aristotle to Mill, who all regard perception as an act of the mind, and the faculty of perceiving nothing else than the mind itself viewed with reference to its perceptive ability. Further on he says: “For the evolution of this force [viz., part of the mind] the brain is in intimate relation with certain special organs, which serve the purpose of receiving impressions of objects. Thus an image is formed upon the retina, and the optic nerve transmits the excitation to its ganglion or part of the brain. This at once functionates [Anglice, acts.—C. W.], the force called perception is evolved, and the image is perceived.”

We have quoted this passage at some length, not only for the purpose of exhibiting Dr. Hammond’s theory of perception, but to show how admirably the argot of science serves to hide all meaning and to leave the reader dazed and disappointed. No one yet, till Dr. Hammond’s appearance on the psychological stage, ventured to call a mere impression on an organ of sense perception; indeed, the whole difficulty consists in explaining how the mind is placed in relation with this image. It was with a view to elucidate this much-vexed matter that the peripatetics invented their system concerning the origin of ideas. It is all plain sailing till the image or phantasm in the sensitive faculty is reached; so that at St. Thomas, regard the writings of these doctors on this subject as a tissue of jargon, overloading and obscuring a question which is so plain that it needs but to be enunciated in order to be understood. Then the long and warm conflicts which have torn the camp of philosophy, and separated her votaries into opposite schools, would all be happily ended; it would suffice to say: “Gentlemen, your toilsome webwork of thought is no better than the product of Penelope’s distaff; the whole affair may be summed up in these words: A ganglion functionates, the force called perception is evolved, and the image is perceived.” Mirabile dictu! It is not, therefore, necessary to discuss the question of ideal intuition to find out whether the idea is a representative and subjective form or objective and absolute; whether we are to agree with Reid and the school of experimental psychologists, or do battle under the colors of Gioberti and Rosmini, or the learned and lamented Brownson? All these things are no doubt beneath the consideration of the materialist’s psychology.

But we have still more to learn concerning perception at the feet of this new Gamaliel. He says (page 312): “Perception may be exercised without any superior intellectual act, without any ideation whatever. Thus if the cerebrum of a pigeon be removed, the animal is still capable of seeing and of hearing, but it obtains no idea from those senses. The mind, with the exception of perception, is lost!” Perception is not, therefore, connected with consciousness; for, according to Dr. Hammond, we may hear and see without knowing it. We do not deny that impressions may be made on the organs of sense without eliciting an act of consciousness, for which reason, indeed, ordinary language has reserved the use of words designating the function of organs for those cases where consciousness is elicited; for no one would dream of saying that he feels the prick of a pin or hears another speak without knowing it. A cadaver can perceive as well as a living subject, if we are to accept Dr. Hammond’s view; for we know that an image may be formed and retained by the retina after death, and this is all that is needed for perception. To explain all intercurrent difficulties, we have but to fall back on ganglia and evolution. At each step of the intellectual process a convenient ganglion exists which evolves just the sort of force requisite to produce the desired result, and thus we have a perfect system of psychology. Of the intellect he says: “In the normal condition of the brain the excitation of a sense, and the consequent perception, do not stop at the special ganglion of that sense, but are transmitted to a more complex part of the brain, where the perception is resolved into an idea.” Thus is the brain made the sole organ of thought. We have but to say, “A perception is resolved into an idea,” and in so many words we bound over difficulties which made St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Leibnitz, and Kant, and which will, in all probability, continue to be an object of curious research to the end of time. If a child, beholding the changeful images of a kaleidoscope, should, prompted by the curiosity of youthful age, inquire the reason of this beautiful play of colors, surely no one would cynically answer him that one figure is resolved into another. Dr. Hammond slurs over the difficulty; for the vexing question is, How does the mind form an idea?—not, whether a ganglion is excited and evolves force, but how, on the occasion of such excitation, an idea, which is something altogether different from the excitation, is produced in the mind.

This question he not only fails to answer, but exhibits a woful depreciation of its scope and gravity. He continues: “Thus the image impressed upon the retina, the perception of which has been formed by a sensory ganglion, ultimately causes the evolution of another force by which all its attributes capable of being represented upon the retina are more or less perfectly appreciated according to the structural qualities of the ideational centre.” This sentence furnishes the keynote to the whole theory of material psychics, and leads us to inquire into its growth and history. When Bichat in France and Sir Charles Bell in England simultaneously discovered that a separate function was assignable to the anterior and posterior nerve-fibres projected from each intervertebral foramen; that the anterior possess the power of causing muscular contraction, the posterior that of giving rise to sensation, they laid the foundation of the wonderful and beautiful though much-perverted doctrine of the localization of function. The experiments of Flourens, Claude Bernard, Beaumont, Virchow, and Kolliker multiplied similar discoveries and enlarged the significance of Bell’s and Bichat’s conclusions. To every ganglion its separate function is now sought to be assigned, and we have already alluded to the interesting facts which ataxic and amnesic aphasia have lately developed. The intimate relation thus manifested between particular portions of the brain-substance and the corresponding mental function, aroused and quickened curiosity to find out the nature and reason of this dependence. The materialist perceived in this doctrine of the localization of function a new weapon for attacking the spirituality of the soul, and was not slow to bring it into requisition. It was assumed that a reason for the difference of function in the different portions of the nervous structure would be found in the intimate texture of the nerve-tissues themselves; and the assumption, in so far as it is logical to suppose, that a difference in organization can alone account for a difference in the manifestation of power, was fair and plausible. All efforts were now directed towards such discoveries in the minute histology of the nervous system as would point to a connection between special ganglia and the functions performed by them. The microscope, indeed, brought to light many wonderful differences, but none sufficient to justify what is, therefore, but a mere assumption—the conclusion that the peculiar organization of certain portions of the nervous system is as much the efficient cause of which something else invariably follows; nor need we look for any other relation between the two. This doctrine, applied to the phenomena of the mind, could not but lead the discoverers of localized functions to downright materialism. They perceived that certain phenomena invariably proceeded in the same manner from certain portions of the nervous organism, and that any disturbance of the latter was attended by a marked change in the character of the phenomena with which it was connected. This invariability of antecedence and fluctuating difference of effect pointed unerringly, they thought, to structural differences in the nervous system as the efficient cause of all its functions. Applying this doctrine of causation to the process of intellection, we find how logically it sustains Dr. Hammond’s assertion that mind is an evolution of force from a special ganglion, since an excitation of the same ganglion is always followed by the same result—viz., a mental apprehension.

