Chapter II · (continued 4)

Adam, he stated, measured one hundred and twenty-three feet, nine inches; Eve, one hundred and eighteen feet, nine and three-quarter inches; Noe, one hundred and three feet; Abraham, twenty-seven feet; Moses, thirteen feet; Hercules, ten feet; Alexander, six feet; Julius Cæsar, five feet.

He remarked upon this scale that “though men are no longer measured by their stature, if Providence had not deigned to suspend such an extraordinarily rapid rate of diminution, we, at this day, should scarcely dare to class ourselves, with respect to our size, among the large insects of our globe!”

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, an attempt was made to wrest from Adam the honor of being the first man. Isaac de la Peyrère pulished a work in 1655, entitled Præadamitæ, seu Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 Capitis V. Epistolæ B. Pauli ad Romanos, in which he endeavors to prove that there were two creations of men—the first on the sixth day, when God created man, male and female; which, he asserts, means men and women in all parts of the earth, progenitors of the Gentiles. The second creation, he says, did not take place until some time after, when God made Adam to be the father of the Jews. Those who adopted this idea were called Preadamites. La Peyrère lived to abjure his opinions at the feet of Pope Alexander VI.

Such are a few of the many odd ideas upon the Creation and the first man which human wit, that “dangerous instrument” when not kept within due limits, has been continually devising ever since the beginning of history. The logic

Is it not curious that the queerest crank of all concerning Adam—that which strives to prove that he was an ourang-outang—should have been reserved for our own days of culture, of philosophical research and science?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Spiritualism and Allied Causes and Conditions of Nervous Derangement. By William A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 366. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

It is evident, from the appearance of this work so speedily after the publication of a larger volume on Diseases of the Nervous System, that Dr. Hammond has contracted the cacoëthes scribendi in its worst shape. He is not easy unless the pen is in his hand, and so delightful must be to him the sensation of a calamus currens that, we fear, he pauses not to reflect over the fate of the cyclical writer of old whose long-continued parlurient efforts resulted in the production of a ridiculously small animal. For all that, he must be quite jealous of his reputation as a strong-minded and rational man, since he has undertaken the vindication of reason, even at the expense of reasoning. We give him credit indeed for research, but of that doubtful sort which delights in jumbling together facts gathered from the most opposite sources—

