Volume 27 — CONRAD AND WALBURGA. CHAPTER II. (continued 3)

The collection did very little in showing the various modifications of the Douay Bible. After the edition of 1635 there was scarcely anything in the Caxton exhibition—no copy of Nary’s New Testament, which is certainly remarkable enough. The first edition of the Protestant Bible printed in Ireland dates only from 1714, and certainly a Catholic Testament printed, in spite of penal laws and persecution, in 1719, only five years later, ought to have found a place there. There was no copy of Witham’s New Testament or of Challoner’s first Testament, or of the first edition of his Bible. Nor does Geddes appear. America is not at all represented. Not a copy of Eliot’s Indian Bible, or of Sauer’s German Bible, or the Congress Bible, or the first Catholic Bible of 1790; the Bay Psalm Book stands almost alone.

The Bibles sought for on account of curious renderings or strange blunders were pretty well represented, such as Matthews’ Bug Bible: “Thou shalt not nede to be afraid for any bugges by nyghte,” Ps. xci. 5. The second Genevan, 1562: “Blessed are the place-makers,” Matt. v. 9. Bishop’s Bible, 1568: “Is there no tryacle in Gilead?” Jerem. viii. 22. The Wicked Bible, London, 1631: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Cambridge Bible, 1638: “Whom ye may appoint,” Acts vi. 3, for we. The Vinegar Bible, 1717: “The Parable of the Vinegar.” Oxford Bible, 1807: “Purge your conscience from good works,” instead of “dead,” Heb. ix. 14. Oxford Bible, 1810: 373“Hate not ... his own wife,” for life, Luke xiv. 26. Still these are of no value except as cautions against typographical blunders. But among the curious Bibles and Testaments we were surprised to see no copy of the now rare negro English Testament, published in London in 1829, Da Njoe Testament va wi Masra en Helpiman Jesus Christus. The Rev. Sydney Smith immortalized it, and Notes and Queries in 1864 devoted some space to it. Renderings like these from a copy before us: St. Matthew, vi. 7, “En effi oeni beggi, oene no meki soso takkitakki, leki dem Heiden, bikasi dem membre, effi dem meki foeloe takkitakki, Gado so harki dem,” or vi. 11, “Gi wi tideh da jamjam va wi,”^[86] are certainly as curious as anything exhibited.

An ingenious gentleman like Mr. Stevens might perhaps have deduced from it a proof that Caxton was a follower of Wickliffe, or that the Catholic Church showed no respect for the Word of God.

A catalogue of books such as we have taken up seems to afford little scope for any but dry bibliographical notes, but the Caxton celebration has its lessons that can be gleaned even from a catalogue, and if our readers have followed us we think that they will admit that the attempt to make Caxton other than a pious Catholic was a delusion; and the exclusion of the Catholic element, and the attempt to make Caxton a fulcrum for the exaltation of Protestantism, a failure.^[87] As Catholics we may be grateful for the unintentional evidence the collection afforded of the fact that the Catholic Church protected and preserved the Bible, made men esteem and desire it, gave it to the newly-invented art of printing as the first work to issue, fostered the publication of the original texts, the authentic Vulgate, and of translations in the vernacular; as well as incidentally of proof that the Luther romance was a figment, and proof that the Reformation was forced on the English people, that they clung to the Bible, liturgy, and dogmas of the Catholic Church with the utmost tenacity, and that they lacked only the courage of Ireland and Poland to have maintained their country Catholic.

374

MALCOLM, KING OF SCOTLAND, TO HIS WIFE, ST. MARGARET.

I.

God speed thee, sweet, in all thy tasks of love,

The daily round of thy heart’s majesty—

Thy dear lips opened unto clemency—

My Margaret, my pearl all price above;

My little kingdom, where as king I reign

O’er lands so fair I might with gladness give

All earthly state in these alone to live

Where nothing base doth holy ground profane.

My queen, my Atheling, true noble one,

That wearest on thy Saxon brow a grace

Wherein all loyal hearts can true love trace

To this north land the misty hills do crown.

My rose-lipped daisy, lighting Scotland’s sod

With happy faces lifted up to God.

II.

God speed thee, sweet; my heart so singeth e’er,

As grows more dear among our poor thy fame

With every day. O Lady, true of name,

Giver of bread to all beneath thy care,

My royal-hearted queen and flawless pearl,

How shall my sin-stained prayers for thee avail,

That dost least fault with innocent tears bewail?

Meek daisy, whose white petals do unfurl

From soul wherein all golden visions shine!

So near to God thou seem’st, and pray’st so well,

The book I kiss whereon thy pure eyes dwell,

So grows my prayer the words that have been thine,

So surely grows it sweeter in His ear,

Tuned to the music of thy singing clear.

III.

May that brave saint, sweet wife, whose name is thine,

Whose virgin feet unharmed on dragons fell,

Keep thee in grace with Him thou lov’st so well

Till that far day when shall thy beauty shine

With that light glorified her features wear.

375Blessed light! fair even now encircling thee

When, bowed thy soul in fond humility,

Thou kneelest, of thy God possessed, at prayer.

Ah! love, with Christ, our Lord, forget not me

Who tread this tangled pathway here below

With eyes more dim than thine and feet more slow;

So, when in life eternal we are met,

I still may wear my pearl, my Margaret!

HAVE WE A NOVELIST?

Scarcely fifty years have elapsed since Sydney Smith contemptuously asked: “Who reads an American book?” John Bull was delighted at this sneering query of the witty Dean of St. Paul’s. It was so agreeable an exposé of the literary poverty of a formidable rival. It was so very consoling to find a weak point in the young giant who had twice beaten him in war. Could Sydney Smith rise to-day from his grave in Kensal Green he would witness a marvellous change. The time has passed when he might triumphantly ask: “Who reads an American book?” The time has passed when John Bull might gloat over the poverty of American literature. We have a literature—a noble literature—of which any nation might be proud. We may confidently reverse the celebrated query of the wittiest of English divines, and ask: “Who does not read an American book?” Who does not read the histories of Prescott? Who does not read the charming writings of Irving? Who does not read the wonderful tales of Hawthorne, the poems of Longfellow, of Bryant, of Poe?

Our literary temple, like Aladdin’s palace, is glorious; but, like Aladdin’s palace, it is also incomplete. While our literature is full and splendid in poetry, in history, and in science, it has been strangely wanting in what Prescott calls “ornamental literature”: the romance. The deficiency is more particularly remarkable when we consider the magnificent field which this country offers to the novelist. Our government, our institutions, our society, our national manners, the vice and extravagance of our great cities, our political corruption, the enterprising spirit of our people, the rapid change of fortune in our commercial cities, where the born beggar often dies a millionaire, life at our watering-places—all present interesting and inexhaustible subjects for the romance-writer. No country in the world affords such strong and striking contrasts of character as the United States. Here we have the gay and mercurial Frenchman, the practical and plodding German, the generous and improvident Irishman, the reserved Englishman, the proud Spaniard, and last, but by no means least, the eager, calculating American, with his brain of fire and his heart of ice.

376Certainly there is no lack of materials; the workers alone are wanting; the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. We want a Thackeray to expose the heartless extravagance of our best society; a Dickens to turn our hearts in generous sympathy towards the poor and suffering; a Bulwer to polish the manners of our people, and illustrate the noble truth that knowledge is power, money only its handmaiden. Within a dozen years this trio of novelists has passed away, and they have left no successors. Except a few chapters in Thackeray’s Virginians, and some absurdly nonsensical scenes in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, the works of the great English novelists are entirely foreign: the characters, manners, scenes—all foreign to us. But they are read here with as much pleasure as in England. The Americans are a nation of readers—men, women, and children, all read. The majority of our men read newspapers almost exclusively. Seven-eighths of the novel-reading of this country is done by women. The statistics of any popular library will show that three novels a week form the average of these fair readers.

With so great and constant a demand for novels, why have we no novelist among us?—a great novelist, a national novelist, an essentially American novelist, as Bulwer and Thackeray are essentially English. As there can be no effect without a cause, there must be a cause for this deficiency in our literature. There are two: American publishers and American readers. While an English magazine scarcely ever publishes an article by an American writer, there is not a great English novelist of the last quarter of a century who has not written for one or other of the American magazines. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Trollope, Miss Muloch, etc., etc., have written more or less for our periodicals. Literature, like love, must be encouraged or it languishes and dies. In addition to the want of encouragement given to American novelists by our publishers is the fact that American novel-readers affect to despise American novelists. The novel-reading ladies who frequent circulating libraries, demanding with one voice “something new,” who prefer Miss Braddon to George Eliot, and Mrs. Henry Wood to Thackeray, say they “cannot read American novels.” And yet three of the most popular novels of the last three years have been American, viz.: Infelice, One Summer, and A Question of Honor. We have seen an American lady take up The American, by Mr. Henry James, Jr., and throw it down, saying, “The name is enough.” We have seen ladies decline one of the charming stories of Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Howells, and carry off in triumph the last production of Mary Cecil Hay or the voluptuous “Ouida”! If Americans refuse to read American novels, who will read them?

