:SE LIBRARY 
 
 Y OF CALIFORNIA. 
 MAR 11 1893 
 
PHASES OF THOUGHT AND 
 CRITICISM 
 
 BY 
 
 BROTHER AZARIAS 
 
 OF THE BROTHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 &fe Riter^iDe preitf, 
 1893 
 
Copyright, 1892, 
 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The Rivertide Prett, Cambridge, Ma**., U. 8. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
Acs' 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 A LARGE portion of the present volume has al- 
 ready appeared in print, some of it in pamphlets 
 and some in the pages of the " American Catholic 
 Quarterly Keview." Part was read before young 
 men pursuing their studies ; part, before the Con- 
 cord School of Philosophy, and part, before the 
 International Congress of Education held in New 
 Orleans in 1885. The original matter has been 
 revised, partly rewritten, and coordinated with the 
 view of making apparent the unity of design and 
 continuity of thought running through the whole 
 book. 
 
 The chapter treating of Newman might have 
 been developed to greater length, now that its sub- 
 ject has passed away and a variety of opinions has 
 been pronounced upon him ; but as the pen-picture 
 here given, outlined about fourteen years ago, 
 found recognition and approval at the hand of 
 that eminent Thinker himself, the author deemed 
 it best not to disturb its original dimensions, and 
 contented himself with the filling in of a few addi- 
 tional strokes. 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 The latter part of the volume is occupied with 
 the interpretation of three of the world's master- 
 pieces. They are analyzed and their underlying 
 meaning is explained from the point of view of 
 thought and criticism expressed in the first seven 
 chapters. In the philosophical principle wrought 
 into the mysticism of the book "De Imitatione 
 Christi," in the spiritual sense giving unity to the 
 " Divina Commedia," and in the mystical elements, 
 partly Christian, partly neo-Platonic, entering into 
 the structure of " In Memoriam," it is sought to 
 determine the soul giving life and being to each 
 of these works as an organic whole. Each expresses 
 a distinct phase of thought, and is the outcome of 
 a distinct social and intellectual force. Each em- 
 bodies a vivifying ideal. The criticism that busies 
 itself solely with the literary form is superficial. 
 For food it gives husks. 
 
 DE LA SALLE INSTITUTE, NEW YOBK, May 4, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. FOURFOLD ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL .... 1 
 
 II. ON THINKING 5 
 
 III. EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES .... 13 
 
 IV. THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT .... 24 
 V. LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC HABITS OF THOUGHT . 39 
 
 VI. THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 56 
 
 VII. CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE . . . .72 
 
 VIII. SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION ... 89 
 
 IX. SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA . . 125 
 
 X. SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM . . . 183 
 
 XL CONCLUSION 265 
 
 INDEX . 269 
 
PHASES OF THOUGHT AND 
 CKITICISM 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 / 
 
 FOURFOLD ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 1. THE human soul is the informing principle of 
 the human body; it is one and simple a monad 
 without quantity or extension as all spiritual 
 substances are one, simple and unextended; in- 
 complete in itself, inasmuch as it must needs be 
 united to the body in order that it may fully exer- 
 cise many of its functions ; immaterial, and there- 
 fore void of inertness; active in its operations 
 from the first moment of its existence. According 
 to the mode of the soul's action do we speak of it 
 as having this faculty or that corresponding to the 
 function which it performs. Some faculties are 
 intrinsic to the soul itself, as reason; others, as 
 the imagination, are dependent upon the union of 
 soul and body. 
 
 2. Although the essence of the soul is not the 
 immediate principle of its operations, and although 
 its faculties are distinct from its essence, being 
 in themselves certain properties thereof, it is still 
 the same soul, one and undivided, that thinks and 
 
2 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 feels, that wills and moves and is moved. It is 
 still the same conscious personality, that amid 
 ever - shifting changes can always recognize its 
 own identity in the formula / am I. When we 
 say that the soul has certain faculties, we simply 
 mean that it exercises certain modes of action 
 by placing itself in certain definite relations with 
 certain objects of thought. 
 
 3. Faculties of the soul are therefore the soul 
 itself operating upon particular lines of action, 
 and each faculty becomes more or less developed 
 in proportion to the degree of activity exercised by 
 the soul in some one or other direction. Let us 
 consider some of the soul's activities. Now it is 
 the soul analyzing, comparing, inferring, coordi- 
 nating, passing from known principles to the dis- 
 covery of unknown truths ; viewed in this relation, 
 the soul is called Keason, and, under certain 
 aspects, the Illative Sense. 1 Now it is the soul 
 deciding this to be a good act, and feeling bound to 
 perform it, or thinking that other to be bad, and 
 feeling bound to avoid it; so acting, it is called 
 the Moral Sense. Again, it is the soul moved to 
 pity by the pathos of a scene painted on the canvas 
 or described in the poem ; as the subject of this 
 emotion it is called the ^Esthetic Sense. Finally, 
 it is the soul leaving the noise and distraction of 
 the outside world, entering into itself and realizing 
 
 1 " This power of judging about truth and error iu concrete 
 matters, I call the Illative Sense." ..." The Illative Sense has 
 its exercise in the starting-points as well as in the final results of 
 thought." Cardinal Newman, Grammar of Assent, chap. ix. This 
 chapter is an important contribution to the philosophy of thought; 
 
FOURFOLD ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL 3 
 
 its own misery and weakness, and seeking the help 
 and strength which it finds not in itself, where 
 alone help and strength are to be found, in the 
 God from whom it comes and on whom it depends ; 
 in this highest and noblest action it is called the 
 Spiritual Sense. 
 
 4. The Keason is nourished by intellectual truth ; 
 the Moral Sense is strengthened by the continu- 
 ous choosing of right-doing over wrong-doing; the 
 ^Esthetic Sense is cultivated by the correcting and 
 refining of taste for things beautiful and sublime ; 
 the Spiritual Sense is fostered by the spirit of piety 
 and devotion. This fourfold activity of the soul 
 may be said to cover the whole of the soul's opera- 
 tions. Over all, and the root and principle of all, 
 giving life and being, weight and measure and 
 moral worth to all, is the soul's own determining 
 power, which we call the Will. 
 
 5. In the harmonious development of all four 
 activities is the complete culture of the soul to 
 be effected. The exclusive exercise of any one ac- 
 tivity is detrimental to the rest. The exclusive 
 exercise of the Reason dwarfs the other func- 
 tions of the soul. It dries up all taste for art 
 and letters and starves out the spirit of piety 
 and devotion. In the constant development of 
 the ^Esthetic Sense, one may refine the organs 
 of sense and cultivate taste and sensibility, but 
 if it is done to the exclusion of rigid reasoning 
 and the superior emotions of the soul, it degene- 
 rates into sentimentalism and corruption of heart. 
 So also with exclusive Pietism; it narrows the 
 
4 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 range of thought, fosters the spirit of bigotry and 
 dogmatism, and makes man either an extravagant 
 dreamer or an extreme fanatic. Only when truth 
 and goodness walk hand in hand, and the heart 
 grows apace with the intellect, does the soul de- 
 velop into strong healthy action. 
 
 6. Again, truth is the object of Reason; good- 
 ness, the object of the Moral Sense; beauty, 
 whether in the physical, moral, or intellectual 
 order, the object of the ^Esthetic Sense. Herein 
 I include as a truth knowable by the light of 
 reason, the fact first and supreme above all other 
 facts, that there is a God. 1 Now, the Spiritual 
 Sense takes in all the truth, goodness, and beauty 
 of both the natural and revealed orders, and views 
 them in the light of Faith. The same intellectual 
 light still glows, but added thereto is, so to speak, 
 the splendor of God's countenance. 2 
 
 7. This fourfold activity of the soul does not 
 correspond to any four special faculties. It repre- 
 sents rather four distinct fields upon which all the 
 faculties operate. But we are not here concerned 
 with the intrinsic nature of our respective facul- 
 ties. We leave that to the psychologist. We will 
 consider those faculties rather in their operations 
 and in their practical applications. And first, let 
 us study that process of the mind in which the Illa- 
 tive Sense is included, and which is commonly 
 called thinking. 
 
 1 Constitutio Dogmatica de Fide Catholica, can. ii. 1. 
 
 2 Illuminet vultum suum super nos. Psalm Ixvi. 2. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 ON THINKING. 
 
 1. WE read, we converse, we write, we argue, 
 we discuss men and measures ; but not to the same 
 extent do we think aright. Let us then seek to 
 determine what is right thinking. It is in the 
 workings of daily life to still the voices of reverie 
 and sentiment and the inclinations of nature, and 
 listen to the language of reason ; it is to analyze 
 and discriminate ; it is to ask the why and where- 
 fore of things, to estimate them at their real worth, 
 and to give them their proper names ; it is to dis- 
 tinguish between what is of opinion and what of 
 speculation what of reason and inference, and 
 what of fancy and imagination how much is to 
 be considered certain and how much merely prob- 
 able ; it is to give the true and the false their real 
 values ; it is to lay down a clearly defined line be- 
 tween what is of true science and what of surmise 
 and conjecture; it is to know where one's know- 
 ledge ends and where one's ignorance begins; above 
 all, it is to arrive at that condition of mind in which 
 one can determine how and when to express what 
 one knows, and in which one performs the more 
 difficult feat of abstaining from speaking about 
 
6 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 that of which one knows nothing. This it is to 
 think. Need one be any longer surprised that it 
 is an unknown science to all but the few thought- 
 ful, well-disciplined minds that may be called the 
 educators of the world? 
 
 2. Withal, Thought is a most important ele- 
 ment in our acting. "Weigh its importance for a 
 moment. There is no life without action. Now 
 the soul's activity consists in, and is determined 
 by, its thought. We first feel and think ; after- 
 wards we will; then follow action and expression, 
 which are the outward evidence of our inmost liv- 
 ing. So that our expressions, our actions, our very 
 lives are ours in proportion as they are the outcome 
 of our own thinking and our own resolve, and not 
 of the thinking and the resolve of others. Not in- 
 deed that we all are not in some sense the creatures 
 of circumstance. But though influenced by the 
 external world though the thoughts and actions 
 of others necessarily condition our own thinking 
 and acting still, as the plant transforms into its 
 sap the food it draws from the earth in which it is 
 rooted, even thus should the thought we acquire, 
 the action we imitate, the impulse we receive, be 
 so assimilated into our own nature and personality 
 that they become bone of the bone and flesh of the 
 flesh of our thinking soul and our moral character. 
 
 n. 
 
 1. It follows that our duties as thinking, rational 
 beings are not compatible with that mental lethargy 
 
ON THINKING 7 
 
 in which we all of us are disposed to live. It is so 
 much easier for us to remember and repeat than to 
 think, that the large majority of us leave the think- 
 ing to a few and abide by the word of the hour they 
 choose to give us. We are living in an atmosphere 
 of routine knowledge and of a routine manner of 
 imparting that knowledge ; and both the knowledge 
 and the manner are not infrequently accepted with- 
 out questioning their intrinsic worth, or their cor- 
 rectness, or their fitness for time and place. The 
 professor is under the influence of this spirit. In 
 the lecture -room he is often content with retailing 
 to his class some view of his subject which he 
 adopts from a certain book without taking pains to 
 inquire into its correctness ; the author of that book 
 may have taken it on the same credit from some 
 prior work, and thus the opinion passes down from 
 generation to generation unsuspected, unchal- 
 lenged. Does it follow that the opinion is correct ? 
 By no means. An inquiring mind may one morn- 
 ing awaken to the absurdity of what generations 
 have handed down as a truth not to be gainsaid. 
 Witness the exploded theories still to be found in 
 text-books on chemistry and physics; or see the 
 hold that erroneously constructed grammars of the 
 English language continue to have upon our educa- 
 tional prejudices; or in history, note the gravity 
 with which our manuals repeat the myths of Se- 
 miramis and Ninias, of Romulus and Remus, of 
 Hengist and Horsa. 
 
 2. Passing beyond the class-room to the various 
 phases of thought among the reading public, we 
 
8 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 find the same spirit. Every school of philosophy 
 has its disciples who repeat the sayings of their 
 master with implicit confidence, without ever 
 stopping to question the principles from which 
 those sayings arise or the results to which they 
 lead. Which of them possesses 'the truth? Is it 
 Hegel or is it Schopenhauer? Is it Herbert Spen- 
 cer or is it Mill? If we are to believe their re- 
 spective admirers, each of them holds the secret of 
 all things in heaven and on earth the clue to all 
 difficulties the solution to the world-riddle. But 
 when we place their principles side by side we find 
 in them contradiction enough to create a chaos, 
 and we are led to conclude that in many instances 
 these systems are accepted not so much for truth's 
 sake as because they are the intellectual fashions 
 of the day. So it is with schools of criticism in 
 art and literature. Ruskin has talked thousands 
 into a factitious taste that pretends to admire 
 beauties to be found nowhere outside of the gla- 
 mour his fervid imagination has thrown around 
 objects of art. Paint a daub and call it a Turner 
 and forthwith these critics will trace in it strokes 
 of genius. Think you they understand the real 
 principles of art - criticism ? And fares it any 
 better with the Wordsworthian who finds praise 
 for Wordsworth's baldest and prosiest lines, or 
 with the Shelleyite who sees a mystic meaning in 
 Shelley's most meaningless rhapsodies, or with the 
 Browningite who persists in finding in Browning's 
 poems meanings that the poet himself never put 
 into them, and which he even disavowed? The 
 
ON THINKING 9 
 
 education of all such schools, when made exclusive, 
 is one-sided, narrow, content with no other proof 
 than a prejudice. True criticism, be it that of 
 literature or of art, is all-embracing. 
 
 3. Turning to politics, we find that same groove- 
 spirit. Men repeat the cant of the hour glibly, 
 smoothly, often eloquently, as innocent of what it 
 all means as the child not yet arrived at the use of 
 reason. They have no further cause for belong- 
 ing to one party rather than to another than that 
 they happen to find themselves there. It was the 
 party to which their fathers belonged, and is there- 
 fore good enough for them. But as to seeking the 
 rational grounds on which their political creed is 
 constructed, or the principles that give existence to 
 their party, such things never occurred to them. 
 Grounds and principles were not included in the 
 shibboleth of the hour that they took up and re- 
 peated. And so they go on, year after year, in a 
 well-worn routine of political thought, till a crisis 
 comes upon them, and they are led to think, and 
 mayhap they find that they have been half their 
 lives and all from want of real thought advo- 
 cating a policy unsound in its nature, disastrous in 
 its results, and opposed to their own inner convic- 
 tions. That man has yet to learn the use of his 
 reason, who, in all matters based upon individual 
 opinion, whether they be of politics or religion, has 
 never challenged and weighed and measured the 
 principles upon which his opinions are based. 
 
 4. The uneducated classes cannot make use of 
 their reason in this searching manner ; it may be 
 
10 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 as well for them that it is so ; but the educated man 
 owes it to the reason with which he has been en- 
 dowed to his friends and neighbors who look to 
 him for a guiding word as a sacred duty for which 
 he will have to render an account to his Maker, 
 so to train and discipline his thoughts that he 
 shall acquire a habit of thinking and judging with 
 discrimination. When a young man has been so 
 favored by Providence as to be enabled to spend 
 several years in acquiring a thorough education, 
 surrounded by everything calculated to inspire him 
 with a love for study and a thoughtful habit of 
 mind, breathing an intellectual atmosphere that 
 becomes an essential part of his thinking, he there- 
 by assumes a great responsibility. If he has been 
 so privileged, it is in view of his making use of the 
 opportunities placed at his disposal, not for himself 
 alone, but for his less fortunate neighbor as well. 
 If he has been favored with a more brilliant light, 
 it is with intent to illumine the dark places around. 
 If education has been freely lavished upon him, 
 it is in order that in turn he may freely lavish it 
 upon the wide circle over which he is destined to 
 have influence. Therefore it cannot be too sol- 
 emnly impressed upon those enjoying this privilege 
 to fit themselves in all earnestness, both morally and 
 intellectually, to do the good that it is given them 
 to do. It is well that we all of us hold an exalted 
 opinion of the real dignity of our respective posi- 
 tions in life. To the student whom these pages 
 reach I would say : Gather up with care the treasures 
 of knowledge and wisdom that lie strewn about 
 
ON THINKING 11 
 
 you. Guard them with a jealous eye. See that they 
 be not sullied either by the daubing of error or the 
 turpitude of vice. Cherish them as a heaven-sent 
 patrimony by the right use and investment of which 
 you are to purchase your title to eternal glory. All 
 else may pass away, but the wisdom of well-digested 
 knowledge and methodical thought remains through 
 sunshine and storm, making the sunshine more 
 beautiful and the storm less severe. 
 
 5. There is some truth in these remarks of the 
 eccentric Thoreau : " It is foolish for a man to ac- 
 cumulate material wealth chiefly, houses and lands. 
 Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount 
 of thought which we have had, which we have 
 thought out. The ground we have thus created is 
 forever pasturage for our thoughts. I fall back on 
 to visions which I have had. What else adds to 
 my possessions and makes me rich in all lands? 
 If you have ever done any work with those finest 
 tools, the Imagination and Fancy and Reason, it is 
 a new creation, independent of the world, and a 
 possession forever. You have laid up something 
 against a rainy day. You have to that extent 
 cleared the wilderness." 1 But I would have you 
 enjoy all this intellectual wealth, not simply for its 
 own sake and in a spirit of self-sufficiency and self- 
 contentment, as the New England hermit teaches. 
 Thoreau is only a human mole. He lives in the 
 earth, and his thoughts and aspirations are of the 
 earth, earthy. He ignores the clear sky of a spir- 
 itual world and the brilliant sunshine of a divine 
 
 i Journal, May 1, 1857. 
 
12 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 revelation. It is under this sky and in this sun- 
 light I would have you learn how to think. Con- 
 fine not your thoughts in the narrow cell of a petty 
 prejudice, or the slough of indolence, or the con- 
 tracted limits of comfort and ease, when you can 
 roam through the free air of the Infinite. There- 
 fore, discipline your minds. Be not too credulous. 
 There is a wise as well as a foolish skepticism. 
 Science has her superstitions, and her romancings 
 are as unreal and shadowy as those of the most 
 ephemeral literature. Accustom yourselves to the 
 habit of weighing carefully all you read or hear. 
 Be not carried away by every novelty. Learn to 
 sift the chaff from the grain. Remember that he 
 is not the most learned man who has read the great- 
 est number of books. Only in proportion as you 
 digest and assimilate to your own thoughts what 
 you read do you acquire genuine knowledge. Out 
 of the world's thousand ideas make a single one 
 your own, and I assure you that you will have made 
 more intellectual progress than if you were able to 
 repeat Homer or Milton from memory. 
 
CHAPTER in. 
 
 EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES. 
 
 1 
 
 1. THAT we may all the better understand the 
 nature and scope of sound thinking, let us consider 
 two typical thinkers of recent days, dwelling in 
 different hemispheres of our globe, standing at 
 opposite poles of human thought, and at the same 
 time recognized masters of their own language. 
 They both possessed this in common, that each 
 was retiring, sensitive, shrinking from mere no- 
 toriety, not over-anxious to speak, and speaking 
 only when each had something to say. They were 
 loved in life, and in death their memories are re- 
 vered by all who knew them ; they are still admired 
 by thousands and still misunderstood by thousands 
 more. 
 
 2. One of these thinkers is Kalph Waldo Em- 
 erson. His was a mind like the JEolism harp. It 
 was awake to the most delicate impressions, and at 
 every breath of thought it gave out a music all its 
 own. His sympathies with Nature were so strong, 
 so intense, so real, that they seemed to take root with 
 the plant, to infuse themselves into the brute crea- 
 tion, and to think and act with his fellow-man. 
 His reading was broad. From the East and from 
 
14 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the West he gathered the sweets of all philoso- 
 phic systems and all literatures, and in the labo- 
 ratory of his brain wrought them into his own 
 peculiar honey-comb of thought and expression. 
 The deeper realities of life he overlooked. Those 
 chasms that reveal whatever is revolting in life's 
 squalor and misery, those seamy sides which Tol- 
 stoi' and Ibsen place before us, were ignored by 
 Emerson. His intellectual vision was too near- 
 sighted to perceive them. A thing, be it an insti- 
 tution, or a custom, or a habit, exists; that suffices, 
 for Emerson ; it must therefore be good, and useful, 
 and beautiful in its own way. He is a passionate 
 lover of the beautiful ; he would reduce all morality 
 to a code of esthetics. Beauty of thought, beauty 
 of expression, beauty of action, beauty of manners, 
 these are the outcome of his philosophy. Su- 
 preme culture is for him supreme human perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 3. However, we must not forget that Emerson is 
 a thinker who has learned how to assimilate the best 
 thoughts of the best writers and make them fruc- 
 tify in his own mind. His lines of thought are nar- 
 row, but he thinks on them intensely. Not infre- 
 quently his language only half expresses that which 
 his mind labors to give utterance to. Some of his 
 assertions are riddles. He speaks with the mys- 
 teriousness of the Sphinx. "We use semblances 
 of logic," he tells us, "until experience puts us in 
 possession of real logic." 1 Wherefore he disdains 
 argument. He will not reason with you. He is 
 
 1 Letters and Social Aims, p. 9. 
 
EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES 15 
 
 content to throw out the hint or the suggestion ; 
 you may take it or leave it. He never obtrudes 
 his views upon you. None the less does he pose as 
 a thinker and a prophet. He is the Sir Oracle 
 of Transcendentalism. But on life and death and 
 immortality, Emerson is no wiser than the books 
 he consults ; nay, not as wise as some. 
 
 4. Unfortunately for Emerson and the value of 
 his utterances, he ignores the supernatural in man. 
 His view of religion is that religion is a merely 
 human institution. He is tolerant only in certain 
 directions. He has never acquired the large- 
 sightedness that is expected from a man of his cul- 
 ture. Let him expatiate on the Nature he loves, 
 on society, on manners, on experience, on represen- 
 tative men, on letters and social aims, and he is ad- 
 mirable, suggestive, original ; but once he descends 
 to concrete living issues, we find only the lifeless 
 bones of intolerance dressed up with the time-worn 
 garments of New England puritanical prejudices. 
 I hold this truly eminent writer and thinker up to 
 the reader that the reader may learn both from his 
 strength and his weakness. One can no more make 
 a model of his mind than one can of his style. 
 He is in some respects a law unto himself. The 
 secret of his success lies in this : that he does not 
 isolate a thought ; he studies its relations as far as 
 his intellectual vision ranges. 
 
 5. Emerson had other limitations. He sought 
 truth in every religious and philosophical system 
 outside of the teachings of the Catholic Church. 
 He attempted to embrace all systems, showing 
 
16 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 thereby that he understood none. In vain is he read 
 for a consistent moral code or a complete philosophic 
 creed; groping through his books one not infre- 
 quently finds shadow taken for substance, dream 
 for reality, Emerson for truth. Whole worlds of 
 thought lie hidden from his vision as they stand 
 enveloped within the umbra of Self projected into 
 intellectual space. Still, his side-views and his 
 half -utterances are suggestive. The reading of him 
 with understanding is a mental tonic, bracing for 
 the cultured intellect as is the Alpine air for the 
 mountaineer. Could one imbibe his sympathy for 
 Nature without becoming imbued with his panthe- 
 ism ; could one acquire his culture without the dilet- 
 tanteism that accompanies it ; could one make his 
 love for the beautiful in all shapes and under all 
 conditions one's own, looking above all beyond 
 the mere surface into the deeper and more spir- 
 itual beauty of things, one would be learning a 
 valuable lesson from Emerson's intellectual life. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Now that we have had a glimpse of the inner 
 chambers of Emerson's mind, let us study another 
 type of thinker, that we may in admiration, and at 
 a distance, and each in his own sphere, to the best 
 of his ability, follow in the footsteps of this master. 
 He is one whose word carries weight wherever the 
 English language is known. His name is revered 
 by the studious of all classes and of every creed ; 
 and it is so because he was, during the whole course 
 
EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES 17 
 
 of a long life, thoroughly honest in the expression 
 of his convictions. He did not understand the art 
 of special pleading; he never learned the trick of 
 covering up disagreeable truths or removing out of 
 sight a fact calculated to tell against him. En- 
 dowed with an intellect one of the most acute ever 
 bestowed upon man, and well disciplined by severe 
 study and profound meditation, it was his delight 
 to grapple with difficulties. That mind so ingen- 
 ious and searching never rested till it found the 
 basis of an opinion, or struck the central idea of a 
 system. It is often a source of wonder to me how 
 much patient, earnest thought its eminent posses- 
 sor must have brought to bear upon an idea before 
 he could see it in so many lights, view it in such 
 different relations, and place it before the reader 
 in all the nakedness of truth. But this is one of 
 the characteristics of great thinkers, and such pre- 
 eminently was John Henry, Cardinal Newman. 
 
 2. It was in 1877 that I first met Newman in 
 the bare, modest parlor of the Birmingham Ora- 
 tory, and I need scarcely add that that meeting is 
 one of the most precious incidents in my life. I 
 thought the very simplicity of that parlor was in 
 keeping with the greatness of the man. Tinsel, or 
 decoration, or an air of worldliness would have 
 jarred with the simple, unassuming ways of the 
 noble soul I met there. He had then lately re- 
 turned from his beloved Oxford, where his Alma 
 Mater, Trinity College, did herself an honor and 
 him an act of tardy justice in inducting him as 
 Honorary Fellow. This veteran knight of natural 
 
18 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and revealed truth looked old and worn ; his hair 
 was blanched ; his features were furrowed with the 
 traces of age. His manners were gentle and con- 
 descending. His voice was soft and beautiful in its 
 varied modulations, now serious, now playful, 
 according to the subject he spoke upon. With the 
 most exquisite tact he listened or placed his re- 
 mark as the case required. There was a charm in 
 his conversation. As it flowed along placid and 
 pleasant, his countenance glowed with a nameless 
 expression; his eyes sparkled, and he spoke with 
 all the strength and clearness of a man whose intel- 
 lectual vigor is still unimpaired. I was not half 
 an hour in his presence when I felt the spell of that 
 irresistible personal influence which he swayed 
 through life, whether within the walls of Oriel, or 
 from the Protestant pulpit of St. Mary's, or in the 
 retirement of the Oratory. I then understood the 
 power that shook the Anglican Church to its very 
 basis three and thirty years previously. In 1889 
 I again met this venerable leader of men ; within 
 him faintly flickered that brilliant intellectual light 
 that had been the beacon and the comfort of so 
 many souls groping through the mists of doubt and 
 error. As Cardinal he was the same cheerful, 
 pleasant, unassuming man that he had been as plain 
 John Henry Newman. Gladly would I limn for 
 the reader the dear, sweet face, so genial and gentle 
 and serene, that ever haunts me ; describe the voice, 
 so feeble and yet so soft and mellow, that continues 
 to reverberate in my ear; catch the genial gleam 
 of those eyes that I still behold with their far-away 
 
EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES 19 
 
 look, as though peering into another world and 
 communing with some invisible person. 
 
 3. Though endowed with the delicate sensibility of 
 the poet, Cardinal Newman never permitted senti- 
 ment or feeling or inclination or confirmed habit to 
 control or divert the severe logic of his noble rea- 
 son. See, for instance, the caution with which he 
 took the most important step in his long career. 
 For years inclination and grace and the logic of his 
 mind had been leading him into the Catholic 
 Church, but he makes no move that is not first 
 sanctioned by reason and conscience. 1 His sym- 
 pathies have gone forth to her long before proof or 
 argument points out the way; but he holds aloof 
 till reason becomes convinced. 2 He even keeps 
 others for years from entering her Communion. 3 
 And whilst writing a book in favor of that Church 
 he does not yet make up his mind to become a mem- 
 ber ; he reserves to himself the chance of changing 
 his views after the whole argumentative process 
 influencing him has been placed before him in 
 writing. 4 In all this he is acting sincerely and in 
 
 1 " I had no right, I had no leave, to act against my conscience." 
 Apologia, 2d ed. p. 150. " All the logic in the world would not 
 have made me move faster towards Rome than I did." Ibid. 
 p. 169. 
 
 2 May 5, 1841, he writes : " That my sympathies have grown 
 towards the religion of Rome I do not deny ; that my reasons for 
 shunning her communion have lessened or altered it would be diffi- 
 cult perhaps to prove. And I wish to go by reason, not by feel- 
 ing." Rid. p. 189. 
 
 8 " I kept some of them back for several years from being re- 
 ceived into the Catholic Church." Ibid. p. 177. 
 
 4 Lastly, during the last half of that tenth year (1844) I was 
 
20 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 good faith. Protestants question his honesty; 
 Catholics fear he may be trifling with grace ; but 
 none the less he waits and prays, and the truth 
 grows upon him from the gray of dawn to the full 
 light of day. Never for a single moment did he 
 falter through the whole course of the long and 
 painful struggle ; from first to last he acted accord- 
 ing to his lights ; God respected the earnest endeavor 
 and blessed it and crowned it with the grace of 
 conversion. I repeat it, it is this strict and chival- 
 ric adherence to truth at all times and under all 
 circumstances that won him the profound respect 
 and admiration of Christendom. He disciplined 
 his mind into the habit of seeing things as they are 
 and of expressing them as he saw them, till it had 
 become an impossibility for him to do otherwise. 
 
 4. His is a mind well worth our study. Its 
 logical acuteness was something marvelous. Its 
 analyzing power was searching and exhaustive. 
 Its introspection seemed to be all-seeing. He un- 
 derstood so well the checks and limitations of the 
 human intellect that he was never satisfied to ac- 
 cept an idea for the reasons on its face. Like 
 Emerson, he regarded verbal logic as a mere pro- 
 visional scaffolding. He went behind the formal 
 demonstration to what he considered the far more 
 powerful motives of credibility. The syllogism 
 
 engaged in writing a book (Essay on Development) in favor of the 
 Roman Church, and indirectly against the English ; but even then, 
 till it was finished, I had not absolutely intended to publish it, 
 wishing to reserve to myself the chance of changing my mind 
 when the argumentative views which were actuating me had been 
 distinctly brought out before me in writing." Ibid. p. 186. 
 
EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES 21 
 
 says not all. The real convincing and abiding rea- 
 sons on which a proposition is accepted as true are 
 beyond either the premises or the conclusion. "As 
 to Logic," he remarks, "its chain of conclusions 
 hangs loose at both ends; both the point from 
 which the proof should start and the points at 
 which it should arrive are beyond its reach; it 
 comes short both of first principles and of concrete 
 issues." 1 Besides all this there are undercurrents 
 of sentiment and inclination, associations of ideas, 
 obscure memories, half confessed motives, proba- 
 bilities, popular impressions that determine the 
 frame of mind and the tone of thought, and they 
 all of them enter into his calculations. "And 
 such mainly is the way," he tells us, "in which all 
 men, gifted or not gifted, commonly reason, not 
 by rule, but by an inward faculty." 2 
 
 5. Newman was not viewy as was Emerson. 
 He abhorred vagueness. He thought in the con- 
 crete. He lived in a clearly defined world of his 
 own. He had his own point of view and his own 
 charming manner of clothing a truth, but he was 
 always careful to make allowance for the personal 
 element that might refract his vision or deflect his 
 inference. His advice to a writer reveals one of 
 the secrets of that giant-like strength which he dis- 
 played in controversy, and with which he so effect- 
 ually overwhelmed his opponents: "Be sure you 
 grasp fully any view which you seek to combat, 
 and leave no room for doubt about your own mean- 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, chap. viii. i. 
 
 2 Oxford University Sermons, xiii. 7, p. 257, 3d ed. 
 
22 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 ing." 1 A mind recognizing all these elements of 
 thought and coordinating them, and giving each its 
 value and position, is the highest ideal of a well- 
 thinking mind that I can place before the reader. 
 But I have not yet said all. 
 
 6. Cardinal Newman's mind is above all a reli- 
 gious mind. Religion is for him a reality, an 
 intense reality; it is a sacred tunic clothing all his 
 thoughts and making them holy and earnest ; it is 
 an essential part of his existence ; it is the life of 
 his life. And this is not simply the religion of 
 sentiment or of the mere viewiness of doctrine and 
 dogma, but religion based upon clear-cut doctrines 
 and well-defined principles. At the age of fifteen 
 we find him resting " in the thought of two and two 
 only supreme and luminously self -evident beings," 
 himself and his Creator. 2 From that age, he tells 
 us in one of those revelations of himself that light 
 up his soul and show the man, " dogma has been 
 the fundamental principle of my religion : I know 
 no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea 
 of any other sort of religion ; religion, as a mere 
 sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As 
 well can there be filial love without the fact of 
 a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme 
 Being." 3 Here is the central thought of Cardinal 
 Newman's intellect. All thoughts, all issues group 
 around that one idea. Every sermon, every essay, 
 
 1 Letter to W. S. Lilly, Fortnightly Beview, September, 1890. 
 
 2 Apologia, p. 49, ed. 1882. London: Longmans, Green, Reader 
 & Dyer. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 96. 
 
EMERSON AND NEWMAN AS TYPES 23 
 
 every treatise of the eight and thirty volumes 
 penned by his hand, reveals a soul ever questioning, 
 ever struggling with difficulties, ever solving to it- 
 self the problems and issues of the day, ever arran- 
 ging and rearranging in clear, well-defined order its 
 own views and opinions; and all for one object 
 and with one result, that of harmonizing them with 
 the teachings of religion. The thoughts and ques- 
 tionings and theories against which other strong 
 and well-equipped intellects struggled only to be 
 made captives of irreligion and agnosticism, he 
 also wrestled with and became their master, each 
 new effort giving him additional strength; and 
 finally, his laurels won, and looking out upon the 
 intellectual struggles of the day with the repose of 
 a warrior who had been in the fight and had come 
 out of it a victor, he passed away in his ninetieth 
 year, enshrined in a halo of veneration. 1 
 
 1 The student desirous of understanding the philosophical phase 
 of Newman's mind and method should read the following works in 
 this order : 1. Apologia. 2. Oxford University Sermons. 3. Doc- 
 trinal Developments. 4. Grammar of Assent. This book restates 
 and coordinates on a more scientific basis the principles discussed 
 in the University Sermons. 5. Idea of a University. 
 
 The spiritual phase of his mind may be traced in his Parochial 
 and Plain Sermons, and his Sermons to Mixed Congregations. 
 
 The purely literary phase of his mind is best illustrated in his 
 Present Position of Catholics in England, Loss and Gain, Callista, 
 and The Dream of Gerontins. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 1. FROM these types of thinking let us return to 
 thought itself, and note the higher principle of its 
 existence. Not content with enjoying the light of 
 day, let us look to the sun whence emanates that 
 light. From thinking we pass to the principle of 
 all thinking and all knowing. Truth is of the 
 mind. It is the equation between the intellect and 
 its object. The three elements of every proposi- 
 tion of every truth apprehended are subject, 
 object, and their relation. Now, that which we 
 apprehend as truth is truth not because we appre- 
 hend it as such, but because it exists as such in the 
 light of the Unchanging Truth that is independent 
 of all modes of apprehension. Without that light 
 our intellectual vision were as darkened as our bod- 
 ily eyes without the light of the sun. This is the 
 teaching of great thinkers and great saints. In 
 this simple manner does St. Augustine express him- 
 self : " If what you say is seen to be true by both 
 of us, and what I say is seen to be true by both of 
 us, where, I would ask, do we see it? Assuredly, 
 neither you see it in me nor I in you ; but we both 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 25 
 
 see it in that unchanging truth which is above our 
 minds." 1 "But," adds another great Doctor of 
 the Church, the angelic Thomas of Aquin, "un- 
 changing truth is contained in the eternal reasons 
 of things, and therefore our soul knows all things 
 as true in those reasons." 2 The intellectual light 
 by which our mind apprehends and pronounces 
 upon truth that which makes it evident to us 
 that two and two make four, or that it is impossible 
 for a thing to be and not be at the same time, or 
 that every effect has a cause, that light is in some 
 sense a participation in the Uncreated Light that 
 contains in itself the eternal principles of things 
 and the eternal reasons for all actual and possible 
 truths and existences. Here we have the true 
 source both of the knowledge we possess and the 
 intellects by which we know. The human intellect 
 so illumined is the principle of thought. Such an 
 aspect of our thinking brings us nearer to God. 
 The light of his Divine countenance is stamped 
 upon us. 3 It guides our reason; it strengthens our 
 understanding ; it illumines our thoughts ; it places 
 its impress on all that is true, all that is good, and 
 all that is beautiful. 4 
 
 1 Confess, lib. xii. cap. xxv. 35. 
 
 2 Summa. Pars prima. Qusest. Ixxxiv. art. v. 
 
 8 Signatnm est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine. Psalm iv. 6. 
 
 4 Per ipsani sigillationem divini luminis in nobis omnia demon- 
 strantur. Summa, loc. cit. Whilst the light as from God is un- 
 created, St. Thomas holds that as received by the human intel- 
 lect it is participated in in a finite mode, and therefore as it exists 
 in the soul it is a created light. He holds this as against the 
 theory of the intellects agens of Averrocs. See his De Unitate 
 Intdlectus contra Averroistas. 
 
26 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 2. From this elevated point of view one can 
 more easily perceive the true relations of all know- 
 ledge, be it in the natural or in the supernatural 
 order. Utterly groundless is the position of the 
 agnostic who rejects as impossible a divine reve- 
 lation. Since the very light of our natural reason 
 that primary condition of all knowledge and all 
 certainty comes from God, why may not the 
 same all-powerful Author, if it so pleases his infi- 
 nite wisdom, communicate other truths of an order 
 beyond the reach of human discovery? Such a 
 communication were only an additional ray from 
 the same inexhaustible source. The light of that 
 ray may be more dazzling, its warmth more burn- 
 ing, its energy more vitalizing, but it is still a ray 
 from the same Divine Light that illumines this 
 world. And could our weak intellectual vision only 
 bear its full brilliancy we would recognize it as of 
 a piece with other rays less brilliant. For in that 
 Divine Essence whence all truths emanate, there 
 are no broken aspects of things, no wastes of know- 
 ledge, no doubt or darkness, no opposition or con- 
 tradiction of views, nothing of all that belongs to 
 our feeble and limited intelligence; but all those 
 truths that we apprehend in a partial sense, and 
 under various aesthetic, literary, and scientific as- 
 pects, are therein harmonized into a single whole. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Taking our stand here we shall also be in a 
 better position to judge of the intellectual and so- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 27 
 
 cial deviations from old lines of thought and action. 
 The flood of light that a new theory, or a new idea, 
 or an additional aspect of an old truth, throws 
 upon us is for the moment too much for us. 
 We are bedimmed with its splendor. We have 
 therefore "to grope in the dark as though there were 
 no light. Men are slow to conceive an idea ; slower 
 still to grasp its whole import. It takes many 
 minds and a long period of time to mature a 
 thought. In consequence, what we regard as de- 
 viations, when the thing is not evidently false, may 
 be really the shortest route to the whole truth. No 
 man knows where the error ends and at what point 
 the truth begins in any of the doubtful issues that 
 agitate the world. All we may be certain of is 
 that the truth shall finally prevail. It remains for 
 us but to wait and hold firmly by the old moor- 
 ings till the atmosphere clears and we see our way. 
 The truth suffers most from those over-zealous de- 
 fenders whose zeal is not according to knowledge ; 
 who are guided more by their prejudices than by 
 any enlightened views ; who beat the air with wild 
 and whirling words ; whose acquaintance with the 
 new is fragmentary and at second-hand ; who con- 
 sider a training in one branch of science or letters 
 sufficient preparation to cope with athletes in every 
 other branch; finally, who enter the arena pos- 
 sessed of no other weapons than dogmatism and pre- 
 sumption. These men mislead the weak-minded ; 
 they bring confusion into the ranks ; they impede 
 the action of competent thinkers and shut them 
 out from achieving good; they set up difficulties of 
 
28 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 their own making, and knock down objections no 
 living opponent of faith and revelation ever dreamed 
 of putting forth. These are the friends from whom 
 truth may well pray to be delivered. 
 
 2. Nor is there much to be feared from the at- 
 tacks even those of them made in good faith 
 upon revealed religion. The opponents the most 
 competent have as a rule overlooked some essential 
 element in their calculations; or they have been 
 overhasty in drawing their conclusions; or they 
 have misread the document; or they have made an 
 erroneous assumption in their premises. Careful 
 study and research will set the matter right. Less 
 sincere opponents are too prone to talk about mat- 
 ters whereof they know nothing to injure any but 
 the fickle and the superficial. The accurate thinker 
 makes due allowance for all such shortcomings. 
 By patient self-possession of one's soul may one 
 escape being carried away by the cant of the hour 
 or the intellectual fashion of the day. Because a 
 theory is popular, it does not follow that it is also 
 true. Disease is catching, not health. And so 
 too may error gain proselytes faster than truth. 
 Moreover, the very newness of a new theory or a 
 new doctrine tends to its exaggeration. It stands 
 out in undue prominence. It compels a readjust- 
 ment of our previous knowledge. We see not at 
 first sight its right relations with other subjects; 
 we grasp only part of the truth, or we overesti- 
 mate its impoj*tance, or we fall short of its true 
 position in our calculations, and all this misleads 
 us in our reasonings upon it. But be it remem- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 29 
 
 bered that this mental confusion is only a passing 
 phase. 
 
 3. The present generation may not apprehend 
 the real import of a new doctrine or a new theory ; 
 at most only a few of the master-minds rightly 
 measure its entire course ; but those coming after 
 us, being born into the new light, shall have become 
 accustomed to it, and shall have learned to place 
 the truth on its proper basis and in its most telling 
 position. The age devours all manner of know- 
 ledge with equal avidity, be the knowledge whole- 
 some or be the knowledge poisonous. Some it di- 
 gests and assimilates into the blood and bone and 
 muscle of its thoughts; some it rejects; some again 
 of a poisonous character throws it into fevers and 
 excitements and produces blotches and plague- 
 spots. But it is only the truth that is life-giving 
 and strengthening. All else is imbued with the 
 seeds of death and destruction. The truth alone 
 survives. 
 
 III. 
 
 1. As all the years of a person's life are wrought 
 into the formation of his nature and character, so 
 does it take all the past centuries of a people's 
 existence to make it that which it is at present. 
 And the characteristic spirit of a people gives 
 tone and color to the spirit of each individual of 
 that people. This remark leads us to some very 
 sugestive reflections. We all of us are the out- 
 come of past influences. Generations have lived 
 
30 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and thought and acted that each of us might be 
 what he is. Were any link in the chain of heredity 
 lacking we would be different in aptitude, in capa- 
 city, in very form and appearance. The absence of 
 some faculty, the feebleness of some disposition in 
 some one or other of our ancestors were sufficient 
 to vary the results in the person of each of us. Na- 
 ture acts with persistence; slowly, it is true, but 
 with the sureness of fate. She never breaks the 
 mould. Types are produced and apparently van- 
 ish, perhaps for ages; but they are not lost; all at 
 once, when least expected, they replace their im- 
 press on countenance and character and help to 
 shape the course of life and action. Every gener- 
 ation weakens or strengthens some one point or 
 other in character or disposition, in tone or temper- 
 ament, in intellect or soul. Each individual has 
 his personality stamped with the weight and per- 
 sistent force of his ancestry. This is an ele- 
 mentary truth; we cannot ignore it, and it is wis- 
 dom to recognize and accept its inevitableness, and 
 shape our lives so as to strengthen in ourselves the 
 sources of our strength and weaken whatever con- 
 tains an element of social or personal disorganiza- 
 tion. As it took long periods of heat and of 
 glacial action, of attrition and denudation, of sink- 
 ing and rising of the earth's surface, and conse- 
 quent changes of plant and animal life in order to 
 prepare this world for man's habitation, so is it 
 in the throes of ages that the hereditary tendencies 
 of the present generation have had their birth. 1 
 
 1 A friend suggests that these remarks savor of Evolutionism. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 31 
 
 2. What we say of man's organic growth and 
 development applies with no less force to the for- 
 mation of his thought. Around him and within 
 him, in the very air he breathes, is the wisdom of 
 all past ages and civilizations. No thought is iso- 
 lated. It has sprung from some previous seed ; it 
 has fed upon other prior thoughts ; at their expense 
 has it been nourished and has it waxed strong. 
 We think as we do now, because past generations 
 thought as they did in their day ; because Greece 
 thought as she did, because Rome thought as she 
 did, and because Greece and Rome have been our 
 educators and the educators of Europe for the past 
 twenty centuries. Truths and expressions that 
 were then new and startling have since become com- 
 monplace. That which was the exclusive property 
 of a thoughtful few has with time filtered into the 
 general intelligence. 
 
 3. Another source of our ideas is that which re- 
 sults from the transmitted experiences of past gen- 
 erations. One may hear from men who have never 
 
 It is a question of truth and not of names. Now every theory that 
 has ever laid hold of the brain of man has done so by reason of 
 some truth contained in it. And Evolutionism is no exception. 
 How much or how little is its share of truth neither we nor its 
 advocates are in position to define. However, it so happens that 
 this is one of the very doctrines the Evolutionists have ignored. Mr. 
 Frederick Harrison thus berates them for it: " Even the philoso- 
 phers of Evolution consistently forget that the generation of men 
 to be are being daily evolved out of the whole of the generations 
 that have been. Evolutionists are the readiest of all to tear up 
 whole regions of human history as waste paper, or to discharge the 
 product of vast ages of man into the deep, as some dangerous 
 excrement of the race." Nineteenth Century, November, 1880. 
 
32 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 learned how to read or write the wisest and best 
 sayings in one's Horace. The experiences of life 
 and the workings of the human heart are confined 
 to no privileged order of men. Every people has 
 its' proverbs embodying the lessons that time and 
 men's failings and successes alike have handed 
 down. The fables attributed to ^Esop were the de- 
 light of youth and of old age in Greece; trans- 
 planted by Phaedrus, they took firm root in Rome ; 
 recast into inimitable verse by Lafontaine, they 
 became classic thought in France; but prior to 
 Lafontaine, or Phsedrus, or JEsop they had been the 
 daily lessons of children on the banks of the Gan- 
 ges. They crystallized in a convenient and attrac- 
 tive form the worldly wisdom and the common 
 experiences of mankind; long before they were 
 inscribed in books they had been the joint inherit- 
 ance of a faithful and tenacious traditionary know- 
 ledge. 
 
 4. Since, then, the past has contributed so largely 
 to make us what we are since it supplies the very 
 atmosphere of our thinking and the conditions 
 under which our brain works it behooves each 
 and all of us to think and read in a temper and 
 mood in keeping with the great thinkers of former 
 times. It is by a wise, discriminating use of past 
 thought in connection with the present that we may 
 hope to secure definite and profitable results in our 
 thinking. This is the legitimate function of books. 
 Only in so far as they supply food for our mental 
 activity do they avail. And for this reason they 
 are not to be overestimated, nor is the worth of a 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 33 
 
 man's opinions to be measured by the number of 
 volumes that he has read. Nor should we be too 
 hasty to despise the views of men limited in their ac- 
 quaintance with books. It is the besetting mistake 
 of students. To them I would say : You will find 
 in the world men who have not had your oppor- 
 tunities for book-knowledge ; men who have passed 
 through life with open eyes and wide-awake minds ; 
 who have read long and diligently in the great book 
 of Nature, be it that of man or that of plant and 
 animal, and who have drawn therefrom lessons of 
 wisdom and usefulness; you will find these men 
 sound in their judgments on every topic within the 
 sphere of their experience; you will find their 
 views of actions and events clear, just, enlightened ; 
 still you may be inclined to make but slight esti- 
 mate of their attainments because they cannot 
 back up their opinions by quotation from some one 
 or other of your favorite authors. This were a 
 serious blunder which the experience of advancing 
 years and a like knowledge of the world will enable 
 you to correct. Your proper and most profitable 
 course would be to modify, strengthen, improve 
 your crude theories by their practical knowledge. 
 What need of their knowing that this man or 
 that wrote the same thought that they thoroughly 
 realize. You tell them that you read their opinion 
 in such and such a classic, and they may well reply 
 in the words of La Bruyere : " I believe it on your 
 word ; but I have given the opinion as my own. 
 May I not think a true thing in my own way, after 
 these great authors have thought it in theirs, and 
 
34 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 since others shall still think it after I have passed ? " 1 
 Much has been written of late years with the view 
 of determining the extent of Shakespeare's learn- 
 ing. I would ask, to what purpose ? Does it not 
 suffice to know that Shakespeare's own mind was 
 fertile enough to conceive, capacious enough to 
 contain, creative enough to originate and send 
 forth, fresh and vigorous in the full bloom and 
 maturity of exquisite expression, all the great 
 thoughts arising from the hearts of all the great 
 poets of all times ? In the presence of such a wealth 
 of genius books and authorities go for very little ; 
 not that they are to be despised; nor did Shake- 
 speare despise his Plutarch and his Holinshed, his 
 Grower, his Florio's Montaigne, and his Chapman's 
 Homer ; but they were in his hands simply the dead 
 men's bones over which the spirit of his genius 
 moved, and forthwith the bones knit together, and 
 flesh grew upon them, and he breathed into them 
 a soul, and they stood erect living creations, dis- 
 tinct personalities, each with a will and a destiny, 
 and the responsibility of his deeds pressing upon 
 him and stamping his character forever. In a like 
 spirit should we all of us learn the use of books. 
 They are aids only inasmuch as they help our 
 thinking. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. Right thinking is a habit; it is therefore to 
 be acquired by practice. One may say here and 
 
 1 Les Caracteres, t. i. p. 118. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 35 
 
 now : " I will begin from this hour to think cor- 
 rectly," but it does not follow that forthwith one 
 will become a profound thinker. There remains to 
 consider the ways and means by which to arrive 
 at this habit ; one must look to the lets and hin- 
 drances that beset one's course; then by slow, pa- 
 tient, and earnest effort one may finally succeed in 
 controlling one's intellect. Every thought has its 
 cause ; every action, its motive ; every conclusion, 
 its premise. Therefore, the essence of right think- 
 ing is this : that he who so thinks is not content 
 with the last word of a chain of thought ; he exam- 
 ines the process by which that chain has been con- 
 structed ; he determines the value of the principles 
 from which the chain starts ; he regards the thought 
 in all its bearings and defines its true position in 
 the nature of things. 
 
 2. Again, that is the most efficient and best 
 trained thinking which is the most continuous. 
 But continuous trains of thought are possible only 
 with an economizing of brain power. Anything 
 tending to weaken that power, or to scatter it over 
 a large field of observation, is a hindrance to 
 sound thinking. In this category is to be ranked 
 all reading in which fancy or curiosity is allowed 
 to run away with reason and understanding. It 
 were as easy for a man to be successful in life by 
 a constant change of occupation, as for one with 
 no control over his mind to become a profound 
 thinker. I would not be understood as discoura- 
 ging the reading of works purely imaginative. They 
 have their use. I touch on such works simply to 
 
36 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 caution against their abuse. To profit by them one 
 should bring to their perusal a well-defined stand- 
 ard of excellence, a cultivated taste that clearly dis- 
 criminates between a novel or poem of real merit 
 and the trashy works that now glut the book-mar- 
 ket, and a decided and firm resolve to waste neither 
 time nor talent upon reading that is useless or in- 
 jurious. The man or boy that allows novel-read- 
 ing or in fact aimless reading of any descrip- 
 tion to become a passion with him, thereby saps 
 his mental, his moral, and his physical energy as 
 surely as the opium-eater destroys this threefold 
 energy by the inordinate use of opium, or the 
 drunkard by excessive drink. 
 
