where this violence was restrained, multitudes thus hid themselves, thinking, as Tacitus says of poets, "that, if they were to excel, it was necessary for them to leave the conversation of the crowd, and the pleasures of the city, and to retire, as the poets themselves say, in nemora et lucos, id est, in solitudinem *." For Catholicity, it must be remarked, attracts wise men, by propos ing, to such as feel themselves qualified for it, that sweet and wise retreat which Plato deemed to be so eminently the choice of him who is undeceived as to human happiness. In that magnificent vision of the future state which Socrates describes at the end of the Republic, he says, “The soul of Ajax came, and, remembering the affront he had received concerning the armour of Achilles, refused to resume a human body. After that came the soul of Agamemnon, who, having in aversion the human race on account of his past misfortunes, chose the condition of an eagle. The soul of Epeus, who made the wooden horse, preferred the condition of a woman skilled in working at her needle. The soul of Ulysses came also to choose its lot, but remembering his past calamities, and thenceforth exempt from ambition, it sought for a retreat and the peaceful condition of a private person, which others had left, and said that such would be its choice if it had been the first t." It is Catholicity which invites and attracts men to the secret paths of study, led by the love of moral truth and sacred wisdom. Has the Church any influence in this locality, then here you are sure to find cells, and books, and all "Those instruments with which high spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave." Her voice prompts all those words that poets utter when they say, "Bid them love each other and be blest, And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, Far from her the desire of producing or perpetuating a stationary period in regard to wisdom. She wishes that each man and each nation should ever advance towards its fountain. "Adhuc enim," she says with St. Augustin, "modicum lumen est in hominibus; ambulent, ambulent ne eos tenebræ comprehendant ‡." A change comes o'er the spirit of our wanderertacita studiorum occultus in umbra. He reads old books, and seeks to learn from them the magic of their mysteries. He *De Oratoribus. + Lib. x. Confess. x. 23. finds himself drawn on to love that Church which exalts the dignity, purifies the intention, enlarges the sphere, and rewards with richest recompense the wisdom of the studious. There no one, unless through his own grievous fault, has occasion to complain that he had unnumbered obstacles to turn his steps aside from this delightful road; that, if he should at last have conquered them, it has been by purchase, and for a dear price, having grown old in the solitary, unaided struggle. For the invitation of Catholicity to man from his youth might be expressed in the beautiful language of just reason, as represented by the poet, saying, "You will shine in the schools; you will not pass your time talking idly in the public places; you will have no law-suits for frivolous subjects; you will proceed to the academy, to walk beneath the shade of sacred olives with a wise young man of your own age. In happy leisure you will enjoy the sweet odours exhaled from the yew, and the foliage of the white poplar in the beautiful days of spring, when the plane and the young elm blend their murmuring sound*." In such proposals there is an attraction which many minds will feel. For men, in regard to the retreat required for study, resemble the holly, which desires the shade in its youth, and which is therefore met with so commonly in the woods, growing under the loftiest trees, as if delighting in the shelter. Men, after all, would not wish to be young pines, of which foresters say that, when once planted, instead of being attended to like other trees, they ought to be abandoned to themselves and forgotten during many years. A system which leaves them thus to themselves in youth can never be recognized as emanating from a mother; but Catholicism attracts to itself those who would nourish a love for something higher than the passing interests of each day: within the Church such men are found, while, as the poet says of others, "Thro' briars and brambles, in the world we stray, And thorny care, and rank and stinging hate, O sacred solitude! divine retreat! There, blest with health, with bus'ness unperplex'd, "I will continue to study and to write," says Rupertus to * Nubes, 1005. Varenne-Fenille, Mém sur l'Admin. Forestière, ii. + Id. Cuno, bishop of Ratisbon, in the epistle prefixed to his work de Divinis Officiis. "I will feast in these writings, as the holy law prescribes et adorato Domino Deo tuo epulaberis in omnibus bonis, quæ Dominus Deus tuus dederit tibi." : Cardan, in his old age, was so contented with his state, that he declared he would not change it to become young again if he were to give up wisdom in the exchange. "It appears," says Leibnitz, relating his words, "that such men have pleasures which cannot be conceived by those who have not tasted them." "It is not a little thing," he adds, "to be content with God, and with the universe, and to possess those true principles which give such an advantage over all that the ancients derived from their philosophy." Who, then, that really seeks wisdom, can turn from the centre in Catholicity, where it is so prized? "Abundantia hominis sapientia ejus est," says S. Pachomius *. Whither, but to the Catholic Church will you prudently proceed to find such abundance? 66 'Sapientia apud sanctos est," says the same voice; “et in illis Dei voluntas reperitur†;" all studies else are but as circular lines, and death the centre where they must all meet ‡. The old French, alluding to what we have just seen, used to speak of a Lenten saint, un saint de Carême, meaning one of those men that hide themselves for the study of wisdom, saying with the poet, we will feasting philosophize, neque enim, cum lectulus aut me Porticus excepit, desum mihi §." How loved, how honoured are such characters where the Catholic religion reigns! Catholicity accepts even the term philosopher. St. Odilo, in his life of St. Maiolus, calls Lyons Philosophiæ nutricem et matrem; the old historian of Muri, which the unjust pretenders to wisdom have so recently plundered and suppressed, says that "study is indispensable for religious men.