The indiscriminate and almost universal novel-reading now practised is a striking and alarming feature of American life, when we consider the tone and character of so many of the modern novels. Judged by them, divorces, elopements, intrigues, and other crimes against society are the normal attendants of modern civilization. They play a conspicuous part in most of the “popular novels” of the day. Yet such books are eagerly devoured by young girls, 377whose minds are keenly susceptible to their dangerous influence. An insidious poison is thus infused which often fatally corrupts the youthful imagination. Bad books are the devil’s own instruments for the ruin of souls. As it is impossible to deny the fact that novels form the staple reading of a majority of the world, it is important that they should be not only pure but above suspicion.

The Catholic press cannot too strongly condemn the scope and influence of the novel of to-day. While Scott and Miss Edgeworth are neglected, the vile trash of Rhoda Broughton and Mrs. Forrester is eagerly sought. The good old habit of reading history, travels, biography, essays, etc., is almost entirely abandoned. “We want something new and exciting,” is the general cry; “history and biography are too deep.” And so they go on from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year, reading nothing but novels, and filling their minds with nonsense, if nothing worse. While we condemn indiscriminate novel-reading, we do not condemn novels indiscriminately. There are a few that can be read without detriment either to morals or religion, and these, we are sorry to say, are the novels that modern readers pronounce “flat.”

During the century of our national existence we have had three genuine American novelists: Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Gilmore Simms. The first of this trio possessed great natural gifts and enjoyed a liberal education. The singular advantages which nature so lavishly bestowed upon Brockden Brown prevented him from being a popular novelist. He was a pure idealist. He lived in a world of his own. His beautiful and fertile imagination created beings which never could exist in this world, and these he made the heroes and heroines of his strange stories. They may please the intellectual few, but they possess no interest for the uncultivated many. If Brown’s talents had been properly directed, if he could have kept his soaring imagination fixed on the earth, and been satisfied with describing men and things as they really exist, his would have been a lasting fame. But, as it is, he is not now read by one in ten thousand, nay, in ten times ten thousand. Cooper is second to Brown in point of time and superior to him in point of popularity. He threw a charm, a grace, and an interest around the life and character of the American Indians which appear inconsistent in the light of recent experience. In his sea-stories he succeeds where the greatest novelist signally failed. Cooper enjoyed a high reputation during life, but his novels now rank with the writings of Mayne Reid, and are almost exclusively read by boys. Simms’ stories of the Revolution and the border life in the South that succeeded the struggle for independence are excellent in their way. His Revolutionary romances afford glimpses of generous devotion to patriotism and an ardent zeal in the cause of liberty which Americans might read with profit at the present day.

But those novelists belong to the past—the dead and buried past. We want the present time described—the living, breathing, busy present. There never was an age, there never was a country, that afforded such scope for the novelist as this age and country. Our cities are swarming with an eager, 378reckless, enterprising population, presenting an infinite variety of characters, each occupied with his own particular pursuits of ambition, pleasure, or wealth. Take New York as the representative city of America. There are to be found the best and the worst features of our civilization; the most unbounded wealth and the most squalid poverty; the most exquisite culture and refinement and the most degraded and abandoned of the human race. Is not our society as vain, frivolous, false as that English society which Thackeray satirized so unmercifully? Have we no Vanity Fair, no heartless Becky Sharps, no selfish George Osbornes, no wicked old Steynes, no disreputable Rawdon Crawleys?

Our country is the last of nations in point of time, but the first in all material prosperity. Like Minerva, it sprang into existence fully equipped for a career unparalleled in the annals of the world. Other nations have taken a thousand years to reach the position which the United States took at one bound. We have more than realized the dream of Plato. But let us not imitate the philosopher of Greece, and banish poetry and pure fiction from our republic. Let us not hang the sword of Damocles over the imagination, but let it be purified. Let us not employ the scissors of Atropos to cut the threads of fictitious narrative, but let it be purged of its present loose and dangerous tendency. Sir Walter Scott declared novels to be “a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half-love of literature which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society, and are read much more for amusement than with the least hope of deriving instruction from them”; yet Ivanhoe throws more light upon the personal character of Richard Cœur de Lion, Kenilworth informs us more particularly about the court of Elizabeth, the Fortunes of Nigel gives us a better insight into the private life of King James, than we derive from Hume. By his poems and novels Scott threw a perpetual charm over the bleak hills of Scotland; he made its ruined abbeys as interesting as the ruined castles of Germany; he made its lakes the favorite resort of thousands of summer tourists. Author of the most celebrated novels that were ever written, Scott was unjust to the children of his mind when he spoke slightingly of novels. It should be remembered that he also spoke unfavorably of the literary profession—a profession by which he made a million dollars and an immortal name.

When the author of Waverley spoke disparagingly of novels that kind of literary composition was almost in its infancy, certainly in its childhood. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith were the only great names in that department of English literature. It was almost an uncultivated field, but the reaper was at hand, whose harvest should be abundant, whose reward great. The lordly halls of Abbotsford still stand, the magnificent result of novel-writing. For every novel written during the time of Scott there are at least one hundred written now. The novels published during the last fifty years are far more numerous than all the novels that had previously existed in the world. A hundred years since pamphlets were written to promote the success of a political measure, to show that “taxation” was “no tyranny,” to overthrow a 379minister, etc. Now, when Disraeli wants to convince the country of his political sagacity, he writes a novel; when Dickens wanted to show up a crying injustice to the poor he wrote a novel; when Thackeray wanted to expose the shams of English society he wrote a novel. The age of pamphlets is gone, the age of novels has succeeded. Statesmen write novels, soldiers write novels, clergymen, lawyers, doctors—all professions, all classes and both sexes, write novels, and still the novel-reading Olivers “ask for more.” Any person who visits a fashionable circulating library upon a Saturday afternoon will see how great is the demand for new novels.

Books which were, in the last century, read in mixed assemblages of young ladies and gentlemen could not now be read by old ladies in the privacy of their closets. Apropos of which is a story out of Lockhart’s Scott: “A grand-aunt of mine,” said Sir Walter, “was very fond of reading, and enjoyed it to the last of her long life. One day she asked me, when we happened to be alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs. Behn’s novels. I confessed the charge. Whether I could get her a sight of them? I said, with some hesitation, I believed I could; but that I did not think she would like either the manners or the language, which approached too near that of Charles II.’s time to be quite proper reading. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them being so much admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I wish to look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and confidential’ on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw her afterwards she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: ‘Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not,’ said she, ‘a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society of London?’”

Although a vast improvement has taken place in the tone of novels generally, yet there are many still written which should not be read, and many are read which should not be written. It is a striking and lamentable fact that the worst novels of the day are written and read by women. The miss scarcely in her teens reads books which her grandmother would be ashamed to read. As the pampered palate of the epicure can only enjoy food highly seasoned, so the vitiated minds of modern readers can only enjoy highly seasoned novels; mysterious murders, mad marriages, runaway matches, terrible secrets, awful mysteries, hidden perils, etc., are required to stimulate their jaded taste. As a person who feeds only on dainties will soon have the dyspepsia, so a person who reads only highly-seasoned novels will have a sort of mental dyspepsia. Scenes are described, circumstances are mentioned, conversations retailed, vices introduced into modern novels which would cause any man to be banished from decent society who should so far forget himself as to allude to them. Yet such things are read without 380blushing by young ladies, such books are discussed by ladies and gentlemen without shame. If our young ladies are to read nothing but novels, in the name of modesty let not their literary food be corrupt and corrupting; let not their virgin minds be filled with foul images; let not their Christian souls be soiled with even a thought of vice.

Queen Anne could not enjoy her breakfast unless the Spectator was by her plate. Were Addison alive now and writing the Spectator, we doubt whether Queen Victoria would have it with her morning meal. Times change, and kings as well as commons must keep pace with their age. Gibbon’s vanity was gratified that his history was in every lady’s boudoir and discussed in every fashionable drawing-room in London. Were Gibbon writing in this present year of grace, we do not think the Decline and Fall would deprive the last novel of its “pride of place” in my lady’s boudoir. About twenty-two years ago Macaulay received that famous £20,000 check from the Messrs. Longman for a volume of his History of England, of which more than twenty-six thousand five hundred copies were sold in ten weeks. Macaulay’s History was even more popular than Gibbon’s. He said: “I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.” “For a few days” Macaulay’s history did “supersede the last fashionable novel,” but we think we are safe in saying that it will have fewer readers this year than a new novel by “Christian Reid” or Mrs. Alexander. Take the average girl of the period, question her about her reading, and what is the result? She averages six novels a week—three hundred a year. Certainly much in point of quantity, but how about the quality? Has she read the Spectator, the Vicar of Wakefield, Macaulay’s Essays? No. They would be as tiresome to her as the compliments of an old beau—as old-fashioned as last year’s bonnet.

Mme. Roland when a girl slept with a volume of Plutarch’s Lives under her pillow. Our girls, who are more interested in contemporary society than in the lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans, put the last novel under their pillow, that they may continue the first thing in the morning the entrancing story of Theo, which “tired nature” compelled them to relinquish at midnight. We trust they may never be called upon to display the lofty heroism of Mme. Roland—that their only tears may be those shed over the woes of imaginary heroines, their only sorrows as fictitious as those in the novels they love so well.