 3. Another bane of solid and fruitful thought is 
 reverie. It consists chiefly in a loss of control over 
 the mind and the affections and a total abandon- 
 ment of the soul to revel and become merged in 
 Nature. It is the passion of delicate, sensitive, and 
 sentimental young men and women. There is for 
 such souls a yearning to commune with Nature 
 and lose themselves in a vague sentiment. Victor 
 Hugo interprets this feeling when he tells us that 
 in the solitude of the woods he feels the presence of 
 a Great Being who listens to him and loves him 
 
 " Je sens quelqu'un de grand qui m'^coute et qui m'aime." l 
 
 Indeed, one of the most clearly uttered messages 
 that Nature gives to man is that there is a Some- 
 thing beyond the tangible and the visible. It 
 is a message to which every sensitive heart re- 
 
 1 Contemplations, liv. iii. 24. 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF THOUGHT 37 
 
 spends. "There is in man, "says Chateaubriand,' 
 "an instinctive melancholy, which makes him har- 
 monize with the scenery of Nature.'* And the same 
 author speaks of "the immensity of the seas, which 
 seems to give an indistinct measure of the great- 
 ness of our souls, and which excites a vague desire 
 to quit this life, that we may embrace all Nature 
 and become united with its Author." 1 The bond 
 of sympathy between man and Nature, when prop- 
 erly regulated, is strong and wholesome. There is 
 a soothing effect in the placid lake. A troubled 
 heart becomes calm in the serene presence of 
 mountain scenery. The eternal peace of which 
 every snow-clad summit speaks enters and possesses 
 the soul and lifts it above the worries and annoy- 
 ances of every-day life. Such communion is bene- 
 ficial. But the reverie in which the soul becomes 
 diffused through Nature and lost in a weak senti- 
 ment, however refined it be, is still sensual and 
 therefore demoralizing to the soul and disintegrat- 
 ing of all robustness of faculties. The faculties of 
 the soul should, in all their functions, operate ac- 
 cording to their nature and in their proper order. 
 In reverie that order is broken. The reason, which 
 should always remain supreme and always govern, 
 becomes dethroned and merged in the imagination. 
 Intellectual disorder leads to many other disor- 
 ders in the moral and spiritual worlds. By all 
 means let us commune with Nature and learn 
 the lessons she would teach us, always bearing in 
 mind that God is her Author and ours, that He 
 
 1 Genie du Christianisme, p. ii. liv. iv. chap. i. 
 
38 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 is ever present in the material universe, acting in it 
 with a preservative and a cooperative act ; acting 
 in it most intimately, but distinct from it ; acting 
 behind the ultimate atom of material substance, be- 
 neath the primal energy of material force ; acting 
 always and containing in Himself as Archetype, in 
 all their fitness and beauty of perfection, the ideals 
 of all good and beautiful things in this world. In 
 this manner shall we avoid the evils of reverie. 
 
 4. No less pernicious and equally to be avoided 
 is the opposite extreme of being too introspective. 
 There is such an evil as thinking too much about 
 one's thinking. It is a morbid disposition. It 
 impedes all serious thought and all earnest action. 
 That is pure dilettanteism which amuses itself with 
 itself in its workings. To meddle with the springs 
 of thought whilst thinking is like interfering with 
 the process of digestion whilst eating, or measuring 
 the strain and waste of nerve and muscle whilst 
 acting. Earnest work is unconscious work ; so is 
 earnest thinking unconscious thinking. This will 
 be all the more evident when we shall have pursued 
 the subject of thought as a habit upon the fields of 
 literature and of science. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 LITERAEY AND SCIENTIFIC HABITS OF THOUGHT. 
 
 1. THERE is a wide difference between the habits 
 of thought engendered by literary pursuits and those 
 begotten of scientific studies. The difference is 
 as marked as are the diverse objects of thought. 
 Literature we know to be personal in its nature, in 
 its method, and to a great extent in its object. 
 Science is impersonal, both in its subject-matter 
 and in its treatment. Literature deals with per- 
 sons and things so far as they affect our humanity ; 
 every piece of written composition that appeals to 
 the emotional element in our nature may be re- 
 garded as literature. Science deals with persons 
 and things as they are in themselves, or in coor- 
 dinated relations. It examines, investigates, dis- 
 cusses from an impersonal point of view; utterly 
 regardless of individual bias, it gropes its way 
 through the entanglements and environments of a 
 subject-matter, and cautiously passes from the 
 known to the unknown. Science, in a word, is 
 concerned with the true as true. Its object is 
 truth. Literature, on the other hand, ranges over 
 a wider field. It may be personal or impersonal, 
 subjective or objective, as best suits its inclina- 
 
40 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 tion. It accepts the true and the false, the good 
 and the evil, the beautiful and the deformed, and 
 moulds them all to its own purposes, ultimately 
 with the view of acting upon man's feelings, now 
 arousing his curiosity, now exciting his wonder and 
 admiration, again working upon his sympathies and 
 stirring his soul. Its object is the ideal of all that 
 is sublime and beautiful in nature. 
 
 2. Entering the interior of the thinking-subject, 
 we may note the process the mind goes through in 
 developing a definite course of thought upon some 
 object. Is the object one of a scientific nature? 
 See how cautiously the mind proceeds. It lays 
 down its postulates; if runs over the principles 
 that it holds within its grasp ; it casts about among 
 the laws and facts already demonstrated and rec- 
 ognized as certain; these it groups together into 
 classes and sub-classes ; it compares them with one 
 another; it considers their various properties; it 
 views the modes and properties and behavior of 
 other facts, or groups of facts, in the light of those 
 well-known and well-understood ; it applies to them 
 its demonstrated formula, and draws its conclu- 
 sions. Throughout this process the scientific mind 
 remains unimpassioned, and regards persons and 
 things as labeled abstractions, rather than as con- 
 crete realities. It works within narrow and closely 
 defined lines. It grows impatient of all that does 
 not bear upon the question under consideration, and 
 rejects it as a distraction. The habit of mind thus 
 developed is rigid and exclusive, and unfits its 
 possessor for grasping and treating with facility 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 41 
 
 other subjects than those upon which it has had 
 life-long practice. 1 It lacks in extension what it 
 gains in comprehension. 
 
 3. Is the object of thought one of a literary na- 
 ture ? Here the mind follows a process the reverse 
 of that employed in a scientific pursuit. Its first 
 effort is to grasp the conclusions and work back- 
 ward to the starting principles. Nothing comes 
 amiss to it. The thought apparently farthest re- 
 moved from the main idea may throw upon it ad- 
 ditional light. All that science, or art, or Nature 
 can contribute, the literary mind makes its own, 
 not for the sake of science, or art, or Nature, nor 
 by way of determining some unknown truth, nor of 
 reaching some scientific discovery, but as so many 
 illustrations drawing out, exemplifying, clearing 
 up more vividly the ideal which it has grasped, and 
 which it labors to express. To every literary 
 mind may be made, and made as little to the pur- 
 pose, the reproach that the sophist Callicles ad- 
 dressed to Socrates : " By the gods, you never stop 
 talking about shoemakers, fullers, cooks, and phy- 
 
 1 There is a striking confirmation of the above remarks in the 
 experience of Professor Tyndall. Speaking of his student-life in 
 Germany, about the year 1851, he thus describes the state of his 
 mind: "In those days I not unfrequently found it necessary to 
 subject myself to a process which I called depolarization. My 
 brain, intent on its subjects, used to acquire a set resembling the 
 rigid polarity of a steel magnet. It lost the pliancy needful for 
 free conversation, and to recover this I used to walk occasionally 
 to Charlottenburg, or elsewhere. From my experiences at that 
 time I derived the notion that hard-thinking and fleet-talking do 
 not run together." "My Schools and Schoolmasters," in the 
 Poptdar Science Monthly for January, 1885. 
 
42 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 sicians, as though our discourse were of these." 1 
 All such illustrations are the material out of which 
 the literary mind constructs a body for its concep- 
 tion. Literature is an art, and the process of liter- 
 ature is the process of all art. Note that process. 
 The soul conceives a thought. The thought grows 
 into a central idea, around which group other sub- 
 ordinate ones. It becomes for the soul an ideal. 
 That ideal is nourished by reading, or reflection, 
 or study, or experience, or all of these combined, 
 and quickens into life, and waxes strong, and takes 
 possession, not only of the intellect, but of the 
 whole man, and gives him no rest till he finds for 
 it an adequate expression according to the bent of 
 his genius, be it that of a poem, a novel, an essay, 
 or a historical study, a painting, a statue, or a 
 musical composition. 
 
 4. In all this the literary mind experiences, 
 with a thoughtful writer, "how hard it is to think 
 one's self into a thing and to think its central 
 thought out of it. " 2 It is not the work of a few 
 days or a few weeks. It is a slow and elaborate 
 process. At the age of four Goethe first wit- 
 nessed the puppet-show of "Faust." He was still 
 a child when he read the legend. 3 From the start, 
 the idea enters his soul, and takes possession of it, 
 and grows into a thing of life ; and forthwith it be- 
 comes the ruling idea of his existence, and he makes 
 
 1 Plato, Gorgias, cap. xlv. 
 
 2 Hare, Guesses at Truth, p. 275. 
 
 8 In an abridgment of Widmann's Faust-Book. See Bayard Tay- 
 lor's translation of Goethe's Faust, vol. i. appendix, pp. 397-403. 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 43 
 
 it the inspiration of his activity, and moulds upon 
 it in many respects both thought and conduct, and 
 picking up all the traits and characteristics of his 
 age, he weaves them into this legend, not hastily, 
 but slowly, studiously, in the spirit of true art, 
 till, finally, in his eighty-second year he pens the 
 last line of his great Faust-poem. The first im- 
 pression in his fourth, the first line in his twenty- 
 fourth, the last line in his eighty-second year; 
 this is a lesson that who runs may read. The ex- 
 ample of Goethe illustrates the spirit of artistic 
 genius. It takes the old and remodels it into a 
 new artistic whole. The scientific genius builds 
 upon the foundations already laid. A Newton or 
 a Descartes may add to the sum of mathematical 
 knowledge ; he may give new methods of demon- 
 stration and calculation ; but he leaves untouched 
 every principle and every proposition that science 
 had previously established. Even when such a sci- 
 entific genius grasps by anticipation a new law or 
 a new truth, he coordinates it with other known 
 laws, and thereby corrects his first impressions. 
 
 5. Not so the literary genius; for, though the 
 man of letters and the man of science have this in 
 common, that the terms they use possess a recog- 
 nized value, still he of the literary habit makes not 
 nor does he seek to make a 1 connection or a 
 continuity with aught of the past ; having grasped 
 the ideal, he labors to give it full and adequate ex- 
 pression independently of any other ideal, past or 
 present. He lives and breathes in an atmosphere 
 of opinion and assumption that permeates his think- 
 
44 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 ing, and colors both thought and language; he 
 takes it all for granted ; he draws from it the ma- 
 terial with which to shape and strengthen his own 
 creation. Biehter, in contemplating this literary 
 habit of thought, is filled with admiration : " I fear 
 and wonder," he says, "at the latent almightiness 
 with which man orders, that is, creates his range 
 of ideas. I know no better symbol of creation." l 
 It is, indeed, the process of moulding something 
 entirely new and distinct out of material hitherto 
 used for other purposes. It is a creation because 
 it is a launching into existence of an artistic type 
 that preexisted only as an ideal in the author's 
 mind. As such, it is an imitation as indeed is 
 all art in a finite manner, and within the limits 
 belonging to finiteness, of the creative act by which 
 the Infinite First Cause drew all things from no- 
 thingness. 2 
 
 6. But there are certain habits of thought in 
 which literary and scientific methods interlace and 
 overlap to the detriment of both letters and sci- 
 ence. Scientific habits of thinking, for instance, 
 lead the scientist to look upon persons and things 
 no longer in their concrete nature, but rather as so 
 many abstractions, or, at most, as concrete speci- 
 mens of an abstract principle. His very feelings 
 and emotions he learns to classify and, as far as 
 possible, separate from himself. He measures the 
 
 1 Wit, Wisdom, and Philosophy of Jean Paul Friedrich Eichter, 
 xi. p. 129. 
 
 2 See Gioberti, Del Bello, cap. vi. Del Modo in cui la Fantasia 
 Esietica si pu6 dire Creatrice del Bello, p. 105- 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 45 
 
 worth of things accordingly. They possess value for 
 him in proportion as they explain a difficult prob- 
 lem, or contribute a new truth to the sum of know- 
 ledge. It has been well remarked: "Even the feel- 
 ings of speculative men become speculative. They 
 care about the notions of things and their abstrac- 
 tions, and their relations, far more than about the 
 realities." 1 So that, whilst the scientist may un- 
 wittingly bring literary habits to bear upon scien- 
 tific issues, to the detriment of science, unwittingly 
 also may he bring his scientific habits into affairs of 
 every -day life, and measure persons and things by 
 a false criterion. So, also, may the man of a liter- 
 ary way of thinking use false weights and measures 
 in forming his estimates. "An author's blood," 
 we are told, "will turn to ink. Words enter into 
 him and take possession of him, and nothing can 
 obtain admission except through the passport of 
 words." 2 And, because words do not always rep- 
 resent the full measure of things, or are at times 
 totally inadequate to express the relations of things, 
 the mind living in words becomes guilty of blun- 
 ders no less egregious than the mind living in* ab- 
 stractions. What, then, is the normal state of the 
 mind? 
 
 n. 
 
 1. The normal function of the human intellect is 
 to apprehend truth. Its activity feeds upon truth, 
 and by truth is nourished. For truth it was cre- 
 ated ; by the light and warmth of truth it develops 
 
 1 Hare, Guesses at Truth, p 495. 2 Ibid. 
 
46 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 in strength and grasp ; without the truth, it gropes 
 in darkness, restless, yearning, in misery, hunger- 
 ing and thirsting for that which alone can satiate 
 its desires. There may be barriers in the way; it 
 may require enduring labor to remove the barriers ; 
 opposition only sharpens the eagerness with which 
 the quest is pursued. In this life, subject to the 
 present order of things, with body and sense stand- 
 ing between the soul and the apprehension of all 
 knowledge, it is not easy to determine which is the 
 true and which the false. The gratuitous and un- 
 questioned notions acquired in early training; the 
 habits of thought in which the intellect works ; nat- 
 ural likes and dislikes ; feeling, sentiment, inclina- 
 tion ; prejudices of the age and the race ; assump- 
 tions and opinions that are the outcome of one's 
 environment, are all so many hindrances in the 
 way of the clear and simple apprehension of truth. 
 But they are not insuperable barriers. The human 
 intellect, acting in its normal state, and according 
 to the laws of its nature, may with time and pa- 
 tience, and without deceiving itself in the process, 
 attain to the knowledge of truth. It cannot ac- 
 cept error as error; and if error does, as error 
 will, enter into its calculations, it first assumes 
 the garb of truth, and as such alone is it admitted. 
 Thoughtful study, comparison, careful reasoning 
 upon evident principles, truths, and facts, furnish 
 sufficient light to penetrate the mask and reveal 
 the underlying falsity, if falsity there be. 
 
 2. It is within the province of the human mind 
 not only to apprehend the truth, but also to recog- 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 47 
 
 nize it as truth. In this recognition consists the 
 mind's certainty. We know and distinguish with 
 absolute certainty that two and two make four, 
 and not five or three. There is nothing relative 
 either in our knowing this truth or in our being 
 certain of it. The Hottentot and the Indian are 
 equally certain. The agnostic who denies this ab- 
 solute certainty is also equally certain. If you 
 would inquire how we know that we are certain 
 with an absolute certainty, we can give you no 
 further reason than that, being constructed as we 
 are, we cannot think differently. This certainty 
 is an ultimate fact of consciousness. It is of the 
 very essence of our reason so to think. We are 
 what we are. We find ourselves to be what we 
 are as thinking beings independently of ourselves. 
 We take ourselves on trust. We take on trust all 
 the faculties of our souls. We use them as we 
 find them. What they report to our conscious- 
 ness our inner selves as true, we accept as 
 true. We cannot do otherwise. The attitude of 
 our mind towards all knowledge is the same to this 
 extent : that in all it seeks to discern the true from 
 the false, to reject the false and to accept the true. 
 3. For this reason we cannot agree with Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer when he tells us that "we are not 
 permitted to know nay, we are not even per- 
 mitted to conceive that Reality which is behind 
 the veil of Appearance." 1 Why not? Where is 
 the hindrance? Since we recognize this reality, 
 do we not conceive it? It would seem as though 
 1 First Principles, p. 110. 
 
48 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the knowing and thinking of Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 were not the knowing and thinking of the normal 
 intellect. If we are not permitted to know or con- 
 ceive the reality back of appearance, how come we 
 to know that it exists? And yet Mr. Spencer is 
 sure of its existence and recognizes it as essential 
 to our thinking. Elsewhere he explained himself 
 more fully in these words : " Phenomenon with- 
 out noumenon is unthinkable; and yet noumenon 
 cannot be thought of in the true sense of thinking. 
 We are at once obliged to be conscious of a reality 
 behind appearance, and yet can neither bring this 
 consciousness of reality into any shape, nor can 
 bring into any shape its connection with appear- 
 ance. The forms of our thought, moulded on ex- 
 periences of phenomena, as well as the connotations 
 of our words formed to express the relations of 
 phenomena, involve us in contradictions when we 
 try to think of that which is beyond phenomena; 
 and yet the existence of that which is beyond phe- 
 nomena is a necessary datum alike of our thoughts 
 and our words." x Plato clearly makes the distinc- 
 tion : " That which is apprehended by intelligence 
 and reason always is, and is the same; but that 
 which is conceived by opinion with the help of sen- 
 sation and without reason, is always in a process 
 of becoming and perishing and never really is." 2 
 Underlying the confusion of thought in Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer's assertion is an important fact, not 
 
 1 " Last Words about Agnosticism," Nineteenth Century, No- 
 vember, 1884. 
 
 2 TimcKUs, Jowett's Plato, vol. iii. p. 612. 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 49 
 
 sufficiently considered by the philosopher of evolu- 
 tion. It is the fact that thought is always more 
 than its expression. But why quarrel on this ac- 
 count with either thought or expression, so long 
 as each is evolved according to the law of our 
 intelligence? That intelligence is limited in its 
 operations ; but it is not we who have defined the 
 limits, or set the boundaries. We find ourselves 
 with those limitations; we cannot change them. 
 Our consciousness reports to us the phenomenon; 
 our reason infers that there is no meaning in 
 phenomenon without noumenon. The one con- 
 notes the other in our thinking. What substance 
 is to accident, what the ideal is to the actual, what 
 essence is to" existence, the noumenon is to the 
 phenomenon. We perceive the one in the other. 
 We perceive it and we know it. We accept the 
 vouchment of our intellect on the subject. 
 
 4. True, we cannot pass beyond this vouchment 
 and give the noumenon a local habitation and a 
 name. What then? At this point we discern the 
 fallacy of Mr. Herbert Spencer's conclusions. He 
 seems to forget that the ultimate analysis of any 
 and every thought brings home to us the fact that 
 the clearly defined image of the thought does not 
 represent the whole thought; that that image is 
 only a symbol; that the word in which that image 
 is expressed is also a symbol; and that in this man- 
 ner every expression is only a symbol symbolizing 
 a symbol of the thing expressed. And it may 
 happen, and it does happen, that we think correctly 
 in terms of things of which we know nothing be- 
 
50 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 yond their existence and their relations. Such is 
 the case with space and time. The great intellect 
 of an Augustin wrestled with the problems of 
 these two ideas; the more he sought to fathom 
 them, the greater was his awe. And his verdict on 
 the problem of time is that in which all thinkers 
 must rest. "If nobody questions me, I know; if 
 I should attempt an explanation, I know not." 1 
 In other words, we know these things to use them 
 rightly in our thinking; but we cannot grasp at 
 a sufficiently clear image of them to explain them 
 to others. 
 
 5. Plato, in another of those sublime passages 
 that light up a whole world of thought, thus shows 
 how our knowledge of things is not simply of the 
 transient and the phenomenal, but of essences and 
 eternal principles : "Essence," he says, "which 
 really exists colorless, formless, and intangible," 
 which, therefore, let me remark, is above the con- 
 ditions of time and space, " is visible only to 
 intelligence that guides the soul, and around this 
 essence the family of true science take up their 
 abode. And, as the Divine Mind is nourished by 
 intelligence and pure science, so the mind of every 
 soul that is about to receive what properly belongs 
 to it, when it sees after a long time that which is, is 
 delighted, and by contemplating the truth is nour- 
 ished and thrives. . . . And it beholds Justice her- 
 self, and temperance, and science, not that to which 
 creation is annexed, nor that which is different 
 
 1 Quid est ergo tempus ? Si nemo ex rae quaerat, scio ; si quse- 
 renti explicate velim. nescio. Conf. lib. xi. cap. xiv. 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 51 
 
 in different things of those we call real, 1 but that 
 which is science in what really is." z Therefore, 
 in opposition to Mr. Spencer, we may lay down 
 the proposition that we not only think the nou- 
 menon, but we know it and conceive it behind 
 the phenomenon, not indeed as an image distinct 
 from the phenomenon, but as an element in the 
 existence of the phenomenon without which the 
 phenomenon would be unthinkable. Furthermore, 
 we may affirm that although our thinking is cir- 
 cumscribed, words and images are not the measure 
 of its limits. 3 
 
 6. Nor can we agree with Pascal when he tells 
 us : " It is a natural disease of man to believe that 
 he possesses truth directly; whence it comes that 
 he is always disposed to deny whatever he does not 
 understand ; whereas in reality he naturally knows 
 only falsehood, and he should take for true only 
 those things whose opposites seem false." 4 Why 
 call that conviction of direct knowledge of the truth 
 a malady ? What would become of reasoning and 
 inferring, of all indirect knowledge, if that which 
 we hold directly is not valid ? It is all based upon 
 this very conviction. Man is born for the truth; 
 how comes it that falsehood should be more accept- 
 
 1 Or as Jowett more strongly translates it, " Not in the form of cre- 
 ated things or of things relative, which men call existence, but know- 
 ledge absolute in existence absolute " Plato, vol. ii. p. 124, 2d ed. 
 
 2 Phcedrus, cap. xxvii. p. 713. 
 
 8 Were this the place, it might be shown that this fallacy runs 
 through much of Mr. Spencer's reasoning regarding personality 
 and all the elements of Christian philosophy. 
 
 4 Penstes, t. i. premieie partie, art ii. p. 154. 
 
52 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 able? "If our intellect," says Mivart, " is to be 
 trusted at all, it must be trusted in what it declares 
 to be the most certain of all, namely, necessary 
 truths." 1 But our intellect is to be trusted even 
 as we trust the reality of our own existence ; and 
 necessary truths do not come to us by a process of 
 indirection, but are directly and immediately self- 
 evident. We have no other vouchment than that 
 we take upon trust our whole nature, and with it 
 the normal workings of our intellect. You may 
 call it an assumption or any other name you choose 
 to give, but it is none the less a fact the most pri- 
 mary of all facts, underlying all action, be it phy- 
 sical, moral, or intellectual. Universal skepticism 
 is an absurdity; the very act of doubting all things 
 is a positive mental act. Therefore the habit of 
 confidingness is the healthier habit of mind. Speak- 
 ing of these two habits, Cardinal Newman, with 
 that keenness and practical grasp of his subject for 
 which he is preeminent, says: "Of the two, I 
 would rather have to maintain that we ought to 
 begin with believing everything that is offered to 
 our acceptance, than that it is our duty to doubt 
 of everything. The former, indeed, seems the true 
 way of learning. In that case, we soon discover 
 and discard what is contradictory to itself; and 
 error having always some portion of truth in it, 
 and the truth having a reality which error has not, 
 we may expect that when there is an honest pur- 
 pose and fair talents, we shall somehow make our 
 
 1 A Philosophical Catechism for Beginners, p. 25. This little 
 book is a marvel of clearness and condensation. 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 53 
 
 way forward, the error falling off from the mind, 
 and the truth developing and occupying it." l 
 
 7. When, therefore, we are told that "error is 
 inextricably bound up with the spirit of man," we 
 may interpret it in the sense that it is with diffi- 
 culty, and after long search, man is enabled to dis- 
 cover truth, and disentangle it from the errors with 
 which it not infrequently is bound up. But we 
 must keep this fact distinct from the no less pal- 
 pable fact that in itself and by the light of reason 
 man's intellect recognizes at sight, and accepts 
 with a certainty beyond cavil, all necessary, self- 
 evident truths as truths necessary and self-evident. 
 Be it remembered that it is the truth that is ne- 
 cessary, and not the error. Truth is of things. 
 Truth is reality. Error is only accidental. And 
 when the writer whom we have just quoted, mak- 
 ing error necessary, adds the following remarks, 
 we feel bound not only to dissent from him, but to 
 disengage the truth from the sophism in which he 
 has enveloped it. "This necessary error," von 
 Hellwald tells us, " is the essence of religion, the 
 phantasy, the ideal. Man has an innate tendency 
 to form ideals. It would be blocking the way to 
 every deeper insight into things did we hesitate to 
 consider the first stirrings of religion in man as the 
 first emergence of the ideal." 2 He thus insists 
 that all religion is based upon error and illusion, and 
 makes the ideal the outcome of necessary error. 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, 2d ed. p. 377. 
 
 2 F. von Hellwald, Culturgeschichte, bd. i. p. 46. Tilmann Pesch, 
 8. J., Die Grossen Weltrdthsel, bd. ii. p. 501. 
 
54 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Indeed, he considers it a profound saying of the 
 poet, that error alone is life and knowledge is 
 death. 1 This is the last word of the philosophy of 
 negation. 
 
 8. Certainly it is a remarkable intellectual feat 
 that bases that which represents whatever is per- 
 fect in man's conception and positive in the order 
 of things as the outcome of mere negation. Art 
 has its ideal; life has its ideal; religion has its 
 ideal ; civilization has its ideal. Are these ideals 
 the outcome of error and illusion ? Has it indeed 
 come to this, that men gather grapes of thorns? 
 that the seeds of error grow up and give forth the 
 ripe and luscious fruit of truth? that deception 
 may be sown and confidence reaped? No; error 
 exists but as the excrescence cast off by truth. 
 There could be no wrong if there were not first 
 a right; there could be no error if truth did not 
 have a prior existence ; there could be no ideal if 
 there were not a foundation of absolute truth, ab- 
 solute goodness, and absolute beauty upon which 
 to build up the ideal. Surely literature and 
 art cannot be the outcome of error. Think you 
 the ideals after which Shakespeare and Dante, 
 Beethoven and Haydn, Rafael and Murillo and Mi- 
 chael Angelo, constructed their masterpieces, are 
 the growth of error? Error and mistake may enter 
 into every human expression of the ideal ; but the 
 
 1 Eben so wahr als tief ist des Dichter's Spruch : 
 
 " Nur der Irrthum ist das Leben, 
 Und das Wissen ist der Tod." 
 
 Culturgeschichte, p. 49. 
 
HABITS OF THOUGHT 55 
 
 error and the mistake are not of the ideal. It is 
 rather because human hands are unskilled, and hu- 
 man expression is stammering, and human judg- 
 ment is feeble. Let us dwell a moment on the 
 nature, the origin, and the functions of the ideal, 
 and we shall be in better position to understand 
 how it is that genius is not a living in error, nor 
 art a groping after illusions. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT. 
 
 1. A GENIUS conceives and expresses a great 
 thought. The conception so expressed delights. 
 It enters men's souls; it compels their admiration. 
 They applaud and are rejoiced that another master- 
 piece has been brought into existence to grace the 
 world of art or letters. The genius alone is dis- 
 satisfied. Where others see perfection, he per- 
 ceives something unexpressed beyond the reach of 
 his art. Try as best he may, he cannot attain that 
 indefinable something. Deep in his inner con- 
 sciousness he sees a type so grand and perfect that 
 his beautiful production appears to him but a faint 
 and marred copy of that original. That original 
 is the ideal; and the ideal it is that appeals to the 
 ^Esthetic Sense, and calls forth men's admiration. 
 
 2. An analysis of this admiration will lead us 
 to an understanding of the ideal. It is universal. 
 The ^Esthetic Sense is as innate to man as is his 
 physical sense of taste or touch. Savage and civ- 
 ilized admire whatever appeals to their admiration. 
 Now, not everything does so appeal. The trivial, 
 the contemptible, the weak, the inferior, are all 
 beneath man's sense of admiration. The virtuous, 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 57 
 
 the noble, the heroic ; whatever expresses strength 
 or power ; whatever is beautiful or sublime ; in a 
 word, whatever raises man's thoughts and aspira- 
 tions to a superior plane, that is for him an ob- 
 ject of admiration. Man has within him two op- 
 posing elements. One seeks to raise him up into 
 a spiritual and spiritualizing sphere of thought and 
 action ; the other tends to drag him down to things 
 earthly and debasing. They are the two steeds 
 that Plato represents the soul as driving, likening 
 it to a charioteer; one steed "leans and presses 
 heavily towards the earth, if he be not well-trained 
 by his charioteer;" the other is "beautiful and 
 noble and of a godlike character." 1 They are the 
 opposing elements the law in his members fight- 
 ing against the law of his mind of which St. Paul 
 speaks in language less allegorical. 2 Now, it is 
 the function of this sense of admiration to raise up 
 and spiritualize the inferior parts of man's nature, 
 so that they grovel not in things earthly, and to 
 strengthen and improve his nobler aspirations. 
 Where man may not imitate, where he may not 
 even love, he can still admire. Wherever an ideal 
 is expressed, there is an object for his admiration. 
 We may not be able to explain this mysterious re- 
 lation, but we all have the experience of it. Our 
 souls are so attuned as to give out a music respon- 
 sive to the chords that are touched. This we know 
 and feel. Let us study the impression. 
 
 3. Take a Rafael or a Murillo. We gaze upon 
 
 1 Plato, Phcedrus, cap. xxv. p. 712, t. i. ed. Hirschigii. 
 
 2 Romans vii. 23. 
 
58 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the painted canvas till its beauty has entered our 
 soul. The splendor of that beauty lights up within 
 us depths unrevealed, and far down in our inner 
 consciousness we discover something that responds 
 to the beauty on which we have been gazing. It 
 is as though a former friend revealed himself to us. 
 There is here a recognition. The more careful has 
 been our sense-culture, the more delicately have 
 our feelings been attuned to respond to a thing of 
 beauty and find in it a joy forever, all the sooner 
 and the more intensely do we experience this recog- 
 nition. And therewith comes a vague yearning, a 
 longing as for something. What does it all mean? 
 The recognition is of the ideal. "The memory," 
 says Plato, "on beholding the beautiful object, is 
 carried back to the nature of absolute beauty." 1 
 Thus, there is not only a recognition ; there is also 
 a reminiscence of a higher spiritual order of things 
 of which the soul has had occasional glimpses; 
 there is a yearning for the home to which it be- 
 longs. Cavil as men may, the artistic ideal is an 
 essential element in art work and art criticism ; it 
 speaks to something higher than the material sense ; 
 it tells of something more than technical detail and 
 exquisite finish. There are moments when, beneath 
 the spell of some great masterpiece, man feels the 
 nearness of the Godhead, and his soul is thrilled 
 with emotions that vibrate beneath the divine 
 touch. There is no denying what is a universal 
 experience. "The ideal," says Charles Blanc, "is 
 the primitive divine exemplar of all things ; it is, 
 
 1 Phcedrus, cap. xxxv. p. 718. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 59 
 
 so to speak, a reminiscence of having already wit- 
 nessed perfection, and the hope of seeing it once 
 again." 1 Charles Blanc is only repeating the 
 magnificent definition of the ideal which has come 
 home to every soul not buried in the inert material, 
 and which has been echoed down the ages ever 
 since Plato gave it expression: "It is," says this 
 wonderful seer, "a recollection of those things our 
 soul formerly beheld when in company with God, 
 despising the things that we now say are, and 
 looking upward towards that which really is." 2 
 Without admitting the Pythagorean doctrine of a 
 preexistent state, here implied, we may go farther, 
 and say that without the ideal there is no reality. 
 
 4. Nature recognizes the ideal. She has her 
 types, and works by them. Each of her products 
 is a specific realization of a separate type. As 
 genus is a reality, distinct from, and causative of, 
 the species, so is each of Nature's types a reality, 
 distinct from the concrete thing fashioned after it 
 and causative thereof. Hence it is that, in the 
 animal and even in the vegetable world, we daily 
 witness reversions to older types and the reproduc- 
 tion of ancestral traits of character. Nor is this 
 all. Ascending higher still 
 
 " Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God," 
 
 we come to the prototype of all created types, and 
 find it existing in the Word. Here is the source 
 
 1 See M. Edouard Pailleron's " Discours sur Charles Blano 
 dans 1'Acade'mie," Le Temps, 18 Janvier, 1884. 
 
 2 Phcedrus, cap. xxix. p. 714. 
 
60 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and fountain-head of the ideal. In the Word, 
 from the beginning before there was a beginning 
 of time, and the voice of God caused created things 
 to leap forth from nothingness, throughout the 
 cycles of eternity, in that perpetual Now which 
 has neither past nor future, 1 God contemplates 
 those types. By the Word were they made real in 
 the order of created things. For the Word is the 
 conception of the Divine Intelligence. 2 In God, 
 who is most pure activity and absolute actuality, 
 being and conception are one and the same thing. 
 And so, the Father recognizing Himself, and the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things con- 
 tained in the Divine Intelligence, conceives the 
 Word. Therefore all knowledge, all wisdom, all 
 created things are in the Word and exist by reason 
 of the Word. 3 Were the eternal type not in the 
 Word, the actual existences fashioned after it 
 would not be. And this is why we say that with- 
 out the ideal there is no reality. We have at last 
 found the origin and source of the ideal. In all 
 earnestness have we sought it ; and, hushed in holy 
 awe before the Godhead, in a loving reverence do 
 
 1 Plato expresses this distinction very clearly : " And the terms it 
 was r6 r^v and it will be r6 r'Uffrai are generated forms 
 of time, which we have wrongly and unawares transferred to an 
 eternal Essence." Timceus, cap. x. 
 
 2 Dicitur autem proprte Verbum in Deo, secundum quod Verbum 
 significat conceptum intellectus. Summa St. Thomce. Pars I. 
 Quaest. xxxiv. art. 1. 
 
 3 Sic ergo uni soli personae in divinis convenit dici, eo modo quo 
 dicitur Verbum. . . . Pater enim intelligendo se, et Filium, et 
 Spiritum sanctum, et omnia alia quse ejus scientia" continentur, 
 concipit Verbum. Ibid, ad 3. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 61 
 
 we contemplate its splendor. The Word is not 
 only the source of all created existences ; the Word 
 is also the light that enlightens this world. Its 
 glory is reflected, now dimly, now clearly, in every 
 created thing. To the Word did we trace the 
 source whence emanate the principles of our think- 
 ing. And as the reason is illuminated with a light 
 above and beyond the sparks that it throws out in 
 its workings, that light giving it all necessary and 
 self-evident truths; as the soul is nurtured and 
 strengthened by that mysterious energy called grace, 
 so the created ideal in each individual mind is en- 
 lightened and vivified by the uncreated ideal dwell- 
 ing in the Word. This illumination of the ideal 
 is the expression of the beautiful. 
 
 5. We now know whence it is that a thing of 
 beauty becomes for each of us a joy forever. It 
 is the mission of the artist to rend the veil of 
 accidents and accessories in which the ideal is 
 shrouded and present it to us in all its beauty and 
 loveliness. And the beauty reflected therefrom 
 lights up the folds and inner caverns of our souls, 
 and reveals therein a recognition of this ideal, and 
 reflected from our inmost souls is the image of Him 
 from whom we come, and who is our Home his 
 image and a pale reflex of the splendor of his 
 glory : on beholding which reflection we are moved ; 
 our souls are stirred to their very centre ; a yearn- 
 ing takes possession of us, a longing for the 
 Home whence we came, a groping after the In- 
 visible Ideal, and we feel our souls vibrate be- 
 neath the touch of the Infinite. God is in us and 
 
62 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 we are in God, and the sense of our nearness to 
 Him grows upon us. This is the experience that 
 passes over us in the presence of the ideal. It is 
 the experience that Plato has grandly recorded in 
 his wonderful allegory. 1 
 
 II. 
 
 1. We are now in position to understand the im- 
 portance of an ideal in literary habits of thought. 
 It is essential to them. Literature is the form of 
 art the most varied and complicated. Plato hath 
 well and aptly said of a literary structure : " Every 
 speech ought to be put together like a living crea- 
 ture, with a body of its own, so as neither to be 
 without head, nor without hands, nor without feet ; 
 but to have both a beginning, a middle, and an end, 
 described proportionately to one another and to the 
 whole." 2 So to construct a literary masterpiece 
 that part fits to part and each is subordinate to the 
 whole requires a central idea. As the parts in the 
 animal organism are determined by the vital prin- 
 ciple animating them, in such manner that all un- 
 consciously develop into fitness and harmony, even 
 so is it with the literary production. When the 
 central thought, the animating principle, the ideal, 
 is clearly grasped, it shapes the form in which it 
 would be expressed. This teaching is clear and 
 simple and as ancient as art. It is the teaching 
 
 1 In the Phcedrus, cap. xxxiii.-xxxviii. 
 
 2 Phcedrus, cap xlvii. p. 726. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 63 
 
 on which all the masterpieces throughout the ages 
 have been constructed. 
 
 2. The artist disentangles the ideal from such 
 accidents and accessories as tend to conceal it, and 
 gives it a new embodiment. Out of the materials 
 that Nature furnishes he fashions for it a body, 
 and breathes into that body the ideal as its living 
 soul, and forthwith the masterpiece stands out a 
 thing of life and beauty and artistic excellence for 
 undying admiration. Defects of detail may enter 
 into its execution, but they are lost, forgotten, ab- 
 sorbed in the general effect produced. It is the 
 "Transfiguration " of Rafael. Who, in presence of 
 that noble scene, would cavil about the posing of 
 limbs or the laws of perspective ? l It is the " Ham- 
 let" of Shakespeare. Surely, he who overlooks 
 the power, the depth, the philosophy, the dramatic 
 greatness of that tragedy, and quarrels with gram- 
 matical structure or obscure expression, has yet to 
 learn the elements of true criticism. Or, it is the 
 u Phaedo"of Plato, whose sublime thoughts so fre- 
 quently recur throughout the sentences here penned. 
 He who should stop at the hard metaphysic or the 
 apparently pointless questions and obscure answers, 
 and should refuse to soar with Socrates in his dy- 
 ing song into the pure regions of truth, proves 
 that he lacks the sympathy and knowledge to ap- 
 preciate Grecian thought in the days of Plato, and 
 is, therefore, unable to place at its worth one 
 of the sublimest pieces of writing ever penned by 
 
 1 For an instance of such caviling, see Taine's Italy, Eng. tr. 
 pp. 142, 143. 
 
64 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 human hand. 1 Or, it is the "Divina Commedia." 
 What boots it that Dante's estimates of men and 
 measures are not those of the historian? It de- 
 tracts naught from the wonderful poem. Men are 
 lost in admiration when they note the care with 
 which word is built upon word, each having a 
 special significance, and all made into a grand 
 allegory wrought out of the politics and the philo- 
 sophy, the strife and struggle, the fierce hates and 
 the strong loves, in which the author lived and 
 moved and fought. Or, it is Mozart's "Requiem." 
 The critic who would quarrel with that grand com- 
 position because in its intricate and complicated 
 structure, speaking of a life's hopes and fears, and 
 the more awful hopes and fears beyond the grave, 
 he misses the sweeter strains of other days would 
 fail to grasp the sublime conception of the piece as 
 a whole. Or, it is the gothic cathedral. Who 
 thinks of making faces at gargoyle or statued niche, 
 where all is emblem and significancy, the stone em- 
 bodiment of a nation's aspirations? We read in 
 it thought, satire, censure, desire, pathos, passion. 2 
 In all these instances, behind the mechanical struc- 
 ture, looking out upon us, and peering into our 
 souls, is the ideal. 
 
 1 It is this lack of sympathy that makes the reading of Plato so 
 laborious. Perhaps it is failing to distinguish between the mental 
 habits of the ancient Athenians and those of modern thinkers that 
 has led Mr. Mahaffy, in his admirable History of Greek Literature 
 (vol ii. p. 173), to make the criticism noticed above as regards part 
 of the dialogue. 
 
 2 This idea has been grandly drawn out by Victor Hugo, in 
 Notre Dame de Paris, liv. iii. chap. 1- 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 65 
 
 3. This is a doctrine unpopular and distasteful 
 to modern ears. None the less do we here repeat 
 it and insist upon it as a primary factor in all 
 the higher forms of thought and art, and an ele- 
 mentary principle of criticism. It is now claimed 
 that art has no other aim than to construct the 
 form for the form's sake. Now, the art that has 
 only itself for its aim may amuse, may please, may 
 even cause admiration on account of the mechanical 
 skill exhibited ; but it is not the art that endures 
 for all time. I shall grant that a Shakespeare or 
 a Goethe may sing as the blackbird sings ; but I 
 deny that their art is without purpose, still less 
 without a soul, a vivifying ideal. The ideal, in 
 calling forth our admiration and raising up our 
 thoughts to things higher and beyond the scenes of 
 every-day life, or in purifying the incidents of or- 
 dinary duties, is educating our better nature; it 
 is working with a purpose. Ideal and purpose 
 combined determine the form. " To act with a pur- 
 pose," says Lessing, "is what raises man above the 
 brutes ; to invent with a purpose, to imitate with a 
 purpose, is that which distinguishes genius from 
 the petty artists who invent to invent, imitate to 
 imitate." l Be it remembered that nothing outside 
 of the Godhead exists for its own sake. The art 
 produced in this spirit is sheer pettiness. Nowhere 
 is this more evident than in the world of letters. 
 Just as a word has value only inasmuch as it ex- 
 presses an idea, even so any number of words strung 
 together is meaningless and inane, unless it ex- 
 
 1 Prose works, Bohn ed. Dramatic Notes, No. 34, p. 327. 
 
66 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 presses a thought, not for the expression's sake, but 
 for that of the thought. The sophists of Plato's day 
 attempted to teach expression for the form's sake. 
 He refuses the very name of art to such expression. 
 "She lies," he tells us in his own scathing words, 
 "and is not an art, but an inartistic trick." 1 In- 
 deed, all art worthy of the name is imbued with the 
 earnestness of life. Consciously or unconsciously, 
 the artist's is a mission to crystallize in his work 
 the spirit of the age ; it is also his mission to edu- 
 cate his age, to raise it above itself, and to sustain 
 its aspirations upward and onward 
 
 " Artistry being battle with the age 
 It lives in ! Half life, silence, while you learn 
 What has been done ; the other half, attempt 
 At speech, amid world's wail of wonderment 
 
 ' Here 's something done was never done before I ' 
 To be the very breath that moves the age, 
 Means not to have breath drive you bubble-like 
 Before it but yourself to blow : that 's strain ; 
 Strain 's worry through the life-time, till there 's peace; 
 We know where peace expects the artist-soul." 2 
 
 III. 
 
 1. No less opposed to the doctrine of the ideal 
 is the School of Realism in literature and art. 
 This school either ignores the ideal or regards it 
 as the product of error. If there is no ideal, or if 
 the ideal is only an illusion, then there is nothing 
 beyond the nature we behold and live in ; then the 
 supreme effort of all art is to delineate that nature 
 
 1 teal OVK fffn T*XV(\, dXA' &TCXVOS rpiftff. Phcedrus, cap. xliii. 
 
 2 Robert Browning-, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, p. 110. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 67 
 
 in detail with the greatest fidelity; then the sole 
 rule of art is, "Copy, describe, imitate, express 
 minutely whatever you see or hear; the more accu- 
 rately you follow your model the greater artist you 
 are." There is in this doctrine a mixture of truth 
 and error. True it is that art cannot ignore nature. 
 The world we live in is the material upon which art 
 generally works. Therefore the artist observes 
 men and things ; he studies the nature outside him- 
 self and the nature within himself ; he experiments ; 
 he compares, judges, discriminates; in this way 
 does he gather up and select the subject-matter upon 
 which he afterwards labors for artistic purposes. 
 But there is in all this more than mere imitation. 
 It is a wholesome realism, and does not exclude the 
 ideal. It is the realism that Millet paints and Rus- 
 kin commends. The art that merely imitates can 
 only produce a corpse ; it lacks the vital spark, the 
 soul, which is the ideal, and which is necessary in 
 order to create a living organic reality that will 
 quicken genius and arouse enthusiasm throughout 
 the ages. Let us make the distinction ; it is a vital 
 one : Art is not imitation ; art is interpretation. 
 
 2. This distinction the realistic school in art and 
 letters loses sight of. Accordingly, it abandons all 
 attempt at an ideal ; it makes no effort to read the 
 lessons of nature ; it sees nothing in nature to read 
 beyond the cold, hard lines that it traces ; it holds 
 that as the only knowledge is the knowledge arising 
 out of observation and experiment, upon observa- 
 tion and experiment alone must art work. And, 
 as the novel is the most potent literary influence of 
 
68 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the day, the realist would especially make the novel 
 a mere study in nature and character, in which 
 naught is to be set down save what has fallen un- 
 der the eye or has been experienced in actual life. 
 On the face of it, this theory is sound enough. By 
 all means, let us have observation and experiment. 
 But distinguish between the observation that takes 
 in all the elements of nature and the observation 
 that regards only the material side of nature. The 
 latter alone falls under the scope of the realistic 
 school. It has no other field for development. In 
 consequence, it deals only with man living and act- 
 ing out his brute nature in all its cunning and sensu- 
 ality. The writers of this school give us the result 
 of observations indeed, but their observations are 
 of the street and the tavern ; of the slum and the 
 dive ; of passion through all its phases wallowing 
 in the mire of depravity. They picture human na- 
 ture ; but it is diseased human nature. Believing 
 only in the animal man, naught else remains for 
 the members of this school to depict. Not saintli- 
 ness of life ; for saintliness of life means to them 
 only hypocrisy, or, at most, warped character. Not 
 nobility of thought or word; for the weak, the err- 
 ing, the monstrous in human nature is the only 
 theme their art recognizes. 
 
 3. But this is not the world in which we live and 
 move. This is not the human nature that we are 
 cognizant of. The circle of our acquaintance in- 
 cludes we know intimately men and women of 
 a far different stamp; men and women who are 
 true and faithful in their love and friendship; 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 69 
 
 grand and generous souls, who are self-sacrificing 
 whenever good is to be accomplished or duty to be 
 fulfilled ; who think and say the sweetest and sub- 
 limest thoughts; whose lives are pure and disinter- 
 ested ; whose intentions and aspirations are elevated 
 and ennobling ; who, in the daily round of their 
 beautiful lives, shed about them loveliness and 
 peace and joy and gladness of heart. These are 
 the men and women that surround us. Here is 
 the reality that we know. Here is the reality that 
 even the realist knows. It is only in his library 
 that humanity is to him such a monster. The low- 
 liest life has its sublime passages. It has where- 
 with to inspire the artist, for it has its ideal. 
 Millet dignifies on the canvas occupations the most 
 menial; Wordsworth reveals the humblest life 
 thrilled by delicate sentiment or by strong passion. 
 Be the subject what it may, genius will ever dis- 
 cover in it an ideal that shall elevate the soul. In 
 this thought we place our consolation and our hope 
 for the future of art and letters. "Realism," said 
 an eloquent French preacher, "is a chronic disease; 
 it is the leprosy of art; it is the epidemic of liter- 
 ature in the nineteenth century." 1 This is the 
 proper diagnosis of the case. Let it be treated as 
 a leprosy or an epidemic. It is at most but a pass- 
 ing phase, a new experience. 
 
 4. There are influences hovering over epochs and 
 
 peoples that give them a characteristic coloring, and 
 
 place upon them a distinctive impress. Our age is 
 
 preeminently a transition period. Steam and elec- 
 
 1 P&re Felix, Conferences, 1867, Conf. v. p. 251. 
 
70 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 tricity have added wings to thought and action. 
 Theories appear and disappear in rapid succession 
 to be followed by others as transient. New discov- 
 eries, new industries, and new sciences are hastily 
 calling for new terms, new habits of thought, and 
 new methods of work. And yet, much of our 
 thinking runs in old grooves. We are groping in 
 mist and darkness, with new and complex problems 
 pressing upon us harder and faster than we can 
 solve them. Each decade brings its riddle. The 
 conjectures of one decade become the conclusions 
 of the next, and are made the elementary truths of 
 the third. Hence it is that so many of the books 
 of the day are mere fleeting records of impressions 
 as fleeting. Hence the mental entanglements and 
 inconsistencies that beset men's thoughts and ac- 
 tions, their reasonings and their sentiments, their 
 formal expressions and their inner convictions. 
 The clearly demonstrated truth in science and the 
 distinctly expressed ideal in art and letters alone 
 remain permanent in the midst of these ever shift- 
 ing scenes. 
 