Rudis indigestaque moles—

in order that a boastful parade of erudition might impart weight to his otherwise feather-light conclusions. A certain lack of method in the handling of his subject is what first impresses the reader of Dr. Hammond’s latest lucubration, and stamps the writer as illogical in the last degree. So-called spiritual manifestations are by him included in the same category as the pious acts of the saints, who doubtless would reject with horror the fantasies of Katie King and the friponnerie of Home. Under the head of “curing mediums” we read of cures wrought by some obscure personage called St. Sauveur, which, if true, we are willing to accept, but which, like all unauthenticated cases of the sort, we are free to admit or disallow as the weight of evidence justifies. But, we ask, what relevancy to the heading of this chapter can possess the case of a woman laying an egg, or of another giving birth to two rabbits? If any such there be, we confess our inability to discover it; for certainly in those cases there is no question of curing. Neither can we perceive what induced the author to adopt Kerdac’s absurd division of spiritual agents into “physical mediums,” “seeing and auditive mediums,” and “curing mediums,” since clearly the first caption covers the whole ground. This is a sin against that canon of method which forbids one branch of a division to overlap another. Then the doctor never can discriminate between essential differences and accidental resemblances; and if a so-called medium should, by slight of hand or electro-magnetism, produce phenomena resembling the miraculous achievements of the saints, pop they both go into the same category of frauds or victims to a hallucination. He never dreams as being within the range of possible things that personal sanctity on the one hand has any power which does not belong on the other to deception or mental imbecility. It is refreshing to see how he gets these things mixed together, and with what complacent readiness he relegates all believers in the supernatural to the regions of blind ignorance and grovelling superstition, while he calmly stands on the undimmed hill-tops, or sublimely soars through the placid atmosphere of pure reason. Dr. Hammond rejects à priori the possibility of an occurrence not due to the operation of natural agents, and hence he is necessitated constantly to indicate or suggest an explanation of what is most marvellous and obscure. This, of course, is a very difficult procedure, and hence we need not be surprised at the following ingenious, if not entirely logical, scheme he has devised for making straight paths that are crooked, St. Rose of Lima possess in common with these, or how can the principle of automatism be made to apply to her case? This saintly personage dwelt in a climate where mosquitoes were numerous and vicious, yet she enjoyed entire immunity from their sting, while worshipping in a little arbor built by her own hands; and this, she averred, was done in consequence of a pact by virtue of which the blood-thirsty little insects agreed to strike their notes in praise of the divine Being. Either the statement of Görres and its verification in the bull canonizing St. Rose must be rejected in toto, or admitted without any slipshod attempt at explanation as that which Dr. Hammond offers. He pretends that if such a thing did happen, it must be in consequence of the saint’s hypnotizing the mosquitoes, and thus obtaining control over them. But is it possible that hypnotized mosquitoes would continue to drone out their peculiar music even to a livelier measure than usual, or would ferociously attack all other persons except St. Rose?—for, as Dr. Hammond facetiously(?) remarks, she was not filial enough to include her mother in the bargain. We have here, then, a case which differs essentially from that of the somnambulic lady mentioned, and one that stubbornly refuses to be accounted for in the same manner. The somnambulic young lady exhibited a condition strikingly abnormal; there was complete loss of sensibility and power to observe what was taking place around her, while the mosquitoes became more tuneful than ever, and followed the natural bent of their instinct towards all but the little saint, who made them join her in singing the praises of their mutual Creator. Yet Dr. Hammond would have us believe either that the story is untrue or that the mosquitoes were hypnotized. And this is his mode of conducting warfare against the supernatural: Doctus iter melius. The blunt scepticism of Paine or Hobbes is more tolerable than this skim-milk reasoning. He does not hesitate even to intimate that the prophet Daniel possessed this mesmeric power, and thus escaped the fangs of the enraged and hungry lions into whose den he was cast. The same inconsequence of reasoning may be traced in the conclusion drawn from the experiments of Kircher and Czermak; Kircher having noticed that a hen with tied legs ceased to struggle, when a chalk-line was drawn before its eyes, in the belief that the line was the string which tied it, and that so long as the line remained all efforts at self-deliverance were useless. The good Father Kircher sought no further explanation of the phenomenon till Czermak, in 1873, proved that a true state of hypnotism or artificial somnambulism had been induced. To place the matter beyond doubt, he modified and repeated the experiment, so that now we cannot but accept this explanation, and say of Kircher’s merely:

“Si non e vero e ben trovato.”

This hypnotic condition of the lower animals once allowed, Dr. Hammond rushes to the conclusion that therein is to be sought and found the only true solution of the control which at times the saints of the church exercised over them. This is certainly the most perverse logic that can be conceived of. As well might St. Dominic, St. Ambrose, and St. Isidore, or of following them into the desert and obeying their commands. If, indeed, we accept the lamp which science kindly furnishes, and, enlightened by its light, call those miraculous occurrences the effect of hypnosis, we may perchance escape the charge of credulity.

In this last sentence we confess to have fallen into an error which, however, we will not correct for the sake of the salutary reflection it has stirred up within us. We said: “Unless we accept the lamp which science kindly furnishes,” etc., thereby seeming to intimate that we are enemies to science, whereas nothing could be farther from our purpose. True science is founded on the eternal principles of truth, and, itself shining out with God’s holy light, can never go astray. But there is a pseudo-science, a spurious affair, which has donned the garb of truth and assumed its name, and which men, calling it science, wonder and are amazed that science and religion so often find themselves in antagonism. If men were always careful to discriminate between what is founded on unquestionable facts on the one hand, and the airy hypotheses of highly imaginative scientists on the other, and not bestow the dignified appellative of science on these latter, they would not be so easily captivated by the gilded sophistries of Draper, or allured by the glitter of Hammond’s showy erudition. This en passant.