The invariability of sequence is all that is needed to establish ganglion in the category of causes, and ideation in that of effects.

We will now apply the same method of reasoning to a case in which the obvious distinction between cause and condition cannot fail to strike the most inattentive, and make manifest the sophistry of materialistic physiology. Should we stray into a minster filled with a grand religious light, and find chancel, nave, and pillar all radiant with purple and violet, soft amber and regal red, we would naturally look to the stained-glass window to discover the source of those warm tints and brilliant hues, and would seek to determine what in those party-colored panes gives rise to the cause, of mistaking the cause of a difference between two occurrences for the cause of the occurrences themselves.

We have dwelt at this length on Dr. Hammond’s theory of the Intellect, as it embodies an error so pernicious that the callow mind of the medical student, awed by the authority of a name, is likely, on reading this chapter, to imbibe principles which, slowly elaborated, will lead him in process of time to the chilling tenets of materialism.

The third sub-force enumerated by Dr. Hammond is Emotion, which, like perception and intellect, is a force evolved on the occasion of an excitation in some other portion of the brain. Thus the emotions of joy, sorrow, hope, and love can be excited by making an impression on this portion of the nervous substance, just as we elicit different sounds from a piano by striking different keys in succession. “‘Sblood! do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?” Yet Dr. Hammond would of man make a Hamlet’s pipe, with its ventages and stops, to be sounded from the lowest note to the top of the compass at the pleasure of a skilled performer. The physiological signs of emotion he has truthfully described, such as blushing, palpitation, increase of the salivary secretion, and other bodily changes, the connection of which with the emotions themselves will, we fear, so far as there is any hope of a satisfactory explanation from physiology, remain a dead secret for ever. The fourth and last of the sub-forces evolved by the brain is Will, with respect to which the doctor has not much to say, though it is easy to understand that it owes its origin, according to him, to the same ganglionic i.e., have necessarily produced volition. Volition, therefore, being the result of changes necessarily produced, must itself be necessary, and we then have the anomaly of necessary will, which is a sheer contradiction. There is no such thing, therefore, as volition, in the true and accepted sense of the word, and what we deem to be the free acts of the soul are brought about as necessarily as pain or pleasure when the exciting agents of those emotions are in operation. It is not difficult to estimate the practical consequences of this doctrine. Man, thus made to act by organic changes and the necessary determination of his nature, not being answerable for these, cannot be made answerable for their consequences; so that the good and evil he performs resemble, the former the changes which the bodily system undergoes in a state of health, the latter the morbid changes of disease. The good he does is as much the necessary outcome of his nature as the golden fruit is of the tree, while his bad actions are as the tempest that wrecks or the breath of a pestilence.

This is the self-same doctrine of Broussais dressed in the garb which the latest researches in neurological science have prepared for it, and much more covertly and insidiously presented.

Broussais says: “L’ivrogne et le gourmand sont ceux dont le cerveau obéit aux irradiations des appareils digestifs; les hommes sobres doivent leur vertu à un encéphale dont les stimulations propres sont supérieures à celles de ces appareils” (Irritation et Folie, p. 823).—“The drunkard and the glutton are those whose brain obeys the summons issued by the digestive organs; sober men owe their virtue to the possession of a brain which rises superior to such orders.” Surely in this, as in countless other instances, history continues to repeat itself.

The definition of Insanity given by Dr. Hammond surpasses in clearness and comprehensiveness all those which he has collected from other sources, and is such, we consider, as will with difficulty be improved upon in the respects mentioned. He calls it “a manifestation of disease of the brain, characterized by a general or partial derangement of one or more faculties of the mind, and in which, while consciousness is not abolished, mental freedom is perverted, weakened, or destroyed.” This definition more closely applies to all occurring cases of insanity than any hitherto given, though it is a pity the doctor has robbed its latter portion of all meaning by having virtually denied mental freedom in his foregoing theory of volition. The remainder of the chapter on insanity is exceedingly instructive and interesting. The author has clearly

“Laudet diversa sequentes.”

The great bulk of the work—and it is a volume of nearly nine hundred pages—is taken up with the discussion of those nervous diseases which, for the most part obscure in their origin and of infrequent occurrence, have been brought to light for the first time in this monograph, so that the medical profession owes a deep debt of gratitude to the laborious researches of Dr. Hammond in a very partially explored field. To the general reader the chapter on Hydrophobia cannot fail to prove interesting, presenting as it does a graphic description of the symptoms which usher in this terrible disease, and suggesting remedies which are within the reach of every one, and are calculated to avert the awful consequences of a bite by a rabid dog, provided they be employed without delay. The interval between the reception of the wound and the outbreak of the symptoms is very variable, but the majority of cases occur within seven months. This interval is called the period of incubation, and is usually not characterized by any other signs than a certain amount of mental depression, often the result of a nervous apprehension of consequences. The sleep especially is apt to be disturbed by such forebodings, so that the animal which inflicted the wound is frequently dreamt of. The prognosis of the disease is most discouraging, since our author says: “There is no authentic instance on record of a cure of hydrophobia.” The post-mortem signs of disease are shrouded in obscurity; for, though Dr. Hammond details at great length certain altered conditions of the brain and spinal cord, as well as of the arteries supplying them, those changes are by no means pathognomonic—i.e., peculiar to the disease in question. The point of greatest practical interest to those who have so far escaped the death-dealing fang of Blanche, Tray, or Sweetheart is that, should so sad an occurrence befall them, they must hasten at once to a surgeon, and see that, after having tightly bound the limb above the injury, he use the knife with an un-sparing hand, till every part with which the teeth of the animal may have come in contact has been entirely removed. Cauterization, either by fire, or nitrate of silver, or some of the mineral acids, is preferred by some physicians, and has proved quite as successful as excision. A Mr. Youatt employed cauterization four hundred times on persons who had been bitten by rabid animals, and every time with success. Dr. Hammond employed cauterization seven times—four with nitrate of silver and three with the actual cautery—and always with success. This proceeding should be adopted, even though several weeks, or even months, may have elapsed since the infliction of the wound; in which case, however, excision is deemed preferable to cauterization. The importance of this knowledge to persons residing

Following the chapter on hydrophobia are some very interesting statements concerning Epilepsy—a disease which, in a light form, prevails more extensively than most people imagine. The most remarkable precursory symptom to an attack of epilepsy is what is called an aura, or breeze. This usually begins in some lower part of the body and shoots towards the head. It resembles at times an electric shock, and again a sharp stab or blow. The strangest auræ are hallucinations of vision which lead the patient to believe he sees a rapid succession of colors. The experiments of Dr. Hughlings Jackson with regard to those colored auræ are full of interest.