Being an unquestionable fact that the reading millions of this last quarter of the nineteenth century devote themselves to novels more than to any other class of literature, novels may be made the means of great and universal good. We all know how rapturously the third tier applauds lofty moral sentiments; how enthusiastically the “gods” of the gallery sympathize with virtue in distress; how the protector of innocence is cheered and the villain hooted. Let this natural feeling of the human heart be turned to account in novels. We have all laughed over that inimitable scene in The Rivals between Lydia Languish and Lucy, her maid, who has been sent to the circulating library for some late 381novels. Do not some of Lydia’s favorites suggest the names of popular novels that are in daily request at our fashionable circulating libraries?—the Reward of Constancy, the Fatal Connection, the Mysteries of a Heart, the Delicate Distress, the Tears of Sensibility. Have we not the Fatal Marriage, the Empty Heart, a Woman’s Heart, the Curse of Gold, the Mysterious Engagement, a Clandestine Marriage, etc.? Judging from the books they read, our girls must believe with Mrs. Malaprop that “thought does not become a young woman.”

A popular modern novel, one which nine out of every ten readers pronounce “so nice,” “so interesting,” “perfectly lovely,” is “made up” something after this manner: A young girl, one half of whose character entirely contradicts the other half, engages herself to some worthy but commonplace young man, who is more familiar with figures in his ledger than with figures of rhetoric, who is more apt at writing business letters than love letters, who is better acquainted with market quotations than poetical quotations, who knows more about the Corn Exchange than about Lucille—in short, a man who takes a practical, common-sense view of life. The love of this romantic girl and this practical young man is not very ardent. In the meantime there appears upon the scene a dark, mysterious, gloomy, blasé man of the world, believing in nothing, hoping for nothing, and who looks upon existence as a curse. He is as handsome as an angel, cynical as a fiend, sceptical as a modern philosopher. His “noble” brow is often disfigured by a scowl, his “chiselled” mouth is often marred by a sneer. In a word, he is a sort of fashionable Lara. This scowling, sneering, cynical gentleman has had an interesting history: he was the hero of an unfortunate love-affair. His heart is a burnt-out volcano. In his early youth he had loved—madly, wildly loved—a woman who was married to a brute. He tells this woman his love. She listens to his story, laments that she is not free, and bursts into tears. He takes her in his arms, swearing that she is the one idolized love of his heart. At length she says they must part, but bids him await her summons. He leaves her, goes abroad, and tries to forget his sorrows in the sparkling Lethe of dissipation. In vain. The sad form of his loved one is the skeleton at every feast, and changes every ball into a funeral. At last his long-expected summons comes: the being he loves more than ten thousand lives writes him to come to her at once; that her husband has struck her, she is sick, perhaps dying. He flies to revenge her wrongs. He finds her dead. Thus was his love lost, his hopes crushed, his life wrecked. Lara tells his story to our romantic girl one lovely June evening. They are seated on a moonlit piazza. The perfume of many flowers fills the air. The sound of a distant river is heard. It is a night and a scene meet for love. In tones, tender, sad, but sweet, he tells her his heart has long been ashes; that he never thought the fires of love could again be kindled there, but she has taught him that there is peace, happiness, love for even him. Will she raise this dead heart to life? She murmurs, softly but passionately, “I love you, Arthur.” This is a rather mild and innocent specimen of the food that modern 382novel-readers feed on. The object of fiction should be to represent life as it is—to “hold the mirror up to nature.”

Just one hundred years since all London went wild over a new novel by a nameless writer. The new novel was Evelina, the nameless writer was Miss Burney. The characters in the book were commonplace, the scenes uninteresting, the story unexciting, but it showed, what no other novel of the time showed, that a book could be lively without being licentious, readable without being immoral. Nothing more clearly proves the poverty of the fictitious literature of the last quarter of the eighteenth century than that such a statesman as Burke should sit up all night to read such a book as Evelina. Nothing better proves how prejudice can sway a strong mind than that Dr. Johnson should pronounce Miss Burney superior to Fielding. But it was extraordinary for a young lady to write a book one hundred years ago. It was still more extraordinary for a young lady to write a novel that could be read with pleasure. Hence the furore that it created and the interest that its author excited. Miss Burney did not (as too many of our lady writers do), upon the strength of one successful book, rush a half-dozen inferior novels upon the world. She waited more than four years before she published her next work, Cecilia. For Evelina she received £20, for Cecilia £2,000. We have mentioned Miss Burney, because we consider her as an excellent example for the imitation of modern novelists. She was willing to wait four years after publishing an unprecedentedly successful book before giving another to the world. But, when that other work did appear, it was placed by general consent among the few classical novels in the English language. Nowadays it is the fashion for a popular writer to deluge circulating libraries with rubbish which, in a few weeks, finds its way to the junk-shop. Those who write for posterity write slowly, correct carefully, and publish seldom.

When we remember that this is peculiarly the age of the novel, that more novels are now published in New York in one year than existed in the whole world one hundred years ago, that the demand is still greater than the supply, that we have long since broken the apron-strings that bound us to our literary mother, England, in every other department of letters, we feel convinced that, at no distant day, our novelist will come. But he must be true to his mission, and give a faithful representation of American life and manners, not a “counterfeit presentment.” He must not sacrifice virtue and honor to present popularity, he must not pander to the vicious tastes of a demoralized society, but, like Addison, he must purify the public taste by elevating it to his own high ideal. Such a writer would not violate the sanctities of domestic love or forget the obligations of social duty. He might be witty, but he would never be wanton; he might be lively, but he would never be licentious. Such a writer would be a benefactor to his country and to the world.

383

ANGLICAN DEVELOPMENT.

Development implies a germ. It is the growth of such qualities or characteristics as were inherent in the original principle. If the principle was bad the development will be bad—if, indeed, there be development at all. Perhaps it will be truer to say that bad principles do not develop; they rather generate fresh stages of decay. Corruption is the law of bad principles, as development is the law of good principles. The “survival of the fittest” is certainly true in the moral law, even if it be not certainly true in the material. Six thousand years of human history have proved that divine principles “survive”; and their survival has been their development, in respect to the sphere of their empire. The principles themselves do not grow, but the world grows, and with it divine government. Dr. Newman, in his work on developments, has drawn this distinction very luminously. The church grows, and its influence extends, and its machinery is in constant operation; yet its developments are not developments of its principles so much as of its qualities and capacities. They are also developments of its power. What the church was on the day of Pentecost she is to-day; it is her body which is grown, not her spirit. Divine principles are immutable; but because the world always changes the church must change too—not in her principles but in her action.

The converse of the development of Catholicism is seen in the development of Anglicanism. Whereas the church is more powerful in the proportion of antagonism, Anglicanism grows weaker and weaker. Whereas the church opposes dogma to heresy, Anglicanism suggests wider religious liberty. Whereas the church cuts off every withered branch, Anglicanism grafts the sticks on to its trunk. Thus the development of Anglicanism is in the direction of corruption; of the gravitation of new errors towards the parent one; of the union in one society of every element of dissolution, with a view to spasmodic vitality. The older Anglicanism grows the more decay it engrafts, trying hard to look vigorous with life by the process of galvanizing death. This is its general principle. But, particularly, the modes of its experiment are as instructive and as lamentable as is its principle. Let us take a late example. Nearly five thousand Anglicans have just petitioned their queen against the permitting confession in the Church of England. Their motives may be left to their own consciences, though they do allege, by way of seeming to be in earnest, that “confession is subversive of the principles of morality, social order, and of civil and religious liberty.” Among the petitioners are more than three thousand clergymen; but there are also a vast number of signatories who are set down as “Anglicans not classified.” Now, in what way are we to regard this grave petition as a development of the principles of Anglicanism? Be 384it remembered that confession, as practised by the Ritualists, was in itself a development of Tractarianism; that Tractarianism was a development of the reaction which followed on the decay of Evangelicalism; that Evangelicalism was a development of the reaction which followed on the decay of Dry-Churchism; and that Dry-Churchism was the development of that Erastianism which the house of Hanover firmly rooted in the state church. So that the huge gulf between confession and Georgeism has to be bridged over by successive revolutions, each perfectly natural in its reaction, yet each naturally leading to fresh change. Here we see the distinction between the development of church vitality and the development of heretical restlessness. As we have said, church principles cannot change; it is the action only of the church which becomes enlarged, Catholic principles not admitting of development save in the sense of extension of empire. But Anglican principles can be turned upside down, or can be turned inside out, a score of times. There is no more affinity between ritualism and Dry-Churchism than there was between Evangelicalism and Erastianism. There is no more concord between Dr. Pusey and Canon Ryle than there was between Bishop Butler and John Wesley. Not more opposite was Mr. Simeon to Canon Liddon than was Archbishop Whately to Lady Huntingdon. These Anglicans represent different churches. And yet they all belong to the same church. What, then, is the development of Anglican principles?