 5. In the mean time, it is the life-work of each of 
 us, amid the changes in which he lives, to harmonize, 
 in his own person, all the elements that go to make 
 up that personality. Socrates, on that memorable 
 day when he drank the hemlock cup, told the faith- 
 ful followers who were gathered around him how 
 at different times a dream visited him in diverse 
 forms, exhorting him to apply himself to the cul- 
 tivation of music. 1 By music Socrates meant not 
 
 1 Phvdo, cap. iv. ed. Hirschigii, t. i. p. 46. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THOUGHT 71 
 
 simply that combination of sounds that catches up 
 a few fragments of this world's harmonies, and 
 with them moves our souls. There is another and 
 a higher music. It is the music of a soul in which 
 dwell order and method; which coordinates all 
 knowledge; which recognizes the ideal; in which 
 the good, the true, and the beautiful are cultivated, 
 each according to its own nature, and by its own 
 method. It is the rhythm of a thoroughly disci- 
 plined intellect and a well-regulated life. That 
 dream comes to us all. If we would realize that 
 harmonious development to its full extent we should 
 cultivate both the Spiritual Sense and the Moral 
 Sense with care and assiduity. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
 
 1. AT the start I would call attention to a mod- 
 ern spirit that is abroad, and that is destructive of 
 spiritual culture and spiritual life. Its tone and 
 temper pervade the pages of magazines and reviews ; 
 its meaning runs between lines in popular lectures ; 
 its accent is occasionally heard even from the pul- 
 pit. Its countenance is severe, its cheek pallid ; it 
 seems to groan beneath the burden and the respon- 
 sibility of human life throughout the whole world. 
 It is a spirit that ponders and weighs and mea- 
 sures the mysteries of life and death, of time and 
 eternity, with the small weights and short measure- 
 ments of its own estimates, and because they are 
 found inadequate it finds fault, not with the weights 
 or measures, but with the mysteries, and endeavors 
 to ignore them. It is the spirit of agnosticism 
 a spirit that in the face of the noonday sun will 
 deny the sun's existence and call it a phantasm of 
 the brain. Such an irrational spirit may be thought 
 an impossibility. But is it not guilty of an equally 
 gross piece of absurdity when, recognizing Nature's 
 laws, it denies or ignores or lays aside as unknow- 
 able a Mind, a Personality, a First Cause to make 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 73 
 
 and govern and guide those laws ? Agnosticism has 
 it well named itself. 1 Confining its observations to 
 that which is of sense and feeling, rising no higher 
 than the phenomena surrounding it, missing the 
 meaning of life, dreaming dreams of an all-absorb- 
 ing humanity that devours individual personality, 
 and ignoring all that is spiritual in man's nature, 
 all the supernatural in his soul, its knowledge 
 is but one-sided ; its thought, a serious distraction ; 
 its very essence, a doubt. Its views of moral right 
 and of right-doing are disintegrating and subver- 
 sive of men's most primary notions of intention and 
 action. It looks upon prayer as a loss of time and 
 a waste of energy ; the cultivation of piety is in its 
 eyes the fostering of a useless sentiment without a 
 real object; conscience is not the omnipresent and 
 all-speaking voice of an omniscient Judge, but the 
 inherited disapproval of the tribe; self-reproach 
 is not sincere regret for wrong-doing, but a new 
 social energy intended to give impulse to right ac- 
 tion; in a word, wrong is wrong only so far as it 
 injures the race. Agnosticism has its teachers and 
 defenders. Its very newness makes it an attraction 
 for those ill-disposed to work in the old grooves of 
 thought. Minds as brilliant as that of the late 
 Professor Clifford, as patient and possessed of as 
 powerful grasp as that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 have yielded to its seductive voice, and in its service 
 have become the hewers of wood and the drawers of 
 
 1 Professor Huxley, objecting to the word materialist, suggested 
 that he and his school be called agnostics. This was in 1869, at 
 Mr. James Knowles's house in Clapham Common. 
 
74 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 water through long and toilsome years. Indolent 
 minds find the spirit of agnosticism congenial to 
 their moods, inasmuch as it teaches them to ignore 
 all mystery and cut the Gordian knot of every diffi- 
 culty by relegating it to the Unknowable. Cor- 
 rupted minds make it a cloak for the indulgence 
 of their appetites and passions. And so this spirit 
 has that in it which can fascinate all classes of in- 
 telligence. It talks a cant phraseology that would 
 make one believe it to be the embodiment of what- 
 ever is noblest in the teachings of Gautama and the 
 Gospels at one and the same time. It gives the 
 shows of things for their reality. 
 
 2. Such is agnosticism. The agnostic refuses 
 to acknowledge the Unseen Universe. He is in- 
 tolerant of any mention thereof. He is aggressive, 
 bullying, and not infrequently insulting in his 
 mode of assertion. With the utmost confidence he 
 assures us that there is no supernatural order. 
 He has proved Christ a myth, the Gospels clever 
 forgeries, and Christianity a huge imposition. He 
 insists that it is all settled beyond controversy ; only 
 intellectual babes and sucklings think differently 
 from him to-day. In the name of humanity, he 
 loves humanity exceeding well, and in the name 
 of truth, he reveres truth, he begs you to set 
 aside all such silly notions as that there exists a God, 
 or that his Providence directs the affairs of men, or 
 that you have a soul. This is indeed a new dispen- 
 sation. It is the gospel of negation, and the agnos- 
 tic is its missionary. But in the name of whom or 
 of what does he come ? Assuredly, not in the name 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 75 
 
 of common sense, for the common sense of the 
 whole world holds with absolute certainty the very 
 opposite of his teachings. Not in the name of 
 revelation, for he denies the possibility of a revealed 
 religion. Not in the name of human authority, for 
 he recognizes no authority beyond himself. Not in 
 the name of the reason within him, for in bringing 
 himself to this conviction he ignores the primary 
 laws of all reason. "It is," says Cardinal New- 
 man, "the highest wisdom to accept truth of what- 
 ever kind, wherever it is clearly ascertained to 
 be such, though there be difficulty in adjusting it 
 with other known truth." 1 Now here is where 
 the agnostic errs. He has a favorite theory, a pet 
 notion of his own. It is a mere hypothesis that 
 may or may not be true. But he finds difficulty in 
 adjusting his theory with truths that come home 
 to the highest order of intelligence with an irre- 
 sistible force. So much the worse for the truths 
 and the intellect. His pet conception must stand, 
 and the universally received truths may vanish 
 into oblivion. Of course, his conclusions cannot 
 be broader than his premises. The elements he 
 drops out in the one will naturally be missing in 
 the other. Eliminating the supernatural order, 
 as a consequence there remains in the visible pro- 
 cess of his reasoning only the natural order. 
 
 3. Withal, the supernatural order exists. It 
 secretly enters into the agnostic's reasoning and 
 becomes a disturbing element in his calculations. 
 
 1 Idea of a University. Lecture on Christianity and Scientific 
 Investigation, p. 462. 
 
76 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 He may ignore it ; he may neglect it ; lie may deny 
 it; but he cannot destroy it. In moral, social, 
 and historical discussions it crops out at the most 
 unexpected moments, or awaits him at the end of 
 his speculations and forces him into monstrous par- 
 adoxes. 1 And, strange to say, the agnostic does 
 not perceive how illogical he is. He even boldly 
 asserts that in recognizing this momentous element 
 in human thought and human action, we thereby 
 lose all claim to science. Now, science is a me- 
 thodical treatment of facts according to given prin- 
 ciples. By means of what principles and accord- 
 ing to what method does the agnostic arrive at his 
 conclusion ? So far as he has a principle at all, it 
 is reducible to this, that what the study of matter 
 does not reveal is a dream, a shadow ; 2 there is no 
 reality beyond the phenomena testified to by con- 
 sciousness and the senses. 3 That is to say, the ag- 
 nostic builds up his materialistic theories upon an 
 assumption made expressly to exclude that which 
 he wishes to ignore. Is it just ? Is it scientific ? 
 And as for method, the agnostic has none. He 
 holds aloof from all religious thoughts and remains 
 in a state of apathy towards all spiritual issues. 
 He may or may not have a soul ; it is unknowable. 
 There may or may not be a God; He also is un- 
 knowable. All such questions the agnostic re- 
 gards with sublime indifference. Nay, he considers 
 
 1 For instances see Mr. Mallock's work, Is Life Worth Living f 
 chap. ix. 
 
 2 Leslie Stephen, Dreams and Realities. 
 
 8 The Value of Life. A Reply to Mr. Mallock's Work, p. 72. 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 77 
 
 it a matter of duty and of wisdom to place them out 
 of sight as fruitless speculation. "By continually 
 seeking to know," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "and 
 being continually thrown back with a deepened 
 conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may 
 keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our 
 highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that 
 through which all things exist as the Unknow- 
 able." 1 Now if those issues which are of the 
 natural order and proved by the unaided light of 
 reason, are ignored or denied, how may we demon- 
 strate the existence of the supernatural order which 
 stands beyond the domain of reason upon the higher 
 plane of Faith and God's grace? No chain of rea- 
 soning can lead to this invisible region. It is be- 
 yond the range of human ken. There yawns a 
 chasm between agnosticism and Christianity that 
 human hands cannot bridge over. Later on we 
 shall watch a great modern poet wrestle with the 
 problem. 
 
 4. To the eye of Faith the supernatural world is 
 a reality as real as, in a sense more real than, 
 the natural world. He who denies or ignores 
 it understands not himself, nor humanity, nor 
 the universe in which he finds himself. The hu- 
 man heart knows neither rest nor happiness till 
 it becomes sanctified in this mysterious world. 
 Therefore it is that an Augustin will, while still 
 groping towards this life of grace, cry out from the 
 depths of his own experience : " Lord, Thou hast 
 made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till 
 
 1 First Principles, ch. v. p. 113. 
 
78 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 it reposes in Thee." 1 Even an Augustin could 
 not enter into the supernatural life by the force of 
 his own genius. Reason and research may prepare 
 the way, but assent to the supernatural truths of 
 religion is elicited from the intellect only by com- 
 mand of the will, and the will cannot move the 
 intellect to such an assent without a special super- 
 natural assistance which we call grace. The truths 
 of the supernatural order are seen in this life 
 darkly as through a glass. They are not to be 
 found at the end of any chain of syllogisms. They 
 are not to be learned from a study of Nature's 
 laws. Human reason and human knowledge, 
 whether considered individually or collectively in 
 the race, are limited to the natural. Knowledge 
 of the supernatural can come only from a Divine 
 Teacher. One may be convinced of every truth of 
 revealed religion and yet not possess the gift of 
 faith. That gift is purely gratuitous. The spirit 
 of God breathes where it will. It follows sincere 
 prayer rather than curious research. But once it 
 opens the eyes of the soul, it reveals beyond all 
 power of doubt, or cavil, or contradiction, the su- 
 pernatural as a fact solemn, universal, constant 
 throughout the vicissitudes of ages. 2 
 
 II. 
 
 1. It is the wisdom of true philosophy to take 
 man as he is and deal with him accordingly. 
 
 1 Confess, lib. i. cap. 1. 
 
 2 See Zigliara, Propadeutica ad Sacram Theologian, pp. 11-117. 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 79 
 
 Now, man to the eye of reason is indeed in his 
 essence and nature a rational animal. But to the 
 eye of faith, man is more. He is also a child of 
 grace. No sooner had he been created man than 
 he became the recipient of God's choicest favors. 
 And when, by the Fall, he had forfeited many of 
 his high prerogatives, he was still granted grace 
 sufficient to enable him to repent and be converted. 
 It is within every man's power to attain the high 
 destiny to which he has been called; but he can 
 do so only by reason of the saving grace that flows 
 from the Word. This is not a law of to-day or 
 yesterday; it is of all time. "We are plants," 
 says Plato, "not of earth, but of heaven; and 
 from the same source whence the soul first arose, 
 a divine nature, raising aloft our head and root, 
 directs our whole bodily frame." : We come from 
 God that we may go back to Him. The Word be- 
 came incarnate for all, suffered for all, died for all, 
 redeemed all in order that all might have life ever- 
 lasting. Ours, and ours alone, will be the fault if 
 we should wander away from that noble destiny. 
 
 " Not in entire f orgetf ulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds ofylory, do we come 
 From God, who is our home" 2 
 
 2. Therefore is it worthy of our noblest efforts 
 and our most undivided attention to foster in our- 
 selves the Spiritual Life. Herein is the highest 
 cultivation of the Moral Sense. No time should 
 
 1 Timceus, cap. Ixxi. 
 
 2 Wordsworth, Ode on Immortality. 
 
80 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 be thought too precious to devote to it, for it deals 
 with the things of eternity; no thought too sus- 
 tained or too painful, for its object is the Light of 
 all intelligence. In the prayers that we make to 
 Him who is the Life and the Light, in the sacra- 
 ments that are administered to us, in the sermons 
 that we hear and the doctrinal instructions that are 
 given us, do we imbibe the food that will nourish 
 and sustain in us the spiritual life. But it is 
 not with the Spiritual Life that I am now con- 
 cerned ; it is rather with the Spiritual Sense. They 
 are distinct and are not always found together. 
 The sentiment of piety and sensible relish for di- 
 vine things may be very weak in a nature that is 
 spiritually strong. And also, one may be very 
 weak in the practice of virtue, and still possess 
 this sentiment of piety to a high degree of refine- 
 ment and cultivation. Should we neglect the cul- 
 tivation of this Spiritual Sense there would be 
 lacking something to the complete development of 
 our soul -functions. Our life-duties give an out- 
 ward tendency to the soul ; they withdraw it from 
 its inner self and its own immediate concerns. 
 They are therefore to it a species of distraction. 
 But the soul has an inward life ; and for the proper 
 development of this inward life, it is important 
 that it enter into itself and cultivate the interior 
 spirit. 
 
 3. This is the function of the Spiritual Sense. 
 Without the exercise of this function our thinking 
 were incomplete. It is an incentive to higher and 
 superior culture. Would you know why it is that 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 81 
 
 the religious life has been at all times a nursery 
 for learning and a fountain - head of original 
 thought ? Much is due to the fact that scholars and 
 thinkers have instinctively sought therein a refuge 
 from the noise and whirl of worldly affairs. But 
 much also is due to the cultivation of the Spiritual 
 Sense. It enlarged their intellectual horizon. It 
 threw upon things an additional and far-reaching 
 light. It gave those men a favorable vantage- 
 ground from which they might survey deeds and 
 doers of deeds with unbiased mind. Sheltered 
 in the sanctuary of religion, away from the storms 
 of political strife and free from the struggles and 
 anxieties, "the temptations and distractions that 
 beset their less fortunate brothers battling through 
 the turmoil of life, their souls rested in a peaceful 
 calm beneath this spiritual sky that brought joy 
 and contentment to their hearts, and shed upon 
 them a light which beamed forth from their coun- 
 tenances, even as it enhanced the clearness of their 
 intellectual vision. And so, when they looked out 
 upon the world and the things of the world, they 
 saw more distinctly the needs and wants and short- 
 comings of humanity, and were the first to apply 
 the remedy. They led the van in arts and letters, 
 in science and education, and in all that goes to 
 make up a people's civilization. With no slight 
 reason, then, does Renan speak of monastic insti- 
 tutions as a great school of originality for the 
 human mind. 1 And Ranke, contemplating the un- 
 
 1 Mais il est certain qu'en perdant les institutions de la vie mo- 
 nastique, 1'esprit humain a perdu une grande e*cole d'originalite*. 
 Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse, p. 336. 
 
82 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 broken progress of intellectual culture that had 
 been going on for ages within the bosom of the 
 Catholic Church, hesitated not to say: "All the 
 vital and productive energies of human culture 
 were therein united and mingled." 1 
 
 4. We have nothing to fear from Religion. 
 She is our strength and our support. "The splen- 
 dor of the divine truths received into the mind 
 helps the understanding, and far from detracting 
 from its dignity, rather adds to its nobility, keen- 
 ness, and stability." So speaks His Holiness, Leo 
 XIII., in his noble vindication of Christian phi- 
 losophy. 2 Such is also the experience of Maine 
 de Biran, whom Cousin pronounces the greatest 
 metaphysician that has honored France since Male- 
 branche. 3 His testimony is all the more valu- 
 able because it is the outcome of long and circui- 
 tous wanderings through the mazes of philosophic 
 errors, with here and there a glimpse of light, till 
 finally in his mature years, after much groping and 
 great toil, the full splendor of truth burst upon 
 him. He says : " Religion alone solves the prob- 
 lems of philosophy. She alone tells us where to 
 find truth, absolute reality. Moreover, she shows 
 us that we live in a perpetual illusion when we 
 estimate things by the testimony of the senses, 
 or according to our passions, or even according to 
 
 1 History of the Beformation in Germany, vol. i. bk. ii. chap. i. 
 p. 251, ed. Austin. 
 
 2 Encyclical ^Eterni Patris, 1879. 
 
 8 Nouvelles Considerations sur le Rapport du Physique et du 
 Moral. Ouvrage posthume de Maine de Biran, Preface de M. 
 Cousin, p. vi. 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 83 
 
 an artificial and conventional reason. It is in 
 raising ourselves up to God and seeking union with 
 Him by his grace, that we see and appreciate 
 things as they are. Certain it is that the point 
 of view of the senses and passions is not at all that 
 of human reason ; still less is it that of the supe- 
 rior reason, which, strengthened by religion, soars 
 far above all earthly things." 1 These are not 
 the words of a cloistered monk, nor of a religious 
 teacher. He who penned them had been a materi- 
 alist in philosophy and a worldling in practical life, 
 and though he had outgrown his materialism, and 
 cast off much of the spirit of the world, still at the 
 time of writing them he did not acknowledge him- 
 self a Christian. They are his inmost convictions 
 wrung from him in self-communion by the spirit of 
 truth. 
 
 III. 
 
 1. But we need not look beyond ourselves for 
 further reason why we should cultivate the Spir- 
 itual Sense. Were the reader a young man stand- 
 ing on the threshold of life I would say to him : 
 You now look out upon the world decked in all the 
 roseate hues that your young imagination weaves ; 
 your fancy filled with schemes of ambition; bent 
 upon achieving success in some one or other walk 
 of life, you are eager, even to impatience, to start 
 out in your course ; and you may think it a loss of 
 
 1 Journal Intime Quoted in A. Nicolas : Etude sur Maine de 
 Biran (Paris, 1858). This monograph is a philosophical gem, 
 which deserves to be better known. 
 
84 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 time, a diverting you from your main purpose, to 
 enter seriously upon the cultivation of this Spirit- 
 ual Sense. On the contrary, you will find in it a 
 help. The present is only a passing phase of your 
 existence. Youth soon fades and strength decays ; 
 and as shock after shock in your struggle through 
 life demolishes one after another the air-castles 
 which you so long and so laboriously constructed, 
 you will more and more feel the necessity of ceas- 
 ing to lean upon broken reeds and of looking within 
 your soul's interior for an abiding comfort. If 
 you find there but emptiness, even as you have 
 found hollowness and deceit without, you will grow 
 hardened and cynical. But if, on the other hand, 
 you have learned to commune with yourself and to 
 make your soul's interior the guest-chamber in 
 which to entertain the Divine Word, the Emman- 
 uel dwelling within you, in Him you will find re- 
 newed strength to fight your battles with the world, 
 to help you in trouble, to soothe you in pain, and 
 to console you in sorrow and affliction. In cul- 
 tivating the Spiritual Sense you are also educating 
 yourself up to the larger views of life, and learn- 
 ing the great lesson of patience and forbearance. 
 
 2. And there is another moment a supreme 
 moment when the language of the soul, the sen- 
 timent of piety and relish for divine things, the 
 habit of sweet communion with your Saviour, will 
 be to you a blessing and a comfort. It is when you 
 are prostrate on the pallet of sickness, and life is 
 ebbing fast, and the helpless body seems to be sink- 
 ing down abysmal depths with the weight of its 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 85 
 
 own inertness. From time to time the soul's flick- 
 ering flame lights up into a sudden blaze of con- 
 sciousness and animation, as if wrestling hard to 
 be free. Dear friends and near relatives maybe 
 there, hovering around you, ministering to your 
 every want and gratifying your least desire. But 
 from the questioning eyes that eagerly scan the 
 face of your physician, and the anxious glances 
 that are cast upon you, and the subdued whisper- 
 ings that speak the worst fears, you learn that you 
 are beyond all human aid. More faintly flickers 
 the vital spark and weaker grows the frame, and 
 loving faces gaze upon you with a more wistful 
 look, and beloved forms pass before you with a 
 more stealthy tread ; but they are to you as though 
 they were not. Fainter and feebler you become, 
 and the world recedes farther and farther from 
 you, and those you love so dearly seem afar off, 
 and the distance between you and them grows 
 more and more. You feel yourself sinking into 
 unconsciousness, and you know that your next wak- 
 ing will be in another world, far away from every- 
 thing in life around which your heartstrings are 
 entwined. The last rites of the Church are ad- 
 ministered to you, and as your senses are about 
 shutting out forever the sights and sounds of this 
 world, you catch, as the echo of a far-off voice, 
 the words of the priest, "Go forth, O Christian 
 soul." Happy will you be in that dread hour, 
 if, when you appear before the Divine Searcher 
 of hearts, the pure light of the Word penetrates 
 no corner that you did not know, and reveals 
 
86 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 no sin that has not been repented of and atoned 
 for. Thrice happy will you be when you meet 
 the Divine Presence face to face, if, having cul- 
 tivated the Spiritual Sense and acquired a relish 
 for divine truths, you find that you are familiar 
 with the language of love and adoration, of praise 
 and thanksgiving, which should be yours for all 
 eternity, and that you are not as a stranger in a 
 strange land, but rather as a child welcomed home 
 to his Father's House after a life-long exile. Wise 
 indeed were it that we all of us learn in time this 
 language which must be ours throughout eternity. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. There are two manuals of instruction and 
 initiation into this mystical language of the soul 
 which I would especially recommend. One is the 
 Book of the Gospels. We know its contents, but 
 we ought never to weary of its perusal. We shall 
 always find in it something new. It treats of a 
 subject that never grows old. We cannot hear 
 enough of Him, the Meek One, walking among 
 men and doing good wherever He went. Let us 
 always open the Book reverently and lovingly, and 
 let the light of his Blessed Face shine out upon us 
 from its inspired pages. Sweetly and simply it 
 traces his footsteps ; in loving accents it recounts 
 the words He spoke, the deeds He did, the mira- 
 cles He wrought. It reveals the God-Man. It 
 tells of his sufferings from the manger in Beth- 
 lehem to the cross on Calvary. It tells of his 
 
CULTURE OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 87 
 
 patience and forbearance, of his humility and mod- 
 esty, of his compassion for sinners and his hatred 
 for hypocrisy. His words are as balm to the 
 bruised, rest to the weary, peace to the restless, joy 
 to the sorrowing, and light to those groping in the 
 dark. They penetrate all hearts because they flow 
 from a heart loving man with an untold love. 
 Our familiarity with them from our childhood up 
 may lead us to lose sight of their untold worth. 
 The Sermon on the Mount embodies all that there 
 is of good and perfect in moral thought, moral 
 word, and moral work in the whole life of human- 
 ity. The sublimest hymn that was ever poured 
 forth from the lips of man in prayer and the praise 
 of his Creator is the Our Father. In its gran- 
 deur it rises from the lowest depths of man's no- 
 thingness to the throne of Infinite Majesty; in its 
 pathos it searches the heart, touches its feebleness 
 and exposes its wants; in its utterance it speaks 
 with the simplicity and tenderness of a child lean- 
 ing upon a fond and merciful father. It is at once 
 supplication, exhortation, instruction, praise, and 
 worship. I might go on enumerating the beauties 
 and sublimities of this marvelous Book and never 
 tire, never get done. Its beauty is untold; its 
 wisdom is unfathomable. They are the beauty 
 and the wisdom of Him who is the ideal of all 
 loveliness and the source of all wisdom. 
 
 2. That other book which I would recommend to 
 you has garnered a few of the lessons revealed in 
 these Gospels and bound them together in rich and 
 ripe sheaves of thought. A rare harvesting in- 
 
88 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 deed is this book. It is known in every tongue and 
 its praises have been sung in every note. Next to 
 its original and source it is the most popular book 
 ever written. I speak of " The Imitation of Christ, " 
 which Fontenelle without exaggeration well styles 
 the most beautiful book that ever came from the 
 hands of man. 1 It has been admired by all classes 
 of thinkers and all shades of creeds. Doctor 
 Johnson loved it and used to speak of it as a good 
 book, to receive which the world opened its arms. 2 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau wept over it. 3 John Wes- 
 ley published an edition of it as food for the hun- 
 gering souls to whom he ministered in the Durham 
 coal-pits and on the Devonshire moors. Bossuet 
 called it a volume full of unction ; St. Charles Bor- 
 romeo, the world's consoler; and blessed Thomas 
 More said that the book, if read, would secure the 
 nation's happiness. Surely, a book receiving praise 
 from so many and such diverse sources is worthy 
 of our intimate acquaintance. The author was 
 Thomas Hamerken, of Kempen, commonly known 
 as Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471). We wiU first 
 consider the man and his times ; afterwards we will 
 discuss the spirit, the philosophy, and the influence 
 of the book. 
 
 1 Le plus beau livre qui soit parti de la main d'un homme, 
 puisque 1'Evangile n'en vient pas. 
 
 2 Boswell's Johnson, vol. ii. p. 143. 
 
 8 Dublin University Magazine, June, 1869. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION. 
 
 1. THE century in which Thomas a Kempis saw 
 the light was the transition period between the 
 mediaeval and the modern world. The Crusades had 
 done their work; the gothic cathedral had been 
 built ; the Miracle-Play had ceased to instruct and 
 edify ; Thomas of Aquin had put the finishing hand 
 to Scholastic Philosophy, and left it a scientific 
 monument worthy of his genius and the age ; Dante 
 had crystallized the faith and science, the fierce 
 hate and the strong love, the poetry, the politics, 
 and the theology, the whole spirit of medievalism 
 in his sublime allegory. That old order was 
 breaking up, and in the awakening of the new 
 much anarchy prevailed. In the general crumbling 
 away of institutions the human intellect seemed 
 bewildered. A groping and a restlessness existed 
 throughout ; there was a yearning of men after they 
 knew not what, for the night was upon them and 
 they were impatient for the coming of the dawn. 
 Where were they to seek the light? The ignorant 
 and the obstinate, without either the requisite 
 knowledge or the necessary patience to discover the 
 laws of Nature, sought to wrest from her the secrets 
 
90 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 of which she is possessed by the process of magic, 
 astrology, and simulated intercourse with spirits. 1 
 Hecate was their inspiring genius. 
 
 2. The learned sought the light, on the one hand, 
 through the mists and mazes of the old issue of 
 Nominalism and Realism, which had been revived 
 by William of Ockham (d. 1347), and continued 
 by Jean Buridan (d. after 1350), Albert of Saxony 
 (who taught at Paris about 1350-60), Marsilius of 
 Inghen (d. 1392), and the zealous Peter of Ailly 
 (1350-1425). 2 In their gropings they gathered 
 up little more than an abundance of error, aridity, 
 and intellectual pride. Others, following in the 
 wake of Petrarca and Boccaccio, began to cultivate 
 an exaggerated taste for the ancient classics and to 
 revive the spirit of paganism. Children were in- 
 structed in Greek, 3 and the pedantic quarrels of 
 grammarians divided cities and even whole prov- 
 inces. 4 Others again, weary of the barren dispu- 
 tations of the Schools, sought the light in union 
 with the Godhead through the dark and unsafe 
 paths of Mysticism. Master Eckhart proclaimed 
 it their goal and only refuge. He undertook to 
 point out the way, but became lost in the mazes 
 of neo-Platonism and Pantheism. Under his in- 
 
 1 See Gb'rres, La Mystique, trad. par. M. Ch. Ste-Foi. partie iii. 
 La Mystique Diabolique, t. iv. chap, viii., xiv. 
 
 2 Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Eng. tr. vol. i. p. 465. 
 
 8 Ambroise, de 1'ordre des Camaldules, au commencement de 
 1400, trouvait dans Mantoue des enfants et des jeunes filles verse's 
 dans le grec. Cantu, Histoire Universelle, t. xii. p. 578. 
 
 4 Les querelles des pe'dants hargneux inte'ressaient, divisaient les 
 villes et les provinces. Ibid. p. 589. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 91 
 
 fluence whole nations, impelled by an indefinite 
 yearning for spiritual life, rose up as one man in 
 universal clamor for mystical union with the God- 
 head. They became intoxicated with the New 
 Science. He had taught them that the creation of 
 the world and the generation of the Word were one 
 act ; that the soul preexisted in God from all eter- 
 nity; that the light of the Word was inseparable 
 from the light of the soul, and that in union with 
 that Word were to be found perfection and know- 
 ledge. 1 
 
 3. Although Eckhart tried to hedge in these 
 dangerous tenets with various safeguards and fine- 
 spun distinctions, the people, in their ignorance 
 and enthusiasm, broke loose from all restraint and 
 fell into deplorable disorders. Large numbers 
 formed themselves into societies having as spiritual 
 directors laymen who claimed to be initiated into 
 the secrets of this mystical union with the Godhead. 
 This was a condition of things anomalous as it was 
 .dangerous. Sometimes, indeed, under this lay- 
 direction, the people made real spiritual progress, as 
 did the society known as the Friends of God under 
 the guidance of that mysterious layman who so 
 
 1 "The Light, which is the Son of God, and the shining das 
 Ausscheinen of that light in the creature-world are inseparable. 
 The Birth of the Son and the Creation of the world are one act." 
 Stockl, Geschichte der Philosophic, III., 6, p. 494. Also 10, 
 p. 495. "The soul, like all things, preexisted in God. . . . Im- 
 manent in the Divine Essence, I created the world and myself." 
 Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. i. 106, in which Eckhart's 
 teaching is accounted for at length by Dr. Adolf Lasson. The 
 article in Stockl is far more satisfactory. 
 
92 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 successfully led the celebrated Tauler into the way 
 of this mystical life. 1 More frequently, they went 
 beyond all control and became mere fanatics, as the 
 Beguines and Begards. 2 Tauler (1290-1361) took 
 the yearning multitude by the hand and led them 
 in the path which he had trodden. So powerful 
 was his eloquence and so great the influence that he 
 wielded, that even at this day his name is a magic 
 wand, capable of stirring the hearts of the descend- 
 ants of the thousands along the Rhine who clung 
 upon his lips and eagerly fed their hungering souls 
 with the words of life that fell from them. And 
 whilst the rugged earnestness of Tauler pierced their 
 hearts, the gentle suavity of Heinrich Suso (1300- 
 1365), the minnesinger of the love of God, swayed 
 them with no less force and helped to dissipate the 
 atmosphere of false mysticism and erroneous doc- 
 trines in which they were enveloped. 
 
 n. 
 
 1. To this extent had Mysticism become a pas- 
 sion, when Gerhard Groote established the Bre- 
 thren of the Common Life. The mystical spirit 
 entered into their rule of living, but in so new and 
 
 1 See Life of Tauler, prefixed to his Sermons, edited and trans- 
 lated into French by M. Ch. Ste-Foi (Paris, 1855), vol. i. p. 7 et 
 seq. 
 
 2 When the organization was dissolved by Pope John XXII. it 
 numbered more than three hundred thousand in Germany alone. 
 Gb'rres, La Mystique, t. i. p. 131. They were so called from their 
 institutor, Lambert Begha, who established the organization in 
 1170. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 93 
 
 practical a form that they become known as Bre- 
 thren of the New Devotion. It pervaded the books 
 they wrote ; its spirit was in the very atmosphere of 
 their schools. The children attending them were 
 imbued with it. Amongst those children was 
 Thomas a Kempis. He afterwards became a mem- 
 ber of the Order, was ordained priest, and lived to 
 the advanced age of ninety -one years. We read 
 nothing eventful in his life. Like the Venerable 
 Beda, from his youth up he had borne the sweet 
 yoke of religion. Like Beda, also, it had been a 
 pleasure for him to read and teach and write and 
 transcribe what he found best in sacred and pro- 
 fane literature. In order that the intellect might 
 not grow barren in the mechanical exercise of 
 transcribing the thoughts of others, it was made 
 a rule that the Brothers should cull, each for him- 
 self and according to his taste, some of the beau- 
 tiful sayings and maxims of the Fathers and 
 saints, and add thereto pious reflections. 1 This 
 was a labor of love for Thomas, and in perform- 
 ing it he was sowing and fertilizing the seeds of 
 that special book that was to be the child of his 
 genius. 
 
 2. Another source of inspiration for that book 
 was the beautiful example of his brethren. His 
 convent was a spiritual garden in which were 
 tended with great care all the virtues of the reli- 
 gious life. He needed only to remember and record. 
 Not only in his great work, but in the numerous 
 lives of the brethren that he has left us, he never 
 
 1 These collections were called Rapiaria. " 
 
94 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 tires of expressing his appreciation of their devo- 
 tion, regularity, and spirit of faith. And they 
 were equally edified by his amiable character and 
 great humility. They held him in honor and es- 
 teem, and his influence amongst them was great. 1 
 One of the brethren remembers, as an event in his 
 life, how he had seen him and spoken with him : 
 "The Brother who wrote ' The Imitation ' is called 
 Thomas. . . . This writer was living in 1454, and 
 I, Brother Hermann, having been sent to the gen- 
 eral chapter in that year, spoke with him." 2 Nor 
 was he less appreciated outside his convent walls. 
 The Cistercian monk Adrian de But stops the 
 chronicle of political events to say how he edified 
 by his writings, especially his masterpiece, which 
 the good monk not inappropriately styles "a metri- 
 cal volume." 3 His fame has continued to grow 
 broader, ripple after ripple, till it fills the whole 
 
 1 Among the small and peaceful circle of the religious Mystics, 
 no man exercised so important an influence as Thomas Hamerken, 
 of Kempen. Gieseler, Compend. Eccl. History, v p. 73. 
 
 2 Mgr. J. B. Malou, Becherches sur le veritable auteur de limita- 
 tion, p. 82. 
 
 3 Hoc anno frater Thomas a Kempis, de Monte Sanctae Agnetis 
 professor ordinis regularium canonicorum, multos scriptis suis 
 divulgatis, zedificat: hie vitam Sanctae Lidwigis descripsit et 
 quoddam volumen metrice super illud, Qui sequitur me. Chroniques 
 relatives a Vhistoire de la Belgique, publie"es par M. le Baron Ker- 
 vyn de Lettenhove, t. i. The Imitation as written by a Kempis is 
 both metrical and rhythmical. This is the conclusion of Dr. 
 Hirsche after long and careful study of the original MS. ( Thomce 
 Kempensis de Imitatione Christi. Berolini, 1874. Prefatio, pp. 
 xiv, xv.) Henry Sommalius, in 1599, first divided each chapter 
 into paragraphs, and in the seventeenth century several editors 
 subdivided the paragraphs into versicles. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 95 
 
 world. And yet, when living, he shrank from no- 
 toriety; he loved retirement; he dreaded gossip. 1 
 On, on, through the years of his long life, through 
 the vigor of youth, through the maturity of man- 
 hood, through the gathering shadows of old age, he 
 plied his pen and scattered broadcast devout books. 
 Let us approach still nearer. 
 
 18. Figure to yourself a man of medium height, 2 
 rather stout in body, with forehead broad, and 
 a strong Flemish cast of features, massive and 
 thoughtful, bespeaking a man of meditative hab- 
 its; his cheeks tinged slightly brown; his large 
 and lustrous eyes looking with a grave and far-off 
 look, as though gazing into the world of spiritual 
 life in which his soul dwelt. This is Thomas 
 a Kempis as he appeared to his contemporaries. 
 Still another glimpse of him, as he walks and 
 speaks with his brethren, has been sketched with 
 a loving hand: "This good Father, when he was 
 walking abroad with some of the Brotherhood, or 
 with some of his other friends, and suddenly felt 
 an inspiration come upon him namely, when the 
 Bridegroom was willing to communicate with the 
 bride, that is, when Jesus Christ, his Beloved, did 
 call to his soul as His elect and beloved spouse 
 
 1 "Valde devotus, libenter solus, et nunquam otiosus." MS. 
 \ 1,841, Bibl. de Bourgogne, Brussels, printed for the first time in 
 Appendix to Recherches sur le veritable auteur de I' * Imitation, par 
 Mgr. J. B. Malou, deuxieme ed. p. 388. 
 
 ' 2 " Hie fuit brevis staturae, sed magnus in virtutibus." Ibid. 
 From a measurement of the thigh-bone, Dr. F. R. Cruise of Dub- 
 lin calculated the height of Thomas a Kempis to be at least five 
 feet six inches. Thomas d, Kempis, pp. 306, 324, 325. 
 
96 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 was wont to say, 4 My beloved brethren, I must 
 now needs leave you,' and meekly begging to be 
 excused, he would leave them, saying, 'Indeed, it 
 behooves me to go; there is One expecting me in 
 my cell. ' They accordingly granted his request, 
 took well his excuse, and were much edified there- 
 by." l In this reverential manner was his mem- 
 ory cherished. We are not surprised to learn 
 that a great many, being attracted by his reputa- 
 tion for science and sanctity, flocked around him, 
 to cultivate his acquaintance and to pursue their 
 studies under his guidance. 2 
 
 4. What was the inner life of this attractive 
 soul? What were the trials, the struggles with 
 self, the temptations through which he passed? 
 Surely, he who is both philosopher and poet of the 
 interior life in all its phases must have traversed 
 the rugged path leading up to perfection with an 
 observant eye for all the dangerous turns and 
 treacherous pitfalls that lurk on the way. Above 
 all, he must have loved much. "The passion," 
 says Michelet, "which we meet in this work is 
 grand as the object which it seeks ; grand as the 
 world which it forsakes." And in this love he 
 found strength if) overcome every obstacle. In 
 another work he thus lays bare his soul : " Some- 
 
 1 Opera Omnia Th. de Kempis. Ed. Georg Pirckhamer. Nurem- 
 berg, 1494, fol. xxxv. Kettlewell, Thomas a Kempis and the 
 Brethren of the Common Life, vol. i. p. 33. Mgr. Malou, Re- 
 cherches, p. 84. 
 
 2 Hardenberg, M8. Life of Wessel, a disciple of Thomas a 
 Kempis. Quoted by Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, 
 bd. ii. p. 738, Eng. tr. vol. ii. p. 271. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 97 
 
 times my passions assailed me as a whirlwind; 
 but God sent forth his arrows and dissipated 
 them. The attack was often renewed, but God 
 was still my support." l And in his great book he 
 occasionally gives us a glimpse of himself. Thus 
 we see him at the beginning of his religious ca- 
 reer in great mental anxiety as to whether or no 
 he will persevere. "He presently heard within 
 him an answer from God, which said, 'If thou 
 didst know it, what wouldst thou do? Do 
 now what thou wouldst do then, and thou shalt 
 be secure.' And being herewith comforted and 
 strengthened, he committed himself wholly to the 
 will of God, and his anxious wavering ceased." 2 
 In another place 3 we find him sending up cries for 
 strength and resignation, such as could only come 
 from a heart bleeding and lacerated with wounds 
 inflicted by calumny and humiliation. 4 But it is 
 only a soul that rose above the spites and jealousies 
 of life that could speak the words of comfort and 
 consolation therein to be found. "Verily," hath 
 it been beautifully said, "only a breast burning 
 with pity a breast that hath never wounded an- 
 other breast could have offered that incense to 
 heaven, that dew to earth, which we call 'The Im- 
 itation. ' " 6 Such was the author. He had learned 
 to repress every inordinate desire or emotion, until 
 
 1 Soliloquy of the Soul. See chaps, xv., xvi., xvii. 
 
 2 Bk. i. chap. xxv. 2. 
 8 Bk. iii. chap. xxix. 
 
 4 Charles Butler, Life prefixed to Bishop Challoner's transla- 
 tion of The Imitation, p. vii. 
 * William Maccoll in Contemporary Review, September, 1866. 
 
98 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 in his old age he was content with solitude and a 
 book. "I have sought rest everywhere," was he 
 wont to say, "but I have found it nowhere except 
 in a little corner with a Jittle book." l 
 
 in. 
 
 1. It is interesting to study the literary structure 
 of "The Imitation," and note the traces of author- 
 ship running through it. We will glance at it for 
 a moment. First of all and above all, the book 
 is saturated through and through with the sacred 
 Scriptures. You can scarcely read a sentence that 
 does not recall some passage now in the Old, now 
 in the New Testament. It reflects their pure rays 
 like an unbroken mirror. To transcribe the Bible 
 had been a labor of love for the author. Echoes 
 of beautiful passages from the spiritual writers that 
 went before him reverberate through the pages of 
 this book which is none the less original. The 
 author drew from St. Gregory the Great. 2 St. 
 Bernard seems to have been a special favorite. 3 
 So was St. Francis of Assisi. 4 He drew from St. 
 
 1 Charles Butler, loc. cit. p. viii. These words are inscribed on 
 the pages of an open book represented in the Gertruidenberg por- 
 trait of the author. Dr. Criuse has an autotype copy of this por- 
 trait in his valuable and scholarly book. 
 
 2 Cf. Gregory, Cura Pastoralis, and The Imitation, bk. iv. 
 chap. v. 
 
 3 Cf. the hymn Jesu, dulcis memoria, and bk. ii. chaps, vii, viii. 
 For numerous other instances of passages from St. Bernard cor- 
 responding with sentences in The Imitation, see Thomas ft Kempis, 
 by F. R Cruise, M. D., pp. 314-20. 
 
 4 Cf. Epist. xl., and bk. iii. chap. 1. 8. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 99 
 
 Thomas ; 1 he drew from St. Bonaventura ; 2 he 
 even drew from the Roman Missal. 3 He also laid 
 the pagan classics under contribution. He quotes 
 Aristotle; 4 he quotes Ovid; 5 he quotes Seneca, 6 
 and there are some remarkable coincidences in ex- 
 pression between himself and Dante. 7 He even 
 juotes the popular sayings of his day. 8 The poem 
 of the "Holy Grail " was not unknown to him. 9 In 
 u word, as with the poet, whatever love inspired, 
 no matter the speech in which the voice came, he 
 wrote at her dictation. 10 
 
 2. In both language and spirit the book exhales 
 the atmosphere of Mysticism in which it was con- 
 
 1 Cf. Office for Corpus Christi, and bk. iv. chap. ii. 1 ; also 
 chap. xiii. 2, 17. 
 
 2 Cf . the hymn Eecordare Sanctce Crucis and bk. ii. chap. xii. 2. 
 The Toulouse Sermons attributed to St. Bonaventura, having many 
 extracts from The Imitation, are no longer regarded as authen- 
 tic. See Mgr. Malou, Recherches sur le veritable auteur de limita- 
 tion, pp. 198-202. 
 
 8 Cf. Prayer for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and bk. iii. 
 c Iv. 6 ; Post. Com. Fourth Sunday in Advent, and bk. iv. chap. iv. 
 4 Aristotle, Metaphysics, i. 1, in bk. i. chap. ii. 1. 
 6 Ovid, lib. xiii. de Itemed. Am. in bk. i. chap. xiii. 5. 
 
 6 Seneca, Ep. vii. in bk. i. chap. xx. 2. 
 
 7 Cf . Dante, Inferno, canto iii. and canto vi. with bk. i. chap, 
 xxiv. 
 
 8 Bk. ii. chap. ix. 1. The expression is: 
 
 " Satis suaviter equitat, 
 Quern gratia Dei portat." 
 
 9 Cf. in Le Saint-Graal (Les Romans de la Table ronde, ed. 
 Paulin Paris, t. i. pp. 17&-189) the consecration of Joseph as priest, 
 and bk. iv. chap. v. 
 
 10 lo mi son. un che, quando 
 
 Amore spira, noto ed a quel modo 
 Che detta dentro, vo significando. 
 
 DANTE, Purgatorio, xxiv. 52-54. 
 
100 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 ceived and written. Its very terms are the terms 
 of Mysticism. And if we would understand the 
 book thoroughly we must make tangible to our- 
 selves this mystical state. In the human soul 
 there is and has been at all times a strong and 
 irrepressible yearning after the higher spiritual 
 things of the unseen Universe. It is not given to 
 all to attain its dizziest heights. It may not even 
 be well for all to aim thereat. But it is something 
 to be proud of, to know that our humanity has 
 reached that state in its elect few. And what is the 
 mystical state? It is a striving of the soul after 
 union with the Divinity. It is therefore a turning 
 away from sin and all that could lead to sin, and 
 a raising up of the soul above all created things, 
 "transcending every ascent of every holy height, 
 and leaving behind all divine lights and sounds 
 and heavenly discour sings, and passing into that 
 Darkness where He is who is above all things." 1 
 
 3. In this state the soul is passively conscious 
 that she lives and breathes in the Godhead, and 
 asks neither to speak nor think. Her whole hap- 
 piness is to be. She has found absolute Goodness, 
 absolute Truth, and absolute Beauty ; she knows it 
 and feels it and rests content in the knowledge. 
 She seeks nothing beyond. She has left far be- 
 hind her all practical and speculative habits. Her 
 faculties are hushed in holy awe at the nearness 
 of the Divine Presence. 2 Memory has ceased to 
 
 1 Dionysius Areopagita, De Mystica Theologia, cap. i. 3, t. i. 
 col. 999. Patrol. Grcecce, ed. Mig-ne, t. iii. 
 
 2 See Tauler. Sermon for the Sunday after Epiphany; trad. 
 Ste-Foi. t. i. p. 130. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 101 
 
 minister to her ; Fancy and Imagination walk at a 
 distance and in silence, fearing to obtrude them- 
 selves upon the Unimagined Infinite; Reason is 
 prostrate and abashed before the Incomprehensi- 
 ble; Understanding remains lulled in adoration 
 before the Unknowable. She is overshadowed by 
 the intense splendor of the Divine Glory, and fjlled 
 thrilled through and through with the dread 
 Presence, she is raised above the plane of our com- 
 mon human feelings and sympathies into the high- 
 est sphere of thought and love and adoration at- 
 tainable in this life, and is thus given a foretaste 
 of heaven. The soul apprehends with clearness 
 mysteries that are entirely beyond her ordinary 
 power of conception. Such was the experience of 
 a Francis of Assisi, a Heinrich Suso, a Tauler, a 
 Loyola, a Theresa of Jesus. But this experience 
 became theirs only after they had passed through 
 much tribulation of spirit and their souls had been 
 purified; for it is only to the clean of heart that 
 it is given to become intimately united with God 
 in this manner. 
 
 4. Men of proud thought and vain desire have 
 attempted without the requisite purification to at- 
 tain that state ; but invariably they became lost in 
 illusions, were confounded, and fell into the deepest 
 follies. Therefore it is that this union is safely 
 sought only through the Redeemer. And so, the 
 writings attributed to the Areopagite make the 
 Chalice of the Redeemer the central point of all 
 Christian mysteries; the Chalice being according 
 to them the symbol of Providence which pene- 
 
102 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 trates and preserves all things. 1 This symbol 
 passes down the ages, gathering around it feats 
 of chivalry and love and bravery, adventure 
 and prowess which are also symbolic, and men 
 speak of it as the Holy Grail, which only such as 
 the suffering Tituriel and the pure Galahad are 
 permitted to behold. 2 What is it all but a beauti- 
 ful allegory typifying the struggles of the devout 
 soul before it is permitted to commune with God in 
 this mystical union ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. Thomas a Kempis knows no other way by 
 which to lead the Christian soul to the heights of 
 perfection and union with the Divinity than the 
 rugged road trodden by Jesus. The opening words 
 of "The Imitation" strike the keynote with no 
 uncertain tone : " ' He that f olloweth me walketh 
 not in darkness, ' 3 saith the Lord. These are the 
 words of Christ, by which we are taught to imitate 
 his life and manners, if we would be truly enlight- 
 ened and be delivered from all blindness of heart. 
 . . . Whosoever would fully and feelingly under- 
 stand the words of Christ must endeavor to con- 
 form his life wholly to the life of Christ." 4 In this 
 
 1 Crater igitur cum sit rotundus et apertus, symbolum est gene- 
 ralis providentiae quse principle fineque caret atque omnia continet 
 penetratque. Dion. Areop. Ep. ix. Tito Episcopo, iii. col. 1110. 
 Patrol. Grcecce, ed. Migne. t. iii. 
 
 ' 2 The symbol of the Chalice is older than Christianity. It was 
 adopted from the Dionysian mysteries of the Greeks and given a 
 Christian meaning. See Gorres, La Mystique, tip. 78. 
 
 8 John viii. 12. 4 Bk i chap . j. ^ 2 . 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 103 
 
 manner does the author give us purely and simply, 
 without gloss or comment, the spirituality of the 
 gospel. He does not flatter human nature. He 
 merely points out the narrow and rugged road to 
 Calvary. The "royal way of the holy Cross" is 
 the only safe way: "Go where thou wilt, seek 
 whatsoever thou wilt, thou shalt not find a higher 
 way above, nor a safer way below, than the way 
 of the holy Cross." 1 The pious author, in des- 
 canting on the merits of the Cross, becomes truly 
 poetical: "In the Cross is salvation; in the Cross 
 is life ; in the Cross is protection against our ene- 
 mies; in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweet- 
 ness ; in the Cross is strength of mind ; in the Cross 
 is joy of spirit; in the Cross is the height of virtue; 
 in the Cross is the perfection of sanctity. There 
 is no salvation of the soul, no hope of everlasting 
 life, but in the Cross. Take up therefore thy 
 Cross and follow Jesus and thou shalt go into life 
 everlasting." 2 Thus it is that in the language of 
 a Kempis the Cross symbolizes all Christian virtue ; 
 and bearing one's trials and troubles with patience 
 and resignation is walking on the royal road of the 
 Cross. It supersedes the symbol of the Chalice. 
 