He finds that a vision of red ushers in the phenomenon, and that the whole prism is exhibited to the sight till the violet end of the spectrum is reached. The approach of the aura is often felt, and gives admonition to the patient of the speedy approach of a seizure, so that he is thereby enabled to seek a place of security and retirement before the actual advent of an attack. Many interesting cases, exhibiting the freaks and peculiarities of this strange disease, are recorded by Dr. Hammond. Convulsion, tremor, chorea or St. Vitus’ dance, and hysteria are next treated of in succession, and much valuable information might be derived from a perusal of these chapters.

Catalepsy, one of the strangest of nervous disorders, receives a due share of attention, though much that is authoritative cannot be affirmed concerning it, since the data of the disease are neither numerous nor reliable. When the cataleptic seizure is at its height, there is complete suspension of consciousness, and a muscular rigidity supervenes, which causes the limbs to retain for a long time any position, no matter how awkward or irksome, in which they may be placed.

This condition so closely simulates death that in former times mistakes were frequently made which were not discovered till life had really become extinct in the grave. Another strange feature of this disease is the magnetic influence a female subject exercises over her unattainted sisters during a paroxysm. It has been observed that, if one female in a ward fall into a cataleptic fit, those immediately around her are seized in the same manner, the attack lasting for a period of variable duration. The description of these nervous maladies gradually leads to Dr. Hammond’s views on Ecstasy, which are all the more interesting as the chapter is chiefly taken up with the discussion of the wonderful and perplexing case of Louise Lateau. The chapter should have followed the one on hydrophobia, and been entitled Thaumatophobia rather than Ecstasy, since the doctor exhibits a most contemptuous estimate of the intelligence of those who hold that there can be anything not explicable by the known laws of physiology in the most wonderful cases of ecstasia. He ranks among ecstatics of a former period St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Teresa, Joan of Arc, and Madame Guyon, all of whom, he says, “exhibited manifestations of this disorder.” With respect to those celebrated personages there is no sort ex parte disputant. We do not intend to reopen the discussion of this famous case, since enough concerning it has already appeared in these pages.[115] It is sufficient that we note the recusant spirit of some modern scientists whenever there is question of the supernatural. They will not believe, no matter how overwhelming the evidence, lest they be suspected of weakness, or of bartering their intellectual freedom for the formulæ of an effete authority. These gentlemen consult their prejudices rather than truth, and, provided they tickle the ears of radicals and non-believers, they consider themselves lifted into the proud position of supreme arbiters between reason and authority. Dr. Hammond says ecstasy was “formerly quite common among the inmates of convents.” We would inform him that its frequency was never greater than now, and the widespread attention which one or two cases have attracted is proof how rare is that frequency. Indeed, it has been the invariable policy of the church to discourage tendencies in this direction, and spiritual advisers often remind their penitents that an unbidden and unwelcome guest not rarely presents himself in the garb of an angel of light. It is related of St. Francis of Sales that a nun having declared to him that the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her, he inquired how much vin ordinaire she had taken that day; and, upon her answering, “One glass,” he told her to drink two the following day, and she might have two apparitions. In view of this disinclination of ecclesiastics to encourage ecstasia, especially among women, whose nervous system is so impressionable, it ill becomes Dr. Hammond, having the mass of testimony at his command in support of the genuineness of the two cases to which reference is made, to use the following language: “But the effort was in vain, just as is the attempt now to convince the credulous and ignorant of the real nature of the seizures of Louise Lateau, Bernadette Soubirous—who evoked Our Lady of from authentic cases of true ecstasy. Baron von Feuchtersleben[116] relates many extraordinary cases of this sort. Herodotus (ix. 33) speaks of the Argive women who, under a morbid inspiration, rushed into the woods and murdered their own children. Plutarch relates the story of a monomania among the Milesian girls to hang themselves. We have all read of the convulsionnaires at the tomb of Mathieu of Paris. Dr. Maffei describes a similar epidemic, which received the name of “Pöschlianism” from a religious, fixed delusion which originated with one Pöschl. These cases were usually accompanied by convulsions and terminated in suicide. Besides the disorders alluded to, we read of sycanthropy among the natives of Arcadia, a somewhat similar aberration among the aborigines of Brazil, and the delusion of the Scythians that they viz., that of the noted Ler, an inmate of the Salpêtrière, whose contortions and antics resemble the hysteria of the “Jerkers” in Methodist camp-meetings. The attempt to identify all occurring cases with these is a flagrant violation of the inductive method by which scientific men, above all others, claim that they are guided. If observation and experience are to be our guides in determining the truth, then let us admit nothing but what these criteria verify. This is precisely what these gentlemen do not do; and because they perceive a general resemblance between a group of facts, they identify all possessing this resemblance, and predicate thereon a general law. We cannot hope for a discontinuance of this baneful and short-sighted procedure until men who profess to be votaries of science shall become truly rational, instead of making an empty and futile boast of being rationalists.

THE ETERNAL YEARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—PROGRESSION.

If the preceding considerations have at all succeeded in imparting to our minds a right view of the importance of matter, not solely in its own nature, but in the spiritual world, and in the developments which the spiritual world only arrives at through the medium of matter, we shall find we hold the key to many mysteries, and are walking at liberty in a world of marvels.

So far as we are able to judge, and aided by all that science can discover, we have every reason to believe that the act of creation is complete, and that no more material is needed to work out the ultimate intentions of the divine Being. Certain races of animals have become extinct, and all races are modified more or less by external influences of climate and food. Probably many have all but changed their nature since they first sprang into being; as they will do once more when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. But whether or no this be so, it would be rash to imagine that new creations of hitherto unexisting fauna or flora are ever to be given to the great cosmos. There is nothing to prove that such is the case; and there is a vast amount of facts pointing to the opposite conclusion. Moreover, the completeness of creation is the grander idea of the two, and the most like the ways of God, especially when we consider that [117] But even on this earth we have evidences of the sanctification of matter by its contact with spiritual things.