In speaking of the cures said to have been accomplished by St. Sauveur, Dr. Hammond makes this striking and pregnant remark: “If St. Sauveur had really been the great healer he is said to have been, we should find his doings recorded in a thousand contemporaneous volumes, and every school-boy would have them at his tongue’s end. Neither do facts go begging for believers, nor will they remain concealed in obscure books.” Now, these two sentences fairly teem with fallacies. In the first place, the alleged performances of St. Sauveur are by no means regarded as authoritatively established or widely known, as Dr. Hammond himself subsequently indicates; how, then, even if true, could they have found their way into a thousand contemporaneous volumes? Besides, the age in which St. Sauveur lived differed in this respect from ours: that the recital of even the most marvellous occurrences spread very slowly, and never very widely; how, then, even if true, could the exploits of St. Sauveur have ever obtained much notoriety at the time? And chief of all, there is that inherent spirit of scepticism in every man which prompts him, often in the face of the most positive evidence, to reject whatever is stated to have taken place in derogation of physical law, or else to assign a purely physical reason for it. It is this sceptical tendency which will ever stand in the way of the ready and universal acceptance of supernatural events, however well attested, and, in this respect, essentially distinguishes them from facts of the natural order. It is the operation of this tendency which has driven Dr. Hammond himself into his illogical position, and will leave him there till he subordinates this prejudiced feeling to the higher promptings of his intellect. Long before him Voltaire gave expression to this sentiment when he declared that he would more willingly believe that the whole city of Paris had been deceived, or had conspired to deceive, than he would that a single dead man had risen from the grave. Herein lies the whole philosophy of Dr. Hammond’s position, if philosophy it can be called. He sets out with the conviction that a supernatural occurrence is impossible, and he is consequently determined to reject all testimony of whatsoever sort, no matter how weighty, and which he would readily allow in scientific affairs, which goes to support their authenticity. Historical testimony is of no avail, the good sense and discrimination of individuals goes for naught, when weighed against the flimsiest and shallowest so-called scientific St. Teresa he remarks: “The organization of St. Teresa was such as to allow of her imagining anything as reality; and the hallucination of being lifted up, as I shall show hereafter, is one of the most common experienced by ecstatics.” He thus places the saint in the light of a feeble-minded woman, of weak judgment and puny intellect, whereas all writers agree that in the various reforms she introduced into her religious community she exhibited the rarest good sense, moderation, and vigor of mind. The same remark is applicable to St. Thomas of Villanova. But enough. Rational criticism should be expended on other subjects. The savant who compares Bernadette of Soubirous to the monks of Mount Athos, who go into ecstasy by placing their thoughts on God and their eyes on their navel, cannot expect much dignified criticism. The book is calculated to produce an unfavorable impression against the church in the minds of sciolists and those who are apt to be influenced by the authority of a name. We have already expressed our views on Dr. Hammond’s psychological attainments, and this present volume, so far from inducing us to alter them, rather inclines us to think that our strictures were unduly lenient. The comments which our June article elicited from the press go far to show that the intelligent portion of the community will not accept as genuine science a mere jingling Greek nomenclature—e Græco fonte parce detorta—and that, Draper and Hammond to the contrary, commonsense is not yet so rare as but yet to be common. The style of the book is good, the English pure, and the description graphic. It is well adapted, consequently, for popular reading, and will no doubt have a wide circulation—tant pis.

German Political Leaders. By Herbert Tuttle. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

If Mr. Tuttle were one of the hired scribes of the Berlin Press Bureau, we should have looked for just such a book as he has written. A genuine “mud-bather” could not have shown himself either a more unfair partisan or a more flippant and inaccurate narrator.