 2. For the student "The Imitation" is laden 
 with beautiful lessons. Thomas a Kempis must 
 have had his own scholars in his mind's eye in pen- 
 ning many a passage. He never tires of recalling 
 to them that there is something better than vain 
 words and dry disputations. " Surely great words 
 do not make a man holy and just. 3 . . . Many 
 
 1 Bk. ii. chap. xii. 2 Ibid. 8 Bk. i. chap. i. 3. 
 
104 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 words do not satisfy the soul. 1 . . . Meddle not 
 with things too high for thee ; but read such things 
 as may rather yield compunction to thy heart, than 
 occupation to thy head." 2 He distinguishes be- 
 tween the reading that goes home to the heart and 
 that which is merely a matter of occupation. The 
 distinction is important. One to whom we havn 
 been already introduced draws the same line. No- 
 tice how closely the philosopher and man of the 
 world, writing four centuries after, coincides with 
 the monk. "I am," says Maine de Biran, "as 
 agitated by my books and my own ideas, as when 
 occupied with worldly matters or launched in the 
 vortex of Parisian life. ... I fancy that I am 
 going to discover my moral and intellectual wel- 
 fare, rest and internal satisfaction of mind, the 
 truth I seek, in every book that I scan and con- 
 sult; as though these things were not within me, 
 down in the very depths of my being, where 
 with sustained and penetrating glance I should 
 look for them, instead of gliding rapidly over 
 what others have thought, or even what I my- 
 self have thought. . . . My conscience reproaches 
 me with not having thoroughly sounded the depths 
 of life, with not having cultivated its most earnest 
 parts, and with being too occupied with those 
 amusements that enable one to pass imperceptibly 
 from time to eternity." 3 In good truth, men may 
 go through life discoursing upon the things of life, 
 
 1 Ibid. chap. ii. 2. 2 Ibid. chap. xx. 1. 
 
 8 Journal Intime. Apud Nicolas. Etude sur Maine do Biran, 
 p. 54. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 105 
 
 formulating their views of the diverse subjects that 
 call for definite opinion ; and yet, for want of this 
 introspection, this self - communion, this thought- 
 fulness of God's presence within them, they may 
 indeed possess many and varied accomplishments, 
 but these are all of the outward man. The inner 
 man is starved to a skeleton. This is why all great 
 thinkers, all the founders of religious orders as well 
 as of schools of philosophy, Pythagoras and Socrates 
 as well as Benedict and Loyola, have laid stress 
 upon the cultivation of this interior spirit. It is not 
 merely the opinion of a devout writer ; it is the doc- 
 trine of the gospel, made the wisdom of humanity. 
 3. Again, the author lays down the conditions 
 under which study may be pursued with advantage. 
 He shows the greater responsibility attached to 
 human knowledge, and counsels the students to be 
 humble. " The more thou knowest, and the better 
 thou understandest, the more strictly shalt thou be 
 judged, unless thy life be also the more holy. Be 
 not therefore elated in thine own mind because of 
 any art or science, but rather let the knowledge 
 given thee make thee afraid. If thou thinkest that 
 thou understandest and knowest much, yet know 
 that there be many more things which thou know- 
 est not." 1 Bear in mind that the author is not 
 simply inculcating the modesty and diffidence that 
 belong to every well-educated person, and tint 
 may accompany great intellectual pride. He goes 
 deeper, and insists upon true humility: 2 "If thou 
 
 1 Bk. i. chap. ii. 3. 
 
 2 Cardinal Newman, in one of his most beautiful discourses, 
 
106 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 wilt know and learn anything profitably, desire to 
 be unknown and little esteemed. This is the high- 
 est and most profitable lesson : truly to know and 
 despise ourselves." 1 
 
 4. The author is no less earnest in counseling 
 the student to be simple and pure. "By two 
 wings a man is lifted up from things earthly; 
 namely, by Simplicity and Purity. Simplicity 
 ought to be in our intention ; Purity in our affec- 
 tions. Simplicity doth tend towards God; Purity 
 doth apprehend and taste Him. ... If thy heart 
 were sincere and upright, then would every creature 
 be unto thee a living mirror, and a book of holy 
 doctrine. There is no creature so small and abject, 
 that it representeth not the goodness of God. If 
 thou wert inwardly good and pure, then wouldst 
 thou be able to see and understand all things well 
 without impediment. A pure heart penetrateth 
 heaven and hell." 2 Doctrine as beautiful as it is 
 true. Only to the clean of heart is it given to see 
 God in heaven. Only to the clean of heart is it 
 also given to recognize the splendor of God's glory 
 in the beautiful things that He has created. The 
 poetry and chivalry of the Middle Ages vie with 
 each other in extolling this pearl among the virtues. 
 Perci vale's purity of heart wins for him the rare 
 privilege of beholding the Holy Grail. Lancelot 
 
 shows how modesty accompanied by pride has taken the place of 
 the Christian virtue of humility in the modern world. Idea of a 
 University, Discourse viii. 9, pp. 254-258. 
 
 1 Bk. i. chap. ii. 3, 4. 
 
 2 Bk. ii. chap. iv. 2, 3. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 107 
 
 fails in his quest because of his sin. Galahad's 
 virgin heart makes him tenfold strong against his 
 foes : 
 
 " My good blade carves the casques of men, 
 
 My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
 My strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because my heart is pure.' 1 '' 1 
 
 V. 
 
 1. The philosophy of "The Imitation " may be 
 summed up in two words. It is a philosophy of 
 Light and a philosophy of Life : the Light of Truth 
 and the Life of Grace. Both the one and the other 
 a Kempis seeks in their source and fountain-head. 
 He does not separate them. It is only in the union 
 of both that man attains his philosophic ideal. 
 Vain words and dry speculations, scholastic wrang- 
 ling and religious controversy, may furnish food 
 for man's vanity, but they are unable to nourish 
 his soul. And so, the devout author, with Clement 
 of Alexandria, with Augustin and Aquinas, as- 
 cends to the Incarnate Word the Divine Logos 
 as the source whence proceeds all truth both 
 natural and revealed, for the criterion and the ideal 
 of human knowledge. Here he finds unity and 
 harmony. And if human opinions oppose one 
 another, those alone can be true which are com- 
 patible with the revealed and certain dogmas of the 
 Church. 2 Therefore, he begs the student to hush 
 
 1 Tennyson, Sir Galahad. 
 
 2 Human reason is feeble and may be deceived, but true faith 
 cannot be deceived. All reason and natural search ought to fol- 
 
108 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the clash of systems, and seek above and beyond all 
 system and all caviling the truth pure and simple 
 as it emanates from the Godhead. In his day the 
 clashing of scholastic opinion was loud and fierce, 
 and the din of the Schools so filled the air that he 
 stepped aside from his usual course of ignoring the 
 issues and contests of the outside world and asked : 
 " What matters it to us about genera and species ? " 
 Upon the solution of this problem hinged the end- 
 less disputations between Nominalism and Realism 
 ever since Roscelin revived the issue nearly four 
 centuries previously. The students adopted one or 
 other theory according to their nationality. In the 
 University of Prague the Bohemian students were 
 Realists, whilst those of Germany were Nominal- 
 ists. And when a crisis occurred in the affairs of 
 that institution, thousands of the German Nomi- 
 nalists abandoned its halls and established a new 
 university in Leipzig. 1 
 
 2. Thomas a Kempis has in his book no place 
 for these strifes. In a philosophic poem, which is 
 only less sublime than that with which St. John 
 opens his Gospel, because it is an echo thereof, the 
 devout author lays down the doctrine of truth that 
 runs through his book, even as it has been the actu- 
 
 low faith, not to go before it, nor to break in upon it. Bk. iv. 
 chap, xviii. 4, 5. 
 
 1 Cantu, Hist. Univ. t. xii. p. 293. Some say 40,000. See Len- 
 fant, Hist, de la Guerre des Hussites. Utrecht, 1731, pp. 59, 60, 
 and Hist, du Concile de Constance, t. i. pp. 30, 31. Of course, the 
 immediate cause of the difficulty was the retrenchment of certain 
 privileges of the German professors and students by Wenceslaus 
 at the instigation of John Huss. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 109 
 
 ating principle of his life: "Happy is he whom 
 Truth by itself doth teach, not by figures and words 
 that pass away, but as it is in itself. Our own 
 opinion and our own sense do often deceive us, and 
 they discern but little. What availeth it to cavil 
 and dispute much about dark and hidden things, 
 for ignorance of which we shall not be reproved at 
 the day of judgment ? It is a great folly to neglect 
 the things that are profitable and necessary, and to 
 choose to dwell upon that which is curious and hurt- 
 ful. We have eyes and see not. And what have 
 we to do with genera and species ? He to whom the 
 Eternal Word speaketh is delivered from many an 
 opinion. From one Word are all things, and all 
 things utter one Word ; and this is the Beginning 
 which also speaketh unto us. 1 No man without 
 that Word understandeth or judgeth rightly. He 
 to whom all things are one, he who reduceth all 
 things to one, and seeth all things in one, may en- 
 joy a quiet mind, and remain at peace in God. O 
 God, who art Truth itself, make me one with Thee 
 in everlasting love. It wearieth me often to read 
 and hear many things : in Thee is all that I would 
 have and can desire. Let all teachers hold their 
 peace ; let all creatures be silent in Thy light ; speak 
 Thou alone unto me." 2 Can you imagine a sub- 
 limer passage coming from a human hand ? 
 
 3. This is not a system of philosophy. Like 
 Pascal and St. Augustin, a Kempis soars above 
 system, and in the mystical language so well known 
 
 1 Principium, qui et loquor vobis. St. John viii. 25. 
 
 2 Bk. i. chap. iii. 
 
110 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and understood in his day he reduces all philoso- 
 phy to this principle of seeing things in the light 
 emanating from the Word. " From one Word are 
 all things, and all things utter one Word. . . . 
 No man without that Word under standetli or judg- 
 eth rightly." In vain would you search heaven or 
 earth for a more elevating, more correct, or more 
 fruitful principle in philosophy. Was the author 
 Realist? Was he Nominalist? He was avowedly 
 neither. Not that he was not interested in philo- 
 sophic discussions; for had he not taken a keen 
 interest in them, he never would have penned those 
 sublime pages. But his genius sought greater 
 freedom than it could have found in any system. 
 No sooner is one committed to a school, than one 
 has %o pare down, or exaggerate, or suppress alto- 
 gether truths and facts to tally with the system 
 taught by the school. Neither ^ruth nor fact is 
 the outcome of system or school; prior to either, 
 both truth and fact existed. Systems and schools, 
 in confessing themselves such, acknowledge by the 
 very fact that they do not deal with truth whole 
 and entire as truth, but with truth as seen from 
 a given point of view. They may be good, they 
 may even be necessary, as aids in acquiring truth ; 
 but they are not to be identified with it. They are, 
 so to speak, the scaffoldings by which the edifice of 
 truth may be constructed, and as such are to be 
 laid aside as soon as the structure is completed. 
 In this spirit was it that Thomas a Kempis thought 
 and worked. 
 
 4. Was the author opposed to learning? The 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 111 
 
 many expressions in which he speaks so lightly of 
 purely human knowledge or scholastic disputations 
 would lead one to think that he was inclined to dis- 
 parage all such. Nothing was farther from his in- 
 tention. His whole life was devoted to the work 
 of education. He had formed and sent forth, well 
 equipped, many distinguished pupils and disciples. 1 
 He never lost his taste for books. To transcribe 
 and spread abroad good books both in sacred and 
 profane learning had been his delight. In one of 
 his sermons he exclaims, "Blessed are the hands of 
 such transcribers ! Which of the writings of our 
 ancestors would now be remembered, if there had 
 been no pious hands to transcribe them?" 2 But 
 as "The Imitation" treats of the finite and the 
 temporal in their relations with the infinite and 
 the eternal, naturally all things purely human, 
 though not in themselves insignificant, suffer by 
 comparison. In this sense does he define his posi- 
 tion : "Learning, science scientia is not to be 
 blamed, nor the mere knowledge of anything what- 
 soever, for that is good in itself and ordained of 
 
 1 Ullmann says : " He encouraged susceptible youths to the zeal- 
 ous prosecution of their studies, and even to the acquisition of a 
 classical education. Several of the most meritorious restorers of 
 ancient literature went forth from his quiet cell, and he lived to 
 see in his old age his scholars, Rudolph Lange, Count Maurice of 
 Spiegelherg, Louis Dringenberg, Antony Liber, and, above all, 
 Rudolph Agricola and Alexander Hegius, laboring with success for 
 the revival of the sciences in Germany and the Netherlands. 
 Accordingly Thomas was not without scientific culture himself or 
 the power of inspiring a taste for it in others." Eeformatoren 
 vor der Eeformation. Eng. tr. vol. ii. p. 135. 
 
 2 Sermon on the text : Christus scribii in terra. 
 
112 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 God; but," he adds, looking at things from his 
 elevated point of view, and in all truth may he 
 say it, " a good conscience and a virtuous life are 
 always to be preferred before it." He condemns 
 not the knowledge, but the pride, the vanity, the 
 worldliness that are sometimes found in its train. 
 "Because many endeavor rather to get knowledge 
 than to live well, they are often deceived, and reap 
 either none or but little fruit." In like manner, 
 the author places true greatness, not in great intel- 
 lectual attainments, but rather in great love and 
 humility : " He is truly great that hath great love. 
 He is truly great that is little in himself and that 
 maketh no account of any height of honor." 1 
 
 VI. 
 
 1. Here we find ourselves at the second word 
 in which the philosophy of "The Imitation" is 
 summed up. It is not only the Light of Truth; 
 it is also the Life of Grace. This life consists in 
 the practice of the Christian virtues; the practice 
 of the Christian virtues leads up to union with 
 Christ ; and union with Christ is consummated in 
 the Holy Eucharist. Such is the author's philoso- 
 phy of life, and in its development does his genius 
 especially glow. He is mystical, eloquent, sub- 
 lime. He soars into the highest regions of truth 
 in which meet both poetry and philosophy. Fol- 
 lowing in the footsteps of Christ, heeding his 
 words, living in intimate union with Him, loving 
 1 Bk. i. chap. iii. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 113 
 
 Him with a love that counts no sacrifice too great, 
 trampling under foot all things displeasing to Him, 
 bearing one's burden cheerfully for his sake 
 such is the life of the soul as revealed in this 
 wonderful book. Therein is stress laid on the 
 all-important truth that this spiritual life should 
 primarily be built upon doctrine. Conscience must 
 be instructed and trained to form correct decisions : 
 "My words are spirit and life, and not to be 
 weighed by the understanding of man. . . . Write 
 thou my words in thy heart, and meditate dili- 
 gently on them, for in time of temptation they will 
 be very needful for thee." 1 . . . Then Love steps 
 in and fructifies the soul and makes it bear good 
 actions, actions acceptable and pleasing to God. 
 It is the vital principle energizing the world of 
 Grace. Here a Kempis bursts forth into a can- 
 ticle of love that finds in every soul a respon- 
 sive chord: "Love is a great thing, yea, a great 
 
 and thorough good Nothing is sweeter than 
 
 Love, nothing more courageous, nothing higher, 
 nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing 
 fuller nor better in heaven and earth; because 
 Love is born of God, and can rest but in God 
 above all created things." One must read the 
 whole poem to understand and taste its great 
 worth. 2 Be it further noted how this canticle of 
 love is followed by a more practical commentary, in 
 the form of a dialogue between Christ and the soul, 
 all written with the most consummate art : 
 
 ^k. Hi. chap. in. 1,4; iv. 3. 
 2 Bk. Hi. chap. v. 
 
114 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 "CHRIST. My son, thou art not yet a coura- 
 geous and wise lover. 
 
 "SouL. Wherefore sayest Thou this, O Lord? 
 
 "CHRIST. Because for a slight opposition thou 
 givest over thy undertakings, and too eagerly seek- 
 est consolation. A courageous lover standeth firm 
 in temptation, and giveth no credit to the crafty 
 persuasions of the enemy. As I please him in 
 prosperity, so in adversity am I not unpleasing to 
 him. A wise lover regards not so much the gift 
 of him who loves him, as the love of the giver." 1 
 
 2. Here I would call attention to a recently ex- 
 pressed "misapprehension of this love. We are 
 told: "This 'love ' of 'The Imitation ' is no longer 
 the nai've, childlike, warmly vital love of the opti- 
 mistic warrior who in this world cheerfully serves 
 God, like a St. Christopher, because God is the 
 strongest. This new sort of love is a mystical 
 adoration. It produces acts, but they are done in 
 a dream-like sort of somnambulistic ecstasy ; they 
 are the acts of one hypnotized, so to speak, by a 
 long look heavenwards. Strength this love has, 
 but it is the strength of gazing ; movement it has, 
 but it is an anaesthetic, unconscious sort of move- 
 ment." 2 Not so have we read "The Imitation." 
 We find in it mysticism, rhapsody, ecstasy; but 
 we nowhere find quietism, dreaminess, hypnotic 
 influence. The love of which a Kernpis speaks is 
 eminently practical. The author, in his earnest 
 search for philosophic truth, when taking an esti- 
 
 1 Bk. iii. chap. vi. 
 
 2 Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 53. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 115 
 
 mate of that love, was reckoning upon a natural and 
 purely human basis, whereas a Kempis was dealing 
 with supernatural elements. Hence the misappre- 
 hansion. It is very difficult for the non-Catholic 
 mind to understand how the love of God may en- 
 velop and absorb a soid and yet leave that soul 
 thoroughly practical in every-day affairs. Theresa 
 of Jesus and Ignatius Loyola were both mystics, 
 highly favored with visions and revelations from 
 God, but they were also active and energetic. The 
 activity that grows out of love for God is one of 
 zeal, energy, devotedness, thoroughness. A Kem- 
 pis was himself a busy, practical man, and he never 
 could have separated the idea of Christian perfec- 
 tion from the duties and responsibilities of life. 
 He never could have inculcated a love that would 
 paralyze action. He was no apostle of quietism. 
 
 3. The loving soul is instructed in the diverse 
 ways of guarding and preserving grace and virtue, 
 of overcoming temptations, of fleeing and con- 
 temning the world, of trying to be meek and 
 lowly and forbearing, and of seeking intimate 
 union with the Beloved. The inclinations of na- 
 ture, the windings and subterfuges of passion, the 
 dangers from within one's self and the troubles 
 and annoyances that come from without, are all 
 treated with a terseness, clearness, simplicity, and 
 unction that are not met with outside of the sa- 
 cred Scriptures from which they are reflected. But 
 the devout soul is especially to seek strength and 
 comfort and consolation in union with Christ in the 
 Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. This heavenly 
 
116 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 gift contains food for the hungering, healing for 
 the sick; it is the fountain at which the weary and 
 parched soul may slake her thirst ; it is the fruition 
 of all life, the goal of all struggle, the crowning of 
 all effort. Hear how beautifully the pious author 
 expresses the soul's great need for this saving food : 
 "Whilst I am detained in the prison of this body, I 
 acknowledge myself to stand in need of two things, 
 to wit, food and light. Unto me, then, thus weak 
 and helpless, Thou hast given Thy Sacred Body for 
 the nourishment both of my soul and body; and 
 Thy Word Thou hast set as a light unto my feet. 
 Without these two I should not be able to live, for 
 the word of God is the light of my soul, and Thy 
 Sacrament the bread of life. . . . Thanks be unto 
 Thee, O Thou Creator and Redeemer of mankind, 
 who to manifest Thy love to the whole world hast 
 prepared a great supper, wherein Thou hast set 
 before us to be eaten, not the typical lamb, but 
 Thy most Sacred Body and Blood, rejoicing all the 
 faithful with this holy banquet, and replenishing 
 them to the full with the cup of salvation in which 
 are all the delights of paradise; and the holy an- 
 gels do feast with us, but yet with a more happy 
 sweetness." 1 
 
 4. Thus it is that heaven and earth centre in 
 the Eucharist. All the yearnings of the devout 
 soul for union with the Godhead find their consum- 
 mation in the worthy reception of our Lord in this 
 Sacrament of his love. Every act of virtue is an 
 act of preparation for its reception in *the future 
 
 1 Bk. iv. chap. xi. 4, 5. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 117 
 
 and of thanksgiving for past Communions. And 
 so the Holy Eucharist becomes the central object 
 of all spiritual life. All this is developed with 
 great ingenuity in the fourth book of "The Imita- 
 tion." There are several editions with this book 
 omitted. Those making the omission little think 
 that they are losing sight of the principle and the 
 motives underlying the other books. But so it is. 
 They are constructing an arch without a keystone. 
 They are giving us the play of "Hamlet " with the 
 part of Hamlet omitted. They are indeed still 
 distributing good and wholesome thoughts ; but at 
 the same time they are destroying the unity of the 
 book and mistaking its philosophy. It is no longer 
 Thomas a Kempis; it is Thomas a Kempis diluted 
 and seasoned to suit individual palates. 
 
 5. Draper, equally mistaken as to the importance 
 of the fourth book as a clue to the others, imputed 
 to the pious author motives which the author would 
 have repudiated, and assigned his book a purpose 
 for which it was never intended. " Its quick ce- 
 lebrity," this writer tells us, "is a proof how pro- 
 foundly ecclesiastical influence had been affected, 
 for its essential intention was to enable the pious 
 to cultivate their devotional feelings without the 
 intervention of the clergy. . . . The celebrity of 
 this book was rather dependent on a profound dis- 
 trust everywhere felt in the clergy both as regards 
 morals and intellect." 1 The assertion is gratui- 
 
 1 Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 470. Mr. Lecky calls this 
 work " extremely remarkable." History of European Morals, vol. 
 i. p. 105. The writer has found it remarkable in its systematic 
 efforts at misreading history and misinterpreting events. 
 
118 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 tous. There was nothing in the life or character 
 of the author to warrant the statement. It is con- 
 tradicted by the work itself. No man speaks 
 more reverently of the functions of the Altar, or 
 holds in greater esteem the dignity of the priest- 
 hood than does this same Thomas a Kempis, him- 
 self a worthy priest. "Great is the dignity of 
 priests, to whom that is given which is not granted 
 to angels; for priests alone rightly ordained in the 
 Church have power to celebrate and consecrate the 
 Body of Christ." 1 . . . And he thus concludes 
 his beautiful eulogy on the priest at the altar: 
 " When a priest celebrates, he honors God, he re- 
 joices the angels, he edifies the Church, he helps 
 the living, he obtains rest for the dead, and makes 
 himself partaker of all good things." 2 Thus it is 
 that Thomas places the priest between God and the 
 people as their mediator through the sacrifice of 
 the Mass. Surely he could establish no stronger 
 bond of union between clergy and laity. Where, 
 then, is the distrust of which this writer speaks? 
 You may search the book from cover to cover and 
 you will seek in vain for a single word tending 
 by any manner of means, directly or indirectly, to 
 promote or widen the estrangement of the clergy 
 from the laity. Another writer, a Protestant, re- 
 garded Thomas a Kempis in this same relation, 
 but his conclusion was the very reverse. He read, 
 as every truth - loving historian must read, that 
 its author "recognizes the existing hierarchy and 
 ecclesiastical constitution in their whole extent, to- 
 1 Bk. iv. chap. v. 5. 2 Ibid. v. 6. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITA TION 119 
 
 gether with the priesthood in its function of medi- 
 ating between God and man, and ... on every 
 occasion insists upon ecclesiastical obedience as one 
 of the greatest virtues." 1 This is the whole spirit 
 and intention of a Kempis. The secret of the 
 celebrity of "The Imitation" goes deeper than 
 the popularity of the hour. Let us consider it 
 for a moment. 
 
 VII. 
 
 1. How, it may be asked, was the author able to 
 compass, within the covers of this slender volume, 
 so much wisdom, such a vast spiritual experience, 
 such beautiful poetry and such profound philosophy. 
 And he has done all this with a grasp and terse- 
 ness of expression to which no translation has ever 
 been able to do justice. It is because Thomas a 
 Kempis is more than a pious monk, picking up the 
 experiences of the saints and Fathers who preceded 
 him; he is one of the world-authors; and "The 
 Imitation " is so clearly stamped with the impress 
 of his genius, that wherever men can read they 
 recognize it as a book that comes home to their 
 business and bosoms for all time. Go where we 
 will, we shall perceive its silent influence working 
 for good, and upon natures that seem least pre- 
 pared to be affected by it. Thus we read how a 
 Moorish prince shows a missionary visiting him a 
 Turkish version of the book, and tells him that he 
 
 1 Ullmann, Reform, vor der Ref. Eng. tr vol. ii. p. 156. 
 
120 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 prizes it above all others in his possession* 1 That 
 prince may not have been a good Mohammedan in 
 so prizing this little book ; 2 but if he read it with 
 sincerity and thoughtfulness he was all the better 
 man for it. The transition from the cold and fixed 
 fatalism, the barren piety and fierce tribe-spirit of 
 the Koran to the life and warmth and soothing 
 words of "The Imitation," must indeed have been 
 to him a new revelation that helped to burst the 
 bands and cerements of many a Mohammedan 
 prejudice. 
 
 2. Again, the book has always been a consoler in 
 tribulation. Louis XVI., when a prisoner, found 
 great comfort in its pages, and read them day and 
 night. La Harpe, in his love and admiration 
 for what in his day was considered elegant litera- 
 ture, thought the book beneath his notice, even as 
 the Humanists before him had regarded St. Paul. 
 But La Harpe comes to grief, and imprisoned in 
 the Luxembourg meets with it, and, opening it 
 at random, reads: "Behold, here I am; behold, I 
 come to thee because thou hast called Me. Thy 
 tears, and the desire of thy soul, thy humiliation 
 and contrition of heart, have inclined and brought 
 Me to thee." 3 These touching words seemed to 
 come directly out of the mouth of the Consoler 
 
 1 Avertissement d'une ancienne traduction publie*e en 1663, 
 prefixed to the edition of Abbe* Jauffret, p. x. 
 
 2 A book hath been sent down unto thee : and therefore let there 
 be no doubt in thy breast concerning it. ... Follow that which 
 hath been sent down unto thee from thy Lord ; and follow no 
 guide besides him. Kor&n, chap. vii. 1. 
 
 8 Bk. iii. chap. xxi. 5. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 121 
 
 himself. It was like an apparition. He says: "I 
 fell on my face and wept freely." Ever after 
 "The Imitation" was one of La Harpe's most 
 cherished books. 
 
 3. Once more: a woman of superior genius 
 grandly weaves into one of her^most powerful nov- 
 els the great influence which this book wields for 
 good. The heroine is represented with her young 
 soul stifling in the atmosphere of sordid aim and 
 routine existence, her desires unsatisfied, her yearn- 
 ings finding no outlet ; groping in thickest dark- 
 ness, impulsive, thoughtless, imprudent, and withal 
 well-meaning. Trouble and misfortune have come 
 upon her, and she has not yet learned the lesson of 
 Christian patience and long-suffering. Her restive 
 soul beats against the cage of circumstances with 
 hopeless flutter. An accident puts her in posses- 
 sion of a copy of "The Imitation." She reads the 
 book. It thrills her with awe, "as if she had been 
 wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music 
 telling of beings whose soul had been astir while 
 hers was in stupor." It is to her the revelation 
 of a new world of thought and spirituality. She 
 realizes that life, even in her confined sphere of 
 action and routine existence, may be ennobled and 
 made worth living. Was this woman transcribing 
 a chapter from her own life? In reading these 
 magnificent pages we feel that what George Eliot 
 so graphically recorded of Maggie Tulliver, she had 
 found engraven on the heart of Marian Evans. 1 
 
 1 George Eliot is the nom de plume of Marian Evans, succes- 
 sively Mrs. George Lewes and Mrs. Cross. 
 
122 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 This is all the more remarkable, as she did not 
 recognize the divine source of inspiration whence 
 a Kempis drew so copiously. But she too had had 
 her soul-hungerings, and had found many a pres- 
 sing question answered by "this voice out of the 
 far-off Middle Age| " much more efficiently than 
 in feeding on the husks of Positivism and Agnos- 
 ticism. And with her experience of the magic 
 book well might she pay it this eloquent tribute : 
 "I suppose that is the reason why the small, old- 
 fashioned book, for which you need only pay six- 
 pence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, 
 turning bitter waters into sweetness, while ex- 
 pensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave 
 all things as they were before. It was written 
 down by a hand that waited for the heart's promp- 
 ting; it is the chronicle of a solitary hidden an- 
 guish, struggle, trust, and triumph, not written 
 on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who 
 are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. 
 And so it remains to all time a lasting record of 
 human needs and human consolations ; the voice of 
 a brother who, ages ago, felt, and suffered, and re- 
 nounced, in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown 
 and tonsured head, with much chanting and long 
 fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from 
 ours, but under the same silent far-off heavens, and 
 with the same passionate desires, the same striv- 
 ings, the same failures, the same weariness." l Not 
 with the same failures, for this good monk sought 
 only God and God was with him; not with the 
 
 1 The Mill on th? Floss, bk. iv. chap. i'.i. p. 272. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE IMITATION 123 
 
 same weariness, for possessing God in his heart, 
 he was filled with joy, and in all gladness of soul 
 he took up his burden and bore it cheerfully. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 1. Here is the secret of the magic influence 
 wielded by "The Imitation." Pick it up when or 
 where we may, open it at any page we will, we al- 
 ways find something to suit our frame of mind. 
 The author's genius has such complete control of 
 the subject, and handles it with so firm a grasp, 
 that in every sentence we find condensed the expe- 
 rience of ages. It is humanity finding in this sim- 
 ple man an adequate mouthpiece for the utterance 
 of its spiritual wants and soul-yearnings. And his 
 expression is so full and adequate because he re- 
 garded things in the white light of God's truth, 
 and saw their nature and their worth clearly and 
 distinctly, as divested of the hues and tints flung 
 around them by passion and illusion. He probed 
 the human heart to its lowest depths and its inmost 
 folds ; he searched intentions and motives and found 
 self lurking in the purest ; he explored the wind- 
 ings of human folly and human misery and discov- 
 ered them to proceed from self-love and self -grati- 
 fication. But this author does not simply lay bare 
 the sores and wounds of poor bleeding human na- 
 ture. He also prescribes the remedy. And none 
 need go away unhelped. For the footsore who 
 are weary with "treading the sharp stones and pier- 
 cing thorns on the highways and by-ways of life ; 
 
124 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 for the heart aching with pain and disappointment 
 and crushed with a weight of tribulations ; for the 
 intellect parched with thirsting after the fountain 
 of true knowledge ; for the soul living in aridity 
 and dryness of spirit; for the sinner immersed in 
 the mire of sin and iniquity, and the saint, earnestly 
 toiling up the hill of perfection for all he pre- 
 scribes a balm that heals, and to all does he show 
 the road that leads to the Life and the Light. 
 Turn we now from a work inspired in the calm of 
 monastic life to a work indited amid the storms of 
 passion and tribulation, and withal bearing a deep 
 spiritual meaning. Let us consider Dante's great 
 poem. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE DIVINA COMMEDLA.. 
 
 A STUDY of the "Divina Commedia," in any of 
 its aspects, must needs be a study of the age in 
 which it was produced, of the man out of the full- 
 ness of whose soul it issued in notes strong and 
 clear, and of the various influences that made their 
 impress upon both the man and the poem. Of all 
 the supreme efforts of creative genius, the " Divina 
 Commedia " is that that can least be taken out of 
 the times and circumstances that gave it birth. Its 
 contemporary history and its contemporary spirit 
 constitute its clearest and best commentary. In 
 the light of this commentary we shall attempt to 
 read its chief meaning and significance. Few 
 poems admit of so many instructive interpretations ; 
 few so profitably repay earnest study. It is a 
 primary law of criticism, that if we can pluck 
 from the heart of any poem its central conception 
 and vivifying principle, we shall not only grasp its 
 meaning in the main, but we shall also throw light 
 upon many a dark corner within its structure. 
 And in working along the line of the Spiritual Sense 
 of the "Divina Commedia " we shall be most likely 
 to grasp that conception and verify that principle, 
 
126 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Unfortunately, commentators have so buried the 
 beauty and meaning of the poem beneath the rub- 
 bish of conjecture and far-fetched interpretation, 
 that its unity of plan and purpose has in great 
 measure been lost sight of, and its true grandeur 
 but rarely appreciated. We shall first address our- 
 selves to the man and his times ; afterwards we shall 
 consider the poem in its general spirit and bearing 
 as the outcome of the times and the man; and 
 finally, we shall endeavor to determine the philoso- 
 phy and doctrine that are the foundation of its 
 Spiritual Sense, and the nature, action, and expres- 
 sion of that Sense. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. Dante was born in 1265; he died in 1321. 
 Glance at what had been done before, and what 
 was being done within the compass of those years. 
 Already the piety, zeal, and indomitable spirit of 
 Innocent III. (pope, 1198-1216) had caused the 
 papacy to be respected throughout Christendom, 
 and raised it to a high pinnacle of glory and pres- 
 tige. It became the controlling power in Europe. 
 St. Louis had led the final Crusade and died in a 
 stranger's land (1270). The last faint echoes of the 
 trumpet-voice that nigh two centuries before had 
 aroused nations and hurled army after army upon 
 the shores of Asia were now dying away within 
 Dante's own hearing. The poet was born into 
 stirring times. Feuds and factions were rife. 
 They were handed down from sire to son and 
 brought in their trail ruin, bloodshed, and desola- 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 127 
 
 tion. City stood against city, province against 
 province; and both city and province, town, ham- 
 let, and even house, were torn by internal dissen- 
 sions. No man could escape being embroiled. No 
 man could hold his head up and walk securely, a 
 man among his fellow-men, who did not share the 
 responsibilities of his party, and carry out the vin- 
 dictiveness of the house with which he was con- 
 nected. Men were Blacks or Whites; they were 
 Guelf or Ghibelline ; they were Cerchi or Donati : 
 they accordingly fought and suffered. This fact 
 made the "Divina Commedia" possible; it gave it 
 some of its color and helped to fashion it into its 
 present shape. It brought Dante exile, poverty, 
 suffering ; it hardened him against his enemies ; it 
 inspired the gall and bitterness ; but it also gave 
 him the leisure to meditate and construct his great 
 poem. 1 
 
 2. The age of Dante was preeminently a Catholic 
 age. It was an age when men lived in one faith, 
 had one ritual, recited one creed, were taught one 
 and the same doctrine and practice, and breathed 
 a common religious atmosphere. The Church ex- 
 tended the mantle of her care and charity over all 
 orders of society, and gave sanction and benediction 
 to institutions founded to meet the spiritual and 
 bodily wants of Christ's poor. Dissenting sects 
 and schools such as the Albigenses and Waldenses 
 
 1 "I went about," he tells us, "almost a beggar, showing 
 against my will the wound of fortune, the blame of which fre-' 
 quently and unjustly is wont to be imputed to the person stricken." 
 Convito, trait, i. cap. 3. 
 
128 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 in France, the Cathari, Paterini, and disciples of 
 Dolcino 1 in Italy, cropped out here and there, but 
 they were the exception. The only recognized 
 form of religion in every nation that upon 
 which every Christian state in great measure was 
 built was the Catholic religion. Keligion was 
 the supreme affair with the men and women of that 
 day. The world beyond the grave was to them an 
 ever-present reality. Their thoughts and fancies 
 dwelt in it. Their belief in it was intense. They, 
 so to speak, touched it with their hands. It was 
 a powerful factor in their lives. They might be 
 guilty of great excesses; indeed, theirs was an 
 age of excesses ; but sooner or later remorse over- 
 took them, and their atonement was as generous as 
 their sins were enormous. 2 Religion was abused, 
 but its beneficial effects continued to be manifest ; 
 vice was flagrant, but it never lost the sense of 
 shame ; men were cruel, but their cruelty was fol- 
 lowed by sincere regrets ; misfortunes were frequent 
 and signal, but they were accepted with resignation 
 or with the hope of retrieval, or men gloried in 
 them on account of the cause in which they suf- 
 fered. "Religion," says Tommaseo, "was not sep- 
 arated from morality, nor science from life, nor 
 were words from deeds." 3 Such was life at that 
 day ; such do we find it exemplified in the person 
 of the poet and embodied in his poem. 
 
 1 Inferno, xxviiii 55. Villani, Cron. lib. viii. cap. 14. 
 
 2 Guido da Montefeltro after a life of violence becomes a Fran- 
 ciscan Friar. See L'Inferno, xxvii. 67-129. 
 
 3 La Divina Commedia, commentata da Niccolo Tommaseo. 
 L' Inferno, art. "II secolo di Dante," p. xx. 
 
THE D1VINA COMMEDIA 129 
 
 3. This religious spirit inspired the chivalry of 
 the day. Knights passed from land to land in 
 search of adventure, vowed to protect and defend 
 the widow and the orphan and the lonely or op- 
 pressed woman at the hazard of their lives; they 
 went about with a prayer on their lips, and in their 
 heart the image of the lady-love whom they had 
 chosen to serve and to whom they had pledged loy- 
 alty and fidelity; they strove to be chaste in body 
 and soul, and as a tower of strength for the protec- 
 tion of this spirit of chastity they were taught to 
 venerate the Blessed Mother of God and cultivate 
 towards her a tender devotion as the purest and 
 holiest ideal of womanhood. This spirit of chivalry 
 is the ruling spirit of Dante's life and the inspira- 
 tion of some of his sublimest flights. As the knight 
 wore the color of the lady of his heart and pro- 
 claimed her transcendent qualities to all comers, 
 even so did Dante, in the same spirit, proclaim the 
 beauty and loveliness and virtue of his Beatrice 
 beyond all compare. 
 
 4. This religious spirit inspired men and women 
 to go on long and wearisome pilgrimages. Every 
 shrine of prayer had its votaries. With staff and 
 scrip, and in all humility and earnestness; in a 
 prayerful spirit, in penance for sin, for the heal- 
 ing of soul or body, with the view of obtaining 
 through the intercession of a favorite saint some 
 special grace, they walked to the place of pilgrim- 
 age, and there in vigils and fastings besought 
 heaven in their behalf. The practices and expres- 
 sions of pilgrimages became part of men's think- 
 
130 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 ing. They entered into the language of spiritual 
 life. Life itself came to be regarded as a pilgrim- 
 age to the heavenly Jerusalem. And in this alle- 
 gory do we find the key to one meaning running 
 through the "Divina Commedia." 
 
 5. This religious spirit gave direction to the 
 studies of the day. It was the inspiration of the 
 teachers of the age. It caused to bud and bloom 
 the fruitful thoughts of the great thinkers of this 
 teeming epoch. Pope and king vied with each other 
 in founding universities and schools. 1 It was an age 
 of inquiry and disputation ; but over all presided 
 faith and piety. The schools were filled to over- 
 flowing. The brilliant philosophic lights, Thomas 
 Aquinas and Bonaventura, both died in the eventful 
 ninth year of Dante's life (1274). Albertus Magnus 
 died when Dante was in his fifteenth year (1280); 
 Roger Bacon, when the poet was in his twenty-ninth 
 year. These men represent all that was grandest, 
 noblest, and best in the thought of the schools. 
 Contemporary with our poet were lesser lights, 
 also profound thinkers and instigators to thought : 
 Raymond Lully (1235-1315), Duns Scotus 1265- 
 1308), Ockham (d. 1347). The light of these men 
 
 1 In Dante's own day Boniface VIII. established the Uni- 
 versity known as the Sapienza. We may, in justice to a much- 
 maligned man, and as an antidote to the bitterness of Dante's 
 verses against him, quote the following tribute : " Religion owes 
 to him the consoling institution of the Jubilee ; ecclesiastical juris- 
 prudence, the sixth book of the Decretals ; and general sci- 
 ence, the foundation of the Roman university known as the Sapi- 
 enza." Darras's History of the Church, vol. iii. p. 456. See 
 Darras's larger work continued by Abbe" J. Bareille, t. xxx. pp. 
 18-124. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 131 
 
 set Christendom aglow. Thought was quickened. 
 The very atmosphere vibrated with scholastic dis- 
 putations. It was the golden era of scholasticism. 
 Dante made careful study of the writings of these 
 thinkers. Some of them he may have heard dis- 
 course and expound; for he attended the schools 
 and entered into the discussions that were then con- 
 sidered so essential an element of study and a crite- 
 rion of proficiency. We learn from Boccaccio how 
 strong in the poet was the spirit of study : " In his 
 eagerness to know, he heeded neither heat nor cold, 
 nor vigils, nor fasts, nor any other bodily incon- 
 venience." Dante retained that spirit, with few in- 
 termissions, through life. The writings of his con- 
 temporaries and their instructors especially those 
 of Aquinas and Bonaventura became his daily 
 food, and they are the basis of his great poem. 1 
 Nor did he forget Plato and Aristotle so far as they 
 were known and understood in his day. The 
 Stagyrite he calls the master of those who know, 
 and next him in the philosophic family he places 
 
 1 The depth and accuracy of Dante's theological knowledge is 
 something marvelous. The terseness and grasp with which he 
 handles the most abstruse subjects has never been excelled, and has 
 never ceased to elicit the admiration of competent judges. Epi- 
 taphs are not always correct ; but ages of study and investigation 
 have confirmed that upon the poet's tomb at Ravenna ; all are 
 agreed that Dante is not only the glory of the Muses and the pop- 
 ular favorite, but also the theologian lacking naught in doctrine 
 and philosophy : 
 
 " Theologus Dantes, null ins dogmatis expers, 
 
 Quod faveat claro philosophia sinu ; 
 Gloria Musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor, 
 Hie jacet, et fama pulsat utrumque polum." . . . 
 
132 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Socrates and Plato. 1 Much there was in the dis- 
 cussions of this period that was purely curious, 
 silly, of small edification, and of no profit; much 
 also was there that we of the present may study 
 with advantage; much, indeed, must there have 
 been that was noble and suggestive, since it was 
 the epoch that built the gothic cathedral, dictated 
 the "Summa Theologica," and inspired the "Di- 
 vina Commedia." 
 
 m. 
 
 1. Thus it was that over all presided Eeligion. 
 Religion was the Time-spirit of that age. It per- 
 meated thought and word and work. This fact we 
 must bring home to ourselves if we would under- 
 stand the scope of the great poem under consid- 
 eration. A word upon the evolution of this spirit 
 may not be out of place. Pagan Rome attained 
 her rounded civilization by reason of the fact that 
 all the elements in the state, whether literary, or 
 political, or religious, or social, or industrial, or 
 artistic, were bound up in harmony, and were sub- 
 servient to the one universal, all-absorbing idea of 
 Rome. Everything in life and conduct, in religion 
 and morals, was sacrificed to the will, the safety, 
 and the glory of Rome. Then came Christianity. 
 
 1 Vidi il Maestro di color che sanno, 
 
 Seder tra filosofica f amiglia. 
 Tutti 1' ammiran, tutti honor gli fanno. 
 
 Quivi vid 'io e Soerate e Platone, 
 Che innanzi agli altri pi ii presso gli stanno. 
 
 Inferno, iv. 131-135. 
 
THE DIV1NA COMMEDIA 133 
 
 It entered as a disturbing element. It brought 
 not peace and concord, but discord and the sword. 
 It undid the harmony existing between the state, 
 religion, and human passion. It taught men to 
 make war upon their unruly passions, and over 
 the corpse of slain evil inclination to walk in the 
 road of self-denial to a higher spiritual life un- 
 dreamed of in the religion of pagan Kome. That 
 God was more than man, the soul more than the 
 body, eternity more than time; that the practice 
 of virtue was noble and self-indulgence base ; that 
 spending and being spent for the good of one's 
 neighbor was laying up treasures in heaven ; that 
 to live in Christ and die for Christ was gain ; that 
 the love of God and man was the supreme law of 
 life: such were the seeds of doctrine sown broad- 
 cast throughout the Roman state, and nurtured by 
 the blood of millions of martyrs. The barbarian 
 came and conquered pagan Kome, to be conquered 
 in turn by the Christianity he found there. And 
 this Christianity sought him in his native wilds and 
 took possession of him. For centuries the fierce 
 spirit of the barbarian struggled against the checks 
 placed upon his untutored nature. Indeed, that 
 spirit has never been wholly overcome. We all of 
 us carry it within our breasts, and it only requires 
 the occasion to arouse its ferocity. 
 
 2. Still, in the age of Dante, in spite of great ex- 
 cesses, man had come to recognize the existence of 
 a spiritual life and a spiritual world, and to bow 
 in submission to an authority speaking to him 
 in the name of the higher spiritual power. He 
 
134 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 had come to regard the Church as the medium 
 through which God reveals his will to men. At 
 this epoch, we find the secular and religious ele- 
 ments of society more harmoniously blended than 
 they were before or have been since. This blending 
 is strikingly reflected in that one great poem that 
 is the full and clear expression of all mediaeval 
 thought and mediaeval life. 1 Herein enters an ele- 
 ment that is absent from pagan literature. It is 
 the element of spiritual life and spiritual thought. 
 It speaks of the predominance of faith. Faith 
 tinged word and work and made both word and 
 work sincere, earnest, and, says Ruskin, "in a de- 
 gree few of us can now conceive, joyful." 2 Men 
 lived in hope, sought the light and looked toward 
 the light. Everywhere they found reflections of 
 the Light that enlighteneth this world. In this 
 respect there is a marked contrast between the 
 Time-spirit of that day and the Time-spirit of the 
 present. The great chorus of modern thought is a 
 loud proclaiming of pessimism and the despair that 
 
 1 That there was iu Dante's spirit a leaven of the old Roman 
 spirit determining his judgments of things in antagonism with the 
 spirit of Christianity is apparent from these two instances: 1. He 
 condemns Pope Celestine V. for resigning from the Papacy. Now 
 it is certainly a meritorious act to withdraw from any position the 
 duties of which one is unable to fulfill ; and that the Church so 
 regarded this act of Celestine is evident from the fact that she 
 canonized the good Pope. 2. The Church condemns suicide as 
 an act of moral cowardice ; and yet Dante places the keeping of 
 Purgatory in the care of Cato of Utica, because he renounced life 
 rather than liberty. It is to the point as an allegory, but the spirit 
 of pagan Rome all unconsciously breathes through the admiration 
 of the poet for the old Roman. 
 
 2 Pleasures of England, p. 57. 
 
THE DIVINA COM MEDIA 135 
 
 would destroy a hereafter, annihilate the soul, and 
 ignore a Personal Divinity. It acts in open defi- 
 ance of the whole Christian codes of the spiritual 
 truth and the spiritual law that are essential ele- 
 ments in all modern conduct and modern thinking. 
 "Its crowning dogma," says a recent writer, "is 
 written even now between the lines in many a 
 dainty volume, that evil has a secret holiness, and 
 sin a consecrating magnificence." 1 
 
 3. Now, of this agnostic spirit must we divest 
 ourselves in entering upon a study of Dante's mas- 
 terpiece. There we will find no doubt. All is in- 
 tense earnestness. The light of faith guides the 
 poet's steps through the hopeless chambers of Hell 
 with a firmness of conviction that knows no waver- 
 ing ; it bears him through the sufferings of Purga- 
 tory, believing strongly in its reality ; it raises him 
 on the wings of love and contemplation into Heav- 
 en's empyrean, where he really hopes to enjoy bliss 
 far beyond aught whereof he sings. If we would 
 understand the animating principle of the poem, it 
 behooves us to cast aside all idea that these divi- 
 sions of it were a mere barbarous and cumbersome 
 machinery. Not in this fashion are epoch-making 
 works constructed. Dante believed in the existence 
 of these places and in the reality of their woes and 
 their joys as firmly as he believed in himself. The 
 simple faith pervading this poem contrasts strik- 
 ingly with the spirit animating " Faust. " The latter 
 is designed to represent the innate conflict of the 
 
 1 Rev. William Barry, in The Fortnightly Review, March, 1886, 
 art. "The Church and the World." 
 
136 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 savage in man against established law and order in 
 the moral, social, and physical world. Mephistoph- 
 eles is the evil genius of the hero. He imperson- 
 ates the negation of truth and goodness. But much 
 as the spirit-world figures in Goethe's masterpiece, 
 it does so not as a living reality, but as a mere 
 scaffolding whereby Goethe builds up the artistic 
 structure of the experiences gathered from study 
 and observation, or found in the recesses of his 
 own large worldly heart. And what is the upper- 
 most lesson that one may read on every page of 
 that wonderful panorama of modern life? As we 
 understand it we read simply the dark lesson, that 
 only through the experiences that come of all man- 
 ner of self-indulgence and self-gratification may 
 one reach the broader view of life and attain per- 
 fection. This is attempting to make one's own way 
 out of the wood of error and wrong-doing at the 
 risk of being devoured by the beasts of predominant 
 sin and passion. The hero is guilty of crime the 
 most atrocious ; he brings ruin in his wake ; up to 
 his last hour he is sensual and covetous ; he deserts 
 not his sins ; rather his sins desert him. There are 
 regrets ; in one instance there is remorse ; but there 
 is no conversion. And yet, as though in mockery 
 of the Christian ideal of personal purity and holi- 
 ness, this sinful soul is triumphantly borne to 
 heaven amid the song of angels. The poet repre- 
 sents him as saved by the only saving principle on, 
 or above, or under the earth the principle of 
 Love : " Whoever striving exerts himself, him can 
 we redeem, and if he also participates in the love 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDTA 137 
 
 from on high, the Blessed Host shall meet him with 
 heartiest welcome" 1 Faust, like Dante in his 
 poem, is the special object of womanly love. She 
 whose heart he broke pleads in his behalf before 
 the Mater Gloriosa, and her prayer is heard. 
 Faust is saved. Through wreck and ruin of soul 
 and body he reaches the solution of life's riddle. 
 But surely the perfection of heaven is not the sati- 
 ety of self -gratification. The will must be turned 
 towards the good. It has been truly said that "not 
 until the Ethiopian changes his skin and the leop- 
 ard his spots, can he do good that is accustomed to 
 do evil." 2 And this has been still more forcibly 
 emphasized by St. Paul : " And if I should distrib- 
 ute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should 
 deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, 
 it availeth nothing." 3 Now, where in the heart of 
 Faust is that charity that St. Paul insists upon ? 
 What charity did he extend toward his neighbor 
 except in so far as it gratified himself and was in 
 accordance with his conception of things'? He 
 seeks regeneration, not in repentance, but in obliv- 
 ion and communion with Nature. "Faust" is a 
 poem of selfishness. How does Dante treat the 
 same theme of struggle and salvation ? How does 
 he introduce the same element of womanly love? 
 Beatrice, after upbraiding Dante for his sins, says : 
 "God's high destiny would be broken if Lethe 
 
 1 Faust, part ii. act v. Chorus of Angels bearing the soul of 
 Faust. 
 
 2 Susan Blow, A Study of Dante, p. 39. 
 8 I. Corinthians, chap. xiii. 3. 
 
138 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 were passed and such food were tasted without 
 the repentance that breaks forth in tears." 1 Such 
 is womanly love in Dante's conception: spiritual, 
 elevating, ennobling, strengthening, ideal. These 
 characteristics we fail to see in Goethe's conception. 
 To his mind, womanly love is merely a blind love, 
 all-enduring and all-forgiving. But "Faust" is 
 the world-poem of this century, even as the " Di- 
 vina Commedia " is of the thirteenth. Goethe is 
 the mouthpiece of the modern world; the Middle 
 Ages sing through* Dante. And as each was a 
 child of his age, the personality of each is a deter- 
 mining element written into the fibre of both great 
 poems. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. Dante, as revealed to us by time and his writ- 
 ings, stands out in bold relief as a man proud, 
 fiery, irascible, the bitterness of exile and poverty 
 corroding his soul and dropping gall from his pen, 
 and withal humble and gentle and tender ; 2 a man 
 strong to hate and strong to love, 
 
 " Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
 The love of love," 
 
 a man sincere in all he says and does, truth-loving 
 and truth-telling, sparing no one, neither himself 
 nor his friends, nor his enemies. His was a varied 
 career. He imbibed at his mother's breast the 
 traditionary feuds and traditionary hates of his 
 
 J Purgatorio, xxx. 142-145. 
 
 2 Witness the tenderness with which the poet always speaks of 
 the relations of mother and child (Inferno, xxiii. 38-4?). 
 
THE DIVINA COM MEDIA 139 
 
 family; lie nurtured them and fought for them. 
 He was acquainted with the ease and comfort of 
 wealth ; he tasted the pleasure of having had hon- 
 ors thrust upon him ; he was wise in council and 
 prudent in diplomacy ; he felt the shock of battle 
 and witnessed the carnage of war. He traveled 
 from land to land studying men and things, his 
 keen eye penetrating beneath the surface, finding 
 naught too small to be unworthy of note, naught 
 too grand for his expansive intellect to compass. 
 He strayed from the paths of virtue and drank the 
 cup of vice to its nauseous dregs, 1 and in his own 
 soul he experienced the hell of remorse. He re- 
 pented, gave himself to prayer and meditation, 
 and even in all probability to the austerities of re- 
 ligious life; 2 he relapsed, recovered himself again, 3 
 and died an edifying death, clad in the habit of St. 
 Francis. 4 He was exiled; he wandered from place 
 to place, an outcast upon the earth, tasting the in- 
 sipidity of another's salt and the weariness of going 
 up and down another's stairs; 6 yearning to return 
 to his beloved Florence, which he loved with all the 
 love of a son for a mother ; always yearning, but 
 never returning, and hating his enemies all the 
 more fiercely for keeping him out. How insatia- 
 ble was his thirst for knowledge through all his 
 
 1 Purgatario, xxx., xxxi. Para<liso,xv. 121-123; xxiii. 121-123. 
 
 2 Balbo, Vita. lib. i. cap. vii. pp. 94-98. The poet's familiarity 
 with spiritual life could not have been well acquired outside of a 
 novitiate. 
 