Obviously there is not development at all. The word cannot be used in a Christian sense. There is reaction, revolution, novel apostolate; there is not true Christian development. We may say of the great French Revolution that it was a development of (some of) the principles of Voltaire; or that D’Alembert and Diderot, with the Encyclopædists generally, planted seeds which sprang up into the guillotine. Yet the very point of such development was that it sprang not from principle but from the assertion that principle was not divine. And so in Anglicanism: though the assertion was quite distinct, there was no little affinity in the results. The theory of Anglicanism was that the Catholic Church was not divine, but that Church-of-Englandism had pretensions to be so; or rather, that the divine principles of the Catholic Church were purified to perfection in Church-of-Englandism. But a corollary of this theory was that the (divine) Catholic Church had no more authority than had “Reformers”—an assumption which was fatal, in argument and in fact, to the immutability of principles. Accordingly we find that mutability has been the law of the whole system of Anglican developments; in other words, that those developments have been as utterly contradictory as they have been numerous beyond computation. Is this a Christian or a Catholic development, or a development of even a philosophic kind? It is, on the contrary, proof positive that Anglican principles are not divine, for if they were divine they could not change. It is not discipline which has changed, nor external observance, nor the relations of the church to the state; such changes would be comparatively unimportant; it is Christian doctrine, Christian sacraments, 385priestly powers, and all that constitutes the idea of a church. It is not that new doctrines have been added to old doctrines; it is that old doctrines have been excised. A perfectly brand-new theology has supplanted a defunct system; and this not only once but fifty times. So that we have to deny most positively that there has been “Catholic” development in that institution which Queen Elizabeth founded; and we have to affirm that reaction and revolution have proved that institution to be human. It has been argued—and it is still argued in ritualistic organs—that ritualism must be a Catholic development; for its spirit is in the direction of Catholic truth, and its labor is to restore Catholic practice. The answer is that such reaction is not Catholic; it is the aspiration of heresy towards the church. We do not touch the delicate question—which belongs rather to spiritual science—the operation of divine grace outside the church; this question does not enter into our argument; we are speaking only of the distinctions between the development of true theories, and reaction and revolution from false. Development in the Catholic Church has meant expansion of empire, of inherent capacities of adaptation, of definition in proportion of need, and of anathema in proportion of desert; it has never meant the least change of principle. Development in Anglicanism—if we must still use the word—has meant new religions shooting up out of old, with a chaos of old and new together, and with no means of arguing from precedent to sequence what Anglicanism may become this day twenty years. This is certainly not Christian development. It may imply human energy, with restlessness of will and a constant eagerness to keep moving for life’s sake; but as to calling it supernatural development, the very suggestion appears profane. Those three thousand clergymen, with “Anglicans not classified,” who have just petitioned their queen against confession, have asserted three things, each of which is absolutely fatal to the assumption of Christian development. They have said that their sole head is the state; and this is pure paganism and impiety. They have said that they abhor a divine sacrament; and this is anti-Catholic, anti-Christian. But they have said, too, that, in the Church of England, there is to be both liberty of opinion and the forbidding of a Christian practice to the laity; and in saying this they have both cut short development and cut short its root and its principle. Development can only mean one of two things: either the extension of the empire of one principle, or the extension of the rights of religious liberty. That it does not mean the first in the Church of England we think that we have sufficiently shown; and that it does not mean the second these memorialists against liberty have taken their best pains to demonstrate. What development, then, is left to the Church of England? Obviously there can be none, save the increase of wrangling and the natural effort to crush one another’s liberty.

Yet there is one new development—to use the word conventionally, and not in its scientific meaning—which has proved perhaps more shocking and more thoroughly unchristian than any which has ever gone before. That development is modern Broad-Churchism. It is distinct from its antecedent 386in the Georgian era, being necessitated by totally different issues. It is a compound of three things, all kindred in kind and all mutually assisting one another: repugnance to sacerdotal pretension; indifference about dogmatic truth; and a fondness for scientific infidelity. This last is the worst of the three, but it is in most men the parent of the other two. It is an element of Broad-Churchism which had positively no existence until after the full development of Tractarianism. Curiously enough, the return to the supernatural, and the rejection of whatever is not natural, have been almost twin movements in the Church of England. Ritualism having failed to hold the intellects of shrewd men, there were only two courses left open: the one was to, logically, become Catholics, the other to deny the supernatural. The birth of a new school of so-called scientists, which school has sought to question revelation, took place at the very crisis when Anglicans were hesitating whether they ought to become Catholics or not. It furnished the exact pretext desired. If there was doubt about the evidence for revelation, it was useless to adopt all its consequences. Yet it was felt that it would not do to throw overboard Christianity, as at least the most admirable of ethic systems; so the moral part of Christianity was retained, while the dogmatic part was put on one side. Hence a Broad-Churchism which, while being really quite sceptical, covered itself with the mantle of Christian morals. “I deeply regret,” said an ecclesiastic of this school, when he came to the last hours of his life, “that I ever preached anything but morals.” This was paganism, virtuous paganism, but it passed current for respectable Broad-Churchism. What it meant, and what Broad-Churchism now means in almost every one of its adherents, was scepticism in regard to the Incarnation, but a natural admiration for natural virtues. Dean Stanley is one of the doctors of this school, and preaches rationalism in Westminster Abbey. “Christian rationalism” is that last new abortion which has been born of the failure of previous systems. It had no existence in England until twenty years ago; that is, it was not formulated into a system. In these days it is openly taught. In the magazines there constantly appear brilliant articles which are directed against the Christian revelation, while yet advocating the beauty of Christian sentiments, of Christian ethics and philosophy. It is pure rationalism, under the cloak of respectability. “We would not shock your pious prejudices,” these novel theorists seem to say, “by telling you that Christianity is false; on the contrary, we believe that there was a Christ, but he was not the Son of God, he did not rise from the dead, he was only a most admirable doctor. Therefore hold fast to his philosophy, which was amiable in the extreme, and exquisitely adapted to social wants; and, if you like, remain an Anglican or a Dissenter, or even please your fancies with ritualism. You cannot do better than remain a Christian. The Christian system is full of beauty. It is not divine; it was not revealed; it has not one shred of the supernatural; but so useful a system has never before been developed; indeed, it includes the best philosophies. Therefore we advise you to stick to your Christianity, as you would stick to your domestic 387canons of harmony.” This kind of counsel has been given in the Fortnightly and in answer to recent Catholic publications. Its authors are obviously proud of their discovery. “Christian rationalism” will just suit a leisure age, which is too intellectual yet too indifferent to be Christian.

A recent writer has called modern Broad-Churchism “a fortuitous concourse of indifferentisms.” So it is in its acceptance by the majority. But there is a very large section which goes far beyond indifference, and which aggressively attacks Christianity. Whately has the credit of having started the principle that intellectual inquiry is above faith. The first duty of man is to be intellectual; and he must never stand still in his inquiries. When convinced that he has found out the truth, he must proceed to inquire still more earnestly; always despising the very issues of those inquiries which he places below inquiries themselves. Euclid, when it says Q. E. D., ought to have made Q. E. D. an hypothesis. Reasoning is not intended to conduct to truth, but should be pursued as in itself the chief good. Argument is above demonstration, and search is far superior to discovery. This is the theory of many modernists. But it has only lately raised its votaries into a school. Mr. Kingsley, when he said, “I am nothing if not a priest,” had no notion of eliminating Christianity. Even the Oxford essayists and reviewers shrank from this. Dr. Arnold, who wished to remove the Athanasian Creed, did not wish to remove Christianity. Bishop Butler, whom some call the founder of Broad-Churchism, certainly never dreamed of rank scepticism. The theory of Frederic Dennison Maurice, that revelation may be given differently to different centuries, did not exclude revelation. There was always, until quite lately, a clinging fast to the fond truth that Christianity was a divine dispensation. The last generation were quite sure of this. But their grandchildren, if they happen to live in England, may be brought up to adopt the new religion. They may proclaim frankly that Christianity is a myth, or that pagan virtue is the best Christianity. To such a depth has Anglican “development” now sunk. Fathers fear not to talk cold-blooded scepticism before their little ones gathered round their knees, and to poison their young natures with that most dreadful of inclinations—the doubting the pure instincts of their own souls. Sons of clergymen teach their sons that Christianity may be true, just as a particular political theory may be so; but that to ally Christian faith with the honor of God is a sign of feeble intellect or enthusiasm. Many thousands of English children, sons of educated “Anglicans,” now prattle their scepticism over their toys.