Had the book appeared on its own merits, and not as one of a series of biographies, edited under the supervision of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, we should have passed it by like any other piece of book-making; for it is merely a catch-penny performance, and was most probably never meant to be anything else. This volume is of itself sufficient to show how utterly worthless is the claim put forth by Putnam’s Sons that the whole series is to be made reliable in every statement of fact. Bismarck, we are told, was a youth of very tender nature, and is even yet a devout and pious Christian. “His domestic tastes were always strong; his longing for a wife and household of his own would seem to have been very acute, till in 1847 it was satisfied by his marriage with Joanna von Putkammer.”

The truth is, Bismarck was a wild and reckless youth, who distinguished himself at the university by fighting some twenty-five duels and by taking the lead in the boisterous and riotous debauches habitual with so many German students. As a young man he continued this mode of life on his paternal estates, where he was known as Der Tolle Bismarck—Mad Bismarck. His favorite drink at this time was a mixture of porter and champagne. His letters to his sister show that the “acute longing for a wife” is only in the imagination of Mr. Tuttle. “His whole career,” says this writer, “previous to entering the Prussian ministry, was one of study and preparation, … at the university he was a profound and philosophical student of history, particularly that of his own country.” He never took a degree, and he was a profound and philosophical student of nothing except fencing, boxing, and hunting. Mr. Tuttle does not even quote correctly the sayings of Bismarck, which are known to every newspaper reader. Bismarck said: “Germany must be made with blood and iron”; and Mr. Tuttle makes him say: “The battles of this generation are to be fought out with iron and blood.”

The sketch of Dr. Falk is a still sorrier performance. In an attempt to sum up the relations of the church and the state in Prussia from 1817 to 1862, he says: “Accordingly the Catholics made p. 29). Nothing could be more false, nor would one who knows anything of Prussian history commit himself to a statement which can be excused from malice only by being supposed to proceed from gross ignorance.

We might cite fifty passages from this book in which bitter and vulgar prejudice against the Catholic Church has led the author into palpable and unpardonable blunders. Dr. Krementz is the “obstinate and disobedient bishop of Ermeland.” “The complaints of the Ultramontanes are both extravagant and absurd.” The leaders of the Catholic party “as the servants of an infallible spiritual master, were apparently placed above those restraints of moderation, courtesy, and truthfulness which apply in secular matters.… They led their hearers into tortuous mazes of sophistry, they wrapped the subject in clouds of paltry fallacies, at the command of bishops whose gospel is light.” Dr. Falk’s courage “has stood the ordeal required of every statesman who excites the hatred and exposes himself to the vengeance of the pupils of the Jesuit Mariana. He has been threatened with assassination quite as often as the emperor and Bismarck.”

The fact that a book written by an American, for Americans, and published by a leading American house, should evince the most thorough and earnest sympathy with the relentless persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany, throws a very unpleasant light upon our much-talked-of love of fair play and religious liberty.

The will to make martyrs and confessors of the bishops and priests of the United States is not wanting to Mr. Tuttle or Mr. Higginson, if the language of this book may be taken as an evidence of their real sentiments. The only Catholic leader whose biography is given in this volume is Lewis Windthorst, and this is the character which he receives: “He would be the most daring and consistent of sceptics if his interests had not made him the most faithful of believers. Even his religious professions spring from one form of unbelief. To be a free-thinker requires the exercise of faith in human reason and in most of the results of human inquiry, while by espousing the Catholic religion he proclaimed his disbelief in all positive and uninspired knowledge. He doubts everything that is true and believes only what is doubtful.” Since he cannot deny the ability of Windthorst, he makes him a hypocrite; and then, suddenly forgetting what he has just said, he supposes Windthorst to be a sincere believer only to declare him a fool.

We must repeat it. If Mr. Tuttle, during the four years which he has passed in Berlin, had been a pensioner of the “reptile fund,” he could not have written more unworthily.

Faith and Modern Thought. By Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Union College. With introduction by Tayler Lewis, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.