We have it first in the relics of the saints, to which not only a sacred memory is attached, but actual supernatural gifts emanate from them, because they have become holy to the Lord; because they had, while still in life, so frequently, or rather so effectively, come in direct contact with the Eucharistic Sacrifice, with the Body and Blood of Him who, in taking flesh and feeding us thereon, brought God to us and dwelt within us. But the saints are rare; and the example, therefore, derived from their relics is an exceptional one. There are other examples of the way in which the living influence of the faith has changed mankind, through the ages of history, by hereditary transmission.

It has been remarked that while Rome still remained pagan there nevertheless existed other sentiments, and as it were another atmosphere, caught from the presence of Christianity, even while Christianity was ignored or persecuted. The pagan spirit was essentially worldly. How could it be otherwise? Poverty made a man ridiculous; and ridicule is the beginning of contempt. Christian charity and compassion had no pagan counterpart until Christian example gave rise to the notion that it was a wise and good thing to feed the hungry and care for the orphan. Long before the reign of the first Christian emperor the pagan Roman heart, catching some warmth from the celestial fire which burnt unseen in the largely-extended Christian population, began to form institutions which faintly reproduced Christian charity; but this was the influence of mind over mind.

What is a far more remarkable fact is the gradually-developed influence of generations of Christian ancestors over the mere natural instincts of humanity. How much do we not owe to the fact that we descend from a mainly Christian stock! What sweet domestic ties, what calm, heaven-reflecting pools of life, do we not enjoy—not owing to our own personal graces, but because grace, in a greater or less degree, has, though may be with grave exceptions, presided over the rise and growth for centuries of those who have preceded us.

St. Jerome wrote to the youthful daughter of his beloved penitent Paola, as the former was about to dedicate herself to God in a virgin and secluded life, a very large and most emphatic portion of his instructions is taken up with exposing to her the difficulties she will meet with in preserving an essential virtue, and the extreme measures she, a maiden of seventeen, must resort to as a guarantee against temptation. To what, save to the blessed effects of centuries of a more or less Christian ancestry, do we owe the blessed fact that, whereas to any young girl now entering religion her Christian parents and her priestly adviser would fill hours with counsels about holy poverty, obedience, and the conquest of her own will, hardly one word would be breathed about any imminent peril to a virtue which she only thinks of in its highest religious sense, because she has never even dreamt that it could practically be in danger? The very flesh has been purified and chastened by centuries of grace. The human instincts have been almost unconsciously raised to a higher level; and, evil as the world may yet be, we habitually entertain angels unawares. Thus does the longanimity of God wait with ever-slackening step through the long ages of time, while grace permeates slowly the few but ever-increasing willing hearts, sanctifying soul and body equally and together; for “the Lord dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish.” He deals patiently with the world for the sake of the church, patiently with the wicked for the sake of the good, and because the good are not good for themselves alone; they yield a perfume of which they are not conscious, but which attracts others to them; and if but the ten righteous men can be found, the city will be spared!

* * * * *

We often hear allusions made to the destructive work of time, to the ruin of nations, and the obliteration of vast and crowded cities; and writers of the day indulge in sensational reflections upon the future fate of the peoples and homes of modern days. We are all acquainted with the New Zealander who is to sit amid the ruins of London. But those who speak and write in this sense have in their minds the fate of heathen nations and pagan cities in the first hour or epoch of the world’s existence, before the accomplishment of the mystery of the Incarnation—that is, before God dwelt upon earth to reconquer by his precious blood and sweat of agony his kingdom among men. But as Christians we cannot believe that Christian nations, however imperfect in their Christian practice, will ever be cast out, root and branch, and the ploughshare pass over their hearths and His altars as over Ninive and Troy, as over the Etruscan cities and the pleasure-loving Roman towns of southern Italy. The ten righteous are never wanting in any city where the altars of Jesus are erected, and where the Mother of fair love is named with tender and reverent confidence. The surging tide of evil may threaten us, as in guilty Paris and brutalized London; but though heavy chastisements may pour down on these examples of modern vice, yet never, never will the dear Conqueror who has deigned to plant his foot on the teeming city streets as his priests carry the Blessed Sacrament to the dying, and who has his tabernacles of love here and there through our crowded thoroughfares,

Believe it, O ye loving hearts! who are burning in silent anguish over the erring and the ignorant, who are pouring sad tears on the cruel wickedness of high places, and on the degradation and depravity of the neglected and the forgotten.

Heavy and sharp and terrible may be the punishment of our iniquities; but even hell itself is less hell than it would be but for the shedding of the precious Blood; and no nation where his name is invoked, no people among whom he has his part—albeit not, alas! the larger part—can ever perish out of sight, out of mind, as the huge heathen nations have gone down in utter darkness in the lapse of ages, and hardly left a stone to proclaim, “I am Babylon.”

Sweet patience of Jesus! sweet pity of Mary! we wrong you both when we forget that where you have once entered, there you will abide; because the few are the salvation of the many; because, though not every door-post and lintel bears the red cross, yet those that do bear it plead for the rest, and the angel of destruction stays his steps at the first and drops his avenging sword; for his Lord and Master has passed that way!

* * * * *

We have spoken of the creation as being complete. We have concluded that, while we are incapable of measuring its extent, and can only vainly guess at unknown worlds beyond our own system, it will never receive one atom, one molecule, in addition to those of which it now consists. Our reason for this belief lies deep down in the very roots of theology, which we find a better reason than any with which mere human science can furnish us, because the end of the latter is contained within the end of the former, as the greater contains the less. We have already stated our reason—namely, that the ultimate object of the creation was the Incarnation, and, that object accomplished, there can apparently be no need of further creation. In saying this we are not presuming to limit the power of God or to interpret his unrevealed will. We are, with all diffidence, formulating a supposition which approves itself to our reason. The creation was the expression of the goodness of God, uttered outside himself by the Logos, God the Son. But the creation, merely as such, merely as existence, and man, the lord of creation, merely in his natural state, were incapable of union with God. Therefore, from the first, man was constituted in a state of grace. Thus the second mission, which is that of the Holy Ghost, and which is the second in the eternal decrees, the nunc stans of eternity, is the first in the nunc fluens of time. For the grace of God, which is the Holy Ghost, was given to man in measure and degree from the first moment of his being, four thousand years before the first mission, that of God the Son, took place in time. Both are continuous, and both are progressive. The mission of God the Son did not cease when he ascended into heaven; for it is continued at the Consecration in every Mass, and in every tabernacle where the Blessed Sacrament dwells. At each Mass he comes and comes again! In the Blessed Sacrament he remains. Therefore his actual presence is progressive, in proportion to the increase of his altars where the bloodless sacrifice is offered, [118]