 8 Paradiso, xxii. 107, 108. 
 
 4 Balbo, Vita, lib. ii. cap. xvi. p. 422. Pelli, p. 144. 
 
 6 Paradiso, xvii. 55-66. 
 
140 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 troubles we have already seen. There was no sub- 
 ject taught that he did not master: medicine, law, 
 letters, music, mathematics, painting, physics, phi- 
 losophy, and with great breadth and depth, his 
 favorite, theology. He absorbed in all of these 
 whatever was worth knowing. In some subjects 
 he even went beyond his teachers and anticipated 
 modern theories. 1 
 
 2. Such is the man as we see him walk among 
 men : silent, reserved, haughty, taking no liberties 
 and allowing none to be taken. Can Grande won- 
 ders why the poet with all his learning cannot 
 amuse half as well as his buffoon. Dante retorts 
 with all the scorn of his soul that he supposes it 
 to be because like is pleased with like. 2 Not after 
 this fashion does he seek amusement. Not every 
 man is a companion for him ; and so we find him 
 restless and wandering, writing his soul into his 
 great poem. 3 That is a characteristic picture left 
 of him by the prior of a monastery which he vis- 
 ited: "Dante has been here," writes Brother Hil- 
 ary; "as neither I nor any of the brothers recog- 
 nized him, I asked him what he wished. He made 
 no answer, but gazed silently upon the columns and 
 
 1 II notar solamenti i luoghi degli scritti danteschi, e segnata- 
 mente del poema, in cui 1' autore fa prova di singular virtu filosofica 
 e anticipa talvolta i pensieri e i trovati piu recenti, vorrebbe un 
 lungo discorso. Chi crederebbe, per esempio, che Dante abbia divi- 
 nato il sistema dinamico ? Gioberti, Del Bello, cap. x. p. 238. See 
 Opere, ed. Lombardi, vol. v. p. 89. See, also, Tiraboschi, Vita, 
 in Opere, vol. v. 
 
 2 Similis simili gaudet. Hettinger, Die Gottliche Komodie, p. 55. 
 
 3 Mais ce qu'il raconte, c'est sa propre conversion. Edmond 
 Scherer, Litt. Contemp. p. 60. 
 
THE D1VINA COMMEDIA 141 
 
 galleries of the cloister. Again I asked him what 
 he wished and whom he sought; and slowly turn- 
 ing his head, and looking around upon the brothers 
 and me, he answered, 4 Peace! ' "- 1 Brother Hil- 
 ary takes him apart and speaks a kind word to him, 
 and the reticence and reserve melt away, and be- 
 neath the haughty crust, hardened by adversity, is 
 found the gentleness of woman. The kind word 
 and the kind treatment draw from his bosom the 
 precious fragment of his great poem lying there, 
 and he hands it to the prior with the words, " Here, 
 brother, is a portion of my work which you may 
 not have seen ; this remembrance I leave with you ; 
 forget me not." 2 
 
 3. In this manner do we catch glimpses of the cir- 
 cumstances under which the great poem was writ- 
 ten. The author suffered much; but his sufferings 
 purified his soul and raised him out of the transi- 
 tory into the sphere of the permanent and the 
 ideal. They were his purgatorial fire. Nor should 
 we judge him rashly. We should be lenient to- 
 wards the gall his pen has dropped, for it has been 
 distilled in his soul by the exile, poverty, persecu- 
 tion, and degradation to which he was subjected. 
 "If," says one who reveres him, "from the dearest 
 illusions of youth, wrapped in the halo of a be- 
 nevolent imagination, the wickedness of men has 
 
 1 It is the same peace the poet sought from world to world : 
 
 "quella pace, 
 
 Che, dietro a' piedi di B\ fatta guida, 
 Di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face." 
 
 Purgatorio, v. 61-63. 
 
 2 Balbo, Vita, p. 290 ; Cantu, Histoire des lialitns, t. v. p. 484. 
 
142 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 thrown you out of the circle of your activity, your 
 affection, your early hopes and aspirations, into 
 the midst of cruel deceptions; if you have been 
 deeply sensitive like Dante, and like Dante have 
 suffered the persecutions of an age that never par- 
 dons one raising himself above it; then, and then 
 only, have you the right to condemn his explosions 
 of wrath." 1 
 
 V. 
 
 3. But if the "Divina Commedia" contained only 
 the ventings of private spleen if it were simply 
 the effect of a mind seeking self-glorification, or 
 were it merely an esoteric expression of some un- 
 orthodox clique 2 it would not live as it has lived, 
 nor would it deserve to rank among the great world- 
 poems. These outbursts are the least portions of 
 it. The poet's soul was too great to be tied down 
 by any party, or a slave to any transitory bond. 
 Reared a Guelf, 3 circumstances and his convictions 
 throw him into the Ghibelline party, but he finds 
 words of rebuke for both Guelf and Ghibelline. 
 Both have run into extremes ; he knows not which 
 to censure most ; 4 so, raising himself above both, 
 he finds the path of honor in making a party for 
 
 1 Caesar Cantu, Histoire des Italians, t. v. p. 516. 
 
 2 Such were the opinions of Ugo Foscolo, Rossetti, Aroux. See 
 Csesar Cantti's reply to Aroux in Histoire des Italiens, t. vii. p. 531. 
 
 8 Balbo, Vita, p. 229. 
 
 * L' uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli 
 
 Oppone, e 1' altro appropria quello a parte, 
 ' e forte a veder qualpiu si f alii. 
 
 Paradiso, vi. 100-102. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 143 
 
 himself. 1 In like manner did he burst the bonds 
 of passion that held him to earth. He walks 
 through exile and suffering, his soul dwelling apart 
 from and far above the fleeting and transitory; 
 reading in all things the ideal beyond sign and 
 symbol; treading this earth as though it were a 
 mere shell whose mysterious murmurings bring him 
 tidings of the sea of eternity and infinitude far be- 
 yond; bearing in his heart a love pure and bright 
 and elevating, that raises him up when he has 
 fallen and bears him triumphantly through trial and 
 temptation. 
 
 2. At a tender age in his ninth year 2 when 
 the bloom of innocence is still upon his youth, a 
 glance at a child, younger than himself by some 
 months, awakens in him consciousness and enkin- 
 dles in him a spark of love sweet and pure and 
 ideal; and the spark grows into a flame, and the 
 flame burns clear and steady, a beacon directing 
 his whole career. He has risen to a New Life. 
 The child grows to womanhood, marries another, 
 and dies young, all unconscious of the love that 
 consumes her poet-lover. And the poet-lover also 
 marries other than his first love, and has children 
 born to him, and grows in greatness and influence, 
 and becomes a leader of men in his beloved Flor- 
 ence, one to be relied on by his friends and feared 
 by his enemies. Still the passion of his boyhood 
 
 1 Di sua bestialitate il suo processo 
 Fara la prova, si ch 'a te fia bello 
 Avert! fatti parte per te stesso. 
 
 Paradiso, xvii. 67-69. 
 
 2 Vita Nuova, ii. 
 
144 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 becomes the cherished ideal of his bosom. He 
 goes astray, but the thought of the loved one re- 
 claims him; another demands his care and atten- 
 tion, but he communes with this one in his dreams 
 and has visions of her in glory. He sings of her 
 in his waking hours. Her image is the talisman 
 whereby to banish all unworthy thoughts and de- 
 sires. He extols her ; he idealizes her ; he embalms 
 her forever in his immortal poem. He identifies 
 her with, and makes her the impersonation of The- 
 ology; and henceforth the name of Beatrice shall 
 stand before men as the synonym of whatever is 
 inspiring in love and ennobling in womanhood. 
 The passion of boyhood followed her to the 
 heavenly abode in which he fancied her, and waxed 
 with years into a most ideal and spiritual influ- 
 ence, until it finally ripened in the poet's heart, 
 through long and laborious study, into the fulfill- 
 ment of his early promise "to say of her what was 
 never said of any woman." 1 This spiritualized 
 type of womanhood stands out unique in the whole 
 range of literature. It is Dante's own creation; 
 rather it is the creation of the Christianity that re- 
 veres and honors the Virgin Mother. Love was 
 the actuating principle of the poet's life. Not love 
 of woman only, but love of country, love of study, 
 love of religion ; and not simply love, but love en- 
 lightened and strengthened by a faith that pierces 
 the veil of the visible and transient and beholds the 
 regions of the spiritual and eternal. 2 
 
 3. Dante's love for the religion of his birth 
 
 1 Vita Nnova, xliii. 
 
 2 See N. Tommaseo, L'/n'rrno, Tnt. p. xlvi. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 145 
 
 grew into a passion. Neither the Guelf hatred of 
 his youth nor the Ghibelline hatred of his later 
 years against the persons of several popes ever for 
 a moment obscured his mind to the truth of the 
 doctrines of the Church or the sacred office of the 
 papacy. In his view, the greatness of ancient 
 Rome was decreed solely to render it worthy of 
 being the Holy Place in which should sit the suc- 
 cessors of the Fisherman. 1 The mystical vine of 
 the Church still grows, and Peter and Paul who 
 died for it still live. 2 He holds by that Church ; 
 he begs Christians not to be moved, feather-like, 
 "by every wind of doctrine." "You have," he 
 tells them, "the Old Testament and the New, and 
 the Pastor of the Church who guides you; let 
 this suffice for your salvation." 3 
 
 4. With this profound respect for the Church, 
 he loved her ceremonies, her dogmas, her teachings, 
 her institutions. He to whom the heavens and all 
 that they contain were symbols of the spiritual es- 
 sences they veil could not fail to grasp the poetry 
 and the meaning of every prayer and ceremony and 
 office of that Church who, through whatever is in 
 
 1 La quale, e il quale, a voler dir lo vero, 
 
 Fur stabiliti per lo loco santo, 
 U' siede il successor del maggior Piero. 
 
 Inferno, ii. 22-24. 
 
 2 Pensa che Pietro e Paolo, che moriro 
 
 Per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi. 
 
 Paradiso, xviii. 131, 132. 
 8 Avete il vecchio e il nuovo Testamento, 
 E il Pastor della Chiesa che vi guida : 
 Questo vi basti a vostro salvamento. 
 
 Rid. v. 76-78. 
 
146 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and about her temples, speaks eloquently to men in 
 sign and symbol. There is not a stone in her ca- 
 thedrals that has not its mystical meaning ; there 
 is not a garment with which her priest vests him- 
 self that is not emblematic of some spiritual truth ; 
 there is not an anthem or antiphon in her offices 
 that does not help to draw out the beauty and sig- 
 nificance behind it all. "The elements and frag- 
 ments of poetry," says the Dean of St. Paul's in 
 his scholarly monograph, "were everywhere in the 
 Church in her ideas of life, in her rules and in- 
 stitutions for passing through it, in her preparation 
 for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, 
 usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, com- 
 mercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings 
 and ends she had given them, the religious serious- 
 ness with which the forms of each were dignified 
 in her doctrine and her dogmatic system, her de- 
 pendence on the unseen world, her Bible. Prom 
 each and all of these, and from that public feeling 
 which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and in- 
 coherently, was quite alive to the poetry which 
 surrounded it, the poet received an impression of 
 greatness and beauty, of joy and dread." 1 How 
 far the poet made use of the impulses emanating 
 from one and all of these influencing agencies is 
 known only to him who has made a complete and 
 thorough study of the poem embodying their inspi- 
 rations. Por we must not lose sight of the fact 
 that the poem is, in all the grandeur and depth of 
 its mystical meaning, made up of the spirit and 
 
 1 Rev. R. W. Church, Dante, p. 111. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 147 
 
 doctrine of the Church. 1 The spites and personal 
 animosities are but specks scattered here and there 
 upon the whole surface of crystalline beauty. 
 Shining out in pristine splendor is the Spiritual 
 Sense. Let us now glance at the philosophy and 
 doctrine underlying that Sense. 
 
 VI. 
 
 1. There is a common ground on which all su- 
 preme intelligences assemble. It is the region of the 
 Ideal. It is ascended only by the long and arduous 
 labor of study and thought. There meet poetry and 
 philosophy in their highest soarings. They meet 
 and converse and stand upon the footing of mutual 
 understanding. Poetry is permeated by the philo- 
 sophic spirit, and philosophy dons the garb of 
 poetry. Few are the souls assembled upon that 
 supreme height. Plato and Virgil dwell there ; so 
 do Shakespeare and Goethe. And, consummate 
 singer, profound philosopher, and skilled theolo- 
 gian, by eyery right and title, as being each and all 
 of these, Dante there also has his home. Sweet- 
 est of singers, he is at the same time profoundly 
 
 1 Dante cristiano, cristianissimo serapre nel Poema e in tutte le 
 opere ; Dante cattolico sempre. . . . Balbo, Vita, lib. ii. cap. ii. 
 p. 232. 
 
 In truth, he anticipated the most pregnant developments of 
 Catholic doctrine, mastered its subtlest distinctions, and treated 
 its hardest problems with almost faultless accuracy. Were all the 
 libraries in the world destroyed, and the Holy Scriptures with 
 them, the whole Catholic system of doctrine and mprals might be 
 almost reconstructed out of the Divina Commedia. Hettinger, 
 Dante's Divina Commedia, p. 234. . 
 
148 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 scientific; his mental vision sees the nicest intri- 
 cacies and the most delicate distinctions ; eminently 
 religious, he also gathers up the fragments of an- 
 cient mythologies and ancient systems that he finds 
 stranded upon his age, and pieces them together, 
 giving them deeper import in the light of the Chris- 
 tian mysticism in which he is immersed. "He 
 brought back," says Gioberti, "the Gentile my- 
 thology and symbolism to their source, rendering 
 them anew esoteric and poetic. " l He made them 
 wholly subordinate to the Christian spirit, and by 
 means of them conveyed practical lessons that are 
 balm to the weary and drink to the thirsty. In 
 like manner did he treat the science of his day. 
 He made it the handmaid of the great spiritual 
 truths he would impart. For this reason it is of 
 small moment whether his theories be superseded 
 by others apparently more probable ; the moral and 
 spiritual lesson still remains, and still speaks to the 
 same human heart and the same human aspira- 
 tions. So also did he make use of allegory. 
 
 2. Allegory there was before the time, of Dante. 
 Vision, too, was there. Such were the visions of 
 Alberic; 2 such the vision of Paul, 3 and many oth- 
 ers. 4 The language of allegory and vision was the 
 favorite mode of conveying spiritual advice. 5 But 
 
 1 Del Bello, cap. x. p. 214. 
 
 2 Tomraaseo, L' Inferno, p. 416. Discorso: Altre vision! in- 
 fernali. 
 
 8 Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophic Catholique au Xlllme. Siede, 
 p. 473. 
 
 * Ibid. pp. 484-491. 
 
 6 Ozanam calk attention to the general analogy between the pas- 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 149 
 
 all previous visions and allegories are to the great 
 allegorical vision of Dante what the old plays and 
 stories out of which our own Shakespeare con- 
 structed his immortal masterpieces are to those 
 masterpieces themselves. In the one case and in 
 the other, we may trace phrases and expressions 
 and conceptions, and even whole trains of thought, 
 to their sources; but to what avail? The master- 
 mind has given to the phrase or sentence a new 
 application and a larger scope, and with grasp of 
 purpose and sureness of aim has reset sentence 
 and phrase in a sense in which through all time 
 they will be recognized as the ideal forms. To 
 achieve this is the exclusive mission of , genius. 
 And in a marked degree was this the mission of 
 Dante. Critics find fault with his occasional 
 coarseness of diction. True it is that Dante does 
 not employ words with the view of concealing the 
 image he would portray. His descriptions are 
 always vivid. He "condenses aphorisms into pic- 
 tures, and sums up chapters of morality in por- 
 traits." 1 Whatever there is in his poem that is 
 beautiful or tender and much there is of beauty 
 and tenderness he expresses with delicacy and 
 sweetness the most exquisite; but when the poet 
 would describe the loathsome and the horrible, he 
 makes use of language best calculated to leave a 
 
 sage of the soul through the spheres of the Paradiso and the 
 favorite titles of the ascetic treatises of St. Bonaventura : Itine- 
 rarium mentis ad Deum ; Formula aurea de gradibus virtutem ; De 
 vii itineribus ceternitatis. Loc. cit. p. 335. 
 
 1 A. J. Symonds, Introduction to the Study of Dante, p. 163, 
 2ded. 
 
150 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 loathsome or horrible impression. Critics should 
 not forget that elegance and prettiness of phrase 
 are not grandeur and strength; that they are 
 wholly incompatible with grandeur and strength; 
 that if Dante were always elegant and pretty in 
 his phrasings Dante would never have been great 
 or sublime, nor would his poem tower through the 
 vista of the ages one of the grandest monuments 
 of human thought and human skill ever conceived 
 and executed. And the secret of it all lies in the 
 poet's intense earnestness. 
 
 3. This earnestness asserts itself throughout the 
 poem chiefly in three lines of thought : (1) A de- 
 voted patriot, loving his country, suffering for it, 
 and yearning for its welfare with all the energy of 
 his being, he launches notes of warning and denun- 
 ciation against its vices, its enemies, and its false 
 friends, and with invective the most scathing vili- 
 fies all who seemingly stand between it and its 
 well-being. This burning patriotism has made the 
 poem the great national epic. 1 (2) A child of the 
 Church, true and attached, though at times way- 
 ward, the poet takes the liberty of a child free- 
 spoken and free to speak, to utter words of censure 
 against what he considers abuses in the external 
 administration of the Church and the policy of 
 her Pontiffs. 2 (3) Finally, Dante's chief mission, 
 the prime motive of his intense earnestness, is the 
 
 1 Inferno, xxvi. 1-10; Purgatorio, vi. 75-151; Paradiso, xv., 
 xvi. To understand the political aspect of the poem it is essential 
 to read the author's work De Monarchia and some available history 
 of that period, say Villani or Caesar Cantu. 
 
 2 Inferno, xix. 88-117; Paradiso, xviii. 115-136; xxvii. 19-66. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 151 
 
 Spiritual Sense underlying his poem. This he has 
 not left to be discovered. He takes pains to in- 
 form the reader. He tells him that leaving aside 
 all subtle investigation, the end and aim of his poem 
 briefly put, both as regards the whole and its parts, 
 is to remove therefrom men living in a state of mis- 
 ery in this life, and lead them to one of happiness. 1 
 This he does upon an ethical basis. 
 
 4. The poet recognizes free-will as the basis of all 
 human responsibility, and the consequent amena- 
 bility of the soul to reward or punishment : " Inborn 
 in you is the virtue that keepeth counsel and that 
 should guard the threshold of assent. Here is the 
 principle whereto occasion of meriting in you is at- 
 tached, according as it gathers up and winnows out 
 good or guilty loves." 2 The argument of his poem 
 is man receiving at the hands of Divine Justice his 
 deserts according to the motive and nature of the 
 actions he performs. 3 Man passes from the dark- 
 .ness of sin and the wilderness of error into the light 
 of truth and grace. The poem is a song of emanci- 
 pation. It chants the breaking of the bonds of sin, 
 and the passing into the light and freedom of the 
 children of God. It is a song of hope. Evil is in- 
 deed mighty, and great is the havoc it plays among 
 souls; but mightier still is God's grace. It is a 
 
 1 Sed omissa subtili investigatione, dicendum est breviter, quod 
 finis totius et partis est, removere viventes in hac vita de statu 
 miseriae, et perducere ad statum felicitatis. Epistola, xi. Ep. ad 
 Kani Grandi de la Scala, 15. 
 
 2 Purgatorio, xviii. 61-66. See the whole of this important pas- 
 sage. Cf. Suntma, ii. 1, Quaest. cxiv. art. iv. 
 
152 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 song of light and life. Its tendency is upward and 
 onward to the triumph of spirit over matter. It is 
 ever pouring into our souls to the music of 
 
 " one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 1 
 
 5. The poem is, therefore, practical. The thought, 
 the energy, and the earnestness of the whole age are 
 concentrated upon it. Speculation abounds in it ; 
 but it is in order that knowing all the better one 
 may do all the better. The poet is careful to tell 
 us that if he speaks by way of speculation, it is not 
 for the sake of mere barren words, but rather that 
 such may tend to action. 2 The intellect is made 
 for truth; its ultimate perfection consists in the 
 contemplation of truth. 3 The poet never forgets 
 that true wisdom consists in right-knowing and 
 right-doing. 
 
 vn. 
 
 1. In the development of this thought we have 
 the mystical meaning and central idea of the " Di- 
 vina Commedia." It is the drama of human 
 nature sinning, struggling against vice, straining 
 
 1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, i. 1. 
 
 2 Ep. xi. 16. "Non ad speculandum, sed ad opus inco3ptum 
 est totum." 
 
 3 Cosl della induzione della perfezione seconda le scienze sono 
 cagioni in noi ; per 1' abito delle quali potemo la verita speculare, 
 ch' e ultima perfezione nostra, siccome dice il Filosofo nel sesto 
 dell' Etica, quando dice che'l vero e '1 bene dello intelletto. Con- 
 vito, ii. 14, p. 153, ed. Fraticelli. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 153 
 
 after perfection, and making for the Supreme Good 
 by means of Knowledge and Power : the primary 
 knowledge of one's duties towards one's self, one's 
 neighbor and God, and the larger knowledge of 
 the relation and coordination of those duties in the 
 light of philosophy and theology ; the power flow- 
 ing from this knowledge aided by prayer and grace 
 and the assistance of the unseen, spiritual world. 
 
 2. The element that gives life to the knowledge 
 and makes effective the power is Love. Love is the 
 inspiration of all knowledge. Without love there 
 can be no philosophy ; l it is the form the soul 
 of philosophy. 2 Be it remembered that philosophy 
 is not, in the intention of Dante, mere speculation. 
 It is an intimate union of the soul with wisdom in 
 all-absorbing and undivided love. 3 Therefore it is 
 that only those living according to reason can be- 
 come philosophers. Those leading merely the life 
 of the senses can know or experience naught of the 
 mysteries and consolations of this true philosophy. 4 
 Nor can intelligences exiled from their supernal 
 home, such as fallen angels and damned souls, phi- 
 losophize, for the reason that love has become ex- 
 tinguished in them and malice prevails. 5 Love is 
 the soul of philosophy ; wisdom is its body ; moral- 
 ity its beauty ; such is the underlying conception of 
 Dante's doctrine. 6 He recognizes no truth that is 
 
 1 A filosofare e necessario amore. Convito, tratto iii. cap. 13, 
 p. 226. 
 
 2 Amore 6 forma di filosofia. Ibid. p. 229. 
 
 8 Filosofia e uno amoroso uso di sapienzia. Ibid. cap. 12, p. 225. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 224. 
 
 6 Ibid. cap. 13. p. 226. 6 Ibid. cap. 14. 
 
154 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 not a ray of the Divine Intelligence ; no good that 
 does not flow from the Infinite Love ; no beauty 
 that is not clothed in the morality born of the Eter- 
 nal Law. "The Alpha and Omega of all writing 
 that Love reads me is the Supreme Good that con- 
 tents this Court." 1 So speaks he in his sublime 
 vision to the Apostle of Love. And he enlarges 
 upon it in this fashion : " By argument of philo- 
 sophy, and by authority descending hence, such 
 Love must needs on me be stamped ; for Good, so 
 far as it is good and comprehended as such, enkin- 
 dleth Love, and enkindleth it all the greater as 
 more of goodness is therein comprised. Therefore, 
 towards that Essence so supreme that every good 
 which is found outside of It is but a ray of Its 
 light more than towards aught else, it behoov- 
 eth the mind of each one discerning the truth 
 whereon is based this evidence to move in love." 2 
 From that Divine Essence have come all things ; 
 to the same should all things tend. And as regards 
 man, both reason and revelation urge him to keep 
 for God the sovereign use of all his loves. 3 
 
 3. Nor does the poet stop here. With depth and 
 force and admirable grasp of expression, he pene- 
 trates to the workings of Love in the Godhead. 
 He determines It to be not only a principle of Light, 
 but also a principle of Life. Here he is mystical, 
 sublime, suggestive. He stands upon the highest 
 plane of Christian philosophy. He contemplates 
 the Trinity in the creative act. He beholds the 
 
 1 Paradise, xxvi. 16-18. 2 Ibid. 25-36. 
 
 8 Ibid. 45-47. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMED1A 155 
 
 Triune Godhead in the bosom of the Word. And 
 thus the Word, which is the central fact of all his- 
 tory, the central thought of all philosophy, the cen- 
 tral germ of all speech, becomes for Dante the cen- 
 tral Idea of the "Divina Commedia." He says: 
 " That which dieth not and that which can die are 
 naught else than the splendor of that Idea l which 
 in His love our Lord begetteth. For that living 
 Light 2 which so goeth forth from Its source 3 
 that It ceases not to be one therewith, 4 as well as 
 with the Love 5 that maketh Three-in-One of Its 
 bounty 6 unites Its rays as though mirrored in nine 
 subsistences, 7 Itself remaining eternally One and 
 Undivided. Thence It descends to the ultimate 
 potentialities, passing down from act to act, till It 
 makes no further than brief contingencies ; 8 and 
 these contingencies I understand to be things gen- 
 erated, which the moving heavens 9 produce with 
 and without seed." 10 The sum and substance of 
 this sublime doctrine is that Love produces all 
 things, from the heaven of heavens and the celes- 
 tial spirits down to the least and most evanescent 
 
 1 The Word. 
 
 2 The Word, the Son. 
 8 The Father. 
 
 4 Ego et Pater unnm sumus, Joan. x. 30. 
 6 The Holy Ghost, the Third Divine Person. 
 
 6 That is, of Its goodness, not through necessity. 
 
 7 In the nine heavens, or in the nine motive intelligences. 
 Bianchi. 
 
 8 That is, extending down from the more active to the less active 
 till It comes to the least existence in the chain of created things. 
 
 9 Divine Light moving the heaven, produces things generated. 
 Tommaseo. 
 
 lu Paradiso, xiii. 53-66. 
 
156 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 creature. With St. Thomas the poet here holds 
 the influence of the heavenly bodies as secondary- 
 causes. 1 With the Angelic Doctor also he holds 
 that beings are perfect in proportion as they reflect 
 the Divine attributes : 2 "If burning Love disposes 
 and stamps the clear view of the Prime Virtue, all 
 perfection is there acquired. Thus was the earth 
 once made worthy of all the perfection of living 
 things; thus was the Virgin made a mother." 8 
 In Dante's philosophy the Ideal becomes the 
 standard of all beauty. Grand vistas of thought 
 here open up to our contemplation; but we must 
 not tarry. One remark, however, may be per- 
 mitted. It has been well said : " See deep enough 
 and you see musically ; the heart of Nature being 
 everywhere music if you can only reach it." 4 If 
 it has ever been given to human intellect to look 
 back of sign and symbol and behold the essence 
 and relation of things, it has been given to Dante. 
 And this is why he has seen so musically. He 
 sees virtue and justice and suffering all blended 
 in their true relations ; he notes the harmony be- 
 tween the natural and the supernatural orders, 
 between faith and reason, grace and free-will, time 
 
 1 Corpora caelestia sunt causa inf eriorum effectuum mediantibus 
 causis particularibus inferioribus, quse deficere possunt in minor! 
 parte. 
 
 Virtus corporis caalestis non est infinita ; unde requirit detenni- 
 natam dispositionem in materia ad inducendum suum effectum et 
 quantum ad distantiam loci, et quantum ad alias conditioner 
 Summa, I. quaest. cxv. art. vi. ad. 1, 2. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. ii. quaest. iv. art. 5. 
 8 Paradiso, xiii. 79-84. 
 
 4 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship, lect. iii. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 157 
 
 and eternity, the divine and the human, and the 
 harmony fills him with wonderment, and its music 
 enters his soul, and he sings it in accents so sweet 
 that he who lets the sweetness enter into his heart, 
 may well say with the poet on hearing Casella sing 
 one of his own hymns: "Still sounds its sweetness 
 within me!" 1 
 
 vin. 
 
 1. That deep insight into the moral and physical 
 world has enabled Dante to see in Love not only 
 the Light and the Life of all things created and 
 even of the Uncreated One in whom Love, Light, 
 and Life are one infinite identical activity but 
 also the principle and source of sin and passion : 
 "Neither Creator nor a creature . . . was ever 
 without Love, be it natural or be it spiritual ; and 
 well thou knowest. The natural is always free 
 from error ; but err the other may by evil objects, 
 or by excess, or by defect of vigor. Whilst well- 
 directed in the first, and in the second it moder- 
 ates itself, it cannot be cause of evil delight; but 
 when to ill it turns aside, or when with more care 
 than it ought, or with less, it runs after good, 
 then against the Creator works his own creation. 
 Hence it behooves you to understand how Love 
 should be in you the seed of every virtue as well 
 as of every deed deserving punishment." 2 In this 
 strain the poet continues, holding with the Angelic 
 
 1 Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona. Purgatorio, ii. 114. 
 
 2 Ibid. xvii. 91-105. 
 
158 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Doctor that there is no passion, not even excepting 
 Hate, that does not presuppose Love. 1 For, as the 
 great Schoolman teaches, there is no passion that is 
 not moved towards, or does not rest in, some ob- 
 ject. And it is so because of some kind of har- 
 mony or adaptability between the subject moved or 
 resting and the object towards which it moves or 
 in which it rests. But Love consists in the accord 
 of the one loving with the object loved. 2 Now the 
 human heart seeks the good, yearns for the good, 
 loves the good, and is content only in the posses- 
 sion and enjoyment of the good. This is a pri- 
 mary law. No system of philosophy has ever soared 
 higher than that question every Christian child 
 learns from the Little Catechism : " Why did God 
 make you ? God made me to know Him, to love 
 Him, and serve Him in this world, and to be 
 happy with Him forever in the next." 3 It contains 
 the solution of the whole mystery of man. It 
 names the Supreme Good towards which tends all 
 Love. 
 
 2. But it frequently happens that the Supreme 
 Good becomes clouded from man's vision and in- 
 tent, and he seeks bliss in loving the lesser goods 
 that are more palpable to his view. Herein is how 
 Love becomes the source of all that is sinful in 
 thought and word and work on the part of man. 
 (1) Now it is Love excessive. As such it seeks 
 
 1 Summa, I. ii. qusest. xxvii. art. 4. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. ii. quaest. xxix. art. 2. 
 
 8 A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, lesson i. " On the End of 
 Man." 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 159 
 
 happiness in imaginary perfection, or in the praise 
 of men, or in a sense of self-sufficiency that causes 
 one to ignore one's origin, or helplessness, or de- 
 pendence upon the aid of Grace. This is Pride or 
 Vanity. Again, this worldly love impels one to 
 seek happiness solely in the external sufficiency 
 that wealth can bring. This is Avarice ; and it is 
 at the root of treasons, frauds, deceits, prejudices, 
 anxieties, violence, and insensibility to misery. 1 
 The same Love seeks bodily gratification either in 
 eating or drinking to excess and this is Glut- 
 tony; or in the enjoyment of the carnal and sexual 
 appetites and this is Lust. (2) Now it is Love 
 defective. As such, it is lax and sad in attending 
 to things spiritual, and is known as Sloth. (3) 
 Finally, it is Love distorted. As such, it grudg- 
 ingly looks upon a neighbor's prosperity as an ob- 
 stacle in the way of one's preeminence when it 
 is called Envy ; or it changes into wrathful feelings 
 that seek to be revenged for real or fancied wrong. 
 It is then called Anger. These various forms of 
 misapplied Love are known as the Seven Capital 
 Sins, and are the chief sources of all evil. 2 
 
 3. The poet takes these sins and all the sins that 
 flow from them, and holds them up to our view in 
 all their loathsome nakedness. And he does so, 
 not as a mere matter of sport, but that he and his 
 
 1 Summa, II. ii. Quaest. cxviii. art. 8. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. ii. Qusest. Ixxxiv. art. 4. See Inferno, xi. and Tom- 
 maseo's tract appended to this canto, entitled " Dottrina Penale di 
 Dante," p. 120. The poet gives the genesis of the Seven Capital 
 Sins on the same line of reasoning with St. Thomas, whom we have 
 here followed in substance. See Purgatorio, xvii. 106-139. 
 
160 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 readers may learn to hate them, and from witness- 
 ing their torments may get some faint conception 
 of their enormity, and may be led to exclaim: 
 "Wisdom Supreme, how great is the art Thou 
 showest in heaven, on earth, and in the evil world, 
 and how well Thy Goodness dispenseth justice ! " l 
 The poet transports us to the Hell that he so vividly 
 pictures; we there are told the dire consequences 
 of sin to persons and families and peoples upon 
 earth ; we meditate upon the dread lessons embod- 
 ied in this song of woe and wrath, of wailings and 
 regrets, and our soul learns to recoil from aught 
 that could break the golden chain of Law and Love 
 with which the Creator binds all his creatures to 
 Himself. It is a solemn preparation for the more 
 practical lessons conveyed in the other two parts of 
 the poem. Their Spiritual Sense at once becomes 
 apparent. Indeed, it is the clue to their proper 
 appreciation. For the poem gives us, as no other 
 purely human production gives us, "the solution 
 of the great, eternal, and sole problem of our life, 
 namely, deliverance from evil and final bliss in 
 God as the source of all Truth and all Love." 2 
 Let us, in a cursory manner, follow the evolution 
 of that Spiritual Sense. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1. The poet is in the midway of life. 3 He has 
 become entangled in the woods of sin and error. 
 
 1 Inferno, xix. 10-12. 
 
 2 Hettinger, Die Giittliche Komodie, p. 66. 8 Inferno, i. 1. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 161 
 
 He is beset by three predominant passions that are 
 about to devour him. These are the lion of pride 
 and over-vaulting ambition, the leopard of concu- 
 piscence, and the she-wolf of avarice. Mary, Mo- 
 ther of Divine Grace, sees his plight, and foras- 
 much as he has venerated her, she does not abandon 
 him in his peril. She sends Lucy, or Illuminative 
 Grace, to his assistance. Lucy commands Virgil 
 that is, 'Keason, enlightened by her directions 
 to save him. As he is about returning upon his 
 evil course, 1 Reason tells him that he must take an- 
 other road if he would escape the beasts and be rid 
 of the errors of his ways. 2 He obeys. The jour- 
 ney is long and dismal and dreary. Sometimes the 
 poet is discouraged and desires to return. 3 Some- 
 times he requires, in an especial manner, the assis- 
 tance of Virgil: as when the Roman poet turns 
 him around and with his own hands closes his eyes 
 that he may not behold the Gorgon ; all of which 
 means that there are certain sins and temptations 
 in life that cannot be overcome by human nature 
 unaided by reason and God's redeeming grace. 
 Such is sensuality, which hardens the heart, even 
 as the head of the Gorgon was fabled to turn to 
 stone those looking thereon. In giving the figure 
 the poet would have us look to the spiritual sense : 
 "O you who have sane intellects, note the doc- 
 trine veiled beneath those strange verses." 4 At 
 
 1 Inferno, xv. 50-52. 
 
 2 E non c' era altra via 
 Che questa per la quale io mi son raesso. 
 
 Purgatorio, i. 62, 63. 
 8 Inferno, viii. 100-103. * Ibid. ix. 50-63. 
 
162 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 times Virgil himself is unable to make headway 
 against the powers of darkness. But a heavenly 
 messenger comes and dispels all dread, and opens 
 the entrance, and forthwith Dante and his guide 
 walk securely and without molestation. 1 They 
 find no further opposition. Indeed, it is only by 
 reason of heavenly grace that Virgil is able to lead 
 Dante through the dread region : " From on high 
 descends virtue, which enables me to lead him." 2 
 Whereby the poet would teach that human reason, 
 good and admirable as it may be in itself, is not 
 sufficient to contend against the world of passion 
 and the evil spirits that inspire wrong -doing. 
 Again, at times the poet would rest. But there is 
 no resting-place for the soul struggling with evil 
 till it frees itself therefrom. We thus have the 
 grand lesson of work and energy in overcoming 
 indolence and sloth and evil habit: "It now be- 
 hooveth thee to shake off all slothfulness, said the 
 Master, for fame comes not to him who sits on 
 down or lies abed; without which whoso consumes 
 his life, leaves on earth such trace of himself as 
 smoke in air or foam on water. Arise, therefore ! 
 Conquer thy panting with the soul that conquers 
 every battle, so be it that it sinks not down with 
 its heavy body." 3 And we have the further lesson 
 that mere sorrow of the lips and outward observance 
 of the law, or reception of the Sacraments, will 
 avail little unless accompanied by change of heart 
 
 1 Inferno, ix. 100-105. 
 
 2 Purgatorio, i. 68, 69. 
 
 8 Inferno, xxiv. 46-54 ; cf . Wisdom ix. 15. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 163 
 
 and sincere detestation of sin : " He cannot be ab- 
 solved who doth not first repent ; nor can he repent 
 the sin and will it at the same time, for this were 
 contradiction to which reason cannot consent." 1 
 Thus, in picturing sin and its punishment in such 
 colors as human conception has never approached, 
 the poet is teaching us the lesson of struggle with 
 self, of abhorrence of wrong-doing, and of striving 
 towards personal holiness. 
 
 2. This is especially the lesson of the "Purga- 
 torio." Before entering these realms of hope and 
 sweet contentment amid great suffering hope and 
 contentment because accompanied by Love the 
 poet must first be washed of the grime and filth 
 that have clung to him in the evil world, the con- 
 templation of which so saddened his eyes and 
 weighed down his heart. He is, furthermore, to 
 be girt with a lowly and pliant rush. "Go then," 
 says Cato, "and gird this man with a smooth rush; 
 then wash his face so that therefrom thou mayst 
 put away all filthiness ; for it were unseemly, with 
 eye obscured by any cloud, to go before the first 
 Minister who is of them of Paradise." 2 In which 
 words is conveyed the wholesome lesson that after 
 one has been cleansed from the grime of sin, one 
 must gird on the plain rush of humility ; for as pride 
 is the chief of all capital sins, so is humility the 
 foundation of all virtue ; and with meek and lowly 
 heart must one walk in the narrow way, fearing 
 lest one fall, and remembering that one carries 
 heavenly treasures in a frail vessel. And once the 
 
 1 Inferno, xxvii. 118-120. 2 Purgatorio, \. 94-99. 
 
164 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 soul has set out upon the road of virtue and right- 
 doing, she must not go back: "Let not your re- 
 turning be hitherward. The Sun which is now 
 rising will show you where to take the mountain 
 at an easier ascent." 1 In proportion as the soul 
 becomes enlightened by prayer and meditation will 
 she find all the easier the ascent up the mountain- 
 heights of perfection. 
 
 3. It is only through humble obedience in all 
 right-doing and humble submission in all right- 
 thinking that the soul can attain the great object of 
 this pilgrimage. This is the only road to liberty. 
 And liberty of spirit is what the poet seeks : " He 
 goeth in search of liberty, which is so dear, as he 
 knoweth who for it gave up his life." 2 He goes in 
 search of the highest spiritual good. And he can 
 only advance in the light : " To go upward in the 
 night may not be." 3 Only by grace and mercy 
 can one progress in the path of perfection. Still, 
 freedom of will is respected, and so the poet may 
 retrace his steps in the darkness: "Well might 
 one therewith turn downward and wander about 
 the hillside whilst that the horizon holds the day 
 closed." 4 The poet arrives at the gate of purga- 
 tion. It is guarded by an angel whose face is 
 radiant with beauty and who bears a sword and 
 
 1 Purgatorio, i. 106-108. 
 
 2 Rid. I 71, 72. Cato taking his own life rather than renounce 
 liberty is symbolical of the soul, destroying all selfishness that it 
 may attain the light and freedom of spiritual life. See Bianchi's 
 Divina Commedia, note to those lines, p. 245, ed. 1863 ; p. 253, ed 
 1868. 
 
 3 Purgatario, vii. 44. * Ibid. vii. 58-60. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 165 
 
 keys. There are three steps. The first is of 
 white marble so polished that therein the poet may 
 see himself mirrored. The second is a fire-burnt 
 rock tinted more deeply than perse, 1 with a cross 
 through its length and breadth. The third is 
 porphyry flaming as blood spirting forth from a 
 vein. 2 The poet, striking his breast, begs for 
 mercy, and asks to enter. 
 
 " Nearer now we drew, 
 
 Arriv'd, whence in that part, where first a breach 
 As of a wall appear'd, I could descry 
 A portal, and three steps beneath, that led 
 For inlet there, of different colour each, 
 And one who watch' d, but spake not yet a word. 
 As more and more mine eye did stretch its view, 
 I mark'd him seated on the highest step, 
 In visage such, as past my power to bear. 
 Grasped in his hand a naked sword, glanc'd back 
 The rays so toward me, that I oft in vain 
 My sight directed. ' Speak from whence ye stand : * 
 He cried : ' What would ye ? Where is your escort ? 
 Take heed your coming upward harm ye not.' 
 
 ' A heavenly dame not skilles%of these things,' 
 Replied the instructor, ' told us even now, 
 " Pass that way : here the gate is." ' ' And may she 
 Befriending prosper your ascent,' resum'd 
 The courteous keeper of the gate : ' Come then 
 Before our steps.' We straightway thither came. 
 
 The lowest stair was marble white, so smooth 
 And polish'd that therein my mirror 'd form 
 Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark 
 Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, 
 Cracked lengthwise and across. The third, that lay 
 Massy above, seemed porphyry, that flam'd 
 Red as the life-blood spirting from a vein. 
 
 1 Perse is a mixture of purple and black, the black predomi- 
 nating. Dante, Convito, iv. 20. 
 
 2 Purgatorio, ix. 90-102. 
 
166 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 On this God's angel either foot sustain' d, 
 Upon the threshold seated, which appear' d 
 A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps 
 My leader cheerly drew>me. ' Ask,' said he, 
 ' With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt.' 
 
 Piously at his holy feet devolv'd 
 I cast me, praying him for pity's sake, 
 That he would open to me : but first fell 
 Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times 
 The letter, that denotes the inward stain, 
 He on my forehead with the blunted point 
 Of his drawn sword inscrib'd. And ' Look,' he cried, 
 ' When enter'd, that thou wash these scars away.' 
 Ashes, or earth ta'en dry out of the ground, 
 Were of one colour with the robe he wore, 
 From underneath that vestment forth he drew 
 Two keys of metal twain : the one was gold, 
 Its fellow silver. With the pallid first, 
 And next the burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, 
 As to content me well. ' Whenever one 
 Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight 
 It turn not, to this alley then expect 
 Access in vain.' Such were the words he spake, 
 ' One is more precious : but the other needs 
 Skill and sagacity, large share of each, 
 Ere its good task 4o disengage the knot 
 Be worthily perform'd. From Peter these 
 I hold, of him instructed, that I err 
 Rather in opening than in keeping fast, 
 So but the suppliant at my feet implore.' 
 Then of that hallow'd gate he thrust the door, 
 Exclaiming, ' Enter, but this warning hear : 
 He forth again departs who looks behind." 
 
 As in the hinges of that sacred ward 
 The swivels turn'd, sonorous metal strong, 
 Harsh was the grating ; but so surlily 
 Roar'd the Tarpeian, when by force bereft 
 Of good Metellus, thenceforth from his loss 
 To leanness doom'd. Attentively I turn'd, 
 List'ning the thunder, that first issued forth ; 
 And * We praise thee, God,' methought I heard 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 167 
 
 In accents blended with sweet melody. 
 
 The strains came o'er mine ear, e'en as the sound 
 
 Of choral voices, that, in solemn chant 
 
 With organ mingle, and, now high and clear, 
 
 Come swelling, now float indistinct away." l 
 
 4. The allegorical veil is here so thin that whoso 
 chooses may penetrate it in the light of Catholic 
 doctrine and Catholic practice. " We need hardly 
 be told," says one who has written a charming 
 book instinct with beautiful thoughts and sugges- 
 tions, "that the gate of St. Peter is the Tribunal 
 of Penance. . . . The triple stair stands revealed 
 as candid Confession mirroring the whole man, 
 mournful Contrition breaking the hard heart of the 
 gazer on the Cross, Love all aflame offering up in 
 satisfaction the life-blood of body, soul, and spirit ; 
 the adamantine threshold-seat as the priceless mer- 
 its of Christ the Door, Christ the Rock, Christ 
 the sure Foundation and the precious Corner- 
 Stone. In the Angel of the Gate, as in the Gos- 
 pel Angel of Bethesda, is discerned the Confessor ; 
 in the dazzling radiance of his countenance the 
 exceeding glory of the ministration of righteous- 
 ness ; in the penitential robe the sympathetic meek- 
 ness whereby restoring one overtaken in a fault, 
 he considers himself lest he also be tempted; in 
 the sword the wholesome severity of his discipline ; 
 in the golden key his divine authority ; in the silver, 
 the discernment of spirits whereby he denies abso- 
 lution to the impenitent, the learning and discre- 
 tion whereby he directs the penitent." 2 
 
 1 Purgatorio, ix. 65-137, Gary's translation. 
 
 2 Maria F. Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, pp. 112, 113. See the 
 
168 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 5. Repentant and with good resolve, the soul 
 now goes forth on her final pilgrimage of purifica- 
 tion. There is still upon her the impress of the 
 Seven Capital Sins. To rid herself of the last trace 
 of these is her first endeavor. And as the angel 
 brushes away the trace of one sin after the other, 1 
 and the soul advances farther and farther in the 
 way of perfection, she finds herself growing all the 
 lighter for having got rid of the burden of her 
 imperfections, and the more eager is she to mount 
 to the summit. 2 Charity takes possession of the 
 soul, and she would see all men ascend with her : 
 "O race of men," admonishes the poet, "born to fly 
 upwards, why at a little wind fall ye so down?" 8 
 He also upbraids us for allowing ourselves to re- 
 main blind to the beauty and splendor of things 
 spiritual, and becoming absorbed in things earthly : 
 " Heaven calls you, and revolves around you, show- 
 ing you its eternal beauties; and your eye gazes 
 only on the earth, wherefore He who discerns all 
 chastises you." 4 We here perceive too that in afflic- 
 tion and trouble the soul has come to recognize the 
 Hand that punishes : " He who discerns all chas- 
 tises you;" and she accepts her trials as coming 
 from the hand of a loving Father, and offers them up 
 in expiation for past sin and as a source of merit. 
 
 Dissertation of Tommaseo appended to Purgatorio, ix. Penitenza 
 e Correzione, pp. 127-30. 
 1 Purgatorio, xii. 140 sqq. 
 
 2 Pungemi la f retta 
 Per la impacciata via. 
 
 Ibid, xxi.4.5. 
 Ibid. xii. 95, 96. 4 Ibid. xiv. 149-151. 
 
THE DIV1NA COMMEDIA 169 
 
 6. Finally, the poet passes through the fire that 
 cleanses him whole, and Virgil says to him: "The 
 temporal fire and the eternal hast thou seen, my 
 son, and thou art come to a part where of myself 
 no farther do I discern. With reason and with 
 art have I brought thee hither. Take for guide 
 thine own good pleasure; beyond the steep ways 
 and the narrow art thou. Yonder is the sun that 
 shines upon thy forehead ; here are the young grass, 
 the flowers and the shrubs, which the land of itself 
 alone brings forth. Whilst rejoicing come the fair 
 eyes that with their weeping made me go to thy 
 aid, thou mayst sit down and mayst go among them. 
 Await no more word nor sign from me; free and 
 upright and sound is thy Free-will, and it were 
 wrong not to do its bidding; wherefore thee over 
 thyself I crown and mitre." 1 The soul has con- 
 quered. Therefore Yirgil leaves the poet free from 
 the dominion of his passions ; more than free, a king 
 crowned triumphant over himself; more than king, 
 a mitred priest, ruling the cloister of his heart, 
 his thoughts and his affections, and mediator and 
 intercessor before the Divine Mercy for himself 
 and those commending themselves to his prayers. 
 Through speculation and through right-doing has 
 he been led by reason as far as reason can lead him. 
 He now passes into the hands of Divine Theology, 
 and in the radiance beaming from her eyes, dispel- 
 ling many a mist of ignorance, he will read profit- 
 able lessons of wisdom and of spiritual perfection. 
 He meets Beatrice. Henceforth neither fear of 
 
 1 Purgatorio, xxvii. 127-143. 
 
170 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 eternal torments, nor hope of mere earthly reward, 
 nor consolations of sense and feeling will be his 
 incentive to right-doing. Love alone shall lead 
 him. In the company of Beatrice, basking in her 
 sweet smile and receiving her loving admonitions, 
 will he walk from sphere to sphere and traverse 
 the empyrean. She begins by showing him how 
 great is the distance between the mere science of 
 reason and speculation and the high and holy 
 Light that is now to be a guide to his feet. The 
 poet asks: "But why so far above my sight flies 
 thy wished-for speech, that the more my vision 
 strains to see it the more it loses it? " And Bea- 
 trice answers: "To the end that thou mayst know 
 the School that thou hast followed ; mayst see how 
 its doctrines can keep pace with my speech; mayst 
 also see that your way is from the Divine way as 
 far apart as from earth in distance speeds the high- 
 est heaven." 1 Henceforth the soul will tread 
 God's way. And in what consists that way? 
 
 7. It is a way not unknown to every soul seek- 
 ing after spiritual perfection and union with God. 
 It is the Way of personal purity and holiness. 
 Well and truly hath it been said: "The only ob- 
 stacle to spiritual growth lies in ourselves. Good- 
 ness Divine, which 'spurns from Itself all envy/ 
 is forever shining in ideal beauty and drawing the 
 soul with cords of love. If we do not see the heav- 
 enly vision, it is because we are blinded by sin ; if 
 we do not press forward towards it, it is because 
 
 1 Purgatvrio, xxxiii. 82-90 ; cf. De Imitations, Christi, lib. iii. 
 cap. xxxi. 32. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 171 
 
 we are clogged by sin." l The chief mission of the 
 Church that to achieve which she makes use of 
 all the means at her command is to enable the 
 soul to divest herself of sin and become united 
 with the Supreme Good. In the Church flows the 
 spirit of regeneration. She is the mystical vine 
 perennially shooting forth branch and leaf and lus- 
 cious fruit throughout the ages, and in every fibre 
 retaining vigor and freshness. Her mystical sap 
 continues to nourish souls and impart to them a 
 healthful and health-giving growth and develop- 
 ment. And that mystical sap is none other than 
 Love Divine. It glows in the heart of every mem- 
 ber grafted on her mystical body. It inspires the 
 spirit of charity and fosters the communion of 
 saints. In this spirit did Dante write his great 
 poem, and in this spirit must that poem be read. 
 It is the story of a soul seeking perfection in unison 
 and harmony with the Church, by the light of 
 Faith, and borne upward by the supreme law of 
 Love. 
 