Contrary to the intention of the author, the title of his work is absurdly tautological, when interpreted by its contents. The impression conveyed by the title page would lead us to expect, did in point of fact lead us to expect, at least an orderly and careful analysis of the subjects chosen. In this we have been disappointed, not by the good-will with which the author labors, but by his want of success. The work is composed of six chapters which might have been published independently of one another. Of these the first is valuable as an aggressive demonstration of the materialistic and irrational tendency of certain modern professors. The fifth and, perhaps, the sixth possess a similar value; while the rest of the book, although fairly written, is comparatively worthless.

The author is manifestly devoted to Christianity; his mind is sensitive to the repulsive features of modern heathenism; he seeks to defend the nobler order of ideas. But the trouble is that his brief is not full. He does not know his case. His theological speculations are crude even to rawness, and the point d’appui of his structure is not only vague and inconsistent, but is shored up with declamation which serves to impart an additional appearance of insecurity to that which is already feeble. It is rather ludicrous to behold an evangelical Protestant, at this late day, endeavoring to undo the whole work of the Reformation, by trying to make faith appear reasonable, or by seeking other grounds for it than his own interior inspiration.

Achsah: A New England Life-Study. By Rev. Peter Pennot. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1876.

This is a capital story, or “study,” as the author very rightly calls it, of New England life. The character are all sui generis, such as only a small, narrow, sufficiently well-to-do New England town could produce, while one of them, Deacon Manlius Sterne, is a creation. Never have we seen that peculiar union of service of God and service of Mammon, which Christ pronounced to be impossible, so admirably portrayed as in this typical New England deacon, who himself would be the first to quote our Lord’s words condemning such service to a business rival, but who at the same time could very easy satisfy his own conscience on the matter, and find what he would consider a religious way out of the difficulty. God’s religion looks a very small and mean affair among these New England Christians. This very book, we take it, is a revolt against the sham and littleness of such a life. The writer seems possessed of the best intentions, though not of the profoundest knowledge of Christianity. His reflections, for instance, on the death of Dr. Steinboldt are a little out of place in a Christian’s mouth. Thus, he apostrophizes death: “Sent of God, to rich and poor alike, to kings and emperors and peasants, to all nations and peoples, this good physician comes to fulfil Christ’s crowning promise of rest to all who are ‘weary and heavy laden.’” To which we say, all very well; only that in the present instance “this good physician” happens to come in the form of suicide to a murderer, who, to add to his delinquencies, was a quack.

It was a mistake of the author, too, to make one of his characters, an excellent Catholic apparently, attend Protestant service on the Sunday, instead of going to the Catholic chapel in the town and hearing Mass. However, he is evidently very favorably inclined towards Catholics, so we will not quarrel with him on so palpable a slip.

“It has pleased God to give us no very clear idea of the great future, and so we speculate and wonder and dream, each after the fashion of his own heart; and one is quite as likely to be right as another. Thank God that he has elevated the mysteries of life and death above the realms of human reason, and left each to aspire to the future of his own imagination, to long for the heaven of his own desires.” This sounds to us little above the Turk’s dream of Paradise, who, by the bye, according to our author, “is quite as likely to be right” as the Christian. All this is a mistake. Our Lord has left us something far more definite to long for than the heaven of our own imagination and desires.

Again: “Madame Wandl, though a ‘bigoted Catholic,’ was more charitable than these free and enlightened Dickeyvillians, and, when the two talked together on matters of religious faith, it was the harmonious meeting of two extremes of belief, one elevating the humanity of Christ to the level of godliness, the pp. 222, 223).

It seems to us very plain from this and other passages that the Rev. Peter Pennot is far from having made up his mind as to who Christ is. He tells us practically, in the passage just quoted, that he will not say that Christ is at once true God and perfect man. Until he satisfies himself on this point, it is to be feared that his preaching of Christ’s gospel of love will not bear much fruit. It is one thing to preach the Gospel of the Son of God, another to preach the gospel of a being about whom we entertain great doubts.