This may be but a pious thought, and we have no wish to press it upon our readers. We leave it to their devotion to follow it out or not as they will. All we want to prove is that, though our Blessed Lord came once only, conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Blessed Virgin; and once only was crucified, dead, and buried, and rose the third day, and ascended into heaven, nevertheless his sacramental presence is a perpetual carrying on and carrying out of this his first mission to us, and that thus his mission bears a progressive character. He is the conqueror “proceeding to conquer.” He is still sending his messengers before his face to prepare his way. His priests are still going forth to all nations to preach the remission of sins, by planting his altar, which is his earthly throne, in divers parts, till the earth be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the covering waters of the sea.[119] We are looking forward to the fulfilment of that prophecy in all its plenitude; for surely no one can allege either that this time has already come, or that because some, it may be several, missionary priests have had a certain success among the heathen, anything faintly resembling such a grand, lavish promise as that, has received even an approximate fulfilment. Still less will any one assert that such promises are vain; and if not so, then let us look forward, and ever more and more forward, to the progression of our dear Lord’s kingdom upon earth; himself present amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament, coming in that meek guise to take possession of his territories, and all but silently planting his standard first here, then there, as new altars are raised to him, and as other souls are brought beneath the sacraments—the oaths of allegiance to their new Master.

We cannot disguise from ourselves that we have fallen upon evil

The wealth and learning of the Romans, their vast literature, their high art, had no effect in producing either morality or mercy. There were noble examples among them of men and women who, we may believe, responded to the light vouchsafed them, whose names have come down to us; and doubtless there were many, utterly unknown to history, who obeyed the dictates of their conscience, enlightened by the divine Spirit of whom they had never so much as heard. We do not believe that anywhere, in any age, in any city, however given up to iniquity, there was nothing but eternal death reigning over poor, fallen, suffering humanity, and leaving the beneficent Creator, the dear Redeemer, without a soul to love and serve him, albeit in a blind way. We believe such a condition of things to be simply impossible; but however that may be, whether more or less than we have dared to hope, Christianity was not there, and in its absence nothing availed to produce generally even the appreciation of purity or real charity.

As we have said, the Romans were a grand law-giving nation. Civil rights were understood, upheld, and protected better than by the modern Napoleonic code, and far more in harmony with Christianity, which ultimately profited by, and copied so largely, the Roman law. But the law did not touch the heart or enlighten the conscience; and while the public life of Rome had much moral grandeur, the private existence of man and woman alike was infamous; and it was so in proportion to their advance in wealth and luxury.

We have said that only Christianity can moralize civilized nations, and we did so advisedly; for a certain inoffensiveness, and the practice of many natural virtues, exist among nations that have not come within the range of so-called civilization. Where the intellectual and reasoning powers of men are undeveloped, they retain something like the innocence of children. But when man without Christianity is raised to intellectual height, cultivated in mind, refined in manner, surrounded by art, and with advanced knowledge of physical science—when he has thus developed all his powers, without having a corresponding force given him against the inclinations of natural concupiscence, he is then no longer in the infancy of humanity. It is mature, and the ripe fruit tends to rottenness. Civilization and knowledge must go forward pari passu with divine grace to be a real benefit to mankind; for there is no good apart from a high moral standard, whether we consider the individual or the nation, and no moral standard will long support itself without the concomitance of grace. We are told that the great question of the day is the modus vivendi between the church and modern progress. If this be so, the church alone can discover and develop it; because the church is the organ of the Holy Ghost, and when our Lord was about to leave this earth he promised the Paraclete, who would “teach us all things.” Therefore the church is the ultimate dispenser of all science, no matter of what

Hers has been a long history of struggle, and frequently of apparent defeat; but out of it she has ever risen victorious, though her victories are different in character from the triumphs of the world, because they are so silent and so peaceful that they are only known by their results. The first of these results is more liberty, a widening of the cords of her tent; for as the church defines her own nature with increased accuracy, so by this accuracy she leaves more freedom to her children. Definition is also limitation; and both exclude doubt. Doubt is slavery, while certainty is liberty. When our Lord began to teach of the coming kingdom of God, he did so by parables, and to his own immediate disciples alone was an explanation vouchsafed: “To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to the rest in parables.” He spoke of himself as “straitened” until his work should be accomplished.

The whole history of the church has been on the same principle. Until certain things have been accomplished her path is hemmed in, and the accomplishment is ever effected by the means of her enemies, even as our salvation was by the hands of those who crucified Jesus. The rise of each heresy has produced the definition of doctrine, and each definition has widened the horizon of our faith and flooded our life with light. The war with evil has had no other result than to impart spiritual strength to the spouse of Christ. And now everything points to a great crisis, a culminating term, a springtide of the waters of grace; for the long war with Protestantism has led up to the dogma of the Papal Infallibility. The coping-stone is laid, and a new era is beginning, which will be the fuller development of the individual life of the soul in the beauty of holiness and in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. The external edifice is complete; the interior decoration will hasten towards completion. Already we see the signs of those better times approaching. We see them alike in the preternatural as in the supernatural world. The spirits of evil are guessing at the future, and, as is their wont, are anticipating the coming events by parodying the divine future action. The sleepless intelligence and never-wearying enmity of Satan pursues with relentless accuracy every development of God’s truth in the history of the church. With the fragments, in his fallen state, of his former untold science, combined with his thousands of years of cumulative experience, his one desire is to be beforehand with God. In advance of the great divine act of the Incarnation, he instituted the horrors of possession, and practised them in the pagan world on a scale he is but seldom allowed to repeat where the name of Jesus is uttered. With each phase of God’s divine action on the world, and of concomitant human necessities, he changes his tactics. There are but few among us who remember or realize the fact that every incident of our lives is lived in connection with three worlds—the tangible, visible,