 8. The scales of selfishness and worldly wisdom 
 and earthly motives and measures fall from the 
 poet's eyes, and he sees things as they are in the 
 light of God's presence. The beauty of virtue 
 and personal holiness, the nobility and dignity 
 of obedience, the exalted grandeur of humility, 
 the great excellence of poverty and the numberless 
 blessings accompanying it; the necessity of being 
 detached from things of earth; the intrinsic worth 
 of riches, honors, and pleasures ; the wonders of the 
 
 1 Susan Blow, A Study of Dante, p. 65. 
 
172 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Incarnation and Redemption and the exhaustless 
 oceans of grace flowing therefrom ; all these sub- 
 jects, and many more as well, are dwelt upon di- 
 rectly or impliedly, amid the music of the spheres 
 and tho hosannas of angels and saints, catching up 
 and reechoing in heaven the hymns and offices sung 
 by the saints on earth, with a wealth and gorgeous- 
 ness of expression, and a sustained music, bor- 
 rowed from the heavenly music that had entered 
 the author's heart and welled forth again with a 
 rhythm and a harmony becoming the sublime 
 theme. This new vision is of the essence of the 
 Illuminative way. The soul has grown detached 
 from the things of this world. She has renounced 
 sin and the vanities of life. She has become 
 enamored of the spiritual goods of prayer and the 
 sacraments. The Love and the Light wherewith 
 she is filled diffuse themselves upon her neighbor 
 in charitable thought and kind word and helping 
 deed. Hence, she is zealous for the spiritual 
 well-being of her neighbor, and seeks to make it 
 assured by prayer and edification. She has left 
 the way of Nature, "which respecteth the outer 
 things of a man," and adopted those of Grace, 
 "which turneth itself to the inward." J She finds 
 comfort in God alone, and regards all else as vain 
 and trifling, except in so far as it leads to God. 
 
 9, In this spirit, and animated by these senti- 
 ments, does Dante move from sphere to sphere 
 each moment soaring higher on the wings of love ; 
 for in his own words, "The kingdom of heaven 
 
 1 De Imitations, lib. iii. cap xxxi. 5. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 173 
 
 suffereth violence of burning love and of living 
 hope, which conquer the Divine Will;" 1 each 
 moment revealing to him some new truth, each 
 moment adding to the brilliancy of the smile of his 
 Beatrice as she approaches nearer to the Fountain 
 of Light and Life and Love admiration on his 
 lips, love in his heart, and ecstasy in his soul; all 
 in harmony with that "harmony and sweetness 
 that can never be known save where joy is ever- 
 lasting." 2 The splendor of the eternal Sun that 
 illumines all the lights in heaven now comes within 
 his vision, and through the living light appears the 
 shining substance of the glorified body of the Re- 
 deemer, and its radiance dazzles his gaze : " Here 
 are the Wisdom and the Power which opened the 
 roads between heaven and earth." 3 And now 
 Beatrice would wean the poet from interpreting 
 all things in her countenance, and initiate him 
 into a higher state of spiritual life by contemplat- 
 ing heavenly things in themselves: "Why," she 
 says, " so enamors thee my face that thou turnest 
 not to the beautiful garden which flowereth un- 
 der Christ's beams? Here is the Rose wherein the 
 Divine Word was made flesh ; here are the lilies 
 whose odor attracted into the good way." 4 It need 
 not be said that Mary is emblemed in that mys- 
 tical Rose. She is preeminent among all God's 
 
 1 Begnum ccelorum violenzia pate 
 Da caldo amore, e da viva speranza, 
 Che vince la Divina Voluntate. 
 
 Paradiso, xx. 94-96. 
 
 2 Ibid. x. 146-148. 8 Ibid, xxiii. 38, 39. 
 
 * Ibid, xxiii. 70-75. 
 
174 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 creatures. Her effulgence adds to the brilliance 
 of the whole heavens. Saint and angel love her 
 with a special love and pay her a special honor of 
 praise and veneration, their deep love attracting 
 them towards her as the babe is drawn towards 
 the mother. 1 She is extolled with a special fer- 
 vor, and her name resounds with a special en- 
 thusiasm. 2 
 
 10. It were an injustice to the Catholic spirit of 
 the poem to overlook the loving homage paid to 
 Mary from its first canto, when she sends succor 
 to Dante, to its last, when St. Bernard sings her 
 praises with a sweetness of expression, a depth of 
 philosophy, and a tenderness of feeling that have 
 never been surpassed in human language. Agnos- 
 tics may not have any sympathy with this devotion ; 
 but none the less should they appreciate its bene- 
 ficial influence upon conduct, art, and letters. 
 Dante gave us the lofty creation of a Beatrice so 
 ideal and spiritual because he was devout to 
 Mary. Were there no Virgin -Mother, of immac- 
 ulate purity, and dowered with every grace and 
 every virtue, there would have been no ideal of 
 womanhood, such as Dante conceived; and, let us 
 add, the less reverent Goethe would have missed 
 in his masterpiece the central conception of the 
 purifying influence of woman's love, and the 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxiii. 121-126. 
 
 2 Cos\ la cireulata melodia 
 Si sigillava, e tutti gli altri lumi 
 Facean sona lo nome di MARIA. 
 
 Ibid, xxiii. 109-111. 
 
THE D1VINA COMMEDIA 175 
 
 meaning-laden words " the Eternal- Womanly 
 das Ewigweibliche draws us on and upward" 
 would have remained uninscribed among the 
 ineffaceable expressions of world-thought. 
 
 11. The poet ascends into the empyrean. He is 
 now in a transition state, passing from the Illumi- 
 native Way to intimate union with the Godhead. 
 New and wonderful visions present themselves to 
 his admiring gaze, bringing home to him truths 
 equally new and wonderful in that resplendent 
 temple "bounded only by love and light." Beatrice 
 tells him in accents clear and sweet: "We have 
 issued forth from the last body to the heaven which 
 is pure light; light intellectual full of love; love 
 of true good full of joy; joy surpassing every 
 sweetness." 1 Round him flashes a living light. 
 Its effulgence at first dims all vision ; but gradually 
 its grandeur and beauty and significancy unfold 
 themselves. "The Divine Light first is seen in 
 the form of a River, signifying Its effusion on the 
 creatures ; the living Sparks issuing from It are the 
 Angels ; the Flowers they ingem, the Saints. Then 
 in the changing of the River's length to the Lake's 
 roundness is figured the return of all creatures into 
 God as their Centre and End." 2 Finally, the 
 
 1 Noi semo usciti fnore 
 Del maggior corpo al ciel ch' e pura luce ; 
 Luce intelletual plena d' amore, 
 Amor di vero ben pien di letizia, 
 Letizia che trascende ogni dolzore. 
 
 Paradiso, xxx. 39-43. 
 
 2 Maria F. Rossetti, A Shadow of Dante, p. 272, in which the 
 author refers to Venturi as the source of this interpretation. 
 
176 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Light Divine assumes the shape of a Rose com- 
 posed of souls burning with love and basking in 
 the unveiled Presence : " In form of a white Rose 
 displayed itself to me the holy company whom 
 Christ in his own blood espoused." 1 And the 
 hosts of angels flit like bees, descending to the 
 Rose and ascending to where its bliss abideth ever- 
 more, in a constant tremor of love and gladness, 
 and dispensing throughout the Rose the peace and 
 the ardor with which they are thrilled. 2 This 
 wonderful Rose exhales the love with which it is 
 fed, and it thrills with the gladness diffused by the 
 threefold light of God, penetrating the whole uni- 
 verse and making it to smile. High up does his 
 Beatrice take her place, reflecting in dazzling ra- 
 diance the eternal glory. 
 
 12. The poet now enters upon the Unitive Way, 
 under the guidance of the contemplative quel con- 
 templante 5 St. Bernard. Benign joy suffused 
 his eyes and his cheeks, in gesture kind as befits a 
 tender father. 4 In this state the soul has no fur- 
 ther need of doctrine ; she has transcended the rea- 
 sonings and imaginings of men; she is about to 
 enter upon the beatific vision, and who more com- 
 petent to induct her than he who experienced it in 
 his own life and beautifully described it in his 
 book ? 5 " This joyous existence, " Bernard cautions 
 the poet, " will not be known to thee, if thou only 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxxi. 1-3. 2 Ibid. xxxi. 7-17. 
 
 8 Ibid, xxxii. 1. 4 Ibid. xxxi. 61-03. 
 
 6 In his treatise on the Love of God. See Gorres, La Mystique, 
 t. i. p. 101. 
 
THE D1VINA COMMEDIA 177 
 
 boldest thine eyes down." 1 Whereby the saint 
 would inculcate that one must first be detached 
 from things of earth if one would enjoy the state 
 of perfect union with God. But this is not given 
 to man upon his own merits; it is a special favor 
 of Divine grace and mercy, and can be obtained 
 only by earnest prayer. And so, Bernard beseeches 
 for the poet the special grace of ecstatic union with 
 the Godhead, through Mary's intercession, in that 
 marvelous outburst of song that exhausts all that 
 can be sung or said in praise of Heaven's Queen, 
 though it seems never to exhaust the admiration 
 bestowed upon it : 
 
 " Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son, 
 Humble and high beyond all other creature, 
 The limit fixed of the eternal counsel, 
 
 Thou art the one who such nobility 
 
 To human nature gave, that its Creator 
 Did not disdain to make himself its creature, 
 
 Within thy womb rekindled was the love, 
 By heat of which in the eternal peace 
 After such wise this flower has germinated. 
 
 Here unto us thou ait a noonday torch 
 
 Of charity, and below there among mortals 
 Thou art the living fountain-head of hope. 
 
 Lady, thou art so great, and so prevailing, 
 That he who wishes grace, nor runs to thee, 
 His aspirations without wings would fly. 
 
 Not only thy benignity gives succor 
 To him who asketh it, but oftentimes 
 Forerunneth of its own accord the asking. 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxxi. 112-114. 
 
178 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 In thee compassion is, in thee is pity, 
 In thee magnificence ; in thee unites 
 Whate'er of goodness is in any creature. 
 
 Now doth this man, who from the lowest depth 
 Of the universe as far as here has seen 
 One after one the spiritual lives, 
 
 Supplicate thee through grace for so much power 
 That with his eyes he may uplift himself 
 Higher towards the uttermost salvation. 
 
 And I, who never hurned for my own seeing 
 More than I do for his, all of my prayers 
 Proffer to thee, and pray they come not short, 
 
 That thou wouldst scatter from him every cloud 
 Of his mortality so with thy prayers, 
 That the Chief Pleasure he to him displayed. 
 
 Still farther do I pray thee, Queen, who canst 
 
 Whate'er thou wilt, that sound thou mayst preserve 
 After so great a vision his affections. 
 
 Let thy protection conquer human movements ; 
 See Beatrice and all the blessed ones 
 My prayers to second clasp their hands to thee." l 
 
 Forthwith the saint's prayer is granted. "My 
 vision becoming undimmed," says the poet, "more 
 and more entered the beam of light, which in itself 
 is Truth." 2 The veil has dropped. The poet en- 
 joys the ecstatic vision. He penetrates essences. 
 In that single glance mysteries the most profound 
 become unraveled. He sees the harmony existing 
 through all grades of the universe, bound together 
 in ineffable beauty and order their music pene- 
 trating his soul and all united in the golden 
 bonds of Love Divine. He sees and feels; the 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxxiii. 1-39, Longfellow's trans. 
 
 2 Ibid, xxxiii. 52-H4. 
 
THE D1VINA COMMEDIA 179 
 
 sweetness born of the vision is infused into his 
 heart; but language has no word in which to ex- 
 press the splendor he beholds and the rapture that 
 thrills him. He says : 
 
 " From that time forward what I saw was greater 
 Than our discourse, that to such vision yields, 
 And yields the memory unto such excess. 
 
 Even as he is who seeth in a dream, 
 
 And after dreaming the imprinted passion 
 Remains, and to his mind the rest returns not, 
 
 Even such am I, for almost utterly 
 Ceases my vision, and distilleth yet 
 Within my heart the sweetness born of it ; 
 
 Even thus the snow is in the sun unsealed, 
 Even thus upon the wind in the light leaves 
 Were the Boothsayings of the Sibyl lost." l 
 
 The vision confirms him in good resolve and strong 
 purpose. In that blissful state, where each long- 
 ing is perfect, ripe, and whole, 2 his yearning for 
 the Good and the Perfect changes to determination 
 of will to seek and possess them: "Already," he 
 tells us, "my desire and my will rolled onward, 
 like a wheel in even motion, swayed by the Love 
 that moves the sun and all the stars. v/3 Hence- 
 forth the sole law of his action shall be the Love 
 that rules the universe. In obedience to the Divine 
 Will shall he work out his mission on earth; in 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxxiii. 55-66. 
 
 2 Ibid. xxii. 64. 
 
 8 Ibid, xxxiii. 143-145 : 
 
 " Ma gia vol^eva il mio disiro e il velle, 
 81 come ruota che igualmente & mossa, 
 L'Amor cbe muove il sole e 1'altre stelle." 
 
180 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 all things resigned thereto and living therefor; 
 walking through life in the clear light of Faith, 
 with heart beating high in Hope, and soul aflame 
 with all-embracing Charity. 
 
 1. Such is the Spiritual Sense of the "Divina 
 Commedia." We have traced it, a golden thread 
 running through the whole extent of the poem ; we 
 have found that sense, with the prophet of old, dic- 
 tating the first line ; 1 its notes resound strong and 
 clear in the very last verses ; on it are strung the 
 brightest pearls of thought and the rarest gems of 
 diction; by means of it are all the parts solidly 
 welded together, and unity and harmony given to 
 the whole ; it has been the chief inspiration of the 
 poet, sustaining him in his highest soarings and 
 dictating his sublimest songs. Other senses are 
 to be -found in the poem. In parts it has its politi- 
 cal sense; in parts it has its purely moral sense; 
 in others again it has its philosophical sense ; but 
 the sense that pervades the whole, determines its 
 meaning and bearing, and makes of it one of the 
 great world-poems, is the Spiritual Sense. The 
 other senses are employed critically : to find fault, 
 or to sound the note of warning ; to praise, approve, 
 or commend; to expound a theory or explain a 
 difficulty. The Spiritual Sense is used construc- 
 tively. It has built up the poem into that grand 
 climax of thought and aspiration among the 
 
 1 Isaiah xxxviii. 10. 
 
THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 181 
 
 grandest ever reached by human genius with 
 which the poet closes. The clue to this sense, in- 
 deed every clue to the poem, is to be found in 
 the "Paradiso." Carlyle called this portion, to 
 him, "a kind of inarticulate music." 1 It is not 
 to be wondered at. The music of the "Paradiso" 
 is the music of spiritual life; and the music of 
 spiritual life can be interpreted only by those into 
 whose existence spiritual life enters as a living, 
 breathing reality. It is a music articulate and 
 familiar to each religious man. It throbs in his 
 every aspiration. His ear has been attuned to its 
 exquisite cadences; its harmony vibrates through 
 the pages of the spiritual book he reads; it is 
 reechoed in the sermons and exhortations he hears 
 and in the hymns he chants ; his whole life is the 
 clearest commentary upon this poem, rather his 
 life is itself the living poem from which Dante 
 has made a marvelous though still imperfect tran- 
 script. In the noblest themes of that transcript 
 he recognizes echoes of the thoughts, sentiments, 
 and aspirations that in his own breast are continu- 
 ously humming unspeakable music. The fervor 
 and love and high thought that are all so grandly 
 intensified in the terse rhythm of the " Divina Corn- 
 media " are the fervor and love and high thought 
 that are daily moving tens of thousands of men and 
 women to lead the spiritual life therein portrayed 
 in obedience to the Love Divine that rules hearts 
 and sways the heavens in perpetual harmony. The 
 religious man in sauntering through the vast aisles 
 
 1 Heroes and Hero Worship, lect. iii. 
 
182 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 and chapels of this noble cathedral of song, here 
 admiring a tender and touching picture, there gaz- 
 ing upon a scene of terror penciled in vivid colors, 
 again drinking in the sweet and inspiring strains 
 of its clear organ-tones, feels that beneath its sol- 
 emn arches his soul may rest, for he is at home in 
 his Father's House. 1 
 
 2. From the study of medieval thought and 
 aspiration we shall now turn to the study of a soul 
 plunged in grief over the death of a friend, har- 
 ried by the spirit of modern doubt concerning the 
 unseen universe, and by means of Christian faith 
 and Christian charity, attempting to reach the 
 haven of rest attained by Dante and Thomas a 
 Kempis. We shall seek the Spiritual Sense of 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam." 
 
 1 The learned Dominican, Father Berthier, is at present issu- 
 ing an illustrated edition of the Divina Commedia in which every 
 passage is interpreted according to the spiritual sense, as it has 
 been here outlined, and the interpretation confirmed, by numer- 
 ous references and quotations from St. Thomas of Aquin. He 
 also throws light upon many an obscure passage, by reproducing 
 the paintings, mosaics, and frescoes that embody the traditional 
 meaning. The work bids fair to be a minute and exhaustive 
 study of the poet. See. for instance, Father Berthier' s interpreta- 
 tion of "il veltro" (Inferno, i. 101) and the light thrown upon 
 this interpretation by his reproduction of the frescoes attributed 
 to Simone Memmi in the Spanish Chapel at Florence (La Divina 
 Commedia con commenti secondo la Scholastica, del P. Gioachino 
 Bertbier, del Fred. vol. i. fascicolo 1, pp. 14, 15, 31, 32). 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 1. "!N Memoriam" contains one hundred and 
 thirty-one lyrics with a prologue and an epilogue. 
 These lyrics, primarily commemorating the death 
 of Arthur Hallam, 1 are to all seeming simply what 
 Tennyson himself has described them to be 
 
 " Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
 Their wings in tearo, and skim away." 
 
 1 Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the histo- 
 rian, was born in London in 1811. When only nine years old he 
 showed great precocity in learning modern languages and in 
 writing ambitious tragedies. He studied at Eton till 1827, and 
 afterwards passed eight months in Italy with his parents, during 
 which time he became familiar with the works of Dante and Pe- 
 trarca. In 1829 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and then 
 began that memorable friendship with the Tennysons which is 
 embalmed in the In Memoriam. He left Cambridge in 1832. In 
 1833 he accompanied his father to Germany, and on the fifteenth 
 of September, 1833, he died from a sudden jush of blood to the 
 head- His remains were brought to England and interred in the 
 chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, January 3, 1834. He 
 was engaged to be married to Tennyson's sister Emily. He was a 
 brilliant young man, and endeared himself to all with whom he 
 had relations. Lord Houghton and Dean Alford left pleasant 
 reminiscences of him, and Mr. Gladstone pays him this tribute : 
 " There perhaps was no one among those who were blessed with 
 his friendship nay, as we see, not even Mr. Tennyson who 
 did not feel at once bound closely to him by commanding affection 
 
184 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 No doubt they so stood in the poet's original inten- 
 tion. The elegiac part was very probably written 
 during the first nine years. In the Epithalamium 
 the poet so measures the time : 
 
 " Though I since then have numbered o'er 
 
 Some thrice three years." 
 
 And during the remaining eight years he revised, 
 recast, arranged, and developed the poem to its 
 present shape. "It is a fact," says Gatty on what 
 seems to be Tennyson's own word, "that the poem 
 was written at both various times and places: 
 through a course of years, and where the author 
 happened to be, in Lincolnshire, London, Essex, 
 Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere as the spirit 
 moved him." 1 During the seventeen years that it 
 took Tennyson to compose and finish the poem, the 
 subject grew upon him, and his intellectual vision 
 extended far beyond the range of a mere dirge 
 over a departed friend. He wove into the original 
 lamentations the fears and doubts and struggles of 
 the age with atheism and infidelity, its hopes also 
 and aspirations, and transformed dreamy musings 
 of sorrow and the mere expression of baffled selfish- 
 ness into the history of a human soul groping 
 through affliction and doubt towards the light. 
 Tennyson has thus crystallized the thought of the 
 
 and left far behind by the rapid growth and rich development of 
 his ever-searching mind ; by his 
 
 " ' All-comprehensive tenderness, 
 All-subtilizing intellect.' " 
 
 See Alfred Tennyson, His Life and Works, by Walter E. Wace, 
 pp. 24-36. 
 
 1 A Key to In Memoriam, p. 26, note. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 185 
 
 nineteenth century. It is our purpose to make a 
 careful study of the poem, and by the application 
 of certain solvents to test the character of the doc- 
 trine that pervades it. How far do its teachings 
 coincide with Catholic dogma? Wherein do they 
 differ? What is their intrinsic worth? Impor- 
 tant questions these for every Catholic reader to 
 know and to be able to answer. We shall bear 
 them in mind while discussing the nature and struc- 
 ture of the poem and the author's point of view. 
 
 1. It is now conceded that the structure of the 
 poem, as regards its form, follows the metre used 
 by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 1 The poet made a 
 happy selection. This form gives him great free- 
 dom. He is not tied down to any set number of 
 stanzas. He can always stop when the inspiration 
 ceases. It has become in his hands a most pliant 
 instrument for the expression of many and various 
 notes. 
 
 2. As regards its matter, "In Memoriam " takes 
 color and tone from the sonnets and odes of Pe- 
 trarca upon the death of Laura. In Petrarca are 
 to be found the same clear vision of life beyond the 
 grave, the same hope of being once more with the 
 
 1 Mr. J. Comyns Carr, Cornhill Magazine for February and July, 
 1880. Here is a specimen stanza : 
 
 " Oh ! no, beloved, I am most sure 
 These virtuous habits we acquire, 
 As being with the soul entire, 
 Must with it evermore endure." 
 
 However, see Jennings' Lord Tennyson, p. 125. 
 
186 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 friend who has passed from earth, the same pangs 
 of grief upon beholding scenes and incidents con- 
 nected with the memory of the dear departed one, 
 the same dreams in which the absent one returns 
 and consoles the yearning friend all told in the 
 same subdued and polished verse. But here the 
 likeness ceases. Petrarca had but one refrain, the 
 burden of which was Laura. He envied the earth 
 that clasped her mouldering body; he envied the 
 heavens that received her chaste soul ; he was un- 
 wearied in singing the glow of her eyes, the sheen 
 of her hair, the perfect shaping of every limb, and 
 her graceful bearing. He loved to recall when she 
 smiled and when she frowned. He drew from all 
 that is beautiful in earth and sky the wherewith to 
 show forth her virtues and her perfections. He 
 followed her in spirit to her heavenly abode. She 
 came to visit him in his dreams ; she came to visit 
 him in his waking hours. With pleasure and with 
 no slight edification does the reader notice trace 
 after trace of the earthly love drop from the poet 
 as his thoughts and affections become spiritual; 
 and when at the close Petrarca addresses that noble 
 hymn to the Virgin Mother of God : 
 
 " Vergine santa, d' ogni grazia plena ; 
 Che per vera et altissima umilitate 
 Salisti al ciel, onde miei preghi ascolti ; 
 Tu partoristi il fonte di pietate, 
 E di giustizia il Sol, che rasserena 
 
 II secol pien d' errori oscuri e folti," 1 
 
 1 Holy Virgin, full of all grace, who through thy humility, so 
 true and noble, didst ascend to heaven, where thou hearest my 
 prayers ; thou didst bring forth the Fount of Mercy and the Sun 
 of Justice, which enlightens this world full of darkening errors. 
 Canzone viii, stanza iv. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 187 
 
 the reader feels his heart lifted up and he also would 
 have all that is weak and sinful in him consumed in 
 the love of Jesus through the intercession of Mary. 
 
 3. Tennyson is no less untiring in sounding the 
 praises of his dear Arthur, the friend of his bosom, 
 the more than brother to him, who had he lived 
 would have been one of the makers of the world's 
 history : 
 
 " Becoming, when the time has birth, 
 
 A lever to uplift the earth 
 And roll it in another course." 1 
 
 But Tennyson adds other and weightier matters 
 than personal feelings of love and admiration to 
 the burden of his song. 
 
 4. The lyrics of "In Memoriam" have also 
 something in common with the sonnets of Shake- 
 speare. It was the Shakespeare of the sonnets that 
 the poet had in his mind's eye when he wrote: 
 
 " I loved thee, spirit, and love, nor can 
 The soul of Shakespeare love thee more." 
 
 And that he made a thoughtful study of the sonnets 
 while working out his conception of "In Memo- 
 riam" is evident from many a turn of phrase com- 
 mon to both. A surface-reading reveals this much 
 in common : that both series of poems express in- 
 tense love of man for man ; that in both is this love 
 analyzed, probed, expounded ; that both ultimately 
 assert the self-abnegation of love; that both con- 
 fess to the inadequacy of words to express the 
 deeper feelings and the true worth of the object of 
 their love. 2 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxiii. 4. 
 
 2 Cf. Ibid. Ixxv. 2, and Sonnet Ixxxiii. 
 
188 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 5. It is also evident that Tennyson read the 
 deeper meaning beneath the outward expression of 
 the sonnets. For Shakespeare, after the fashion of 
 his time, and indeed of nearly all mediaeval love 
 poetry, infused into these sonnets a sense other 
 than that revealed upon the surface. Dante has ex- 
 plained to us the very process by which he allego- 
 rized his love poems. The love of Petrarca will 
 also bear a spiritual interpretation. The love of 
 Shakespeare is to all seeming certainly of the earth, 
 earthy. But in his day nearly everything in sonnet 
 form was expressive of Platonic love, Platonic sen- 
 timent, and Platonic allegory. Shakespeare caught 
 up this spirit, and it may safely be asserted that 
 he never would have given his sonnets to the world 
 were they not capable of a philosophical meaning 
 which redeems their occasional grossness. " Shake- 
 speare," says Richard Simpson, "is always a phi- 
 losopher, but in his sonnets he is a philosopher of 
 love." 1 The whole series represents the struggle 
 ever waging between the spiritual and the carnal 
 man. 
 
 6. But there is another influence working through 
 "In Memoriam." In June, 1821, Shelley wrote 
 " Adonais," which he had caused to be printed in 
 Pisa. In 1829, when Arthur Hallam entered Cam- 
 bridge, he brought with him a copy of this slender 
 volume. It was read by Tennyson and his circle 
 of friends, and so greatly was it admired, " it was 
 then issued at Cambridge, at the instance of Lord 
 Houghton (Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes) and 
 
 1 Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 6. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 189 
 
 Mr. Arthur Hallam." 1 Little did young Hallam 
 think when making known this poem on the pre- 
 mature death of Keats that he was laying the 
 foundation of a similar monument to be erected to 
 his own memory. But so it came to pass. The 
 " Adonais" is not more interpenetrated with Bion's 
 elegy on Adonis, Moschus's elegy on Bion, and 
 Milton's " Lycidas," than is " In Memoriam " inter- 
 penetrated with the " Adonais." True, Tennyson has 
 assimilated few or none of the ideas or sentiments 
 of Shelley in the sense in which Shelley absorbs his 
 predecessors. The two poets have this in common : 
 that each mourns a spirit snatched from earth in 
 the bud and bloom of springtide promise; each 
 finds in nature a reflection of the desolation that 
 fills his soul on the death of his friend ; each rises 
 above his dream and sings a paean rejoicing in the 
 friend's triumph over the grave. When Milton 
 
 " Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,. 
 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead," 
 
 his was the strong faith of the Puritan believing 
 that the soul of his friend Edward King would sur- 
 vive the decay of the grave ; his was the Christian 
 idea of a future life. But when Shelley exclaims : 
 
 " Peace, peace ! he is not dead ; he doth not sleep," 
 
 he holds views far different. His is the belief that 
 the soul of his friend has been merged in the uni- 
 versal Soul of Nature, and that " he is a portion 
 of the loveliness which once he made more lovely." 
 1 W. M. Rossetti, The Adonais of Shelley, p. 39. 
 
190 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " He is made one with Nature. There is heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder to the song- of night's sweet bird. 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
 Which wields the world with never wearied love, 
 Sustains it from beneath and kindles it above." 1 
 
 7. This doctrine Tennyson considers to be " faith 
 as vague as all unsweet." He believes that the hu- 
 man soul will retain its identity and individuality 
 through all eternity. He has no sympathy with the 
 pantheism of Shelley. And if in one of his clos- 
 ing lyrics he sings of his Arthur as a " diffusive 
 power " in star and flower, whose voice is heard in 
 the wind " and where the waters run," it is only as 
 a memory ever-present and ever-cherished. In an- 
 other of his most significant lyrics he for a moment 
 dreams himself to be such a poet as Shelley. Na- 
 ture has grown sterile, yielding only the remnants 
 of dead myths and allegories of bygone poets ; he 
 feigns himself wandering through the wood of the 
 errors of skepticism and pantheism, wearing a 
 crown of thorns, in consequence of which, with 
 Shelley his brow was " branded and ensanguined," 2 
 and he was an object of mockery until he became 
 relieved and comforted by faith. 3 
 
 8. Tennyson, like Shakespeare, while apparently 
 dealing with personal impressions and personal 
 experiences, rises to a meaning that is of universal 
 
 1 Adonais, xlii. See Tennyson's In Memoriam, by John F. 
 Genung, pp. 32-40. 
 
 2 Adonais, xxxiii, xxxiv. 8 In Memoriam, Ixix. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 191 
 
 application. The love which Arthur inspires is, 
 like the love inspired by Beatrice and Laura, chas- 
 tening and ennobling. . Like Petrarca, the poet 
 lingers lovingly upon the past and recalls the 
 various scenes and incidents in which his friend 
 figured ; like Dante, he soars far away into regions 
 of speculation, and grapples with the problems of 
 the age. Matters of religion and morality and 
 science are all touched upon with the reverence 
 and gravity becoming the occasion. Although 
 Tennyson has neither the grasp, force, fullness, 
 nor burning intensity of expression that we find in 
 Dante, we may in some sense call " In Memoriam " 
 a miniature "Divina Commedia." The poem is 
 religious, it is mystical, it is philosophical. To a 
 certain extent it is autobiographical. It is a psy- 
 chological analysis of sorrow through all its moods, 
 from that of an overwhelming sense of bereave- 
 ment which will not be comforted to that of cheer- 
 ful resignation soothed and nourished by Chris- 
 tian faith and Christian hope. 
 
 9. Indeed, the poem may be not unfitly called a 
 lyrical drama of the soul. It may be divided into 
 certain cycles or periods through which run two 
 distinct currents of thought, namely, the emotional 
 and the intellectual. The diverse periods are sep- 
 arated by chorus-poems l which allude to the season 
 of the year, or revert to the thoughts and emotions 
 of a previous cycle. It is only by surveying the 
 
 1 Attention was first called to the existence of a series of 
 chorus-poems hy Dr. John F. Genung in his very charming and 
 very sympathetic volume Tennyson's In Memoriam. 
 
192 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 poem in all its bearings that one can form a clear 
 conception of its real strength and greatness. Men 
 are only too apt to rest content in the enjoyment 
 of particular fragments of the poem. An admirer 
 of Tennyson writes : " Every mourner has his fa- 
 vorite section or particular chapel of the temple- 
 poem, where he prefers to kneel for worship of the 
 Invisible." l We shall respect the mourner search- 
 ing through the poet's pages for the expression of 
 sorrow that suits his mood ; that the poem can 
 soothe and comfort under such circumstances is 
 evidence of its power ; but it shall be our task to 
 consider the poem as a whole under both its emo- 
 tional and its intellectual aspect. 
 
 II. 
 
 1. The poem may be naturally resolved into two 
 parts, and each part may be subdivided as follows : 
 
 Prologue. 
 
 This lyric sums up the poet's musings and impres- 
 sions. It constitutes his final act of faith. It is to 
 the whole what Petrarca's Hymn to the Blessed Vir- 
 gin is to his sonnets and lyrics on Laura, or what 
 Dante's last Canto is to the whole of the " Divina 
 Commedia." 
 
 Introductory Lyric. i. 
 
 This lyric contains the argument of the whole drama. 
 
 PABT I. 
 Group I. ii. - xix. 
 
 These lyrics record the poet's feelings during the 
 
 1 Roden Noel, Contemporary Review, 1885, p. 223. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 193 
 
 period between the death and the burial of his friend 
 Arthur Hallam. 
 
 Group II. xxii. - xxvii. 
 
 In this group the poet asserts and justifies his grief. 
 In xxiv. 2, the line, 
 
 " Since our first sun arose and set," 
 originally read, 
 
 " Since Adam left his garden yet." 
 
 One of the group is speculative (xxiii.). 
 Chorus-poems. Christmas of 1833. xxviii. - xxx. 
 Group III. xxxi. - xxxvi. 
 
 Musings on the life beyond the grave. 
 
 Three are speculative (xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxv.). 
 Chorus-poem. xxxvii. 
 
 The poet discusses the propriety of speculation upon 
 
 matters of Faith. The line, 
 
 " And dear to me as sacred wine," 
 formerly read, 
 
 " And dear as sacramental wine." 
 
 Group IV. xxxviii. xlvii. 
 
 Surmises regarding the life beyond the grave. 
 
 Lyric xxxix. first appeared in the edition of 1872-73. 
 
 Lyric xlvii. is speculative'. 
 Chorus-poem. xlviii. 
 
 The poet would have it understood that these brief 
 
 lays are intended rather to soothe his own sorrow 
 
 than to allay the grave doubts proposed throughout 
 
 the poem. 
 Group V. xlix. - Ivi. 
 
 Gropings as to the state of the soul in the future life 
 
194 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 This group contains many of Tennyson's inmost 
 opinions. 
 Chorus-poem. Ivii. 
 
 The poet would rest in a settled peace of soul and a 
 calmer hope. 
 
 PART II. 
 2. The poet emerges from the dark weeds of his 
 
 first intense and merely human sorrow, and dons a 
 
 brighter and more hopeful garb. 
 
 Introductory. Iviii., lix. 
 
 Lyric lix. is supplemental to lyric ii. In the earlier 
 poem, the poet indulges in a violent sorrow that would 
 not be comforted. In the later poem, he asks Sor- 
 row to live with him as a comforter and a help- 
 meet. This poem was added to the fourth edition 
 in 1851. 
 
 Group I. Ix. - Ixxi. 
 
 The poet analyzes his dreams and impressions, and 
 makes surmises as to the present relative attitude of 
 Arthur towards him. 
 
 Chorus-poem. Ixxii. 
 
 This lyric commemorates the first anniversary of 
 Hallam's death. Cf . Dante, " Purgatorio," xi. 91- 
 106. 
 
 Group II. Ixxiii. - Ixxvii. 
 
 The poet discusses Hallam's kinship with the great 
 ones of earth. The fleetingness of fame is touched 
 upon even of the poet's verses. Cf . Ixxvii. and 
 Petrarca's sonnet xxv. in " Morte di Laura." 
 
 Chorus-poem. Ixxviii. 
 
 Christmas chorus of 1834. 
 
 Group III. Ixxix. - Ixxxii. 
 
 The poet shows wherein his love was more than 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 195 
 
 brother's love, and how the real bitterness of death 
 
 is in the interruption of communion. Cf. Ixxxii. 2, 
 
 and Dante, " Purgatorio," x. 
 Chorus-poem. Ixxxiii. 
 
 The poet begs the New Year not to tarry, but to 
 
 bring with it a renewal of hope. 
 Group IV. Ixxxiv., Ixxxv. 
 
 Musings as to what Hallam might have been to the 
 
 poet. Lyric Ixxxv. takes up the refrain of xxvii. : 
 
 ** ? T is better to have loved and lost, 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 and touching tenderly upon his friend's death, consid- 
 ers the good influence of his memory. Cf. Ixxxv. 
 and Petrarca, sonnet xi. in " Morte di Laura." 
 
 Chorus-poem. Ixxxvi. 
 
 Group V. Ixxxvii. cv. 
 
 Some of the most remarkable lyrics in the poem are 
 in this group. Lyric xcv. 9, 10 formerly read, 
 
 " His living soul was flashed on mine, 
 And mine in his was wound 
 
 instead of the present reading, 
 
 " The living soul was flashed on mine, 
 And mine in this was wound/' 
 
 Lyric c. formerly read " I wake, I rise," instead of 
 the present opening " I climb the hill." Lyric xci. 
 is a continuation of lyric xcix. commemorating the 
 second anniversary of Hallam's death. Lyric cii. re- 
 cords the fact that Tennyson's family quit their na- 
 tive Lincolnshire. Lyrics civ., cv. speak of Christmas 
 the Christmas of 1835. But it is spent in a strange 
 land, therefore held solemn to the past. Cf. Petrarca, 
 in " Morte di Laura," sonnets xlii, xliv. 
 
196 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Chorus-poem. cvi. 
 
 This is a New Year's lyric, one of the noblest in any 
 
 Group VI. cvii. -cxiv. 
 
 In cvii. the poet celebrates Hallam's birthday. His 
 sorrow assumes a more cheerful aspect. In ex. the 
 line which originally read, 
 
 " While I, thy dearest, sat apart," 
 now reads, 
 
 " While I, thy nearest, sat apart." 
 
 cxiv. is speculative. In cxiii. the line which origi- 
 nally read, 
 
 " With many shocks that come and go," 
 
 now reads, 
 
 " With thousand shocks that come and go." 
 
 Chorus-poem. cxv. 
 
 Spring wakens in the author's breast. 
 
 Group VII. cxvi. cxxx. 
 
 Retrospection. Lyrics cxviii., cxx., cxxiii., cxxiv. 
 are all philosophical. Tennyson sings a paean of joy 
 and hope that through Love he shall not lose his 
 friend in the future. Through Doubt and Darkness 
 he has risen to the pure light ok Faith. 
 
 Final Lyric. cxxxi. 
 
 This poem contains the key to the poet's successful 
 struggle with Doubt and Sorrow and his rising into 
 the clear light of Faith. No amount of reasoning 
 will lead to Faith. This from a rational being re- 
 quires, above all, an act of the will. Cf. the poem 
 named Will. 
 
 Epithalam iu in . 
 
 This lay was written about 1842, on the occasion of 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 197 
 
 the marriage of a younger sister, Cecilia Tennyson, 
 to E. L. Lushington. He is the " true in word, and 
 tried in deed," to whom Tennyson speaks in lyric 
 Ixxxv. 2. The whole poem is written in a pleasant 
 key. The poet can rejoice with those he loves even 
 while not forgetting his deceased friend. 
 
 III. 
 
 1. Such is the poem in barest outline. In order 
 to interpret it aright we should know the environ- 
 ment in which it was produced. What was the 
 state of thought in England during the seventeen 
 years that Tennyson was engaged upon this poem ? 
 In 1833 Arthur Hallam died. In 1833 Newman 
 began to feel within him the first stirrings of re- 
 form ; groping after the light of duty, he wrote 
 that beautiful invocation, " Lead, Kindly Light." 
 While Tennyson was maturing his poem Newman 
 had run his course in the Anglican Church, had 
 moved the flower of English minds to great depths 
 of religious thought, and had brought to a haven 
 of rest in the bosom of the Catholic Church many 
 noble and beautiful souls. Maurice and Arnold 
 were influencing religious minds in the direction 
 of Broad-Church liberalism. The volume entitled 
 " Essays and Reviews " was sowing broadcast seed 
 of infidelity and free-thinking among educated 
 Protestants. Carlyle was infusing a decoction of 
 German transcendentalism into the thinking body, 
 and weaning young men from the spiritual life of 
 purely dogmatic Christianitv. Strauss had forged 
 
198 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 his mythic theories concerning the Life of our 
 Lord, and was attempting to undermine the strong- 
 hold of Christian faith. Darwin was cruising in 
 " The Beagle " and maturing those theories that 
 were to revolutionize the study of natural history. 
 Faraday was making captives of the thunderbolts 
 of heaven and pressing them into the service of 
 man. The spirit of political reform was in the air. 
 O'Connell had only recently wrung Catholic Eman- 
 cipation from an unwilling ministry. Cobden had 
 been equally successful in bringing about a repeal 
 of the corn-laws. The people were beginning to 
 think for themselves. Woman's position in society 
 was growing in importance, and discussion upon it 
 was broadening. There was a general awakening 
 throughout the body, religious, social, and political. 
 It was amid the eddies and currents of thought 
 set in motion by all these agencies that Tennyson 
 wrought out the life-drama of " In Memoriam." 
 
 2. He saw these various currents ; he studied and 
 calculated the flow of some ; he drifted into the 
 influence of others ; but what is his own point of 
 view upon the great issue of life and death that is 
 the burden of his poem ? To begin with, greatly 
 as he admires and exults in the progress of the age, 
 he does not find mere knowledge the road to all 
 excellence. He can solve more problems of life by 
 making appeal to Christian faith and to the pri- 
 mary instincts of the human heart, rather than by 
 mere speculation. He distinguishes between know- 
 ledge and the deeper wisdom that regulates intel- 
 lect and heart and conduct. The distinction is 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 199 
 
 fundamental with Tennyson. He had already 
 written : 
 
 " Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden 
 
 breast, 
 Full of sad experience, moving towards the stillness of his rest." 1 
 
 In the present poem he shows how worse than help- 
 less how destructive is knowledge without wis- 
 dom. He looks upon it as a thing 
 
 " Half -grown as yet, a child, and vain 
 She cannot fight the fear of death. 
 What is she, cut from love and faith, 
 But some wild Pallas from the brain 
 
 " Of Demons ? fiery-hot to burst 
 All barriers in her onward race 
 For power. Let her know her place ; 
 She is the second, not the first. 
 
 " For she is earthly of the mind. 
 
 But Wisdom heavenly of the soul" 2 
 
 In these words we have the clue to Tennyson's at- 
 titude towards all speculation. Though placing 
 knowledge second, the poet does not belittle it. 
 
 " Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
 Against her beauty ? May she mix 
 With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 
 Her pillars ? Let her work prevail." 
 
 Herein he differs from his great contemporary and 
 brother poet, with whom all knowledge is only a 
 thing relative, and who holds that what man calls 
 knowledge to-day, he may call ignorance to-morrow. 
 
 1 Locksley Hall. 
 
 2 In Memoriam, cxiv. 2, 3, 5. 
 
200 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " Ignorance overwraps his moral sense, 
 Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps, 
 So much and no more than lets through perhaps, 
 The murmured knowledge ' Ignorance exists.' " 1 
 
 3. Another fundamental doctrine in the poet's 
 creed is that in the relations of good to evil all 
 things shall turn to good. He says : 
 
 " Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill." 2 
 
 Is not this also the teaching of Browning? 
 Does he not tell us that somehow, through ways 
 and means that are beyond our ken, all will end 
 for the best? 
 
 " My own hope is a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 
 
 That after Last returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched ; 
 
 That what began best, can't end worst, 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 8 
 
 This doctrine of the ultimate triumph of good 
 over evil is with Tennyson not a dogma, but a trust, 
 an instinctive feeling, a hope. He does not know ; 
 he is not sure : 
 
 " Behold, we know not anything ; 
 
 I can but trust that good shall fall 
 
 At last far off at last, to all, 
 
 And every winter change to spring." * 
 
 And with touching pathos he thus alludes to 
 man's helplessness in the presence of this great 
 mystery : 
 
 1 Browning, Parleyings with Certain People (Francis Furini). 
 
 2 In Memoriam, liv. 1. 8 Apparent Failure. 
 * In Memoriam, liv. 4. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN ME MORI AM 201 
 
 " So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
 
 An infant crying in the night : 
 
 An infant crying for the light : 
 
 And with no language hut a cry." * 
 
 4. It is evident to the poet that everything in 
 life has an aim, which it has, and that nothing in 
 life misses its aim, which were true did each of 
 God's creatures act according to the laws and limi- 
 tations set down by the Creator in pursuing its 
 aim. But the human will enters into all calcula- 
 tions of human action. And that will is free. The 
 poet had stated, as one of the mysteries of our na- 
 ture for which we cannot account, that our wills 
 are ours to make them one with the will of God. 
 Now while wills are free and at the same time 
 prone to evil and we all of us know that we are 
 free to do right or wrong there must needs be 
 deviations from the well-known and clearly form- 
 ulated will of God, and therefore from the ulti- 
 mate aim of the Supreme Good for which all men 
 were created. So great, so awful is the respect 
 in which God holds man's will, He even permits 
 man to damn himself rather than that by Divine 
 omnipotent interference man's free will should be 
 destroyed. 
 
 " The greatest gift that in his largess God 
 
 Creating made, and unto his own goodness 
 Nearest conformed, and that which He doth prize 
 
 Most highly, is the freedom of the will, 
 Wherewith the creatures of intelligence 
 Both all and only were and are endowed." 2 
 
 1 In Memoriam, liv. 5. 
 
 2 Dante, Paradiso, v. 19-24, Longfellow's translation. 
 
202 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 5. The half-truth that vice forms an essential 
 part of human progress, that good is reached 
 through evil, upon which Browning bases his op- 
 timism, we know to have been derived from the 
 half-truth of Bernard de Mandeville's "Fable of 
 the Bees." Browning tells us as much. Address- 
 ing Mandeville, he says : 
 
 '* As with body so deals law with soul 
 
 That 's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good 
 Through evil, earth its race-ground, heaven its goal, 
 Presumably : so far I understood 
 Thy teaching long ago." 1 
 
 We cannot so easily lay finger upon the original 
 of the optimism of Tennyson. But we can trace a 
 close relationship between his views and the teach- 
 ings of his friend Frederick Denison Maurice. 
 Both breathing the same intellectual atmosphere 
 and thinking in the same tone and temper, it is not 
 surprising that there should be a kinship in their 
 ideas. We can best illustrate this kinship by the 
 following parallel passages. Speaking of man's in- 
 adequacy to grasp God's purposes and the insuffi- 
 ciency of man's theories and systems, Maurice says : 
 " The old proclamation of a divine kingdom . . . 
 is not in any sense whatever our scheme or theory 
 of the Universe, but is sent to confound, to break 
 in pieces our theories of the Universe, to show how 
 feeble and contemptible we and our theories are ; 
 what absolute need all creatures have of a Living 
 God, who will reveal to us himself ; what relation 
 there is between us and Him ; how He works in us 
 1 Parleyings with Certain People (Bernard de Mandeville). 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 203 
 
 to bring us to know his purposes, and to move in 
 accordance with them" In another place he would 
 have us " look out upon the world, and see a valley 
 covered with dry bones of different systems.'" And 
 farther on in the same lecture, he speaks of our 
 obligations to infidels, " if they have been employed 
 to convince us that human systems must indeed 
 perish, one and all) that what survives must be 
 something of a higher derivation, of a more eternal 
 character." l Two years later Tennyson crystallized 
 the underlying idea of these extracts in lines which 
 are now memorable : 
 
 " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 
 
 " Our little systems have their day ; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be : 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 2 
 
 6. From the teachings of Maurice, Tennyson 
 learned to tone down all dogma to the haziness of 
 Universalism. Therein did he find confirmed his 
 conviction that nothing is without a purpose, and 
 that that purpose must needs be good. Therein 
 did he imbibe a conception of the Incarnation, half 
 Christian, half pantheistic. Therein he found 
 " Christianity translated out of time into eternity," 
 to use an admirable phrase of Dr. Martineau ; 
 he found the kingdom of God operating in the 
 hearts of men, leavening the human race and lead- 
 
 1 The Religions of the World, lect. viii. pp. 247, 248, 257. Lon- 
 don, 1847. 
 
 2 In Memoriam, Prologue, 4, 5. 
 
204 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 ing it to a higher life ; he read that " all the 
 higher human relations are but faint echoes of re- 
 lations already existing in an infinitely more perfect 
 form in the divine mind." It is a religious theory 
 that appeals strongly to the poetic fancy. " It 
 may seem paradoxical," says Dr. Martineau, " yet 
 it is hardly hazardous, to say that the Maurice the- 
 ology owes its power not less to its indulgence than 
 to its correction of the pantheistic tendency of the 
 age. It answers the demand of every ideal philoso- 
 phy and every poetic soul for an indwelling Di- 
 vine Presence, living and acting in all the beauty of 
 the world and the good of human hearts." 1 Such 
 a theology, while preserving the distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong and recognizing God as a 
 Righteous Will, can still hold out the hope and 
 lay to the human soul the flattering unction that 
 somehow all will ultimately end in a reign of uni- 
 versal good. The poverty and squalor, the misery 
 and suffering, the heart-aches and the soul-pangs 
 that devour the large majority of humanity, are 
 only slightly scanned in the glamour of this sooth- 
 ing philosophy, from the elevated plane of com- 
 fort and culture and well-being on which Fred- 
 erick Maurice and his friends stand. And here is 
 where Tennyson has taken refuge. He recoiled from 
 the pessimism that had been broadening and deep- 
 ening at the time that his mind was subject to 
 formative influences. Therefore is he the poet of 
 progress in Browning's own trenchant words : 
 
 1 Introductory chapter to Taylor's Religious Life of England, 
 p. 9. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 205 
 
 "Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
 Not God's and not the beasts' ; God is, they are, 
 Man partly is and wholly hopes to be." 
 
 7. Tennyson's conception of progress is distinct 
 from that of Browning. To Browning's mind pro- 
 gress is a development of every human instinct and 
 impulse ; but the characteristic of i^is development 
 is that the more highly wrought instinct or impulse 
 becomes, the less satisfaction accompanies its exer- 
 cise. It is a progress of aspiration unfulfilled and 
 of desire ungratified a seeking after the infinite 
 and never reaching the goal. Tennyson's idea of 
 progress is one in which the soul advances to greater 
 serenity and contentment in attune with the growth 
 of the ages in knowledge and wisdom and the 
 higher law. " His imagination," says Professor 
 Dowden, " dwells with a broad and tranquil plea- 
 sure upon whatever is justified by the intellect and 
 the conscience, and continuously energetic within 
 determined bounds." 1 He holds a personal growth 
 in each one from the purely animal, moving upward, 
 " working out the beast," to a higher spiritual life. 2 
 He holds a growth in national well-being, not indeed 
 with Shelley through the revolutionary spirit 
 "the red fool-fury of the Seine" but as the out- 
 come of a gradual ei^blution till the millennium, 
 
 " When the war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are 
 
 furled, 
 In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." 
 