We have been led aside by such points as these from the main story. The author writes so earnestly and honestly that we cannot but look upon his uncertainty with regret. For the rest, Achsah is as enjoyable a story as we have read for many a day. The author seems to us to have all the gifts of a novelist. He has wit, humor, pathos, and an unforced sarcasm that is very telling. His story runs along without a halt. There is a pleasant, innocent love-plot, and some highly sensational matter is introduced in a very unsensational manner.

Meditations and Considerations for a Retreat of One Day in each Month. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1876.

This little book has been composed for the benefit of those who have or wish to have the most excellent practice of putting aside one day in the month for a religious retreat. Whatever cultivates in us the habit of serious reflection upon the affairs of the soul is of inestimable value, since without some practice of meditation and self-examination it is almost impossible to lead a religious life; and we know of nothing better adapted to create in us this reflective character of mind than what is called the monthly retreat. This devotion is general in religious communities, but it may also be easily followed by persons in the world without interfering with the daily routine of life enough to attract the attention of any one. The collection of meditations before us will, we hope, encourage many to make proof of the efficacy of the monthly retreat. We would suggest, however, that in another edition an introduction be added, giving explanations concerning the nature and practice of this devotion, pointing out how persons engaged in worldly occupations may most easily perform these monthly exercises.

Science and Religion: A Lecture Delivered at Leeds, England. By Cardinal Wiseman. St. Louis: Patrick Fox, 10 South Fifth Street. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This lecture is one of the ablest and most interesting lectures of the late Cardinal Wiseman. It proves in a conclusive and at the same time most agreeable manner that “science has nowhere flourished more, or originated more sublime or useful discoveries, than where it has been pursued under the influence of the Catholic religion.” In demonstrating this truth, the eminent writer has given a great number of facts not generally known to the reading public, which prove the deep indebtedness of science to Catholic Italy for many of its most valuable truths and discoveries.

The publisher has done his part in a praiseworthy manner.

Revolutionary Times: Sketches of our Country, its People and their Ways, one hundred years ago. By Edward Abbott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1876.

This is a very interesting and tastefully printed volume of two hundred pages, containing a great many items of interest with regard to the habits and customs of our American forefathers in the beginning of our national history, a glance at the state of literature, the press, and education, with many entertaining sketches of the “worthies” of that period.

From the chapter on “Political Geography” we cull the following extract, which gives an idea of the style of the work:

“The colonization of the West was yet a dream of the Anglo-Americans, the designs of France and Spain standing in St. Louis was a Spanish town. What is now Indiana had but a single settlement, that at Vincennes. Detroit was a far-distant outpost sheltering a few hundred pioneers. This whole region was an unbroken waste, saving at these few scattered points, which were in large measure military and trading stations. Over all the Indian had free range. Adventurers were exploring the lakes and the rivers, and currents of emigration were only slowly setting in; and on the 9th of October, 1776, three months after the Declaration of Independence, two Franciscan monks, indefatigable missionaries of the Roman Church, took possession of the Pacific coast by the founding of their mission of San Francisco, the germ of the modern city of that name.”

The New Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From the original French. By S. P. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street. 1876.

This neat and beautiful little manual cannot but be of service to every lover of the Sacred Heart, especially at this season of the year. This month is prolonged into thirty-three days, corresponding with the thirty-three years of our Saviour’s life upon earth, and is furnished with appropriate meditations and pious practices, calculated to inspire devotion and excite the love of Christians towards the Heart of their Divine Lord. It is sufficient to say of this little work what the venerable Archbishop of Cincinnati says of it in his recommendation—that “it is perfectly free from all blemish on the score of faith, morals, and piety.” Truly, a high commendation.

Notiones Theologicæ circa Sextum Decalogi Præceptum. Auctore D. Craisson. Parisiis: Benziger Bros.; New York: The same.

A certain remnant of Jansenistic rigorism among the French clergy is assigned by the author of this treatise as one of the reasons which induced him to write on the subjects indicated by the title of his book. In the work itself we have failed to discover anything of importance which may not be found in almost any text-book of moral theology.

THE