But those who can bear it and can follow it out should be doubly on watch and guard in the interests of the multitudes who, it is true, believe in their guardian angel, but forget their left-hand diabolic attendant. It was not so in earlier times when faith was young, among the primitive writers and the great ascetics. One of the holiest of the past generation said that the cleverest work the devil had ever accomplished was the getting men to disbelieve in his existence. Having, as a rule (except among Catholics), established his non-existence in their minds, the sphere of his occult action is necessarily vastly extended. We do not look out for what we firmly believe is not there. He is among us, and we see him not. He has studied the Scriptures, and he knows there will be a time when our maidens shall dream dreams and our young men see visions. He guesses at the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, in a more determinate and wider reign of grace, in the future of the church; and above all he has not forgotten, though many of us have, that there is the promise of yet another mission that will alter the whole face of the world, that will follow on the ever-growing and extending reign of the Holy Ghost, and that will culminate the glories of their Queen—the mission of the angels. They will come, the bright, swift-winged messengers, and “they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and those that work iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father,”[120] and “the angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the just.” We read these sacred words constantly, but how far do we realize their meaning? How far have we amplified the thought in our mind, and given it form and consistency? We read of the day of judgment; but do we suppose that it will be an affair of four-and-twenty hours—the angels in the morning, the judgment about noon, and all the past, present, and future of humanity in heaven or hell by twilight?

It is true we are told that the awful time will come as a thief in the night, and we are apt to explain that into being sudden; whereas it may more properly describe the fact that the time will steal upon us, silently and hiddenly. We shall find our bright brethren, the angels, around us, among us, before we have altogether realized their approach; just as, gradually and by degrees, we shall find the Spirit illuminating the minds and hearts of the innocent and the zealous, the “youths and the maidens,” with divine inspirations, first as the dawning of new light, then as the blaze of noontide. All God’s dealings with his poor creatures have been gradual. They are hidden, but they are never sudden. He always sends his angels before his face to prepare and therefore are most precious to each of us, and not to be treated as a trifle; or, as they are in fact, the devil’s guess at some of God’s secrets, and his anticipation of something belonging to the future destiny of man. We have no intention of polluting our pages by allusion to the jejune trifling of spiritist appearances. We would only ask every one solemnly and reverently to think of God’s ways in our world, and then, as before him, to declare whether or no the half-ludicrous, partially ghastly, and altogether jerky, will-o’-the-wisp performances of spiritists have anything in consonance with the dignity, the uniformity, the plain good sense (if this term sound not irreverent) of God’s dealings with his children. They talk of undiscovered natural laws! When did any grand, God-implanted natural law begin to reveal itself by tricks and antics? What are natural laws but revelations of God’s action and divine being? Every one of them shows us God, and leads us to God by simple and lucid gradation. It is the travesty of his laws in which the devil delights; and as within ourselves there are undeveloped laws which have been overlaid by original sin, and lie within us as the butterfly lies in the chrysalis, therefore the enemy of mankind, who, with far-seeing cunning, predicates the glorious future of mankind before the final consummation of all things, is using his knowledge to practise upon these laws to the detriment of those who lend themselves ignorantly as his instruments.

The fallen angels know far more accurately the secrets of our nature than we know them ourselves, and through this knowledge they deceive the unwary. Still more easily they have their way with those

It is an old proverb that the devil can quote Scripture, and so, also, can he base his evil designs on his knowledge of Catholic truth. We believe in the possibility, by a special permission from God, of the reappearance of the departed amongst us, and of the holy souls coming to ask for prayers, as we read constantly in the lives of the saints; and probably many of us have ourselves known of such incidents on creditable evidence. The devil acts upon this faith as he acts upon his own knowledge of occult laws; and blending a theoretic truth with practical error, he weaves a mesh to catch souls, all the while foreboding the time when the more developed mission of the Holy Ghost, and the elaborating in countless hearts of that hidden holiness by which the church is “all glorious within,” shall bring about that greater familiarity with the supernatural which is foretold as a characteristic of the latter times.

The early teaching of the church laid more stress on the mission of the angels than it became her habit to do in later days. Not that the church, as the organ of the Holy Ghost, ever gives an uncertain sound or calls back any of her divine utterances; but, like a watchful mother, she holds in her own keeping such of the treasures, new or old, which are not adapted to the present wants of her children. There came a time, as Christianity grew more diffused, when the early Christians, not entirely weaned from the heathen practices of their forefathers, were in danger of attempting to define the occupation and attributes of the angels beyond the limits of the church’s authority. They affected to have learnt the names of many, and to decide on their position and purpose in the angelic hosts. Out of that arose a kind of worship and invocation of the angels which bordered on superstition and savored of the worship offered to the demons among the heathens. This fell under the reprobation of the church, and by a natural reaction left devotion to the angels at a lower ebb than what is warranted by sound doctrine.

Then came the German heretics and the dawn of modern Protestantism; and one of the first of their efforts was to banish all belief in the interposition and ministry of the angelic host. They took advantage of the errors and follies of individuals to write against the whole doctrine of angelic action; and though among Catholics the faith in their guardianship and aid is constant, yet it is not now practically (of course virtually it is the same) what it was in earlier times. But here also we have another instance of how the church brings forth from her divine armory the weapon most needed to defeat the machinations of the arch-enemy; for it has been reserved for our day to see devotion to the angels taking a fuller extension and a more definite form than it ever before held in the history of the church’s inner life. In all her definitions and in all her

Let us in thought go back to Paradise, to our great progenitor before his fall. For Adam knew Jesus. Not, indeed, as we know him—the rainless skies of the garden God had planted had formed no background to the beloved sign of our redemption; for as the Redeemer Adam knew him not. We have already given our reasons for believing that besides knowing Him, by the graces of infused science, as the second Person of the Trinity, the Logos, he knew of the intended Incarnation through and by which Jesus was to unite Himself to us. We have also dared to imagine that he foresaw the Real Presence as the carrying out and completion of the Incarnation. But in those days Adam knew of no shedding of blood, of no sacrifice of suffering. The whole of that pathetic and terrible chapter, written in red characters, was a sealed one to our once sinless forefather. But in addition to the first beautiful and tender history of the future Incarnation there was a glorious page redolent with light and full of joy; for Adam looked out beyond Jesus as the Creator, and Jesus as the elder Brother of man in the Incarnation, to Jesus as the Glorificator. Adam knew that the green glades and fruit-laden forests of Paradise were not to constitute his ultimate home. He aspired after the time when the God-Man would reward his fidelity at the close of a longer or shorter probation, and admit him from the infancy of innocence into the resplendent manhood of accomplished and final grace. Then would he be like Jesus; for he would see him as he is!