One hideous consequence of this growth of English rationalism—and Broad-Churchism is practically rationalism—is that it has lowered the standard of personal aspiration by removing the certainties of objects. Protestantism had much of the sentiment of Catholicity, though it had little of its dogma or discipline; but Broad-Churchism is absolutely without sentiment, save such as is common to pagans. What the children of Cicero may have been the children of Broad-Churchmen may be. The divine instinct of faith is reasoned down. Indeed, Cicero or Terence, Plato or 388Sophocles, had a much higher object than the Broad-Churchman; for they professed that to know would be the chief good, whereas Broad-Churchmen pronounce knowing the chief evil. It matters not by what name we call these men, whether free-thinkers, rationalists, sceptics, their aspiration is to be content with not knowing, instead of regarding knowing as the chief good. “I think,” said an English gentleman a few weeks ago, who had graduated at Oxford, and who has six children, and whose father was a distinguished ecclesiastic, “that the best way is to try to live honorably, and not occupy one’s mind with inquiry.” Thus he and his six children have gone back two thousand years in intellectual—that is, eternal—aspiration, minus this advantage which the ancients had over them: that the ancients wished to know what was true. Now, it is manifest that the death of aspiration is the death of the finest qualities of the human mind; and this is specially seen in the rising generation of English young men and young women. Where doubt takes the place of conviction, and cold content of an animating faith; where natural longings are the sole governing principles, and all that is beyond the grave is dark cloud; where the illumination of the intellect by the full knowledge of God—which is alone possible within the Catholic Church—is deferred to the petty quibblings of speculation, it must follow that a lower type of men and women must succeed to our profound Catholic ancestors. There is no need to refer here to Christian morals; they are the exercise of obedience to particular laws. Nor is there any need to speak of mere worldliness, which is often incidental, circumstantial. Nor, again, need we allude to the immense varieties of natural temperament which bias people’s lives, people’s loves. Let all questions of perfection or imperfection be set aside; they are not the immediate points we are considering. Human nature is human nature in every one, be he a Catholic or a free-thinker; and the extent to which human nature may be brought under control is a distinct question from “Anglican development.” The sole point which we are now arguing is the intellectual consequences of the theory and practice of pure Anglicanism, and the conclusion we arrive at is that, intellectually speaking, Anglicanism degrades the human mind. The development of Anglicanism is deterioration. This is its intellectual development. But when we speak of the intellect we are not speaking of talent, of any natural gift, or of industry. We are speaking of intellectual aspiration; for the true dignity of intellect is its object. To separate the intellect from its object, the dignity of the end from the means, is impossible for any really earnest mind, as, indeed, it is rationally impossible. If, then, the object of an intellect be to not believe, to eliminate the supernatural out of the world, or to narrow the compass of aspirations, it follows that the greater is the ignorance, the greater is the dignity, of the human mind. This theory has been advocated by Mr. Spencer. “Our highest wisdom and our highest duty,” says this scientist, “is to regard that through which all things exist as the unknowable.” So that not only to know nothing, but to wish to know nothing, of the will of our Creator in regard to us is the highest aspiration of the trained intellect, whether 389professedly Christian or pagan. Now, (popular) Broad-Churchism does not go so far as this, for it would not be “Christian” to do so. Broad-Churchism affects to be Christian, though it includes within its pale many sceptics. Yet practically the assertion that opposite truths are the same truths, or that no truth is a truth save to its votary, is the assertion that there has not been a revelation, or that if there has been it cannot be understood. Regard it as we will, there is no escaping from the conclusion that Broad-Churchism is inimical to Christianity. It is inimical to divine faith, to divine love; to the interior exercise of Christian virtues; to the perfecting those graces of character which are formed on the pattern of a divine Lord. In short, it is fatal to sanctity. Instability of Christian faith and stability of Christian life are mutually opposed to one another. The Broad-Churchman may be an excellent man, but he cannot be supernaturally a Christian. Christianity is the divine life of man, and it presupposes many postulates and axioms. And since divine faith in the whole range of divine truth is the first requisite of the intellectual Christian, it follows that a Christian who is intellectually not Christian cannot spiritually advance to perfection. Thus intellectually and spiritually the Broad-Churchman is at fault in regard to the Christian life. And this deterioration is the prevalent “development” of the later stages of Anglican change. Broad-Churchism is the profession of most Anglicans. And in one degree or another it is the ruin of aspiration, and therefore of the intellectual Anglican. But young people, whose intellects are undeveloped, are of necessity chiefly nourished by their affections; and unhappily the enfeebling of their faith is the enfeebling the objects of those affections. Thus parents ruin children by enfeebling the objects, and with them the affections which need objects. Intellectually and spiritually, sensitively and instinctively, Broad-Churchism is the ruin of children. And that huge waste of object, of affection, of sentiment, which the disease of Broad-Churchism necessitates, stints the growth, both religious and natural, of the majority of the rising generation. This is the last Anglican development. And it threatens to breed a race of pagans. There is the profession, of course, of some sort of Christian life—for ethically every Englishman must be Christian—but the Christianity is a natural sentiment, it is not a supernatural life. And must we not call this the intellectual degradation of the heirs of two thousand years of truth? The spasmodic attempts of the Ritualist sect to revive certain fragments of Catholic truth, or the earnest aspirations of warm-hearted puritans to love all that they know how to believe, are both admirable efforts, though not true successes; and they are the efforts of a comparatively small number. Nationally England is Broad-Church, and the majority of Broad-Churchmen are sceptical. What stage of development can come next? If in Westminster Abbey “Christian rationalism” is triumphant, what will become triumphant in country parishes? And if the feeble reasonings of Dean Stanley, his serene platitudes or pretty sentiments, are pabulum sufficient for the well educated, what descent into weakness, into indifference or impiety, may we not look for among the 390poorer classes? Scepticism among the poor means simple grossness, unrelieved by the scholarliness of the rich, and uncomforted by even the ease of this life. Yet there is an immense spread of scepticism among the poor. There is even blatant hostility to all religion. Broad-Churchism is the parent of this evil. The final harvest has not yet been reaped. Yet it seems certain that in the next quarter of a century we must either see the English multitude become Catholics, or we shall see them go down into a state of irreligion which will be simply paganism minus its gods.

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. A SKETCH FROM THE PARADISO OF DANTE.

Between Tupino’s wave and that which sends

Its flood from blest Ubaldo’s chosen seat,

A fertile mount an airy coast extends,

Wherefrom Perugia feels both cold and heat

Through Porta Sole, and behind it weep

Gualdo and Nòcera their grievous yoke.

There, on that side of it where most the steep

In its declivity is sharply broke,

Unto the world another Sun was born,

Like this, our daily planet, whose glad face

Beams forth from Ganges, bringing Europe’s morn.

Therefore let no man speaking of that place

Ascèsi say—too briefly by that name

Describing it; but let him say the East!

If he would properly enforce its claim.^[88]

Not much his light had from its dawn increased,

When he began throughout his land to inspire

Some comfort from a purity so great;

Since yet a youth he fought with his own sire

391For sake of her against whom Pleasure’s gate

Men bar, of her face as of death afraid:

And so before his Father, and the Court

Spiritual, with her a marriage made,

And grew in love the more they did consort.

She, slighted widow! reft of her first spouse,

More than eleven hundred years remained

Despised, obscure—no lover paid his vows

To her till this one her affection gained;

It naught availed (to move men in their choice)

To read how Cæsar found her undismayed

With poor Amyclas, hearing his dread voice;

Nor aught availed the courage she displayed,

And the fierce constancy which so sufficed,

That while below heart-broken Mary prayed

Her lofty spirit climbed the cross with Christ.

But, lest my sense I too obscurely screen,

Take for these lovers of my large discourse

Francis and Poverty, for them I mean.

Their concord and glad looks, the gentle force

Of love and wonder, their demeanor sweet,

Were cause that holy thoughts did much increase;

Bernard first bared his venerable feet

To run behind him, after so great peace,

And in his running felt himself too slow:

O unknown riches! O thou good most true!

After the spouse whose bride enchanteth so

Egidius bares his feet, Silvester too.

THE SOCIALIST IDEA.^[89]

A moderate degree of attention bestowed on the signs of the times apparent in society, and a consideration of the social convulsions which among ourselves seem only to end that they may begin again, will make it impossible not to perceive, within the bosom of this society, some permanent, chronic evil, seated at its very core, and ready to bring to the surface the seething elements from below by a series of eruptions recurring at shorter and shorter intervals. This social evil, which for nearly a century has subjected us to periodical revolutions, as certain diseases subject a patient to periodical fits or crises; this evil, whose many roots reach back to causes more or less remote and more or less appreciable; this evil, which marches through the world of to-day like the hurricane that sweeps over cities and plains, and which we see uprooting principles 392in its passage, corrupting morals, and undermining society—for society is directly and particularly threatened by its stormy progress; this social evil—I give it the name it gives itself—is socialism: socialism—that is, a body of doctrines, passions, and plots that attack and would fain uproot the actual social system, or, if you prefer this definition, armed, passionate, and doctrinal aggression against society; socialism, which forty years ago the mass of earnest thinkers scarcely thought it worth while to take into account, so hidden was it then in the depths of mere theorizing, and so dimly perceived by a few thoughtful men, who saw it half covered by the veil of utopianism; socialism, which practical men of that time, in their Olympic repose, deemed too self-condemned by its obvious extravagance to be capable of doing harm; socialism, which even now still finds a few self-styled conservatives so blinded as to join hands and conspire politically with it for the furtherance of their own plans; socialism, which, emancipated from the region of dreams and speculations, and realized for a moment on the burning stage of contemporary history, has shown us its hideous form by the light of incendiary fires, and still points out to us, by the light of a threatening present, the possibility of a frightful future.

Let us begin at the beginning, and ask ourselves the question, What is Socialism? I hasten, at the outset of a subject which touches on such delicate ground, to state that I intend taking my stand above politics or party spirit. I fight only under two flags, that of society and that of Christianity. Even in the harshest strictures I may make I shall attack things, not men—things which we are bound to oppose, not men, whom we are bound to love.