-Libros autem oportet semper describere et augere et meliorare, ornare, et annotare, quia vita omnium spiritualium hominum sine literis nihil est ||." Men in the world are not left ignorant by Catholic voices that wisdom is better for them than all treasures. "They tell me, seigneur uncle," writes Antonio de Guevara to Don Diego de Guevara, "that you are very sad and out of humour in consequence of the weather having injured your crops, and that you are not contented, as is usual with old men but not with such as are prudent like you. Your vines are frozen, but it would be a far greater misfortune to have your * Epist. iii. ap. Luc. Holst. Cod. Reg. + Massenger. + Id. § Hor. Sat. i. 4. Acta Fundat. Murens. Monast. wisdom frozen than your fruits; that would be a greater loss than if all your domains and lordships were ravaged by tempests: for, my lord uncle, you know well that in the markets of Villada and Palentia there is plenty of corn to sell, but at no fair of Medina can you purchase wisdom." But would you behold proof how, in the Catholic civilization, moral wisdom was honoured, and how it ever proved a road of advancement to the highest station? You have only to refer to the history of the Holy See, which displays so many men of the lowest birth exalted to that highest of all dignities, and solely in consideration of their assiduity in cultivating it. Pope St. Dionysius was of such obscure birth, that his origin cannot be traced; John XVIII. was of the lowest race; Damasus II. was son of a Bavarian peasant; Adrian IV. had so poor a mother, that she depended for subsistence on the alms of her parish; Urban IV. was the son of a cobbler: Nicholas IV. was the child of an indigent family; Celestin V. was the eleventh son of poor parents; Benedict XI. was son of a washerwoman; John XXII. was son of a collector of old rags; Benedict XII. was a miller's son; Boniface IX. was son of a poor family fallen from a noble station; Alexander V. did not know who were his parents, all he knew was, that when a boy he lived by begging his bread; Nicholas V. had a mother who lived by rearing poultry; Xystus IV. was son of a fisherman, with whom he exercised the same calling; Adrian VI. was son of a shipwright; Pius V. was son of a shepherd; Xystus V. was son of a herdsman. Thus was realized the symbolism of the triple crown, which, as an eloquent writer observes, "is the crown of the superiority of merit over birth, of the intelligence over the flesh, and of charity which unites, over even justice, which contends *." But, without turning to the society professedly Spiritual and intellectual, refer to what took place in temporal States during the most distracted periods of Christian history, and you will find the esteem of wisdom distinguishing all men Catholically influenced. Alfred, desiring to obtain Grimbald from France to add to the number of wise instructors for his people, sent an embassy of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and religious laymen, bearing valuable presents to his ecclesiastical superior Fullo, archbishop of Rheims, to ask permission for him to come to reside in England. Wisdom was held in such high honour, that the imperial palace of Charlemagne had for courtiers men whose only ambition was to cultivate it. Then was there the school of the palace, to which true philosophers from all countries resorted. Innumerable instances of this profound and practical respect for wise men may be adduced from * Gerbet, Esquisse de Rom. Chrét. ii. c. 7. the history of Christendom down to the latest times. But if you turn from the centre, where will you find wisdom, in the ancient sense of the word, thus prized, thus loved, and honoured? Where will you find the reasons of the few-not meaning thereby the novelties of sophists at variance with tradition-accepted as more worthy than the voices of the many, that is, of the multitude under the delusion of a temporary excitement? Where will you find wisdom studied, traditionally handed down, and esteemed for its own sake? The learned author of the "New Cratylus" complains of men allowing special or professional knowledge to assume the honours which are due to general education. He remarks, “ that the training of an individual for some particular calling is not an education of man as such; that the better a man is educated professionally the less is he a man. Yes," he adds, "to use the words of an able American writer, the planter, who is man sent out into the fields to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sinks into the farmer and is not man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the nature of his craft. The lawyer becomes a statute-book, the mechanic a machine." Here, however, we may remark, that in general the lower classes are in a position more favourable to wisdom, in the true sense of the term, than those who exercise the learned professions; and, accordingly, we never find that the former attempt any systematic separation between their virtue as men, -with which we shall presently observe all true wisdom must be combined, and their business maxims of daily life. "Law and friendship do not agree," says the Sage of Lincoln's Inn. Each learned profession has its rules of etiquette, which neither love, nor any sentiment allied with wisdom, is ever to break through. Addison, "whose humanity is without a parallel in literary history," made a law to himself when in office, as Swift has recorded, never to remit his regular fees in civility to his friends. "For," said he, "I may have a hundred friends; and, if my fee be two guineas, I shall, by relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend gain more than two; there is, therefore, no proportion between the good imparted, and the evil suffered." Every one knows in like manner that the same character belongs to the modern Hippocrates, as the etiquette of physicians must not yield to personal feelings; whereas, in the classes of society more favourable to the Catholic appreciation of wisdom, nothing of this kind is discernible. When do we ever hear a carpenter or mason, a boatman or a gardener's boy, seeking to excuse their breach of any of the natural virtues, by alleging the custom or philosophy of their trade? Who ever heard them say, that friendship does not VOL. VI. |