Thus did Adam dwell in the contemplation of two futures—the one tender and familiar, the other glorious and triumphant—until his own act had made the rift between the two, and the blood-stained cross crowned the heights of Calvary. O felix culpa! We dare to say it, because our mother the church has said it. And as Adam sees that past now, pardoned, ransomed, and glorified[121] with his glorified Lord, he beholds his children, with each stroke of eternity’s golden moments, thronging through the gates of heaven by the Sacrifice of the cross. What must not his love in heaven be! Next to that of Our Lady

But the glory of the saints now in heaven cannot be compared with that which will follow after the second mission of our Lord at the consummation of all things; for that mission is a mission of glory, even as his first was a mission of humiliation. He came to us in the womb of Mary, in the manger at Bethlehem, hidden and unknown, poor and despised; but when the time shall be ripe for that second mission, he will come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.[122] He will come as the glorificator of His own creation, of which Mary is the first in rank, a hierarchy in herself, a sealed fountain, a garden enclosed, a second paradise, but where no sin has entered; and in that second mission his saints, as also his angels, will take part.

Thus we look back upon the first mission accomplished—that of the Incarnation and Redemption; the second mission being accomplished—that of the Holy Ghost gradually developing into the reign of the Holy Ghost; and we look forward to two other missions—that of his angels, and, finally, that of His own second coming. “Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him.”[123] “For the Lord himself shall come down from heaven with commandment, and with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead, who are in Christ, shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ, and so shall we be always with the Lord. Wherefore comfort ye one another with these words.[124]

HOBBIES AND THEIR RIDERS.

Under the general head of hobbies we class a thousand peculiarities distinguishing men which, if strictly viewed according to that accurate balance of mind known as sanity, would almost justify us in calling nine out of every ten men insane on some point, however infinitesimal. Every enthusiasm, from the most exalted moral self-forgetfulness to the most ludicrous extravagance, has been in turn called folly and ridiculed as a hobby. There is in the world a tradition, or rather a prescription, against anything which is not decent and well-behaved moderation. Even Christianity is not to be too obtrusive; even moral reform is to wear a velvet glove. No one sin, be it ever so monstrous and preponderant over other offences in your particular time or neighborhood, is to be singled out and fought against more than any other; decorous generalities and pious conventionalities are by no means to be departed from; and if your heart burns within you, you must put a seal upon your lips and carefully prevent the zeal from infecting your weaker brethren who might thuswise be led astray.

A man’s character is better revealed in his hobby than in anything else belonging to him. Oftentimes the possession of one shows him in a more lovable, human light. He must have both heart and imagination to have one. The man who is wholly incapable of fostering one would be a very unpleasant, not to say dangerous,

Some of our friends, especially elderly people, are often the dearer to us for their little eccentricities, which give a touch of piquancy to their character, and most often reveal some amiable trait. Hobbies do not sit so well on the young; for one always has an involuntary suspicion of their genuineness, and, even if they are genuine, youth ought to repress any attempt at thrusting itself forward and claiming undue attention. Besides, young people have yet to earn the right to occupy the attention of others otherwise than in the usual way of guidance and education, and a peculiar turn of mind may be cherished without manifesting itself by any outward sign. Sterne has a delightful consciousness of the value of a hobby as an indication of character when he shows us Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim in the back-garden at Planchy, following step by step the course of the army of the Allies by the help of a spade and some turf, placed so as to represent bastions and fortifications. This process the old soldiers went through over and over again, always with renewed zest. It was a hobby something like this—but too much mixed with vain-glory and the bad taste which nature has at last succeeded in hiding—that prompted the planting of Blenheim Park, near Oxford, in such a way as to represent the positions of the regiments at the battle of Blenheim. The trees have had time to grow out of this likeness, yet they stand in ranks and platoons which one can imagine to have looked hideous when the oaks and beeches were young saplings.

Hobbies and collections are somehow related; at least the mind is used to coupling them together. One can hardly be a collector of anything without becoming absorbed in the collection and in the knowledge required for adding to and classifying it. Even if the collection have been begun with some object of instruction or benevolence, or as a distraction from grief, it soon grows to be a great interest of life, and toil in its behalf becomes pleasure and relaxation. But oftener still the hobby precedes the collection, and many people who are taken for sober, humdrum individuals, the mere padding of society, would in reality be fast and furious riders of hobby-horses if their means allowed them to give outward expression to their tastes.

A very familiar type is the collector

The hobby of the rich collector who can dignify his gathering of pictures with the name of gallery has a different way of showing itself; it crops out in a sort of innocent ostentation, or again an assumed indifference. There are men whose hobby it is to conceal their hobby, to ape humility and pretend to a nonchalance very far from their real feelings. Among collectors, none are more voracious, more steady-going, and generally more happy than bibliopolists. They are of all ranks and degrees, but perhaps clergymen and college professors predominate. In England the country squire is often an eager book-hunter. Books of genealogy and heraldry are favorite tidbits with him, while clergymen often have a special mania for county histories. The collectors of minor curiosities, miscellaneous objects from all parts of the world, are generally old maiden ladies, who have, as a class, the most amiable and touching weaknesses, such as that of the benevolent little fairy, Miss Farebrother, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, who drops her lumps of sugar in a little basket on her lap, that she may have them to bestow upon her friends, the street-boys. Then there are collectors innumerable of stuffed beasts, of shells, of minerals, of old china, laces, and jewelry, of heathen idols, of all kinds of coins, of autographs, of postage-stamps, etc. The autograph-hunter is a very restless and persistent individual. The American who sent a cheese to Queen Victoria must have been of this species, and the queen did not fail to reward him with a letter written with her own hand.