To come to a full understanding of contemporary socialism it is necessary to look at it under a triple aspect—as an idea, as a passion, and as an action; as an idea which gains ground, a passion which kindles itself, an action which organizes itself more and more under our eyes; as an idea which gains ground by every channel controlled by the contemporary press; as a passion which is enkindled by every phase of contemporary realities; as an action which organizes itself and conspires by every lever known to contemporary revolutionism—that is, in three words, the socialist idea, the socialist passion, the socialist action. It is these that we must fathom and examine, if we would understand what socialism is and means. I shall be satisfied if I succeed in developing this time what is socialism as an idea, and what is the scope of this idea; in what does the socialist idea consist, and what are its immediate consequences.

It is necessary to grasp the nature of the parent idea which nursed socialism in its bosom, and has brought it forth as it appears to-day. Such a movement in the world of reality would be inexplicable without a corresponding, anterior movement in the world of thought. Ideas, in the social system, are as germs in the animal and vegetable systems, and germs in a very practical sense, for they are the seed of things that come to light later on, and grow according to the kind of soil and the degree of heat with which they come in contact. Socialism, as a whole, though intelligible as the result of causes not 393belonging to the world of ideas, is, however, the product of an idea which has grown and thriven long before it came to the surface. I do not mean by this the body of ideas which has helped to create it, but its own parent idea, that which, if I may say so, constitutes the socialist credo. It is true that, if we consider socialism in what appears its only living and real aspect, we are brought face to face with something quite alien to the world of ideas. What we see is not unlike a lion or a tiger obeying its instincts and roaring in the desert for its prey. We have no longer to face a doctrinal socialism with pretensions to a plausible theory, but a brutal socialism claiming no right save that of might; not a dreamy socialism such as forty years ago still carried away generous enthusiasts, but an aggressive socialism hurrying by force to the fulfilment of its programme; not a contemplative socialism parading through the world of ideas a Platonic love for humankind, but a destructive socialism eager to carry through the ruins of the world of realities the bloody banner of its brotherhood. What we see before us might be more fitly called the socialism of torch and dagger than the socialism of ideas and doctrines.

Still, it cannot be denied that socialism heralded itself above all as an idea which was to make the mightiest revolution in the midst of humanity that the world had ever seen. What was this idea, and what, in this era of social revolution, were its starting-point, its path, and its goal? I have long attentively followed the course of this new planet, and marked in the changing sky of our social world its chief appearances. I saw it rise as in the dawn of a bright morning, then grow amid the clouds of a thousand systems more or less important or obscure, then at last reach its zenith, and throw over our modern society the baneful light in which we see it arrayed at present.

At first the socialist idea gave itself out as the idea of social reform; later on in its progressive movement it became the idea of social transformation; and now that it has fully developed itself, it stands forth as the idea of social destruction. If we follow up the stream of theories which distinguished the beginning of this century and the end of the last, we shall find that the parent idea of socialism first embodied the longing for social reform, and tended to restore universal harmony to the new world. To listen to our pretended prophets and Messiahs, one would be led to believe that the great law of universal harmony in the social world had been lost amid conflicting human interests, and needed to be restored or re-enacted; while the systems of philosophy of that period insisted that within the near future a regeneration of human nature and a social reform would take place such as the world had never seen or history chronicled—a greater reform, indeed, than that accomplished by the divine Reformer in behalf of poor humanity. These philosophical systems, full of a dreamy poetry, were nothing but humanitarian idyls, delightful pastorals, pointing in the future, through a tinted medium, to a rose-colored humanity smiling under blue skies and an unclouded sun—a humanity free from all the contradictions and antagonisms of the past, and, like the planets, or better even than 394they, revolving round its centre in the undisturbed and beatific equilibrium of universal harmony. Harmony was everywhere in these fair dreams and easy utopias: there was the harmony of all minds in truth, the harmony of all hearts in love, the harmony of will in liberty, the harmony of passions in pleasure, the harmony of interests in community, the harmony of labor in organization, the harmony of men in brotherhood, the harmony of families in the state, and, finally, the harmony of all peoples and nations in the unity of a government that should rule all alike. The omniarch, or universal monarch, of this universal society appeared in the distance, in the centre of the human world, as the moderator and ruler of this gigantic harmony of brotherly nations. In a word, there was nothing but harmony, everywhere and in all things, harmony easy and spontaneous, springing up from, and flourishing naturally in, the regular play of all human forces, replaced as they would be, so said this new language, in their normal motion around their harmonious centre. This alluring theory, sung by all the bards of the social philosophy, or rather poetry, of that time, marched triumphantly along its flower-strewn path, escorted by all the errors and negations of which it was the result and the essence, and proclaiming to the gaping world: “I am the revelation of the new world. I am Social Reform.”

It is worth noticing that while the working of so many unhealthy doctrines gave birth, as to its natural product, to this growing socialist idea, so the new world of men seemed to grow towards it by every breath it emitted, to call for it and drink it in by the diseased organs of its own unhealthy body. The idea of reform is always and will always be captivating to humanity, because there is in humanity always something to be reformed; but at that time the state of the popular mind, by enhancing its prestige, was preparing for this notion a greater influence over the rising and future generations than it had ever won in foregoing ages.

Humanity was then bleeding from the pitiless wounds made by the doctrines of the eighteenth century. Men’s souls, especially in the lower strata of society, cruelly felt the void created by the Voltairian creed of individualism. These generations, cut adrift from Christianity, felt themselves smothered by the monster of human selfishness. Humanity, literally disinherited of the love of God, was dying of the selfishness of Voltaire. From the heart of this diseased society came a despairing cry for love, brotherhood, association. Then started up innovators on all sides to turn this great need of the human soul to their own account. They proclaimed universal association through universal love; and as Newton had reconciled by the discovery of gravitation the forces of earth and air, so they pretended to build on the attraction of love a permanent harmony between human nature and society. Such was the first appearance on our stage of this comparatively new element, socialism—i.e., the general and yet undetermined formula of social reform. Its claims, thus put forward in public, with a popularity they had never reached before, startled many men, even those thinkers who had scarcely suspected the existence of such ideas. It was, however, no new notion, and had lain undeveloped in society 395certainly as far back as the beginning of this century. It glimmered forth among the fogs of socialist metaphysics wherein Fourier and Saint-Simon groped after their ideal of universal reform; it grew under the pens of writers in reviews and newspapers celebrated in their day—rash innovators who carelessly questioned every basis of human society, and propounded theories whose fulfilment involved nothing less than a radical change of the organic conditions of society, in the magical name and under the shield of social reform.

The world of ideas had never witnessed such a confusion of mind, such an upsetting of fixed landmarks, such a perversion of language. An intellectual orgy gravely took its seat in the social world under the name and disguise of science; absurdities dubbed themselves philosophies, folly called itself reform; indeed, the passage of these eccentric theories and these grotesque utopias was one of the great surprises that attended my curious and truth-seeking youth. They were a source of pure stupefaction to me. The socialist idea hitherto had been almost confined to the exclusive domain of philosophical abstractions and social ideology. After long wandering through the twilight of various conflicting systems, it emerged from these doubtful regions, where only a few innovators perceived its presence, and came down to the level of the people, stirred as the latter were by new aspirations and hopes. From henceforward the socialist idea, the idea of social reform, was not only a theory broached by philanthropists, discussed by scientists and philosophers, and taught by intellectual apostles from tribune and printing-office, but it became a living, acting reality, a watchword of the laboring classes, a personal question among workmen. Once there, ripening as ideas do quickly in the fervid soul of the people, and pushing on towards its development, it strode forward apace, its evolution only waiting an opportunity to perfect itself abundantly. The people, little used to the hair-splitting of socialist metaphysicians, soon saw either that all this talk meant nothing or that it meant a fundamental transformation of actual social life, and consequently the road to, or, as it was grandiloquently called, the new birth of, a state of comfort and power hitherto unknown. Each one made the dazzling formula, “Society must be reformed,” cover his own special grievances or aspirations, his pet theories, his individual hopes and dreams. It soon became patent to all that even the apostles of the new idea meant not only that the new world should be a reformed one, in the common acceptation of the word, but a radically reformed—that is, a transformed—world. The fathers of the socialist idea had already become aware that the present organization of society presented insurmountable obstacles to the realization of their favorite law of harmony as applied to their theory of a future society; they felt that the organic conditions of society as it is were invincibly opposed to their idea, which, in order to triumph in the end, must become not only a reform, nay, not only a transformation, but such a transformation as should change from the very roots all existing vital conditions of society. To reform was not enough; they determined to transform. One idea had thus quickly displaced or succeeded 396the other. Stripped of the wordy disguises in which it still affected to wrap itself, it was simply a theoretical denial of society, such as society has been since men have lived together; a radical change of the social mechanism adopted in principle and in practice by all nations and acknowledged in all ages; a triumphal progress of revolution—indeed, social revolution itself.