 He holds a universal progress of the world in 
 science and art, and he looks forward to the time 
 
 1 Studies in Literature, p. 113. 2 In Memoriam, cxviii. 7. 
 
206 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 when a crowning race shall reap the fruit of all we 
 did and suffered. 1 
 
 8. This optimistic teaching of Tennyson and 
 Browning and Maurice, with all its shades of differ- 
 ence, is of ancient date. We find that consciously 
 or unconsciously probably unconsciously they 
 have been transcribing a leaf out of a very old book 
 which has exercised great influence upon thought, 
 especially as popularized by Marsilius Ficino and 
 Reuchlin at the Renaissance. According to that 
 old book there is nothing absolutely bad. Nothing 
 is accursed forever, not even the archangel of evil. 
 A time will come when God shall restore him his 
 angelic nature and the good name and standing 
 which he once bore in heaven. Hell also shall dis- 
 appear and shall be transformed into a place of de- 
 lights ; for at the end of all time there shall be 
 neither chastisements, nor trials, nor troubles, nor 
 guilty persons; life shall be an eternal feast, an 
 endless Sabbath. This picture is almost a literal 
 transcript from the teachings of the Cabala. Is it 
 not also the doctrine of that modified Universalism 
 which still retains the distinction between good and 
 evil and believes in a temporary state of retribu- 
 tion ? 2 From the point of view of the author we 
 now pass to the poem itself. * 
 
 1 Epithalamium, 33. 
 
 2 See Ad. Franck, Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, p. 
 803. The chief doctrines of the Cabala are to be found in the 
 volume known as Zohar. This book is written in the form of a 
 commentary on the Pentateuch. In its present shape it is a com- 
 pilation of the thirteenth century; but many of its doctrines 
 ascend to Plato (e. g. the division of the soul ; cf. Symposium), the 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 207 
 
 IV. 
 
 1. The introductory lyric was among the last 
 composed. It contains the argument of the whole 
 drama. That argument is that loss may become 
 gain when grief is cherished by love. The author 
 begins : 
 
 ' ' I held it truth, with him \vho sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 There has been much speculation as to the poet 
 here referred to. The Kev. Alfred Gatty decides 
 the matter in the following words : " It may be 
 stated on the highest authority, that the special 
 passage alluded to in the opening stanza cannot be 
 identified, but it is Goethe's creed." And we are 
 further told that the " dead selves " of the poet 
 "are neither our vices nor our calamities; but, 
 rather, our general experiences, which all perish as 
 they happen." l Faust, in Goethe's great life-poem, 
 emerges from the ruins of his dead self to a higher 
 life and a broader assertion of selfhood. It is still 
 the same self trampling upon the narrower and 
 lower experiences of life. But Tennyson would not 
 
 Alexandrian School and the Jewish traditions embodied in the 
 Mishna. 
 
 1 A Key to " In Memoriam," third edition, pp. 1, 2. This edition 
 has been revised by Lord Tennyson, and whenever Mr. Gatty 
 vises italics he is giving Tennyson's own interpretation. This . 
 gives Mr. Gatty's volume an authoritative value that cannot be 
 attained by any other gloss, however ingenious. 
 
208 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 forget the past; he would cherish his grief and 
 twine it around the present and the future. He 
 would, in spite of all obstacles, " reach a hand 
 through time to catch the far-off interest of tears." l 
 So he would have love to clasp grief even in its 
 excess and carry it through the lapse of time 
 beyond all power of being lost or forgotten. Let 
 us trace the progress of that grief. Forthwith the 
 poet enters upon the first stage of his sorrow, when 
 that sorrow is so intense that it will not be com- 
 forted. He finds the emblem of his despondency 
 in the old yew 
 
 " And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 
 Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
 I seem to fail from out my blood, 
 And grow incorporate into thee." 2 
 
 In this mood he rails against sorrow. He will not 
 listen to the commonplaces of consolation. The 
 blank despair of his bereavement is reflected in the 
 material universe : 
 
 " And all the phantom, Nature, stands * 
 With all the music in her tone, 
 A hollow echo of my own, 
 A hollow form with empty hands." 8 
 
 His grief is still in that selfish state that will not 
 be intruded upon. The only comfort he will ad- 
 mit is that flowing from the exercise of his pen. 
 Labor and time are two physicians likely to bring 
 
 1 In Memoriam, i. 2 ; cf . Shakespeare, Sonnet xxxii. : 
 
 " How many a holy and obsequious tear 
 Hath dear religious love stol'ii from mine eye 
 As interest of the dead. " 
 
 2 In Memoriam, ii. 4. * Ibid. iii. 3. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 209 
 
 a healing balm to the soul. His grief will not, in 
 its present acute stage, permit him to sleep, and 
 in the gray dawn of early morning he visits the 
 house of Hallam in Wimpole Street : 
 
 " Dark house, by which once more I stand 
 Here in the long unlovely street; " l 
 
 The house is deserted, the friend who was its light 
 and warmth is not there, and the poet's soul feels 
 as desolate as the scene before him, while 
 
 "ghastly through the drizzling rain 
 On the bald street breaks the blank day," 2 
 
 and he reverts to the ship that is bearing the re- 
 mains of his friend from where within 
 
 "Vienna's fatal walls 
 God's finger touched him, and he slept." 8 
 
 Earth is darkened, and all things reminding him 
 of the lost friend are a pang to his heart. How- 
 ever, the first paroxysm of grief becomes spent. 
 The calm that has settled upon Nature images the 
 apparent quiet that possesses his soul ; for the 
 quiet is only seeming, and in his heart there abides 
 
 . " if calm at all, 
 If any calm, a calm despair." 4 
 
 2. Not long after the poet describes his mood as 
 one of " wild unrest," 5 and recovering himself from 
 the first stunning shock of his grief, and reviewing 
 its action and its effects, he wonders if it has not 
 unbalanced his mind : 
 
 " And made me that delirious man 
 Whose fancy fuses old and new, 
 
 1 In Memoriam, vii. 1. 2 Ibid. vii. 3. 8 Ibid. Ixxxv. 5. 
 * Ibid. xi. 4. 6 Ibid. xv. 4. 
 
210 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 And flashes into false and true, 
 And mingles all without a plan." l 
 
 Indeed, so great is his grief at this period that it 
 takes an exertion of his will-power to prevent him- 
 self from dying and following his friend. 2 
 
 3. But this violent sorrow abates. The presence 
 of the corpse in English soil brings a certain 
 amount of comfort : 
 
 " 'T is well ; 't is something ; we may stand 
 Where he in English earth is laid, 
 And from his ashes may be made 
 The violet of his native land." 8 
 
 The grief-stricken friend begins to reflect upon his 
 mood. He considers the objections raised in re- 
 gard to his sorrow, and defends himself against 
 those who would accuse him of idly nursing a 
 barren sentiment : 
 
 " Behold, ye speak an idle thing : 
 Ye never knew the sacred dust : 
 I do but sing because I must, 
 And pipe but as the linnets sing." 4 
 
 His reverence for the dead is most Christian. It 
 extends to the remains, "the sacred dust," of the 
 body as well as to the soul. 
 
 4. The poet has now sufficiently recovered from 
 the first shock to be able to look back upon the 
 portion of his life that he had spent with his 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xvi. 5. 2 Ibid. Ixxxv. 10. 
 
 8 Ibid, xviii. 1 ; cf . Shakespeare, in Hamlet : 
 " Lay her in the earth, 
 
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 
 May violets spring. 
 
 4 In Memoriam, xxi. 6. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 211 
 
 mourned friend. The " four sweet years " through 
 which they walked together pass before him, and 
 death is still so present to him that he cannot di- 
 vest himself of the thought 
 
 " that somewhere in the waste 
 The Shadow sits and waits for me." 1 
 
 " Somewhere in the waste." Such is Kfe to him in 
 his present mood a waste. Even while he wan- 
 ders towards where the Shadow sits, "often fall- 
 ing lame " in the doubts and difficulties by which 
 he is sore beset, he will persist in contrasting 
 the dreary path he now treads with the pleasant 
 land through which he journeyed with his friend 
 
 " When each by turns was guide to each, 
 And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 
 And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought 
 Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech." 2 
 
 He cherishes his sorrow even as he cherishes the 
 memory of his friend. He loves the very pain that 
 accompanies it, and triumphantly, in words that 
 have become familiar wherever the English lan- 
 guage is spoken, he says : 
 
 " I hold it true, whate'er befall ; 
 I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 
 Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at a//." 8 
 
 Sadly falls the first Christmas eve after the death 
 of Arthur. Its rejoicings are dimmed " with an 
 awful sense of one mute Shadow watching all." 
 But Faith brings hope and consolation, and* with 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxii. 5. 2 Ibid, xxiii. 4. 
 
 8 Ibid, xxvii. 4. 
 
212 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the breaking of the morning the poet, full of the 
 thought of the Infant Saviour, bursts forth in 
 song: 
 
 " Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 
 
 Draw forth the cheerful day from night : 
 Father, touch the east, and light 
 The light that shone when Hope was born." 1 
 
 5. Here occur those two beautiful lyrics in 
 which the poet sings the raising of Lazarus from 
 the grave. He wonders what the risen man had to 
 say of the life beyond the grave. Did his sister 
 Mary question him regarding those four days that 
 he was dead? Did he reveal to her any of the 
 secrets of the new state in which he found him- 
 self ? No answer. But great must have been the 
 rejoicings in that little town of Bethany. And 
 there Mary sits, 
 
 " Her eyes are homes of silent prayer," 
 
 feasting those eyes upon the brother who has been 
 restored to life and to her ; and with love and rev- 
 erence she looks upon Him who hath worked the 
 miracle, and who is the Resurrection and the Life, 
 and she worships Him, and bathes his feet with 
 costly spikenard and with tears : 
 
 " All subtle thought, all curious fears, 
 Borne down by gladness so complete." 2 
 
 Another great poet who also believes in the Divin- 
 ity of Christ has made Lazarus the subject of one 
 of his most perfect poems. Browning's mode of 
 treating the subject has nothing in common with 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxx. 8. 2 Ibid, xxxii. 3. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 213 
 
 Tennyson's. Where Tennyson is calm, reflective, 
 running his comments along an even tenor of sub- 
 dued feeling, Browning is forcible and probing, 
 seeking to grasp in detail the new life of the risen 
 man with 
 
 " Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, 
 Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven." 
 
 It is a life apparently out of joint with all around. 
 Lazarus is with his neighbors but not of them. 
 His higher knowledge of things spiritual causes 
 him to lose all interest in things of earth. He 
 seems out of place. He only sees the unworldly side 
 of things : 
 
 " He holds on firmly to some thread of life 
 (It is the life to lead perforcedly) 
 Which runs across some vast, distracting orb 
 Of glory on either side that meagre thread, 
 Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet 
 The spiritual life around the earthly life : 
 The law of that is known to him as this, 
 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. . . . 
 Indeed the especial marking of the man 
 Is prone submission to the heavenly will 
 Seeing it, what it is, and why it is." 1 
 
 This is as an outsider would regard the spiritual 
 aspect of the new life of Lazarus. The words are 
 placed in the mouth of an unbeliever an Arabian 
 physician. Beneath the dramatic character of the 
 poem lie some important truths. One is that it 
 is best for man and best for the world that man 
 knows not the whole mystery of life. Such a know- 
 ledge would destroy all the effort and all the purpose 
 of man in the directions in which they now run 
 
 1 Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician. 
 
214 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 most forcibly. Another is that the chief thing in 
 all living is spiritual growth and development, and 
 that this may best be attained in " prone submission 
 to the heavenly will." This is also the outcome of 
 Tennyson's study of the sister of Lazarus : 
 
 " Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
 Whose loves in higher love endure ; 
 What souls possess themselves so pure, 
 Or is there blessedness like theirs ? " l 
 
 Gratifying is it to see two poets so different in 
 tone and temper so diametrically opposite in 
 artistic method and execution still on the same 
 fundamental issue arrive at the same conclusion. 
 
 6. Returning to our analysis of the poet wrest- 
 ling with his sorrow, we find that a reaction sets 
 in ; once more his grief asserts itself and over- 
 whelms him ; darkness closes around him, and 
 with weary steps he loiters on through life. Spring- 
 tide brings him no joy, and he only finds a doubt- 
 ful gleam of solace in the very lyrics he is weaving. 
 He again recurs to the old yew-tree in the church- 
 yard. He finds it a fitting type of his sorrow. As 
 the gloom of the yew is for a short season kindled 
 at the tips, and its brighter green passes into gloom 
 again, even so does his sorrow after the brief spell 
 of comfort and solace that seemed to soothe his 
 spirits return with renewed force. 2 
 
 7. And now, in poem after poem, Tennyson 
 dwells upon his separation from his friend and the 
 vast distance between their respective states. He 
 reasons upon the state of the happy dead ; he 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxxii. 5. 2 Ibid, xxxix. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 215 
 
 gropes about for some clear word of hope and 
 assurance that his soul is immortal and will re- 
 cognize Arthur in the other life ; still the grief 
 remains unchanged : 
 
 " Beneath all fancied hopes and fears 
 Ay me ! the sorrow deepens down, 
 Whose muffled motions blindly drown 
 The bases of my life in tears." l 
 
 8. The poet once more rises out of the depths, 
 and seeks solace in the thought of the nearness of 
 his friend. He fancies Arthur's spirit free to come 
 to him, and he begs him to be near him. He hun- 
 gers for the presence of the departed soul, and 
 strives to render himself less unworthy of the com- 
 panionship. In this mood his soul opens to other 
 influences, and he attains greater mastery over his 
 grief. 
 
 V. 
 
 1. In the second part of " In Memoriam " the 
 poet's sorrow takes up a more hopeful and helpful 
 note. He who formerly found naught but desola- 
 tion in the whisperings from the " lying lips " of 
 sorrow, now woos that same sorrow to be to him a 
 helpmeet to aid him in rising to higher things : 
 
 " Sorrow, wilt thou live with me 
 No casual mistress, but a wife, 
 My bosom-friend and half of life." 2 
 
 The grief that would not be comforted the 
 purely human grief has become tempered by 
 faith. Hitherto the poet had been wholly absorbed 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xlix. 4. 2 Ibid. lix. 1. 
 
216 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 in his waking thoughts. But we now come across 
 a remarkable series of lyrics in which he reveals 
 the working of his brain when in his bed at night. 
 The first illustrates how the poet's last thought be- 
 fore sleep and first thought upon waking are of his 
 friend. He is in bed, and as the moon's rays creep 
 through his room he thinks of the same rays pass- 
 ing over the tablet in the little church by the sea. 
 
 " Thy marble bright in dark appears, 
 As slowly steals a silver flame 
 Along the letters of thy name, 
 And o'er the number of thy years." l 
 
 The moonbeams vanish, and he sleeps to awaken in 
 the early morning and think how in the same dark 
 church the same tablet, like a ghost, glimmers in 
 the dawn. Time was when he could not have thus 
 calmly transported himself in imagination to the 
 church and read the record of his friend's death, 
 and slept soundly afterwards. 
 
 2. In the next lyric the poet dreams of Arthur 
 not as dead but as living : 
 
 " When in the down I sink my head, 
 
 Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath; 
 Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death, 
 Nor can I dream of thee as dead." 2 
 
 He dreams of him as he looked and spoke when 
 still in the morning of life. But Arthur's face 
 wears an air of trouble that is new to it. By a 
 trick of the brain, the trouble of the poet's early 
 and uncontrolled grief is transferred to the friend 
 he is grieving for : 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixvii. 2. 2 Ibid. LtviiL 1. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 217 
 
 *' It is the trouble of my youth 
 That foolish Sleep transfers to thee." 
 
 Professor Davidson rightly calls this " a fine piece 
 of psychological observation." ] 
 
 3. In the third lyric the poet has a strange 
 dream. The dream is too consistent not to be also 
 allegorical. He dreams that Nature's reproductive 
 power is lost ; spring brings with it no revival, and 
 the poet wanders about helpless and aimless. He 
 enters a wood with thorny boughs and binds his 
 brow with a crown of thorns. We are at once re- 
 minded of Dante entangled in the forest of error. 
 Perhaps Tennyson considers the speculations and 
 the difficulties with which he is wrestling as fruit- 
 less and barren. All thought is made sterile 
 by the touch of skepticism. The crown of thorns 
 may be regarded as the emblem and heritage of 
 prophecy and martyrdom, of which the poet con- 
 siders himself unworthy, and so he is scoffed at 
 by all: 
 
 " I met with scoffs, I met with scorns 
 
 From youth and babe and hoary hairs : 
 They called me in the public squares 
 The fool that wears a crown of thorns." 2 
 
 Or it may be that the wreath of poetry he was 
 weaving out of his barren sorrow and no less barren 
 doubt and despair was in itself harsh and thorny 
 and but ill-suited to command respect. But a 
 change came over the poet. He tells us : 
 
 ' ' I found an angel of the night ; 
 The voice was low, the look was bright." 8 
 
 1 Prolegomena to In Memoriam, p. 60. 
 
 2 In Memoriam, hrix. 3. 8 Ibid. box. 4. 
 
218 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 This angel is belief in the saving truths of Chris- 
 tianity, which is never loud in its utterance, like 
 modern creeds and modern systems of human origin. 
 The belief is an angel, for it is heaven-born. One 
 touch of this heaven-born faith causes the wreath 
 to bloom. The presence of the angel dispels the 
 darkness of night. Many doubts vanish in the 
 presence of a heartfelt " I believe." We are 
 further told : 
 
 " The voice was not the voice of grief, 
 The words were hard to understand." 1 
 
 All the mysteries of our holy religion speak to us 
 in words that are hard to understand, but we accept 
 their saving doctrine on the authority of Divine 
 revelation. The poem that were a barren expres- 
 sion of merely human grief becomes with the 
 assistance of religion a flourishing wreath. This 
 lyric is one of the poet's happiest inspirations. 
 
 4. Another psychological phase that the poet 
 depicts in this series is the state between sleep- 
 ing and waking, during which he strives to rep- 
 resent to himself the face he knows so well, and to 
 paint its features in the gloom before him. But 
 their outlines escape him, and in the stead night- 
 mare and confusion usurp his fancy, till suddenly, 
 in a passive state, the dear familiar face stands 
 out from the darkness : 
 
 " Till all at once beyond the will 
 I hear a wizard music roll, 
 And through a lattice on the soul 
 Looks thy fair face and makes it still." 2 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixix. 5. 2 Ibid. Ixx. 4. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 219 
 
 In this lyric a complex phenomenon and a difficult 
 piece of soul-analysis are exquisitely described. 
 
 5. In the final lyric of the present series sleep at 
 last favors the poet and forges " a night-long Pre- 
 sent of the Past," in which with his friend he 
 lives over again a pleasant day spent in " summer 
 France." 1 It was in 1832 that the two friends 
 made a tour of that country, and passed through 
 the scenes revisited in his sleep. Tennyson has 
 left a memento of another visit paid to one of 
 these cherished scenes in 1864 : 
 
 " All along the valley, stream that flashest white, 
 Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, 
 All along the valley, where thy waters flow, 
 I walked with one I loved two-and-thirty years ago." 2 
 
 Here ends the series of the lyrics of sleep and dream 
 and reverie. 
 
 VI. 
 
 1. Another group of lyrics is introduced by one 
 commemorating the first anniversary of the death 
 of Arthur. This leads Tennyson to think of all 
 that his friend might have become had he lived, 
 for he bore the marks of kinship with the great 
 and wise. But since he did not live to achieve all 
 that he gave promise of, and since the world heeds 
 only things done, silence shall guard his fame 
 here, the poet being convinced that in Arthur's 
 new state whatever he puts hand to must win great 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixxi. 
 
 a In the Valley of Cauteretz. 
 
220 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 applause. Moreover, his own lay is too short 
 lived. Though the world's poems of early days, 
 
 " the matin songs, that woke 
 The darkness of our planet, last " 
 
 the poet avers that his cannot survive the life-time 
 of an oak. Still, like Petrarca, he will sing for a 
 higher purpose : 
 
 ' ' My darkened ways 
 Shall ring with music all the same ; 
 To breathe my loss is more than fame, 
 To utter love more sweet than praise" l 
 
 2. With every advance we find the poet's grief 
 abating and his sympathies broadening. There 
 are still fluctuations. There must needs be fluctu- 
 ations if the poet is to be true to nature. Were he 
 to ignore them, were his song to be one paean of joy 
 after the first outburst of sorrow, his poem were 
 not worthy of our study. No soul rises at once 
 above the bereavement into which it is plunged 
 by the death of one near and dear. There must 
 needs be a struggle and a constant effort of will- 
 power. Not the least interesting aspect of the 
 poem consists in the record of the soul's fluctu- 
 ations in grief as their proportions diminish, while 
 the soul itself rises higher and higher into regions 
 of faith and hope and trust in the future. Such 
 a lapse is here recorded. While painting the beau- 
 tiful domestic life that Arthur might have led had 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixxvii. 4; cf. Petrarca in Morte di Laura, 
 xxv.: 
 
 " B certo ogni mio studio in quel temp' era 
 Pur di sfogare il doloroso core 
 In qualche mode, non <' acquistar fama. 
 Pianger cercai non gid dfl planto onore." 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 221 
 
 he lived and married the woman who was engaged 
 to him, the poet's sister Emily this lyric in it- 
 self a charming idyll the pang of loss seizes him, 
 and he exclaims : 
 
 " What reed was that on which I leant ? 
 Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake 
 The old bitterness again, and break 
 The low beginnings of content." l 
 
 3. In the very next lyric the poet recovers his 
 equilibrium, and addressing E. L. Lushington, 
 " true in word and tried in deed," the early friend 
 who is to marry his sister Cecily, " clasping brother- 
 hands," he explains his affliction for Arthur and 
 Arthur's abiding influence over him for good : 
 
 " I felt and feel, though left alone, 
 
 His being working in mine own, 
 The footsteps of his life in mine ; " 
 
 " And so my passion hath not swerved 
 To works of weakness, but I find 
 An image comforting the mind, 
 And in my grief a strength reserved." 2 
 
 Feeling that he is best pleasing his departed friend 
 by holding out a brother's hand to this other friend, 
 and letting his feelings and his sympathies flow 
 more freely through the social body of which he is 
 a member, he sings : 
 
 " My pulses therefore beat again 
 
 For other friends that once I met ; 
 Nor can it suit me to forget 
 The mighty hopes that make us men. 
 
 " I woo your love : I count it crime 
 To mourn for any overmuch ; 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixxxiv. 12. 2 End. Ixxxv. 11, 13. 
 
222 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 I, the divided half of such 
 A friendship as had mastered Time." l 
 
 And so he gathers strength in the remembrance of 
 his friend ; his vision broadens ; his song grows 
 more blithe. His harp will persist in striking out 
 notes of joy : 
 
 " And I my harp would prelude woe 
 I cannot all command the strings ; 
 The glory of the sum of things 
 Will flash along the chords and go" 2 
 
 He must sing the triumph of good over evil and 
 truth over error. It will flash out through the 
 notes of sorrow he began with, even as the night- 
 ingale is supposed to sing a double note of joy and 
 grief. 
 
 VII. 
 
 1. We enter upon another stage in the progress 
 of the poem. Tennyson has already spoken of 
 sleep as kinsman " to death and trance and mad- 
 ness." With the madness of uncontrolled grief, 
 with the dreams of sleep, and with death he has 
 been making us familiar. Now he would sing to 
 us of trance. He is no longer content with waking 
 fancies or the shadows of dream-land. He would 
 hold direct communion with the dead. He does 
 not believe in apparitions. Should they happen he 
 would regard them merely as presentiments. But 
 spirit with spirit can meet, and why may not the 
 soul of Arthur commune with the yearning soul of 
 his friend under certain conditions ? These condi- 
 tions are laid down in detail : 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxxv. 15, 16. 2 Ibid. Ixxxviii. 3. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMOR1AM 223 
 
 " How pure at heart and sound in head, 
 With what divine affections bold 
 Should be the man whose thought would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead." 1 
 
 Now the poet records that on a special occasion 
 and under peculiar circumstances his soul blended 
 with the soul of his- friend in intimate and ecstatic 
 communion. Tennyson, from his boyhood days, 
 has been subject to trance. Writing to a medical 
 friend he says : " I have never had any revelations 
 through anaesthetics ; but a kind of ' waking trance ' 
 (this for lack of a better word) I have frequently 
 had quite up from boyhood when I have been all 
 alone. This has often come upon me through re- 
 peating my own name to myself silently, till all at 
 once as it were out of the intensity of the conscious- 
 ness of individuality the individuality itself seemed 
 to dissolve and fade away into boundless being 
 and this not a confused state, but the clearest of 
 the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond 
 words where death was an almost laughable im- 
 possibility the loss of personality (if so it were) 
 seeming no extinction but the only true life. I am 
 ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said 
 the state is utterly beyond words? But in a 
 moment when I come back to my normal state of 
 4 sanity ' I am ready to fight for mein liebes Ich, 
 and hold that it will last for aeons of aeons." 2 This 
 fact the poet has expressed in one of his latest and 
 most mature poems as .follows : 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xciv. 1. 
 
 2 Letter written to Dr. Blood in 1874, and quoted by Professor 
 Davidson in his Prolegomena to In Memoriam p. 83. 
 
224 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " More than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving 1 in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
 And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange, not mine and yet no shade of doubt, 
 But utter clearness, and through Joss of Self 
 The gain of such large life as matched with ours 
 Were Sun to spark unshadowable in words, 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow- world." l 
 
 2. In the " In Memoriam " Tennyson gives us 
 the details of just such a trance, and he avers that 
 while in that state he communed with the soul of 
 his friend. When the household had retired for 
 the night there came upon him a great yearning 
 for his friend, and he began to satisfy its craving 
 by reading Arthur's old letters. We shall let him 
 put the sequel in his own inimitable form : 
 
 " So word by word, and line by line, 
 
 The dead man touched me from the past, 
 And all at once it seemed at last 
 The living soul was flashed on mine, 
 
 " And mine in this was wound, and whirled 
 About empyreal heights of thought, 
 And came on that which is, and caught 
 The deep pulsations of the world, 
 
 " Ionian music measuring out 
 
 The steps of Time the shocks of Chance 
 The blows of Death. At length my trance 
 Was cancelled, stricken through with doubt. ' ' 2 
 
 The poet would like to believe without a shadow of 
 
 doubt that the objective reality corresponded to his 
 
 subjective impressions. Was Arthur's spirit really 
 
 1 The Ancient Sage. 2 In Memoriam, xcv. 9-11. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 225 
 
 present in fond embrace and communion with his 
 own? l Or was it simply the intense yearning that 
 still possessed him while in the trance, thus leav- 
 ing upon his imagination the impression of his 
 friend's presence ? Was Tennyson's that state de- 
 fined by St. Theresa as coming " from an imagina- 
 tion formed by the understanding itself ? " 2 Com- 
 munion with the dead is to all of us a consolation. 
 We love to believe that our dear departed ones are 
 near us, that they read our thoughts, and that they 
 can reach our souls in intimate union when indeed 
 our souls become^ sufficiently purified from the 
 dross of earth. 
 
 3. Let us analyze the author's impressions. ' He 
 tells us that in union with his friend he " came on 
 that which is ; " that is, he distinguished essences 
 beneath appearances, the noumenon behind the 
 phenomenon, reality beyond all images of reality. 
 This is also the teaching of Plato : " Do you not 
 see," he says, " that in that communion only, be- 
 holding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be 
 able to bring forth, not images of beauty, but re- 
 alities (for he has hold not of an image but of a 
 reality)^ and bringing forth and nourishing true 
 
 1 Immediately after writing this sentence I came across the fol- 
 lowing from the pen of Mrs. Chenoweth : " As I read my In 
 Memoriam hushed to utter restfulness in its breadth and height 
 and depth, I am powerless to ask, ' Did young Arthur's spirit in- 
 deed respond to the poet's anguished cry for comfort ? ' As I 
 read, I know that it did so." The Arena, March 1891, art. " The 
 Unclassified Residuum." Mrs. Chenoweth is a member of the Lon- 
 don Society for Psychical Research of which Tennyson is also a 
 member. 
 
 2 Autobiography, chap xxv. p. 221, Eng. tr. 
 
226 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 virtue to become the friend of God and be immor- 
 tal, if mortal man may." 1 Again, the poet tells us 
 that in his trance he caught " the deep pulsations 
 of the world, seonian music measuring out the steps 
 of Time." Have we not here an allusion to the 
 musical numbers by which the soul of the world 
 is extended and diffused from the centre of the 
 earth? 2 He also describes his soul as wound in 
 the soul of his friend. This is the kind of impres- 
 sion that the neo-Platonist records of the soul 
 seeking communion with the Good. " In the vision," 
 says Plotinus, " which has the Good for its object, 
 the soul contemplating makes but one with the ob- 
 ject- contemplated." 3 And speaking of the initi- 
 ated into the mysteries, the same philosopher says : 
 " The truly initiated identified himself with the ob- 
 ject of his contemplation ; he was divested of all 
 his faculties, of motion and passion and desire, of 
 reason and thought, and even of his personality in 
 order that he might be enraptured and possessed 
 by God." 4 St. Augustin, who was familiar with 
 neo-Platonic doctrine and practice, describes a 
 similar experience on the eve of his conversion, in 
 which he passed from the phantasms of the things 
 of sense, and seeking the light found the un- 
 changeable preferable to the changeable. With 
 the flash of one trembling glance, he arrived at 
 the recognition of That Which 7s, and he saw the 
 invisible things understood by the things that are 
 
 1 Symposium, Jowett's trans, ii. p. 62. 
 
 2 Timams. See Grote's Plato, vol. Hi. p. 254. 
 8 Enneades, lib. vi. cap. ix. 10. 
 
 4 Ibid, lib vi. cap. vii. 11. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 227 
 
 made. 1 The Cabalists also recognized this state. 
 In their chief manual we read : " By means of the 
 intuition of love the soul divests itself of the 
 consciousness of its existence, and becomes trans- 
 formed into its principle to the extent of having no 
 other thought or will than the thought or will of 
 God." 2 Dante when describing the state of ecstasy 
 of the soul in the mystical unitive way of the spirit- 
 ual life also expresses the vision of essences : 
 
 " I saw that iu its depth far down is lying 
 Bound up with love together in one volume, 
 What through the universe in leaves is scattered ; 
 
 Substance and accident, and their operations, 
 All interfused together in such wise 
 That what I speak of is one simple light." 8 
 
 But in his vision of Beatrice he speaks more re- 
 servedly and seems not to have lost his identity. 
 He says : " The life of my heart was wont to be a 
 sweet thought which often went to the feet of the 
 Lord, . . . and I would have it understood that I 
 was certain, and am certain, through her gracious 
 revelation, that she was in heaven, whither I, think- 
 ing oftentimes, according as was possible for me, 
 went, as it were seized up. And the sweetness of 
 this thought was such as to make me desirous of 
 death that I might go where she was." 4 The trance 
 of Tennyson stands on no higher plane. It is of 
 a purely natural character. It is a psychic fact. 
 One mode of concentrating thought aids another. 
 The fact that the poet had been from his youth in 
 
 1 Con/, lib. vii. cap 17. 2 The Zohar. 
 
 8 Paradiso, xxxiii. 85-90. * 11 Convito, ii. 8. p. 135. 
 
228 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the habit of depolarizing the organs of his brain, 
 and of thus suspending the activity of the sensory 
 nerves, prepared him for similar results by any 
 other mode of concentrating thought. And so, his 
 trance is not to be confounded with the ecstasies of 
 a Francis of Assisi or a Theresa of Jesus. These 
 are of a supernatural character and the fruition of 
 grace. They are, in the language of Bonaventura, 
 " a mystical and most secret thing, which no one 
 knows save him who receives it, and no one receives 
 it save him who deserves it." 1 
 
 4. This trance be its nature what it may 
 marks the climax of the poet's feelings. There- 
 after his note assumes a more subdued tone. The 
 doubt he had and indeed all sincere doubt he 
 defends against those who would call it devil-born, 
 and he asserts that 
 
 " there lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 2 
 
 Here it behooves us to distinguish. The assertion 
 cannot be accepted in a universal sense. Where 
 the articles of one's creed are received upon purely 
 rational grounds as matters of opinion, or credence, 
 or presumption, or as highly probable, there is al- 
 ways room for honest doubt. But where one's 
 creed is a matter of faith pure and simple, not at 
 all depending on one's reason, but grounded upon 
 a Divine revelation speaking through an infallible 
 church, doubt concerning the mysteries of one's re- 
 ligion and the articles of one's faith is out of place 
 and is in itself sinful. No Catholic may apply 
 these lines to the truths of his faith. Elsewhere 
 
 1 Itinerarium, chap. vii. 2 In Memoriam. xcvi. 3. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 229 
 
 the poet cautions men against entering the chil- 
 ling shadow of doubt, and defines the character of 
 the faith of which he would approve : 
 
 "Wherefore thou be wise, 
 Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
 And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith." l 
 
 But we recognize our faith in our forms. The 
 forms are not more than the faith, but when vivi- 
 fied by the faith they become part of it. After 
 all, is there not some cant in speaking of faith 
 without form? Is it not like talking of religion 
 without dogma? However, though a Catholic may 
 not doubt the essential truths of his religion with- 
 out incurring guilt, still it does not follow that 
 the articles of his creed are free from difficulties. 
 On this point there exists no better commentary 
 than the lucid words of another great light in Eng- 
 lish literature. He says : " I am far, of course, 
 from denying that every article of the Christian 
 Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protest- 
 ants, is beset with intellectual difficulties ; and it is 
 simple fact that for myself I cannot answer these 
 difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the 
 difficulties of religion ; I am as sensitive as any 
 one ; but I have never been able to see a connec- 
 tion between apprehending these difficulties, how- 
 ever keen, and multiplying them to any extent, 
 and doubting the doctrines to which they are at- 
 tached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one 
 doubt, as I understand the subject ; difficulty and 
 doubt are incommensurate" 1 * 
 
 1 The Ancient Sage. 
 
 2 Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sud, part vii. pp. 265. 
 
230 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 5. One indeed the poet knew who had honest 
 doubts, and wrestled with them, and gained renewed 
 vigor in the struggle : 
 
 " He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
 He would not make his judgment blind, 
 He faced the spectres of the mind 
 And laid them." l 
 
 God was with him because he was in earnest. God 
 is with every sincere searcher after truth. It may 
 be presumed that the one here alluded to is Arthur 
 Hallam. 2 
 
 6. Another year brings round the anniversary 
 of Arthur's death. The sorrow of his friend has in 
 the mean time divested itself of all selfishness. His 
 uppermost thought is kinship with those who like 
 him bewail the absence of dear departed ones : 
 
 " O wheresoever those may be, 
 
 Betwixt the slumber of the poles, 
 To-day they count as kindred souls ; 
 They know me not, but mourn with me," 8 
 
 The poet's family is about to move from his native 
 Somersby. This gives rise to an admirable series 
 of musings with which Hallam's memory is inter- 
 woven. Every scene recalls some incident or other 
 in the life of his departed friend : 
 
 " But each has pleased a kindred eye, 
 . And each reflects a kindlier day ; 
 
 And, leaving these, to pass away, 
 I think once more he seems to die." * 
 
 7. The night before leaving the old rectory the 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xcvi. 4. 
 
 2 Gatty, A Key to In Memoriam, p. 104. 
 
 8 In Memoriam, xcix. 5. 4 Ibid. c. 5. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN ME MORI AM 231 
 
 author has another dream which reminds one of the 
 passing of Arthur in the " Idylls of the King." 
 The dream is allegorical. The process of uproot- 
 ing old affections and tearing himself away from 
 life-long associations has wrought upon his imagi- 
 nation, and this parting from the familiar scenes 
 with which the memory of his friend is commingled, 
 he projects into the future when he shall pass from 
 life and meet this much-yearned-for friend. The 
 dream ' bringing home to him the fact that every 
 change is only another step to that final meeting ' is 
 to him a source of comfort. He begins : 
 
 " Methought I dwelt within a hall, 
 
 And maidens with me : distant hills 
 From hidden summits fed with rills 
 A river sliding by the wall. ' ' * 
 
 So does Tennyson still dwell within the hall of his 
 own consciousness and personality. All alone with 
 his talents and accomplishments with those 
 maidens known as the Arts and the Muses has 
 he been living, while beneath him flows the river of 
 Time fed by the rills of the hours and the minutes. 
 In the centre of this hall stood a veiled statue to 
 which the maidens sang. It is the spotless memory 
 of Arthur to which he is consecrating these lays. 
 But a dove emblem of love brings him a sum- 
 mons from the sea. He feels called to other life- 
 duties than those of weaving songs around the 
 memory of his friend. He must proceed to f ullfil 
 those duties. The maidens weep lest they should 
 now be neglected ; but they accompany him. And 
 
 1 In Memoriam, ciii. 2. 
 
232 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 he dreams that with the passing of time the maid- 
 ens his faculties and his poetic power "gath- 
 ered strength and grace and presence, lordlier 
 than before," and that he himself felt a new en- 
 ergy in his life, as his muses poured out song after 
 song: 
 
 " As one would sing the death of wax, 
 And one would chant the history 
 Of that great race, which is to be, 
 And one the shaping of a star." l 
 
 And now the frail shallop of his mortal life becomes 
 too frail for the rolling waves and the foaming 
 tides ; there looms into view the safe and stately 
 ship on which he finds embarked his long-lost 
 friend now grown to great dimensions in every 
 power of his soul, and Tennyson passes to the more 
 secure vessel and falls in silence upon the neck of 
 Arthur. Thereupon the maidens set up a wail on 
 being left behind : 
 
 " Whereat those maidens with one mind 
 
 Bewailed their lot ; I did them wrong : 
 ' We served thee here,' they said, ' so long, 
 And wilt thou leave us now behind ? ' 
 
 " So rapt I was, they could not win 
 An answer from my lips, but he 
 Replying, ' Enter likewise ye 
 And go with us ' : they entered in." 2 
 
 In these stanzas the poet would convey his belief 
 that in the life beyond the grave man shall con- 
 tinue to possess every talent and every perfection 
 of soul that helped to make life noble and beau- 
 tiful on earth. 
 
 1 In Memoriam, ciii. 9. 2 Ibid. ciii. 12, 13. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN ME MORI AM 233 
 
 8. Here ends the purely psychological portion of 
 the drama. The remaining lyrics are chiefly retro- 
 spective. But in order to make their meaning 
 apparent we must now return and take up another 
 series which are speculative and scientific, and 
 which run through the whole drama like a silver 
 thread, giving it unity and strength. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 1. '\In Memoriam" is not only an elegy em- 
 balming the memory of a dear friend ; it is also the 
 poetical expression of a soul's moral and intellec- 
 tual growth through sorrow and through strife with 
 the difficulties that beset the truths and mysteries 
 of religion. He that has never known sorrow has 
 yet to penetrate the inner sanctuary and the most 
 sacred chambers of life, and the meaning of exis- 
 tence is for him a sealed book ; he that has not 
 wrestled with the difficulties that beset an act of 
 religious faith is still in a state of mental child- 
 hood. Through suffering and tribulation of spirit 
 man rises to strength and power and greatness of 
 soul ; through profound study he climbs heights in 
 which his mental vision has a clearer atmosphere 
 and a more expansive horizon. And so, the les- 
 son of the poem is that the soul may rise to higher 
 things by overcoming grief and silencing doubt. 
 
 2. This lesson is not perceptible upon a first 
 reading. And that it is not is due to the fact 
 that the poet never loses sight of the fundamental 
 distinction between poetry and philosophy. The 
 
234 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 sphere of each is distinct ; the method is distinct ; 
 the aim is distinct. Philosophy deals with ab- 
 stractions ; it lays down its premises with care, and 
 sees that no link in the chain of its reasoning is 
 wanting ; it formally draws its conclusions. Poetry 
 is concerned with the concrete, or if it introduces 
 abstract truths it renders them concrete by giv- 
 ing them a local habitation and a name ; it places 
 itself in the heart of a subject, and expresses in 
 rhythmic language the thought still palpitating 
 with life. Tennyson has defined the poetic method 
 as pursued by himself in the present instance : 
 
 " From art, from nature, from the schools, 
 Let random influences glance, 
 Like light in many a shivered lance 
 That breaks about the dappled pools." 1 
 
 But that which is apparently random has none the 
 less a purpose running through it. The silent 
 work the earnest thought and deep study is 
 not visible, but it is there, making of the poem a 
 thing of life and power. Though the poet speaks 
 throughout in the first person, it is not his own 
 doubts he is solving ; it is not the progress of his 
 own soul he is tracing ; it is the story of the inner 
 life of humanity he is narrating. " ' I,' " to use his 
 "own words, " in these poems, is not always the 
 author speaking of himself, but the voice of the hu- 
 man race speaking through him." 2 To this canon 
 of interpretation we shall supply another. It has 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xlix. 1. 
 
 2 Note signed " A. T.," prefixed to Gatty's Key to In Memo- 
 riam. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 235 
 
 been asserted with some show of reason that Ten- 
 nyson's eulogy of his friend Hallam is exaggerated. 
 Though the young man gave promise of much, 
 he never could have achieved all the greatness fan- 
 cied for him by the poet. Mr. Peter Bayne dis- 
 cusses the matter in an apologetic tone. " Exagger- 
 ation, however, on this point," he says, " was the 
 most venial of faults in the writer of ' In Memo- 
 riam,' and he, I think, must be base indeed who 
 fails to perceive the inimitable marks of sincer- 
 ity and affection in Tennyson's delineation of his 
 friend." 1 But here as elsewhere Mr. Bayne has 
 misunderstood the intentions of Tennyson. Pre- 
 cisely as the " I " of the poem came to stand for 
 the whole human race, even so the " Arthur " of 
 the poem has become idealized into the representa- 
 tive of all that is or could be excellent in a de- 
 ceased friend. Arthur is intended to embody the 
 highest type of humanity cut off in the bud. These 
 distinctions are of the utmost importance. They 
 throw light upon much in the poem that would 
 otherwise remain obscure. The progress of the 
 soul is revealed in the recording of its various 
 moods when wrestling with doubt, or questioning 
 science, or solving some ethical difficulty. The 
 reader is led to infer what is going on beneath the 
 surface expression. This much the poet is careful 
 to hint at in the following stanzas : 
 
 " If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, 
 Were taken to be such as closed 
 
 1 Lessons from my Masters, p. 309. 
 
236 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Grave doubts and answers here proposed, 
 Then these were such as men might scorn : 
 
 " Her care is not to part and prove ; 
 She takes, when harsher moods remit, 
 What slender shade of doubt may flit, 
 And makes it vassal unto love. 1 ' 1 
 
 3. Before the awful mystery of the grave, in 
 presence of the clash and force of unknown ener- 
 gies, humanity asks many difficult questions, and 
 doubt and infidelity suggest many serious objec- 
 tions, but Love finds the answer and Faith reads 
 the solution. Love is the key with which Tenny- 
 son unlocks all difficulties : 
 
 " If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
 I heard a voice ' believe no more,' 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 
 
 " A warmth within the breast would melt 
 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up and answered ' I have felt.' " 2 
 
 The very instincts of the heart cry out in solemn 
 protest against the sophistries of materialism and 
 atheism. The fool may deny that there is a God, 
 but man exclaims : " I have felt his presence with- 
 in my heart of hearts ; I have heard his voice 
 speak to my conscience." 
 
 4. Let us now see how the poet makes use of 
 this key. Every cultured mind is in duty bound 
 to face the issues of the day and study to unravel 
 their intricacies. What is the solution that Tenny- 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xlviii. 1,2. 2 Ibid, cxxiv. 3, 4 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 237 
 
 son proposes ? In the first influx of his grief we 
 find him puzzled about the multiplicity of creeds. 
 He often stumbles "often falling lame" while 
 wandering towards where sits Death, 
 
 " The shadow cloaked from head to foot 
 Who keeps the keys of all the creeds." * 
 
 "We have already found his solution in a faith be- 
 yond all forms and the Universalism of his friend 
 Frederick Maurice. We have also seen how he 
 regards doubt. Had he in his religious gropings 
 ever touched upon the creed that in its fullness 
 contains all the truth of all the other creeds ? He 
 has given no evidence of it ; but as we are study- 
 ing his poem from the Catholic point of view, we 
 may quote the following remarks : " He regards 
 as sacred whatever links the soul to a divine 
 truth. He has many friends who are Catholics, 
 and we have heard that he has expressed sincere 
 anxiety to publish nothing relative to the Catho- 
 lic religion calculated to give offense to its follow- 
 ers." 2 
 
 5v The poet thus admonishes him who would 
 meddle with this life of simple faith who would 
 blight or poison it with his doubts or sneers 
 the man who has in his own conceit raised himself 
 above all forms of creed and dogma : 
 
 " Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
 Her early heaven, her happy views ; 
 Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse 
 A life that leads melodious days. 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxiii. 1, 2. 
 
 2 J. C. Earle in The Catholic World, vol. vii. p. 146. 
 
238 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " Her faith through form is pure as thine, 
 
 Her hands are quicker unto good : 
 
 Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
 
 To which she links a truth divine ! " 1 
 
 The divine truth she has linked to flesh and blood 
 is the seeing of God incarnate in the Person of 
 Christ. But the author not only defends the 
 simple faith and the life of prayer and good works 
 based on the divinity of Christ ; he goes farther 
 and cautions the pantheist, 
 
 " Whose faith has centre everywhere," 
 
 who would be a law unto himself, to beware lest in 
 this sinful world for want of the Sacred Type and 
 Model he fail : 
 
 " See thou that countest reason ripe 
 In holding by the law within, 
 Thou fail not in a world of sin, 
 And even for want of such a type." 2 
 
 6. Is there a future life? His own existence 
 has meaning only in the assumption that there is 
 an hereafter, else life's struggles were aimless and 
 hopeless and God were naught to his creatures : 
 
 " My own dim life should teach me this, 
 That life shall live for evermore, 
 Else earth is darkness at the core, 
 And dust and ashes all that is." 8 
 
 Going deeper still, Tennyson finds in the love he 
 bears his friend in all true love an argument 
 for his immortality ; for true love is the one thing 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxxiii. 2, 3. 2 Ibid, rxxiii. 4. 
 
 8 Ibid, xxxiv. 1 ; cf. Browning, La Saisiaz, Am. ed. vol. vi. p. 62. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 239 
 
 worth living for, and though assured that this life 
 were the be-all and the end-all, he would still think 
 it worth living for the sake of that love : 
 
 " Might I not say, ' Yet even here, 
 But for one hour, O Love, I strive 
 To keep so sweet a thing alive.' " * 
 
 But then without the instinct of immortality love 
 had not been : 
 
 " O me, what profits it to put 
 
 An idle case ? If Death were seen 
 
 At first as Death, Love had not been." 2 
 
 Browning in his "Easter-Day" has forcibly and mag- 
 nificently brought home the truth that the absence 
 of the higher love of God were the death of all 
 human love. But reason how we may upon the 
 dark truths centred in our mystic frame, we have 
 an unfailing refuge against all our doubts and the 
 questionings of our soul in our Lord and Saviour ; 
 for in Him shall we find the embodiment of all wis- 
 dom, the meaning of all life, and the solution to all 
 our difficulties : 
 
 " And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought." 8 
 
 7. And now, the poet having found "comfort 
 clasped with truth revealed," believing in the im- 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xxxv. 2. 2 Ibid. xxxv. 3. 
 
 8 Ibid, xxxvi. 3 ; cf . Browning, A Death in the Desert, 474-477 : 
 
 I 
 
 " I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 And has HO far advanced thee to be wise-" 
 
240 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 mortality of the soul, he follows Arthur in various 
 conjectures as to the nature of his future state. 
 What if in this new life Arthur should grow be- 
 yond his reach ? 
 
 " Though following with an upward mind 
 The wonders that have come to thee, 
 Through all the secular to-he, 
 But evermore a life behind." l 
 
 What if Arthur would gladly renew intercourse 
 with his friend when they meet in the other world 
 
 " And he the much-beloved again, 
 A lord of large experience, train 
 To riper growth the mind and will ? " 2 
 
 Or what if sleep and death be truly one, and he 
 should slumber on in one long trance and then 
 awaken to the old thoughts and the old love ? This 
 conjecture was no fancy of Tennyson's brain. It 
 was taught and defended in the last century by 
 Priestley. He believed in a resurrection of the 
 body, but he held that there was no soul apart 
 from the body. "If therefore," he writes, "any 
 person does firmly believe that he shall live again, 
 and receive according to his works ... of what 
 consequence is it whether he believe he has a soul 
 or not? It is enough that he believes that his 
 power of thinking (which is the only province of 
 a soul) will be restored to him at the resurrection, 
 and that he will have a perfect recollection of all 
 the transactions of the present life''' 3 And so, the 
 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xli. 6. 2 Ibid. xlii. 2. 
 
 8 Letters to Young Men of Oxford and Cambridge, 1788, iv. 5, 
 p. 72. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 241 
 
 poet dwells upon this theory of death, and fancies 
 that through the long sleep, 
 
 " love will last as pure and whole 
 As when he loved me here in Time, 
 And at the spiritual prime 
 Re waken with the dawning soul." l 
 
 Or again, regarding the Platonic doctrine of pre- 
 existence, he asks : What if it is with Arthur in 
 the other life as it is with man here below, who 
 though he forgets his preexistent state has still an 
 occasional glimpse "a little flash, /a mystic hint " 
 of the past, and Arthur also gets an occasional 
 glimpse of the old life : " some dim touch of 
 earthly things " surprises him ? And he addresses 
 his friend : 
 
 " If such a dreamy touch should fall, 
 
 O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ; 
 My guardian angel will speak out 
 In that high place, and tell thee all." 2 
 
 Be the conjecture what it may, the author is con- 
 vinced that there will be a loving recognition, and 
 that his chilling fears arising from the spectral 
 doubt that he would no longer enjoy companion- 
 ship with Arthur are vain. 
 
 8. Here I would call attention to a peculiar doc- 
 trine woven into the poem as regards both past and 
 future states of the soul. In the lyric last quoted 
 we find clearly stated the doctrine of preexistence : 
 
 " Here the man is more and more ; 
 
 But he forgets the days before 
 God shut the doorways of his head. 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xliii. 4. 2 Ibid. xliv. 4. 
 
242 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 * 
 
 " The days have vanished, tone and tint, 
 And yet perhaps the hoarding- sense 
 Gives out at times (he knows not whence) 
 A little flash, a mystic hint." 1 
 
 That this doctrine of preexistence is part of Ten- 
 nyson's thinking part at least of his poetical fur- 
 niture ; the distinction is an important one be- 
 comes clear from a glance at his works. We read 
 it in that thoughtful poem, " The Two Voices : " - 
 
 " It may be that no life is found, 
 Which only to one engine bound 
 Falls off", but cycles always round. 
 
 " As old mythologies relate, 
 Some draught of Lethe might await 
 The slipping through from state to state. 
 
 " Moreover, something is or seems, 
 That touches me with mystic gleams, 
 Like glimpses of forgotten dreams 
 
 " Of something felt, like something here ; 
 Of something done, I know not where; 
 Such as no language may declare." 
 