A hobby that used to be rather prevalent, but has somewhat gone out of fashion now, was that of collecting walking-sticks, canes, snuff-boxes, and pipes. Apropos to this, a story is told of an old man whose special mania was snuff as well as snuff-boxes. He was a man of some standing in English society towards the latter end of the last century. His sitting-room was fitted up with shelves like a shop, and on these stood canisters of various kinds of snuff, their names on labels, and the locks and keys of fantastic and rather ingenious shape. This sanctum was his delight, and the shelves, which ran all round the room, were being constantly replenished with new specimens of the weed. He used snuff to an enormous extent, and willingly gave it away to his

We have never heard but of one person who made a spécialité of collecting pieces of wedding-cake; she was an old nurse who had been in the service of a lady employed about the court of William IV. She had pieces of the wedding-cakes of all the princesses of the royal family, including Queen Victoria and some of her daughters, besides remains of the cakes of her mistress’s family, a large and ramified one, and of those of any person of title or distinction of whom, through her connections, she could possibly beg these mementoes.

The horticultural mania, emphatically a hobby for the rich, is one of the most charming and desirable of hobbies; a healthy one, too, as it keeps one out in the open air to a great extent, and supplies the place of such feverish excitements as arise from an interest in politics or in the state of the funds. It even takes away the possibility of interest in petty gossip; for how is it possible to think of the success of Mrs. So-and-so’s coming tea-party when your mind is anxiously engaged on the chance of a late frost ruining your camellias, or the probable time when your Victoria Regia will bloom?

A hobby rather prevalent among women is a constant attendance at auctions. They cannot resist buying little things they do not want, because they are cheap; and, besides, there is a fascination about the atmosphere of a salesroom which is not reducible to mere words. It is milk-and-water gambling, as are many other innocent-looking devices used by very worthy people to increase their stock of pretty possessions without paying full value for them. Very opposite to this is the hobby of petty economies, such as untying a knot instead of cutting it, secreting tiny bits of pencil, keeping a strict watch over matches and candle-ends, etc. It may be a mere habit of mind, but it often degenerates into a foolish hobby, such as is that of keeping every scrap of cloth, silk, or flannel, and carrying about this rubbish from place to place, for the chance of its “coming in usefully” at some future time. Of course we know how many a gorgeous quilt has been evolved from these savings of years, and how mats have been made of the coarser refuse, and the rest sometimes thriftily sold to the paper-mill; but these are often exceptions, for time and deftness are wanting to many who have the instinct of saving, and such small economies are apt to have in themselves a tendency to narrow the mind. Besides, what is thrift in one case is parsimony in another; and while one family may be praise-worthy in its attempts to “take care of the pence,” such care would be despicable in another of easier means.

Shall we call it a hobby to “have one’s finger in every pie”? Some people are not happy unless they are giving their neighbors gratuitous advice, and telling them at every turn how they would act “if I were you.” But of this kind of interference none is so dangerous and none so fascinating as the well-meant contrivances of the born match-maker. This individual is invariably a woman, and generally a most amiable and kind creature.

Among special hobbies, one is said to have been the property of a rich old Englishman of the olden time, who altered a house on purpose to suit it. He could not bear the sight of a female servant, and so angry was he at meeting one on the stairs that he sent for a mason to contrive hiding-places here and there in which an unlucky maid, if she chanced to meet the master, might take refuge out of his sight. The whole house was full of such cunningly-placed holes, and in this odd, honey-combed state it passed to his next heir.

One or two members of a family often take upon themselves the guardianship of the family honor, and bore every relation they have, to the sixth and seventh degree, about the genealogy, intermarriages, quarterings, etc., of their collective fetich. They are learned in family “trees,” know every date, from the first mention of the name in the annals of the country to the number of goods and chattels they brought over with them in the Mayflower; how many shares they bought in the cow of the first settlement; when this and that portrait was painted, and so on. ‘Tis not the knowledge that is irksome, but the inappropriateness and universality of its mention in the conversation of these good people, and the unconsciousness of the narrators that they have ever spoken to you of the subject before.

Have you ever known any one whose “best parlor” was their hobby—a scrupulous, Dutch-like reverence for immaculate cleanliness and order? Scarcely any hobby is more terrible to the stranger or casual visitor. Akin to it is the excess of punctuality by which some people make their guests wretched. Both grow to be a punishment to the person himself; for he, or oftener she, suffers torture every time a guest comes in with snow on his boots, or any one puts a cup of coffee on a marble table, or leans his head on the back of an easychair. Half the day is employed in dusting and cleaning the sacred precincts, and the other half in resting from the exertions thereby incurred.

The hobbies of writers furnish some amusing stories. The historian of the queens of England—Miss Agnes Strickland, as worthy and affectionate a woman as ever breathed—had, it is well known, constituted herself the champion of Mary, Queen of Scots. So thoroughly had she succeeded in realizing the doings of the times of Elizabeth that she spoke on this subject as you would of an injustice that had been done your dearest friend, and that quite recently. It was as fresh in

Political hobbies also abound. These are generally the property of old people, the traditions of whose youth have remained proof against the enlightenment of the present. There are people who boast they have never been on a railroad, and never will be—they are common in Europe, at least—and people who would scorn to be photographed; people who laugh at you if you tell them that the sun really does not go round the earth, and rise and set morning and evening, and who obstinately believe that dogs only go mad during the dog-days. But there are those who, with a better education and more opportunities, are just as unprogressive. Such will buttonhole you and argue seriously that the Pope is going to involve Europe in another Thirty-Years’ War. They seriously believe it and live in dread of it. They would not hurt a fly; but they firmly believe that, if they got hold of a Jesuit, they would remorselessly run him through, and think they had rid the country of a tiger or an alligator. Dr. Newman’s Apologia gives an amusing account of the awe and terror inspired by the dark house in a by-street where “it was said a Roman Catholic lady lived all alone with her servant.” In England the Jesuits and “Bony” long divided the honors of bugbear-in-chief to the British public. To this day some amiable old Welsh lady will assure you in a whisper that the whole country has underground (and it is to be supposed submarine) connection with Rome, and that she never goes to bed without looking underneath to see that there is no Jesuit in disguise concealed there! Then there is the man who, under the Napoleonic régime, whether of the first or third emperor, would tell you in an awestruck manner of the impossibility of putting off the evil hour any longer, and the inevitable certainty of a French invasion and annexation of England to France; the landing always to take place exactly within a few miles of his own house, if he lived by the seaside. If his house were further inland, he would tell you he knew his village would be the first and most convenient place to halt at and plunder.