Up to that period men who worked on the passions of the masses to compass their own ambitious ends had contented themselves with handling political problems, stirring up political revolutions. The game played by leaders of riots or leaders of parties consisted in changing a monarchy for a republic, a republic for an empire, an empire for a monarchy, and one species of monarchy for another; but this was child’s play to the growing power and genius of socialism. Social revolution, as set forth by the socialist idea, had far other ends in view; it did not care to stir the surface only of things, but to undermine, or, as we say now, revolutionize, their foundations. This is the difference between socialism, or social revolution, and political revolutionism, properly so-called; the former seeks to disembowel society itself. Common—that is, purely political—revolutionism only affects the surface of society; it strides over the ruins of governments shattered by the popular arm; it overturns a throne, then another; drives out one dynasty, then a second; creates a republic, then another; improvises a constitution; plays, if I may use the expression, among the dust of institutions, whether demolished thrones, torn constitutions, broken governments or legislatures; it grows excited and drunk with enthusiasm and ambition in the midst of these shifting scenes of the political world, on whose stage actors, now hissed, now applauded, by no rule but the arbitrary passion of the multitude, play ever-varying parts—parts barren and ephemeral, and the common result of which is to wear out those who play them, to sicken them of men and things, to make them drop from the stage stripped of their prestige, and too often covered with popular derision, as despairing actors are wont to fly from the theatre where they have hopelessly “broken down.” It was thus that between the tides of opinion and action political revolution pursued its course, leaving ruin and bloodshed in its track.

But after the flood of these monarchies and republics, these constitutions and governments, these kings and emperors, these presidents and dictators, these ministers and lawgivers; after all these sledgehammer blows of force, these coups d’état, or these sensational changes on a stage where revolution had long since decreed that no government, no constitution, no statesman should ever remain permanently; behind what we may call the political phenomenon, one thing remained firm—namely, society. It was always fundamentally the same, and stood on a substantial, unalterable basis, above which, but not reaching it nor attempting to injure it, flowed the tide of political revolution; it had mechanisms more or less different in appearance in each century, but the same vital permanent conditions; it kept its necessary balance between authority and liberty, between progress and stability; it guarded its three treasures, which to destroy is to kill society—i.e., the family, religion, and property.

This is the secret that explains 397why, after so many ruins heaped up and so many battles won, the genius of revolution could not rest content. It soon perceived that in spite of its gigantic efforts, and even after the immensity of its triumphs, it had only achieved a surface work. Its dreams of governments more or less constitutional and representative, more or less monarchical or republican, had collapsed with the ruins of these governments, thrown down by its own hand; it felt the emptiness and disappointment of these political revolutions, whose commonest result was an increase of wretchedness and a decrease of peace. Then it said to itself: I will go further; I will dig below the very foundations of this society, which I find everlastingly the same, with its old vices, its incurable abuses, and its obstinately recurring tyrannies. I will reach its heart, the very source of its life, the very core of its being. There I shall discover the true vital principle of human society, and, whether it will or no, I will force it to take part in outer actions, and take its place among the realities of history. I will not only reform but transform this rotten and disorganized society.

Thus the idea of transformation quickly superseded that of reform; but even a transformation of the conditions of social life, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, would not have contented the thoroughgoingness of the socialist idea. No doubt it was better than reform, for it was a fuller development of the socialist principle, but it did not constitute a perfect development, it was not the ultimatum of the idea. Transformation was not enough in the eyes of radical socialism, or, if you like the term better, socialist radicalism; destruction was better, and, to speak plainly, its conception of the former was equivalent to the latter. Socialism had dissected the body of society, examined and analyzed it in all directions, and then pronounced its verdict in these words, brimful of supreme contempt: “Rottenness! Let the corpse perish, and the true social body, moulded by our hands, spring from its remains.” Socialism had examined and probed the still standing building of our past and present social polity, and had said: “It is evident to all that the building is bad; better rebuild it, from cellar to attic. The human abode is not stable; to buttress it is useless; let us destroy it. This is no longer the time to reform, or even transform; nothing short of destruction is of any avail. Let the old social Babylon crumble and decay, and from her fruitful ruins, if needful even watered with blood, let the new Jerusalem of society come forth. Social reform was the dream of our fathers; social transformation is but another dream, a generous fallacy, but still a fallacy, attempting impossibilities and ending in nothingness. A ruin cannot be reformed nor a crumbling shed transformed; we see only a building to pull down and a building to put up. What I will do is this: I will use the popular arm to destroy, and on the ruins of the past I will erect the edifice of the future.”

The socialist idea, in its logical march irresistible as fate, had reached its inevitable goal. It began by deciding to reform, then it said, “I will transform,” and finally it announced boldly, “I will destroy, shatter, and demolish.” The beginning was reform with its alluring utopias of social unity and harmony; the middle stage was 398transformation, with specious promises of improvement and hopes of a renewed social youth; the ending is destruction, with open threats of anarchy and social annihilation. It is impossible to cherish illusions any longer on this subject: the reformers glided into transformers and the transformers coolly turned destroyers, not in haste and passion, but in cold blood, theoretically, we might almost say dogmatically; for radical destruction, or the uprooting of the existing social order, is the foremost doctrine of the syllabus of the socialist idea, which is itself the most perfect outcome of the revolutionary idea.

Living socialism—that is, socialism personified in its real representatives—no longer makes any mystery as to this, and cannot pretend to feel itself injured or calumniated if we reproduce and lay bare its own formulas. It is its own voice that cries aloud over the world: “Society as it is must perish, and from its ruins a new social system shall and must spring forth.” The first prophets and teachers of the socialist idea had hoped that the idea in itself, and for its own sake, would be accepted at once, and that humanity would spontaneously open its heart to it, as it does its eyes to the rays of the sun. The disciples have far outrun the programme of their masters; they no longer mention the ideal revolution, and if the ideal alone, preached by word of mouth, should not be strong enough to fulfil the programme at any given time, they mean to back it with the strong hand, and force it by violence to become a fact and hasten towards its definitive triumph. Social destruction is at present the latest phase of the socialist idea, which boldly comes forward, programme in hand, and bids us accept it and help to build up its rule as an inevitable necessity. It summons living society publicly and contemptuously to its bar, and bids it be ready to be demolished and afterwards re-established according to the fancy of this evil spirit, powerful indeed to destroy, but helpless to create.

Thus it is that this doctrine—if it can be called a doctrine—so philanthropic at the outset, so peaceful, so brotherly; this doctrine, which announced itself as a new gospel of peace, freedom, and brotherhood, has come to speak sternly of war, of massacre, of destruction; has sworn that no matter what opposition it raises and what blood it costs, the socialist idea shall triumph, and has decided that if it be necessary to reach the throne at which it aims over ruins and over corpses, it will stride over ruins and over corpses! Let the human sacrifices seal, if need be, the bloody covenant of the new social order.

It will scarcely be believed that this work of social destruction has been compared to the work of Christ, the reformer and transformer of society. It is so, however; and this new era which is before us has actually been likened to the social transformation, or rather restoration, achieved by Christianity—as if anything could be more flagrantly antagonistic to the great transformation worked by the Christian idea than this pretended transformation dreamed of and sung by the prophets of the socialist idea; as if a revolution brought about by force and violence could ever be compared to a restoration accomplished through love and self-sacrifice!

You reformers and innovators, do you forget that Jesus Christ attacked 399nothing by force and destroyed nothing by violence; that in his divine wisdom he was content to sow truth in men’s souls and love in their hearts as the husbandman casts seed into the furrow; and that truth and love have done their work among humankind as germs in the earth, as the blood in our veins, as electricity throughout nature—that is, in mysterious silence, with a strength full of gentleness and patience, yet with unerring certainty? You forget that if Christ cursed the unjust rich man—that is, wealth abusing its privileges, wealth without love, compassion, or sympathy for others—yet he never dreamt of leading the poor against the rich, but simply placed between the two the powerful but sweet link of charity. You forget that if he delivered captives from their bonds and slaves from their chains, he never incited master or slave to wage fratricidal war on each other, and that it was only as his teaching sank into the heart of the master that the fetters of the slave set free through love dropped of themselves, as ripe fruit drops from the tree in its good time and season. You forget that if the divine Reformer came to found a new society, it was by a new creation, and not through destruction; that he came to rehabilitate even bodily society while he created the true kingdom of souls; and that, far from breathing into it the spirit of social hatred and jealousy, he came to restore, or rather found within it, the rule of love and social self-denial. The very goal which the socialist idea has reached by identifying itself with the idea of social destruction is itself the best proof of the irreconcilable antagonism between socialism and Christianity.

I do not say that each individual in the ranks of contemporary socialism defines and adopts this programme of destruction so clearly and so resolutely as I have stated. Under all standards there are many men who neither see nor understand where the chiefs whose orders they obey are leading them—honest, upright men, duped by villains; passionate lovers of good, while strayed and lost in the great army of evil. I fully admit these exceptions, possible, nay, probable, everywhere; and, indeed, why deny their existence? Nevertheless, the mainspring of socialist action in our day lies in the idea of destruction, and the problem which contemporary socialism no longer seeks to veil is simply this: “What are the speediest means for completely demolishing the old structure of society, which is already bursting asunder in all its parts; and when down, what is to be done to rebuild from its ruins the edifice of the new social order?” Yes, such is the problem whose solution socialism boasts of finding, even though it be through rivers of blood and mountains of corpses; and yet this social body, rotten as it is said to be, still rests on strong foundations as old as humanity itself.