 Evidently the doctrine here laid down is opposed 
 to our Christian belief in the resurrection of the 
 body. For if there be no life bound to " one en- 
 gine," that is, to a single body, then indeed does 
 every new cycle of the soul call for a new habita- 
 tion. And yet, in a poem upon the death of his 
 friend Spedding we read : 
 
 " Lie still, dry dust, secure of change," 2 
 
 whereby the writer would convey the idea of an- 
 other state for the dust. Be this as it may, it is 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xliv. 2, 3. 2 Lines to J. S. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 243 
 
 of Catholic faith that every human body has within 
 itself the germ of immortality, and that the soul will 
 once more be united to the body in another state, 
 and under another order of existence. "The soul," 
 says St. Thomas, " is naturally united to the body, 
 for according to its very essence it is the form of 
 the body. It is therefore unnatural that the soul 
 remain without the body. But nothing that is op- 
 posed to nature can so continue forever. Therefore 
 the soul cannot exist perpetually without the body. 
 Hence, if the soul is to exist perpetually it must 
 become reunited to the body, which is the resurrec- 
 tion. And so, the immortality of the soul calls for 
 a future resurrection of the body." 1 And this 
 teaching is in accord with reason. For the perfec- 
 tion of any creature consists in this, that nothing 
 be wanting to its nature as conceived or planned 
 by the Creator, even as God's own perfection 
 consists in the completeness of his infinite Nature. 2 
 Therefore do human perfection and human happi- 
 ness imply a union of body and soul, as the two 
 essential elements of a human personality. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1. Tennyson holds another peculiar doctrine 
 regarding the future states of the soul. He holds 
 that the soul passes from state to state through 
 the various cycles of the aeons that are to be, gath- 
 ering strength according to the degree of its well- 
 
 1 Contra Gentes, lib. iv. cap. 79. 
 
 2 Summa. Theol. Supp. Quaest. Ixxvii. art. 1. ad. 4. 
 
244 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 doing in each for nobler and more perfect func- 
 tions in the succeeding state. The past is left 
 behind as a butterfly leaves its chrysalis : 
 
 " Eternal process moving on, 
 
 From state to state the spirit walks, 
 And these are but the shattered stalks, 
 Or ruined chrysalis of one" 1 
 
 A soul growing and developing may afterwards 
 resume possession of its body, and the body may 
 reflect the splendor of its higher state. But a soul 
 undergoing transformations, each one of which is 
 a distinct state or a distinct plane of existence, is 
 rather to be conceived as passing away forever 
 from its earthly tenement. So the Essenes held. 
 Although believing in the immortality of the soul, 
 they denied the resurrection of the body. 2 There 
 is a similar doctrine of future states touched upon 
 by Browning in his " Evelyn Hope : " 
 
 " Delayed it may be^br me more lives yet, 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse not a few: 
 Much is to learn, much to forget 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you." 
 
 2. This is an ancient doctrine not to be con- 
 founded with the teachings of Buddha. Nor is 
 it to be in all respects identified with neo-Platon- 
 ism. Plotinus did not hold it. Traces of it are 
 to be found in the writings of Origen. 3 Porphyry, 
 who is supposed to have made some studies under 
 Origen, attempted to reconcile the doctrine with 
 the ideas of Plotinus. Proclus saw no limit to 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ixxxii. 2. 
 
 2 C. D. Ginsburg, The Essenes, p. 22. 
 
 8 Huet, Origeniana, liv. ii. cap. ii. quaest. 6. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 245 
 
 the descent of the soul to earthly life and back 
 again to spiritual existence. He held the soul to 
 be " in continual movement descending in genera- 
 tion and ascending towards the gods incessantly." l 
 It was passed down among certain sects of the 
 early Christians as an esoteric teaching known only 
 to an initiated few. It was condemned in the fifth 
 Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in the 
 year 381. St. Jerome cautions the virgin Deme- 
 triada against the doctrine as " an hereditary 
 evil." 2 The doctrine of preexistence was funda- 
 mental in the teachings of the Jewish Cabala. 
 Therein was it taught that every soul is created 
 with the indestructible germs of a certain degree 
 of perfection ; that if its first life on earth has not 
 been such as to cause these germs to develop to 
 their full bloom of flower and harvest of fruit, the 
 soul assumes another body and develops other per- 
 fections, and continues to return until every germ 
 has been fully developed. 
 
 3. This idea of bodily resumption after the pres- 
 ent stage of existence both Tennyson and Brown- 
 ing have rejected for what they consider the more 
 spiritual idea of life rising and expanding through 
 cycles of aeons in other states of existence. And 
 has not Tennyson a trace of the following teaching 
 in his doctrine of reminiscence ? We read : " Just 
 as before creation all beings were present in the di- 
 vine thought, under the form proper to them, even 
 so all human souls before descending to this world 
 
 1 Vacherot, Histoire Critique de V Ecole d' Alexandrie, t. ii. p. 368. 
 
 2 Epist. cxxx. 16, Ad Demetriadem. 
 
246 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 existed with God in heaven under the form that 
 they preserved here below, and all that they learn 
 on earth they knew before arriving thereon." 1 St. 
 Cyril held that they were believers in a preexist- 
 ent state, who asked our Lord : " Rabbi, who hath 
 sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be 
 born blind?" 2 Perhaps some holding the belief 
 of the Essenes had become disciples of Jesus, and 
 they did not all at once rid themselves of the false 
 teaching. The doctrines of preexistence and of 
 future states of development for the soul have 
 passed down to the present day in a continuous 
 stream of tradition and in various forms, from 
 pre-Christian times, with other esoteric theories. 
 It is evident that Tennyson and Browning imbibed 
 these doctrines from some or several of the many 
 channels through which they flowed. Accordingly, 
 Tennyson fancied his friend working out the unde- 
 veloped germs of his greatness and his perfections, 
 and meriting applause in his new state : 
 
 " But somewhere, out of human view, 
 
 Whatever thy hands are set to do 
 Is wrought with tumult of acclaim." 11 3 
 
 4. It need scarcely be said that the whole doc- 
 trine of progressive development from state to state 
 beyond the present is not the Christian doctrine of 
 the life succeeding death. Not that the Christian 
 
 1 Zohar, quoted in Diet, des Sc. Phil. p. 854. The doctrine of 
 the Zohar has been formally revived in more recent times by 
 Pierre Leroux and Charles Fourier. Browning 1 may have become 
 imbued with it in getting 1 up material for his Paracelsus. 
 
 2 See Maldonatus, Comment, in Joan. cap. ix. 2. 
 8 In Memoriam, Ixxy. 5. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 247 
 
 does not recognize progress in the new state. The 
 soul will ever grow in wisdom and knowledge. It 
 will never cease to learn, for it contemplates an 
 infinite essence the riches of whose glory are inex- 
 haustible. St. Augustin becomes indignant over 
 the neo-Platonic theory of recurring cycles. He 
 asks, " Who, I. say, can listen to such things? Who 
 can accept or suffer them to be spoken ? . . . God 
 forbid that there be any truth in an opinion which 
 threatens us with a real misery that is never to end, 
 but is often and needlessly to be interrupted by in- 
 tervals of fallacious happiness." 1 And in another 
 place the same holy doctor, speaking of the various 
 periods of the world's history ending in the ever- 
 lasting Sabbath enjoyed by the saints in heaven, 
 says : " After this period God shall rest on the 
 seventh day, when He shall give us (who shall be 
 the seventh day) rest in Himself. . . . The sev- 
 enth day shall be our Sabbath, which shall be 
 brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the 
 Lord's day, as an eighth and eternal day, conse- 
 crated by the resurrection of Christ, and prefigur- 
 ing the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but 
 also of the body. There we shall rest and behold, 
 behold and love, love and praise. This is what 
 shall be in the end without end. For what other 
 end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to 
 the kingdom of which there is no end ? " 2 This 
 is the Catholic doctrine of heaven. It is the doc- 
 trine that Dante has transmitted in his noble 
 
 1 De Civ. Dei, lib. xii. cap. xx. 
 
 2 Ibid. lib. xxii. cap. xxx. 5. 
 
248 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 poem : " We have issued forth," he says, " from the 
 last body to the heaven which is pure light : light 
 intellectual full of love ; love of true good full of 
 jy ; joy surpassing every sweetness." 1 
 
 1. Tennyson continues to grapple with the prob- 
 lem of life beyond the grave. Who can solve all 
 the questionings that arise in the presence of 
 death? But there are certain truths which are 
 postulated by him regarding the future state. 
 Among these is the truth that we retain our iden- 
 tity. The babe is not conscious : 
 
 " But as he grows he gathers much, 
 
 And learns the use of ' I,' and ' me, ' 
 And finds ' I am not what I see, 
 And other than the things I touch.' " 2 
 
 Man is one in substance and one in all his opera- 
 tions ; one in his senses and one in his thoughts ; 
 this one so feeling and thinking and acting is a 
 combination of body and soul which forms a dis- 
 tinct personality. Now this consciousness of self 
 must remain with the soul hereafter ; it is in the 
 economy of things that it should, otherwise 
 
 " had man to learn himself anew 
 Beyond the second birth of Death." 
 
 Another truth postulated in the poem is that while 
 in time the past is foreshortened and memory 
 forgets many things, in eternity the mental vision 
 must needs be clear : 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxx. 39-43. 2 In Memoriam, xlv. 2. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 249 
 
 " There no shade can last, 
 In that deep dawn behind the tomb, 
 But clear from marge to marge shall bloom 
 The eternal landscape of the past." l 
 
 2. Tennyson rejects the pantheistic notion of 
 the neo-Platonists that the human soul should be 
 finally remerged in the general Soul. He calls it 
 " faith as vague as all unsweet," and says : 
 
 " Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside," 
 
 and avers that each soul shall know the other. But 
 as a final fancy, he for a moment admits the sup- 
 position of absorption in this general Soul, and says 
 that even should the individual soul be destined 
 ultimately to lose its identity, he holds love to be 
 so strong and so persistent that the spirit of his 
 friend would await his own, to clasp it and bid it 
 farewell before losing itself in the light : 
 
 " He seeks at least 
 Upon the last and sharpest height, 
 Before the spirits fade away, 
 Some landing-place, to clasp and say, 
 ' Farewell ! we lose ourselves in light.' " 2 
 
 And since the soul is immortal, and here below in a 
 transition and probationary state, the poet would 
 have his friend near him -that is, the man so be- 
 lieving would have departed souls whom he loved 
 with a pure and elevating love near him in every 
 crisis of life, in sickness and temptation, and at the 
 hour of death. This is not unlike the Catholic doc- 
 
 1 In Memoriam, xlvi. 2. 
 
 2 Ibid, xlvii. 3, 4. This has been erroneously interpreted as a 
 formal expression of Tennyson's supposed pantheism. 
 
250 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 trine of the Communion of Saints, save that Ten- 
 nyson's is a natural desire, whereas the Catholic 
 doctrine stands upon a supernatural plane. The 
 saints are souls to whom men look with reverence 
 and admiration, the very thought of whose lives 
 and virtues is inspiring, and who as God's special 
 friends have power to hear and help us. Note how 
 in this same lyric the poet lashes those anti-Chris- 
 tian writers who assail the faith, deposit their poi- 
 sonous words in men's souls, and then pass to their 
 deserved oblivion : 
 
 " Be near me when my faith is dry. 
 And men the flies of latter spring, 
 That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, 
 And weave their petty cells and die" 1 
 
 3. An objection occurs to the poet. Can we bear 
 that the dead should read our hearts with all their 
 frailties ? He asks : 
 
 " Do we indeed desire the dead 
 
 Should still be near us at our side ? 
 Is there no baseness we would hide ? 
 No inner vileness that we dread ? " 2 
 
 And he answers that the dead see our frailties and 
 our sins, but they see them 
 
 " with larger other eyes than ours, 
 To make allowance for us all." 
 
 He, furthermore, brings us the consoling doctrine 
 that though sin attaches to all, in the end the true 
 shall be sifted from the false, the good from the 
 evil: 
 
 " So fret not, like an idle girl, 
 
 That life is dashed with flecks of sin. 
 
 1 In Memoriam, 1. 3. 2 Ibid. H. 1. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 251 
 
 Abide : thy wealth is gathered in, 
 When Time hath sundered shell from pearl." l 
 
 This, we take for granted, implies repentance for 
 the sins committed, and as far as possible repara- 
 tion for the injury done one's neighbor. Otherwise 
 Tennyson does not rise above the false position of 
 Goethe in his " Faust," who, as has already been 
 seen, saves his hero without either repentance or 
 reparation : 
 
 " The noble spirit now is free, 
 And saved from evil scheming : 
 Whoe'er aspires unweariedly 
 Is not beyond redeeming. 
 
 " And if he feels the grace of Love 
 That from on high is given ; 
 The Blessed Hosts that wait above, 
 Shall welcome him to Heaven." 2 
 
 4. The poet is here led to touch upon ethical dif- 
 ficulties. He knows many a dignified father of a 
 family, who is now a pattern to his boys, but who 
 in his younger days was reckless enough. Dare 
 it be said that this father is all the better for his 
 early wildness ? Tennyson does not encourage such 
 teaching. It is a snare and a delusion to youth, 
 however encouraging it may be to the man who has 
 survived " the heats of youth." So he will have no 
 tampering with the lines between good and evil. 
 He insists upon keeping them clearly defined : 
 
 " Hold thou the good : define it well : 
 For fear divine Philosophy 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Hi. 4. 
 
 2 Faust. Pt. ii. Chorus of the Angels. Bayard Taylor's transla- 
 tion, p. 424. 
 
252 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Should push beyond her mark, and be 
 Procuress to the Lords of Hell." l 
 
 True it is, as we have already noticed, Tennyson 
 weakens his position, and almost undoes what is 
 sound in his teaching by proclaiming in the very 
 next lyric that ,all things converge to a universal 
 good, and that even as every winter changes to 
 spring so shall good be the final goal of ill. This 
 we have found to be one of the cardinal points of 
 his creed. 
 
 XI. 
 
 1. Still another serious objection arises: it is 
 evidently a divine instinct implanted in man that 
 he should desire to see everything in this life ful- 
 fill its aim, and that he should trust to see in the 
 other all the broken threads taken up and woven 
 into the plan and purpose of God's will. But, on 
 the other hand, here is Nature so improvident, and 
 so careless of the individual life, seemingly destroy- 
 ing thousands that a single type may be preserved. 
 How reconcile the fact with the divine instinct? 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life." 2 
 
 It is a mystery to him. He cannot solve it. He 
 can only grope in the dark, holding by the clue of 
 faith, and trusting in the larger hope that some- 
 how all shall be for the best. His own fine words 
 in which he has so deeply and beautifully expressed 
 
 1 In Memoriam, liii. 4. 2 Ibid. Iv. 2. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 253 
 
 his intellectual weakness and his spiritual trust 
 will bear repetition : 
 
 " I falter where I firmly trod, 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God, 
 
 " I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope." l 
 
 2. In the mean time science suddenly rent the 
 veil that had been concealing some of nature's laws, 
 and revealed other mysteries that increased the 
 poet's difficulties. In 1845 Charles Darwin called 
 attention to the fact that Nature was not careful 
 even of the type, that there were vast chasms of 
 silence in her records, that the species as well as 
 the individual was not infrequently obliterated. 
 And Tennyson read these words : " To admit that 
 species generally become rare before they become 
 extinct, to find no surprise at the comparative 
 rarity of one species with another, and yet to call 
 in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly 
 when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much 
 the same as to admit that sickness in the individual 
 is the prelude to death ; to feel no surprise at sick- 
 ness, but when the sick man dies, to wonder and 
 to believe that he died through violence." 2 In a 
 later book the great naturalist thus more succinctly 
 formulated his conclusions : " We have every reason 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Iv. 4, 5. 
 
 2 Journal of Researches, London, 1845, p. 176. 
 
254 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 to believe from the study of the tertiary formations, 
 that species and groups of species gradually dis- 
 appear, one after another, from first one spot, then 
 from another, and finally from the world." l Ten- 
 nyson's keen vision takes in the whole bearing of 
 Darwin's first announcement ; still less does he find 
 Nature's course to tally with man's instinctive trust 
 that no life may fail beyond the grave, and he 
 resumes the subject in another lyric, in which he 
 expresses Darwin's conclusion with grasp and force 
 not excelled by the scientist's own form : 
 
 " ' So careful of the type ? ' but no. 
 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, ' A thousand types are gone : 
 I care for nothing, all shall go.' " 2 
 
 It would indeed seem, in the light of this new dis- 
 covery, as though Nature were confirming the ma- 
 terialist's doctrine that " the spirit does but mean 
 the breath." The poet asks with alarm, shall this 
 be the end of man, with all his noble aspirations, 
 and elevated ideals, and great achievements, that 
 he shall 
 
 " be blown about the desert dust, 
 Or sealed within the iron hills ? 
 
 "No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
 A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
 That tare each other in their slime, 
 Were mellow music matched with him." 8 
 
 Terrified and perplexed by these revelations and 
 analogies of modern science, he despairs of solving 
 
 1 Genesis of the Species, 1859, p. 318. 
 
 2 In Memoriam, Ivi. 1. 8 Ibid. Ivi. 5, 6. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 255 
 
 the overwhelming enigma in this life, and seeks 
 refuge in the other : 
 
 " What hope of answer, or redress ? 
 Behind the veil, behind the veil." 1 
 
 He would have man, against evidence to the con- 
 trary, in the midst of doubt and darkness, hold by 
 the clue of a future life in which all mystery shall 
 be made clear. 
 
 3. Elsewhere, and at a later date, Tennyson dwelt 
 more forcibly upon the barrenness of life without 
 these fundamental truths. In his poem called " De- 
 spair " he has grandly shown how in any view of the 
 world that destroys belief in a moral government, 
 in a hereafter, and in a personal God, the light from 
 the stars shines forth a lie, " bright as with death- 
 less hope ; " man a worm writhing in a world of 
 the weak trodden . down by the strong ; darkness 
 everywhere " Doubt lord of this dung-hill, 
 Hope with broken heart running after a shadow of 
 good," and Love dead rather, a delusion that had 
 never existed. In still another poem he depicts 
 the overwhelming vastness of the universe from 
 the materialist's point of view, and shows how that 
 awful sense of inert immensity can alone be counter- 
 acted in the soul's life and aspirations : 
 
 " Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanished 
 
 face, 
 Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanished 
 
 race. 
 
 " Raving politics, never at rest as this poor earth's pale history 
 
 runs, 
 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million mil- 
 
 lion of suns ? . . . 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ivi. 7. 
 
256 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse- 
 coffins at last, 
 
 Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drowned in the deeps of a 
 meaningless Past ? 
 
 " What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger 
 
 of bees in their hive ? 
 Peace, let it be I far I loved him, and love him forever : the dead 
 
 are not dead but alive." l 
 
 Was ever the sense of oppressiveness arising from 
 contemplation of the vastness of the universe more 
 powerfully expressed ? Were man a mere spawn 
 of matter a mere development of protoplasm 
 born for time and ending with time, that vastness 
 and that oppressiveness would be overpowering. 
 But with a profound sense of his greater majesty 
 as a spiritual being, and conscious of his capacity 
 for undying love, for is not love stronger than 
 death? this undying love represented by the au- 
 thor's love for Arthur, man in that consciousness 
 raises himself above and beyond the whole length 
 and breadth and height and depth of this material 
 universe ; its vastness shrinks into insignificance 
 by the side of a single spiritual act of an immor- 
 tal soul. Man loves ; his love, when pure, above 
 all when supernatural, grows and strengthens with 
 his years, and he cherishes it because it is to out- 
 live all conditions of time and place. 
 
 " Peace, let it be ! " even so in the " In Memo- 
 riam " does the poet turn aside from the nightmare 
 horrors of Nature, shrieking against his belief in 
 another and a better world : 
 
 1 Vastness. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 257 
 
 " Peace ; come away : the song- of woe 
 Is after all an earthly song- : 
 Peace ; come away : we do him wrong 
 To sing- so wildly : let us go." x 
 
 4. In another lyric Tennyson contemplates this 
 earth in its evolution from " tracts of fluent heat " 
 till it has assumed its present form, and " at the 
 last arose the man," and he watches the course of 
 human progress through joy and sorrow, man him- 
 self being in his view only " the herald of a higher 
 race;" but he cautions us not to lose our hold 
 upon the clue of immortality, 
 
 " Nor dream of human love and truth, 
 As dying Nature's earth and lime. 
 
 " But trust that those we call the dead 
 Are breathers of an ampler day 
 For ever nobler ends." 2 
 
 And he would have all men drive out of themselves 
 the beasts of passion and raise themselves to higher 
 things : 
 
 "Arise and fly 
 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die. 8 
 
 XII. 
 
 1. Here ends the struggle. The poet can now 
 look back on it all and say : 
 
 " I trust I have not wasted breath : 
 / think we are not wholly brain, 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Ivii. 1. 2 Ibid, cxviii. 1, 2. 
 
 8 Ibid, cxviii. 7. 
 
258 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, 
 Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ; 
 
 " Not only cunning casts in clay : 
 
 Let Science prove we are, and then 
 What matters Science unto men, 
 At least to me ? I would not stay. 
 
 " Let him, the wiser man who springs 
 Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
 His action like the greater ape, 
 But I was born to other things" l 
 
 2. This singer of Christian hope would not stay 
 with the science that speaks in the name of ma- 
 terialism. Evolution progress spiritual, intel- 
 lectual, material he can understand, but he will 
 none of materialism. He is unwearied in reitera- 
 tion of this truth. Science reveals change in the 
 earth's crust : 
 
 " There rolls the deep where grew the tree. 
 earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 
 There where the long street roars, hath been 
 The stillness of the central sea." 2 
 
 " But," paraphrasing in the words of one who made 
 a loving study of the poem, " there is one thing 
 fixed and abiding that which we call spirit ; and, 
 amid all uncertainty, one truth is certain that to 
 a loving human soul a parting which shall be eter- 
 nal is unthinkable." 3 And equally fixed in human 
 consciousness is the conviction that there is a loving 
 God. This is proven, in the argument of the poem, 
 not by the things of Nature, though the material 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxx. 1, 2, 3. 2 Ibid, cxxiii. 1. 
 
 8 E. R. Chapman. A Companion to In Memoriam, p. 07. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 259 
 
 universe suffices to prove it, but rather by the uni- 
 versal yearning of the human heart. On this point 
 both Tennyson and Cardinal Newman struck the 
 same chord. In prose no less noble than the po- 
 etry of Tennyson the Cardinal says : " The world 
 seems simply to give the lie to that great truth, 
 of which my whole being is so full ; and the effect 
 upon me is in consequence, as a matter of neces- 
 sity, as confusing as if it denied that I am in ex- 
 istence myself. . . . Were it not for this voice 
 speaking so clearly to my conscience and my heart, 
 I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a poly- 
 theist when I looked into the world. I am speak- 
 ing for myself only ; and I am far from denying 
 the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, 
 drawn from the general facts of human society, but 
 they do not warm me or enlighten me ; they do not 
 take away the winter of my desolation, or make 
 the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, 
 and my moral being rejoice." l 
 
 3. Strengthened and inspired by the virtues of 
 faith and hope and love, the poet and with him 
 humanity rises triumphant over all difficulties, 
 and looking back upon the strife he can now 
 sing : 
 
 " And all is well, though faith and form 
 Be sundered in the night of fear ; 
 Well roars the storm to those that hear 
 A deeper voice across the storm." 2 
 
 When the virtues he would sing are not merely 
 natural virtues, but possess the supernatural char- 
 
 1 Apologia, p. 267. 2 In Memoriam, cxxvii. 1. 
 
260 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 acter of the theological virtues, the soul's triumph 
 is indeed complete. And the dead who have passed 
 through the strife and have come out of it vic- 
 torious overlook the tumult from afar, and smile, 
 " knowing all is well." For Tennyson considers 
 faith in human progress, in spite of all apparent 
 evidence to the contrary, as akin to divine faith ; 
 and he still sees, however darkly, that all things 
 work towards a good end : 
 
 " I see in part 
 
 That all, as in some piece of art, 
 Is toil cob'perant to an end." l 
 
 4. The author leaves out in his calculation the 
 one element that explains the anomalous state of 
 things, the retrogressions of races, otherwise than 
 as mere eddies of time : 
 
 " No doubt vast eddies in the flood 
 Of onward time shall yet be made, 
 And throned races may degrade : ' ' 
 
 but that element, that great factor in humanity, 
 Cardinal Newman has supplied. He says : " And 
 so I argue about the world : if there be a God, 
 since there is a God, the human race is implicated 
 in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of 
 joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a 
 fact a fact as true as the fact of its existence ; 
 and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called 
 original sin becomes to me almost as certain as 
 that the world exists, and as the existence of God." 2 
 Had the poet reckoned with this element he would 
 have caught a clearer glimpse of the infinite love 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxxviii. 6. 2 Apologia, p. 268. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 261 
 
 of God for man, his paean of victory would have 
 been none the less jubilant, and his sense of depen- 
 dence would have been all the more profound. 
 
 5. But what can excel the clarion note in which 
 Tennyson in this last group asserts the commun- 
 ion of the living and the dead ? Alluding to his 
 trance, he sings that if Arthur was with him then, 
 none the less can this friend be with him when- 
 ever the great desire to commune with the departed 
 spirit grows upon him : 
 
 " If thou wert with me, and the grave 
 Divide us not, be with me now, 
 And enter in at breast and brow, 
 Till all my blood, a fuller wave, 
 
 " Be quickened with a livelier breath, 
 And like an inconsiderate boy, 
 As in the former flash of joy, 
 I slip the thoughts of life and death ; 
 
 " And all the breeze of Fancy blows, 
 And every dewdrop paints a bow, 
 The wizard lightnings deeply glow, 
 And every thought breaks out a rose." 1 
 
 In his final song every trace of doubt has vanished. 
 The feeling of an immortal existence has become 
 part of his thinking. His friend that was, is and 
 shall be his beyond all power of separation : 
 
 " Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; 
 
 Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
 Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine." 
 
 And therefore the image of his friend is mingled 
 everywhere : 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxxii. 3, 4, 5. 
 
262 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 " Behold, I dream a dream of good, 
 And mingle all the world with thee." 1 
 
 6. That there is between the dead and the living 
 something in common, that they are intimately 
 united, that there exists an unseen and an unspeak- 
 able communion between them, is a conviction 
 borne in upon the author with a force beyond all 
 resistance. Is this truth not also the common 
 heritage of humanity ? He addresses Arthur : 
 
 " Far off thou art, hut ever nigh ; 
 I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice ; 
 I shall not lose thee though I die." 2 
 
 But all this triumph of faith and hope and love 
 over doubt and materialism is not of man's own 
 merit. He should will it ; he should pray for the 
 grace of it ; he should place himself in the hands 
 of the Supreme Will, the guide and strength-giver 
 of all finite wills. And so Tennyson addresses 
 the Divine Will : 
 
 " O Living Will that shalt endure 
 
 When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
 Rise in the spiritual rock, 
 Flow through our deeds and make them pure." 8 
 
 He asks that our deeds may be made pure in order 
 that we may all the more readily rise to faith in the 
 truths that we cannot prove, or in his own apt 
 words : 
 
 "And trust, 
 
 With faith that comes of self-control, 
 The truths that never can be proved 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxxix. 3. 2 Ibid. czxz. 3. 
 
 8 Ibid, cxxxi. 1. 
 
SPIRITUAL SENSE OF IN MEMORIAM 263 
 
 Until we close -with all we loved, 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul." x 
 
 Faith, though based upon knowledge, springs not 
 from knowledge alone. It is not commensurate 
 with science. It is a gratuitous and a gracious gift 
 of God, and not infrequently descendeth where it 
 is least expected. 
 
 7. The song that was begun as a dirge over the 
 dead ends in a marriage-lay. Now that the poet 
 has found life worth living, he sings the marriage 
 of a dear sister with another bosom friend, as a 
 pledge and a hope of a future generation that 
 shall approach nearer to, and hasten the reign of 
 the universal good that he descries in the far-off 
 future, where abide : 
 
 " One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves." 2 
 
 8. Finally, as Petrarca ends his lyrics and son- 
 nets upon Laura with a beautiful prayer to the 
 Blessed Virgin, as Goethe finds in woman through 
 the same immaculate Mother redemption from the 
 ills of life, so does Tennyson conclude the work 
 of his poem of sorrow, and struggle, and triumph 
 over the powers of darkness infesting the age, 
 with a magnificent hymn to Him who is Light and 
 Love and Life : 
 
 ' ' Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove.' ' 8 
 
 1 In Memoriam, cxxxi. 3. 2 Epithalamium, 36. 
 
 8 Prelude, 1. 
 
264 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 Thus, the final note of Tennyson's song, which he 
 makes the prelude of his poem, terminates where 
 the final note of Dante's song terminates, in that 
 Love which moves the world, the sun and all the 
 other stars. 1 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " In Memoriam," viewed from the ground upon 
 which we now stand, is a highly finished expression 
 of the heart-hunger of a soul groping after the ful- 
 fillment of its desires and aspirations, searching into 
 science and art, and challenging heaven and earth 
 to yield up the secret of happiness and content- 
 ment, and in the primitive instincts of human na- 
 ture together with the essential truths of the Chris- 
 tian religion in these alone interpreted in the 
 light of faith discovering the meaning of life and 
 answers to the questionings of doubt and mate- 
 rialism. In this fact lies the claim of the poem to 
 rank with " Faust" and the " Divina Commedia," 
 not indeed in degree of greatness and fullness of 
 expression, but in kind. " In Memoriam " is also 
 a world-poem. 
 
 1 Paradiso, xxxiii. 131. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 1. IN the previous pages we have sought the 
 ideal in thought and applied the principles of crit- 
 icism which we regard as most fruitful in word 
 and work. Had the writer known a more elevat- 
 ing doctrine he would have imparted it cheerfully, 
 were the expression of it ever so inadequate. The 
 mere negations of criticism are barren of results ; 
 the mere clash and clamor of controversy only 
 too frequently end in personal animosities and the 
 strengthening of prejudice. Meanwhile thought 
 is starving and paralyzed for want of the warmth 
 of life and the nourishment of life-giving food in 
 men's teachings. Keen and bright intellects, hun- 
 gering and thirsting, grope in cold and darkness 
 after spiritual meat and drink with a yearning 
 and an earnestness that are rarely witnessed in the 
 history of human thought. 
 
 2. Beneath the rationalism and agnosticism of 
 the day there is a strong religious feeling crying out 
 for light and life and warmth. Witness the neo- 
 Christian movement in France. It is a reaction 
 against the barrenness of materialism in philosophy 
 and the rottenness of realism in literature. It is 
 a school of choice spirits who refuse to subscribe to 
 
266 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the doctrine that there is no unseen world, and who 
 would converge their best thoughts upon the soul 
 and its destiny. These writers hold by the reality 
 of spiritual life. They crave nourishment for that 
 life. Faith in that life and religious truth and 
 moral right they regard as integral portions of 
 human activity. With Kenan they hold a man's 
 worth to be in proportion to the amount of reli- 
 gious sentiment he has preserved from his early 
 training, that religious sentiment giving fragrance 
 to his whole life. 1 Religion is from their point of 
 view as great a need for the intellect as philosophy. 
 They do not vouch for the truth of their conception 
 of religion, but they have no doubt whatever con- 
 cerning its beauty and goodness. "Faith," says 
 M. Edouard Rod, " has an answer for every curi- 
 ous question ; it explains all. " It gives the reason 
 for our existence, since it proves to us that we are 
 the centre of the world ; it lends us the courage to 
 support our sufferings, since it teaches us that they 
 are a preparation for a better destiny ; it imparts a 
 relish for life, since it convinces us that life is eter- 
 nity. By plunging into mystery it has caused all 
 fear thereof to vanish ; its affirmations have ban- 
 ished doubt, and in the triumph of its certitude it 
 has established a marvelously constructed system 
 upon an imaginary basis, which, designed as it is 
 to meet every intellectual want, leaves no room for 
 despair." 2 
 
 1 Feuilles Dftachfes, pref. p. xvii. 
 
 2 Le Sens de la Vie, p. 26. 
 
CONCLUSION 267 
 
 3. So speaks one of the apostles of the neo-Chris- 
 tian movement. He talks of faith ; but faith in 
 what? there's the rub. The new creed speaks 
 respectfully of religion, but it accepts no dogma ; it 
 assumes the Christian code of morality without the 
 Christian sanction and the fundamental religious 
 truths upon which both code and sanction are based. 
 It is merely a vague sentiment. Christian morality 
 without the Christian religion is an abstraction ; 
 religion without dogma is a chimera of the brain. 
 In attempting to appropriate from Christianity 
 its beautiful morality, its consoling faith, its all- 
 embracing mysteries, without the doctrine and the 
 dogma of Christianity, the neo-Christian disciples 
 are plucking flower and leaf, leaving behind the 
 root and stem through which life-giving nourish- 
 ment flows. As well expect the plucked flower to 
 ripen into fruit as this admiration for Christianity 
 to be productive of spiritual life and growth or to 
 end in the robust activity that is a mark of every 
 genuine Christian institution. 
 
 4. Nothing can supersede the Catholic Church 
 as a great social and intellectual force the 
 Church of Clement and Augustin and Aquinas, the 
 Church that inspired Dante and a Kempis with 
 its unchanging dogma, its harmoniously developed 
 doctrine, its significant ritual and ceremonial ; with 
 its priesthood, its sacraments, its hymns and 
 prayers ; its all - embracing charity embodied in 1 
 the various institutions established throughout 
 the world for the healing of human misery and 
 
268 PHASES OF THOUGHT AND CRITICISM 
 
 the well-being of society. This is the substance 
 of which the neo - Christian movement is but the 
 shadow. Herein do flower and fruit, root and 
 stem, all receive life and nourishment from the 
 Word in whom they are planted. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ADRIAN DE Bur, 94. 
 -flSsop, 32. 
 
 ^Esthetic Sense, 2, 56. 
 Agnosticism, 72-75. 
 
 and Christianity, 77. 
 Alberic, vision of, 148. 
 Albert of Saxony, 90. 
 Albertus Magnus, 130. 
 Allegory, 148. 
 Ancient Sage, The, 224. 
 Angelo, Michael, 54. 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, on thought, 25. 
 
 and scholastic philosophy, 89. 
 
 and The Imitation, 99, 107. 
 
 and Dante, 131, 156. 
 
 on the resurrection, 243. 
 Areopagite, writings attributed to 
 
 Denis the, 101. 
 Aristotle and The Imitation, 99. 
 
 and Dante, 131. 
 Arnold, Thomas, 197. 
 Art, its meaning, 67. 
 Artist, the, 63. 
 Augustin, St., on thought, 24. 
 
 on time, 50. 
 
 on the end of man, 77. 
 
 on The Word, 107. 
 
 soars above systems, 109. 
 
 on neo-Platonism, 247. 
 
 ecstasy of, 226. 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 130. 
 Balbo, on Dante (note), 147. 
 Bayne, Peter, 235. 
 Beatrice, 137. 
 
 and Dante, 143, 144, 169, 170, 
 
 Beda and Thomas a Kempis, 93. 
 Beethoven, 54. 
 Begards, 91. 
 * Beguines, 91. 
 Benedict, St., 105. 
 Bernard, St., 98, 174, 176, 177. 
 his prayer to Mary, 177. 
 Berthier, on Dante (note), 182. 
 Bion, 189. 
 
 Blanc, Charles, on the ideal, 58, 59. 
 Boniface VIII. (note), 130. 
 Boccaccio, 99, 131. 
 
 Bonaventura, St., 99, 228. 
 Bonaventura and Dante, 131. 
 Books, when they avail, 32. 
 Borromeo, St. Charles, 88. 
 Bossuet, 88. 
 
 Brethren of the Common Life, 92, 93. 
 Browning, his admirers, 8. 
 
 on art, 66. 
 
 his conception of progress, 205. 
 
 his treatment of Lazarus, 213. 
 
 his conclusion one with Tenny- 
 son's, 214. 
 
 on future states of the soul, 244. 
 Buddha, 244. 
 Buridan, Jean, 90. 
 
 Cabala, the, 206, 227, 245. 
 
 Cantu, Caesar, on Dante, 142. 
 
 Catholicity and doubt, 228, 229. 
 
 Callicles, 41. 
 
 Can Grande, 140. 
 
 Carlyle, on the Paradiso, 180. 
 
 and transcendentalism, 197. 
 Cathedral, gothic, 64, 89. 
 Cato, 163. 
 Chapman, 34. 
 
 Chateaubriand on reverie, 37. 
 Chenoweth, Mrs. (note), 225. 
 Chorus-poems, 191. 
 Church, Dean, on Dante, 146. 
 Christianity and agnosticism, 77. 
 Christopher, St., 114. 
 Clement of Alexandria, 107, 267. 
 Clifford, Professor, 73. 
 Cobden, 198. 
 Communion of Saints, 250. 
 
 with the dead, 250. 
 Consciousness, growth of, 248. 
 Cousin on Maine de Biran, 82. 
 Criticism, true, 9. 
 Crusades, the, 89. 
 Cyril, St., 246. 
 
 Dante, the life - incidents that con- 
 tributed to the making of his 
 poem, 126, 127, 138, 139. 
 a Catholic, 128. 
 and chivalry, 129. 
 and pilgrimages, 129, 130. 
 
270 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dante as a student, 130. 
 
 as a theologian (note), 131. 
 
 a pagan leaven in (note), 134. 
 
 his character, 140, 141. 
 
 his sufferings, 141. 
 
 rises above party, 142. 
 
 and the Blessed Virgin, 144. 
 
 his love for religion, 145. 
 
 his diction, 149. 
 
 his earnestness, 150. 
 
 his ideal of womanhood, 174. 
 Dante, 54, 64, 99, 227. 
 Darwin, 198. 
 Darwin, Charles, 253. 
 Davidson, Thomas, 217. 
 Death-bed scene, 84, 85. 
 Demetriada, 245. 
 Descartes, 43. 
 Despair, 255. 
 Devotion, new, 93. 
 Divina Commedia, the, 64, 125. 
 
 world-poem of the middle ages, 
 
 a song of joy and hope, 151. 
 
 practical, 152. 
 
 its central idea, 152. 
 
 the element of love in, 153-155. 
 
 its allegorical sense, 160-179. 
 
 a transcript of religious life, 
 
 189. 
 
 Doubt, 228, 261. 
 Draper, on The Imitation, 117. 
 Dream, allegorical, 231. 
 Duns Scotus, 130. 
 
 Easter Day, 239. 
 
 Eckhart, his mysticism, 90, 91. 
 
 his influence, 91. 
 
 Education, given for a purpose, 10. 
 Eliot, George, on The Imitation, 121, 
 
 122. 
 Emerson, a type of thinker, 13-16. 
 
 the outcome of his philosophy, 
 
 his limitations, 15. 
 Essays and Reviews, 197. 
 Essence, divine, truth in, 26. 
 Essenes, the, 244, 246. 
 Ethical difficulties, 251. 
 Eucharist, the, centre of spiritual life, 
 
 116, 117. 
 
 Evelyn Hope, 244. 
 Evolution of the earth, 257. 
 Experiences, transmitted, 32. 
 
 Fable of the Bees, 202. 
 Fables, tradition of, 32. 
 Faith, a gratuitous gift, 263. 
 Faust, spirit of, 135. 
 
 meaning of, 136. 
 
 lesson of, 136, 207. 
 
 womanly love in, 137. 
 
 world-poem of the nineteenth 
 
 century, 138, 251. 
 Florio, 34. 
 Fontenelle, on The Imitation, 88. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, St., 98, 101. 228. 
 
 Free will, 150, 201. 
 
 Friends of God, society of, 91. 
 
 Galahad, 102, 107. 
 
 Gioberti, on Dante, 148. 
 
 Goethe as literary artist, 42, 43, 65. 
 
 as poet and philosopher, 147. 
 
 his ideal of womanhood, 174. 
 
 and Tennyson, 251. 
 
 and the Blessed Virgin, 263. 
 Gospels, book of, 86, 87. 
 Gower, 34. 
 
 Grail, Holy, the, 99, 102, 107. 
 Greece among our educators, 30. 
 Gregory the Great, St., 98. 
 Grief, fluctuations of, in In Memo- 
 
 riam, 220. 
 Groote, Gerhard, 92. 
 
 Hallam, Arthur (note), 183, 197. 
 
 introduces Shelley's Adonais to 
 
 Cambridge, 188. 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, on the Evolution- 
 ists (note), 30. 
 Haydn, 54. 
 Hegel, 8. 
 
 Hellwald, F. von, on error, 53, 54. 
 Hengist, 7. 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, 185. 
 Heredity, 30. 
 Hermann, Brother, 94. 
 Hettinger, on Dante (note), 147. 
 
 on the Divina Commedia, 160. 
 Hilary, Brother, 140. 
 Holinshed, 34. 
 Homer, 12, 34. 
 Horsa, 7. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, 188. 
 Hugo, Victor, 36. 
 Huss, John (note), 108. 
 Human reason, not always sufficient 
 to conquer passion, 162. 
 
 Ibsen, 14. 
 
 Identity, doctrine of, 248. 
 
 Illative sense, 2. 
 
 Imitation of Christ, The, 88. 
 
 rhythmical (note), 94. 
 
 sources of, 98, 99. 
 
 key-note of, 102. 
 
 lessons for students, 103. 
 
 its philosophy, 107, 109, 112. 
 
 secret of its success, 119, 123. 
 In Memoriam, explained and ana- 
 lyzed, 192-197. 
 
 its composition, 184. 
 
 its structure, 185. 
 
 its subject-matter, 186-192. 
 
 characterized, 191. 
 
 grief in, analyzed, 207-215. 
 
 the more helpful notes of, 215. 
 
 dream and sleep lyrics of, 216- 
 219. 
 
 lyrics dealing with a future 
 state, 240-248. 
 
INDEX 
 
 271 
 
 In Memoriam, one of the world-po- 
 ems, 264. 
 canons of interpretation, 234, 
 
 235. 
 
 Innocent III., 126. 
 Intellect, human, its function, 45. 
 and truth, 46. 
 and certainty, 47. 
 Introspection in thought, 38. 
 
 Jerome, St., 245. 
 
 Johnson, Doctor Samuel, 88. 
 
 John, St., 108. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas a, 88. 
 
 his times, 89. 
 
 held in esteem by his communi- 
 ty, 94. 
 
 described by contemporaries, 95, 
 96. 
 
 his inner life, 96, 97. 
 
 transcribes the Bible, 98. 
 
 no avowed system of philoso- 
 phy, 110. 
 
 and learning, 110-112. 
 
 on love, 113, 114. 
 
 a practical man, 115. 
 Knowledge, well-digested, 11. 
 KorSn, the, 120. 
 
 La Bruyere* on originality, 33. 
 
 Lafontaine, 32. 
 
 La Harpe, 120. 
 
 Lancelot, 107. 
 
 Laura, 185, 263. 
 
 Lay, marriage, 263. 
 
 Lazarus, treatment of, by Tennyson 
 
 and Browning, 212, 213. 
 Lecky, quoted (note), 117. 
 Leipzig, University of, 108. 
 Leo XIII., on reason and revelation, 
 
 82. 
 
 Letter of Tennyson, 223. 
 Little Catechism, 158. 
 Louis IX., 126. 
 Louis XVI., 120. 
 
 Loyola, St. Ignatius, 101, 105, 115. 
 Love in the Divina Gommedia, 153- 
 
 159. 
 
 in In Memoriam, 236. 
 Lucy, or Illuminative Grace, 161. 
 Lushington, E. L., 221. 
 Lycidas, 189. 
 
 Mandeville, Bernard de, 202. 
 Man, his end, 158. 
 
 Maine de Biran, on religion and phi- 
 losophy, 82. 
 
 on the inner life of man, 104. 
 Malebranche, 82. 
 Marsilius Ficino, 206. 
 Marsilius of Inghen, 90. 
 Mater Gloriosa, the, 137. 
 Maurice, F. D., 197, 202. 
 Mediaeval time - spirit, evolution, of, 
 132, 133, 136. 
 
 Methods, literary and scientific, 44. 
 Michelet, on Thomas a Kempis, 96. 
 Mill, 8. 
 Millet, 67, 69. 
 Milton, 12. 
 
 and Shelley, 189. 
 Miracle-Play, 89. 
 Missal, Roman, 99. 
 Mivart, St. George, on the intellect 
 
 and truth, 52. 
 Montaigne, 34. 
 Moral Sense, 2, 71, 79. 
 More, Blessed Thomas, 88. 
 Moschus, 189. 
 Mount, Sermon on, 87. 
 Mozart, 64. 
 Murillo, 54, 57. 
 Mysticism, 90. 
 
 described, 99-101. 
 
 Nature, scenery of, 37. 
 Nature, problems of, 252. 
 Nature's types, 30. 
 Neo-Platonic doctrine, 226, 249. 
 Newman, 197. 
 Newman, as a thinker, 17-23. 
 
 his conversational power, 18. 
 
 his appearance, 18. 
 
 his reasoning power, 19, 20. 
 
 his idea of religion, 22. 
 
 on the true way of learning, 52, 
 75. 
 
 on modesty and pride (note), 
 106. 
 
 on doubt, 229. 
 
 on the existence of God, 259. 
 
 on original sin, 260. 
 Newton, 43. 
 Ninias, 7. 
 Nominalism and Realism, 90, 108. 
 
 Ockham, 130. 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 198. 
 
 Origen, 244. 
 
 Original sin, doctrine of, 260. 
 
 Our Father, the, 87. 
 
 Ovid, 99. 
 
 Pascal, soars above systems, 109. 
 Pascal, on truth, 51. 
 Paul, vision of, 148. 
 Percivate, 106. 
 Peter of Ailly, 90. 
 Petrarca, 90, 185, 220. 
 
 his sonnets, 186. 
 Phaedo, the, 63. 
 Phaedrus, 3'2. 
 Philosophy, scholastic, 89. 
 
 and poetry, 234. 
 Plato, allegory of, 62. 
 Plato, on essences, 50, 225. 
 
 on the ideal, 58. 
 
 on literary structure, 62. 
 
 on true art, 66. 
 
 on man's origin and destiny, 79. 
 
 and Dante, 131. 
 
272 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Plato, as poet and philosopher, 147. 
 
 Plotinus, 226, 244. 
 
 Popularity no criterion of truth, 28. 
 
 Porphyry, 244. 
 
 Prague, University of, 108. 
 
 Preexistence, doctrine of, 241. 
 
 Priestley, on the resurrection, 240. 
 
 Purgatorio, the lesson of, 163. 
 
 the gate of, described, 165. 
 
 the meaning of the allegory, 
 
 167. 
 
 Pythagoras, 105. 
 Pythagorean doctrine, 59. 
 
 Quietism, 115. 
 
 Rafael, 54, 57, 63. 
 
 Ranke, on culture hi the church, 82. 
 Raymond Lully, 130. 
 Reading, aimless, 36. 
 Realism, school of, 66, 67, 265. 
 Reason, 2, 3. 
 
 Religion in the Middle Ages, 128. 
 Religion, revealed, opponents of, 28. 
 Religious life a nursery for learn- 
 ing, 81. 
 Remus, 7. 
 Renan, on monastic institutions, 81. 
 
 on religion, 266. 
 Requiem, the, of Mozart, 64. 
 Reuchlin, 206. 
 Reverie, 36. 
 
 Richter, on literary art, 44. 
 Rod, Edouard, 266. 
 Rome among our educators, 30. 
 Romulus, 7. 
 Rose, the mystical, 173. 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 88. 
 Routine thought, 7. 
 Routine in politics, 9. 
 Royce, Josiah, on The Imitation, 114. 
 Raskin and art, 8, 67. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 8. 
 
 Semiramis, 7. 
 
 Seneca, 99. 
 
 Shakespeare, 54, 65, 147, 149. 
 
 Shakespeare's learning, 34. 
 
 his sonnets, 187, 188. 
 Shelley, his admirers, 8. 
 
 his Adonais, 188, 189. 
 Simpson, Richard, on Shakespeare, 
 
 188. 
 
 Sins, seven capital, 168. 
 Socrates, 41, 70, 105, 132. 
 Somersby, 230. 
 Sorrow, 233. 
 Soul, fourfold activity of, 1. 
 
 its faculties, 1-4. 
 
 music of, 71. 
 
 the general, 249. 
 Spedding, 242. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 8, 73. 
 
 and the noumenon, 47-49. 
 Spiritual act, more than material uni- 
 verse, 256. 
 
 Spiritual sense, 3, 4, 71. 
 
 culture of, 79-81. 
 
 and spiritual life, 80. 
 Strauss, 197. 
 Supernatural, the, 75, 76, 78. 
 
 and the natural, 78. 
 Suso, Heinrich, 91, 101. 
 Systems of philosophy, one-sided, 110. 
 
 Tauler, his mysticism, 91, 101, 
 
 his influence, 91. 
 
 Tennyson, and Arthur Hallam (note), 
 183. 
 
 and Petrarch, 186, 263. 
 
 and Shelley, 190. 
 
 and Dante, 191, 264. 
 
 and his age, 198. 
 
 his point of view, 198-206. 
 
 and Browning, 200, 205. 
 
 and Maurice, 202-204. 
 
 his conception of progress, 205, 
 260. 
 
 and Goethe, 207, 263. 
 Tennyson quoted, 107. 
 
 his reverence for the dead, 210. 
 
 and trance, 222-227. 
 
 on doubt, 228. 
 
 and Catholics, 237. 
 
 and scoffers at religion, 238, 
 250. 
 
 and Darwin, 253, 25$. 
 
 and evolution, 258. 
 
 and Newman, 259. 
 Theresa of Jesus, 101, 115, 225. 
 Time-spirit, mediaeval and modern, 
 
 134. 
 Thinking, 5. 
 
 and personality, 6. 
 
 continuous, 35. 
 Thoreau, on thought, 11. 
 Thought, principle of, 25. 
 
 St. Augustin on, 24. 
 
 ideal in, 56-59. 
 Tituriel, 102. 
 Tolstoi', 14. 
 
 Tommaseo, Nicolo, on religion. 128. 
 Trance, 223. 
 
 Transfiguration, the, 63. 
 Truth, why it suffers, 27. 
 
 and error, 29. 
 Turner, 8. 
 Tyndall, on brain-polarization (note), 
 
 Ullmann, on a Kempis (note), 111. 
 
 more just than Draper in his es- 
 timate of The Imitation, 118. 
 119. 
 
 Unitive way, the, 176. 
 
 Universe, the unseen, 74. 
 
 Unknowable, the, 74. 
 
 Vastness, quoted, 255, 256. 
 Virgil, 147, 161, 162. 
 Vision, the ecstatic, 179. 
 the mental, 296. 
 
INDEX 
 
 273 
 
 Voices, the Two, 242. 
 
 Way, the illuminative, 172. 
 
 the unitive, 175, 176. 
 Wenceslaus (note), 108. 
 Wesley, John, 88. 
 Will, supreme, 262. 
 WiU 3. 
 
 free, 201. 
 
 William of Ockham, 90. 
 Wimpole street, 209. 
 Word, the, 60, 61, 267. 
 Wordsworth, his disciples, 8. 
 
 his ideality, 69. 
 
 quoted, 79. 
 
 Zigliara, on the Supernatural, 78. 
 Zohar, quoted, 246. 
 
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