Property is its material foundation, the family its human foundation, and religion its divine foundation; and therefore the logical march of the socialist idea drives it, like fate, to clamor not only for the reform and transformation but for the ruin and destruction of these three things on which rests the whole of society, religion, family, and property. I do not hesitate to declare it, in spite of the vehement denials of men still unaccountably blinded to facts: the real scope of the socialist idea when pursued to 400its logical conclusion is the radical transformation or the utter uprooting of these stable and ancient institutions, as old as human society itself—property, family, and religion—and thereby the fall of our whole social system, as of a building on its shattered foundations and its broken supports. There are many theoretical socialists who do not dare to exhibit their theory in terms whose brutality seems to exceed even the grotesqueness of the idea they embody, and many who still cling to a few illusions and have a regard for decency. Such as these protest against what they call our calumnies and exaggerations. Destroy? they exclaim; we do not wish to destroy, we only long to transform. There was a time when, with mistaken faith in the honesty of purpose I loved to find or imagine everywhere, I, and you perchance, were deceived by this specious excuse, these alluring formulas; but to-day it is impossible to mistake the sense of this former mystery; it has too disastrously been revealed to us.

The socialist idea directly attacks the principle of property—that is, individual possession of one’s fields, house, capital, or patrimony, so happily called the domain; property—that is, in the common order of things, the fruit of individual labor or of the labor and self-denial of one’s forefathers; property—that is, the pledge of man’s independence, and the sign of his kingship in his own home, small as it may be; property, which in all nations and ages has been sheltered under the triple shield of nature, justice, and religion; property, the material basis of society—indeed, its necessary condition and the link by which the family is bound to its native soil as the tree by its roots; property, always and everywhere looked upon as sacred and inviolable among nations who have claimed the honors of civilization; property, which all societies have acknowledged even while appearing to deny its rights, violating them by force; property, in a word, which is a thing so familiar to us that the least infraction of its laws would cause us a remorse only to be allayed by reparation. Such is the nature of property; and shall we believe the teaching of this new jurisprudence, the propagators of these new laws, who maintain that there is no question of destroying but only of reforming, or at most transforming, the nature of property?

In what does this miraculous, proposed transformation consist? The expedient is very simple—namely, to strip the mass of owners in order to constitute one sole and supreme owner; for it is obvious, after all, that some one must still possess the earth. This legal spoliation, no doubt, will be a work of time, but it will be sure. And who is the new owner to be, in whom the right of universal property shall be vested, and on whose shoulders will be flung the burden of universal wealth? The state, forsooth; the god-state, the “state” which may be an honest man to-day, but to-morrow may be a rogue; the god-state, whom infatuated philosophers are constantly working to aggrandize, to make all-powerful, and for which they strive night and day to win more worshippers. This is to be the one owner and possessor of all; the state shall have all, organize and work all, distribute and apportion all, be the centre, the fountain head, and the goal of all; while in this universal domain where the state controls all, this huge arsenal 401where the state produces, executes, or orders all, society shall become a human hive, vast as the earth itself, but in which every individual shall be reduced, as a terse writer has put it, to the size and functions of a bee. This is the masterpiece elaborated by the socialist idea—the dream of universal property, which is likewise a dream of universal levelling, universal stuntedness. Individual responsibility or initiative is swept away; human kingship and free-will disappear; domestic society is left without a material basis, and even public society without a foundation; the right of all is practically the right of none, and the result is universal slavery to universal despotism. Such is the miracle of this transformation of property, so glibly promised by the socialist theory to future generations; and though all who fight under the banner of legal spoliation do not carry thus far their social ideal, and do not look forward to such absolute communism, all are on the road to it by the very fact of vesting in their god-state the right of increasing and decreasing, making or unmaking, individual property under the name of taxes on the rich and rates for the poor. What astonishes me above all in this respect is to see in certain men, the most interested personally in the upholding of the conservative principle of property, a certain pandering to, or half-support of, this eminently anti-social idea.

The same socialism which attacks the immemorial constitution of property attacks likewise the immemorial constitution of the family. The socialist idea attacks specially in the family, together with the principle of property, the three things which are its pride, its strength, and its stability—namely, unity, indissolubility, and inheritance, which, it is needless to say, uphold its permanence and perpetuity. First of all, it attacks unity, and unity in trinity: one man, one woman, and one whole family springing from both; one life produced by two sources fused into one—a unity which, in the family as everywhere else, is the essential condition of harmony, order, beauty, and happiness. This unity does not please the socialist. An advocate of free morals and free love, he prefers polygamy, as allowed by the Koran and practised by Moslems, to the conjugal unity enjoined by the Gospel and sanctioned by the teaching and practice of Christendom. Socialism attacks the indissolubility—that is, the permanence—of the marriage tie. Such an indissolubility before God and before the state is in its eyes only the civil and religious endorsement of slavery, the legal and theological confiscation of liberty. The apostles of free love are unable to understand the principle which binds two human beings to each other for ever and under no matter what circumstances. What revolution allows to society socialism would fain make accessible to the family—that is, perpetual change and unlimited option concerning divorce and separation. Socialism claims unblushingly, in the name of nature and progress, the revolutionary right of a husband to send away his wife, and a wife to leave her husband, as easily as a nation disposes of its sovereigns and its governments—a right equivalent to a permanent revolution in the family and the state, and bearing as its fruit the abolition of inheritance. Inheritance means the tradition of a patrimony; it is the pledge of the stability and perpetuity of domestic 402or home society; bereft of it, the family, without moorings in the past or hopes in the future, becomes, like the individual, an ephemeral phenomenon, gone in a breath and holding to nothing but the present hour. This right of inheritance has its place in God’s plan and man’s laws; it represents to coming generations the labors, the benefits, the sacrifices of their forefathers; it extends the influence of the latter over their descendants. But socialism does not shrink from questioning it in theory and attacking it in practice. How, it asks, should the will of a dying man be able to transmit beyond his grave a domain to his posterity? Down with a privilege which gives man, when he is a corpse, a posthumous omnipotence in contradiction with the very condition of the dead, and injurious to the freedom of action of the living! Socialism thus saps every conservative family principle, and the spirit it instils into the human mind is destructive to the foundations of home society, in order that it may prepare a clearer path to the eventual destruction of public society.

It is scarcely necessary to follow the socialist idea throughout its destructive march in order to realize the havoc it makes of domestic society; a glance at its practice is enough. Look at the homes and hearths where this idea has seated itself and taken practical possession. What homes, great God! and what morals; they might astonish even a heathen. The acknowledged reign of license and disorder, sanctioned by a so-called doctrine, and careless of any outward badge of respectability, whether civil or religious; a boasting display of a foulness for which the very faculty of blushing is lost, for the socialist idea, breathing its poison over these hearths, has extinguished the lamp of domestic virtue, and tossed into the mire not only the ideal of Christian perfection but that of moral blamelessness. No wonder that men preaching such doctrine and practising such morals should be eager to transform the family; they do it, indeed, in a strange and appalling manner by turning the sanctuary of honor and virtue into a sink of corruption and vice.

Furthermore, I maintain that they would turn the home, the school of faith and religion, into a school of unbelief and impiety; for socialism, which detests the family and property, hates religion still worse, because it is the chief bulwark of property and the family. It hates religion as such—not only this or that religion, but the very principle of communication between God and man, and the main object of the socialist idea is to transform—that is, destroy—this element in mankind. The fiat has gone forth, the watchword is given, “No more religion in humanity”; and the ideal of progress, as pointed out to the world by the socialist, is simply the suppression of all religion, which he dubs with the unpopular names of fanaticism, superstition, clericalism. The cry is not only no more property, no more family, no more homestead, no more hearth; but the frantic cry takes up other matters and echoes to the ends of the world a more sweeping denunciation: No more religion, no more altars, no more priests, no more churches, no more ritual, no more oblation, no more ceremonies, no more religious festivals. The like has never before been seen in history; it could not have been even conceived. This public attempt to drive out all religion 403from humanity in the name of progress is an absolutely unparalleled phenomenon, not only within but beyond Christianity. It is a monster in human history, the deformity of the nineteenth century. Our age will appear before history with this shameful inscription on its forehead, which will sufficiently brand it in the opinion of after ages: “I, the nineteenth century, have proclaimed by the voice of a million of atheists, as the law and condition of all progress, the abolition of all religion.”

And yet you will find religion attending the birth of every new society; you will meet it at the source of every growing society, and will perceive it shining and triumphing when that society has reached its utmost greatness and perfection, for a great heathen writer has truly called it the motive force of all things: Omnia religione moventur. Religion is to the world of men what sap is to the plant, blood to the animal, electricity to the system of nature—an indispensable condition of life, of motion, of fruitfulness. Who would dare undertake to drive from the earth and uproot from the soul of man this divine link between God and human nature, this boundary of human life, this vivifying force which permeates all, fertilizes all, directs and controls all?

Why, I ask these frantic demolishers, why not pluck electricity from nature, sap from the plant, and blood from our veins? For it is true that it were easier for the tree to live without sap, the plant without root, the body without blood, than it is for the human soul to exist without religion—religion, that need of something divine, that longing after something durable, that step towards the infinite; religion, that natural breath of the soul, as the air is of the body, that attraction heavenwards which corresponds to the physical attraction earthwards of our body! A mysterious but very sensible force draws us towards our physical centre of gravity, but a force still more mysterious, more sensible, and, above all, more powerful draws us towards our heavenly, our spiritual centre; and while we are physically bound by a chain as strong as life to the stage of our earthly existence, yet spiritually we soar by as irresistible an impulse towards the place of spirits, the eternal and the infinite.