riched even this life, whoever has the heart of a man, and a single generous feeling in his soul, would be disposed to murmur at Providence for having given us our birth amid the meanness and filth of the modern world. Other parts of antiquity, and even mediæval facts, are also remote in place and time, and have a certain poetic charm when embellished by the art of the historian; but nevertheless they do not approach Greek and Roman excellence. The Middle Ages are, no doubt, admirable for their Christian genius, and the people then, so far as animated by the Catholic idea, certainly surpassed the most cultivated gentile world; but I know not what there is in their annals to admire, except what they directly or indirectly derived from religion; and the modern eulogists of Feudalism, Chivalry, Gothic Architecture, and the Crusades, strike me as being little reasonable and very dull. The knightly heroes, and all those fearless or lion-hearted warriors, with their mad adventures and silly love-making, appear to me very much like those one finds in Boiardo and Ariosto, and Cervantes, who hits them off in his inimitable way, I am inclined to believe, partakes often of the philosophical historian not less than of the satirical poet. There may be something laudable in their strong muscles and reckless generosity, but assuredly they lack simplicity and common sense, and therefore true greatness. Their courage is rendered ridiculous by the lack of worthy aim, and by effort, pomp, and ostentation. We do not find in them the prudence, the naturalness, the true valor, and the sane and tranquil fury of Themistocles, Epaminondas, and Scipio, and they amongst us who revive the chivalric practices, and fancy themselves advancing the civilization of the age, only succeed in getting themselves laughed at. If you really wish to advance the age, and have really at heart to change its manners and customs, which, by the way, is no joke, - leave the old romances and chronicles, and turn to history; add the superhuman excellences of the Gospel to the ancient spirit of Athens, Sparta, Samnium, and Rome; assemble and melt into each other Plato and Dante, Brutus and Michael Angelo, Cato and Hildebrand, Lycurgus and Charles Borromeo; fuse together these elements, which we marvel to find separated in history, so necessary are they each to the others' perfection, and cause to come forth from their fusion a new civilization, higher and more exquisite than the world has hitherto known. This should be the great endeavour of the age, and especially of us Italians."- Introduzione, Tom. I. cap. 2, pp. 164 – 168. We might easily extract much more to the same purport, but this is sufficient for our present purpose, and, unless we wholly mistake the author's meaning, or unless he attaches at ridiculous importance to mere external polish, fully bears us out in our assertion, that he holds that in civilization and strictly secular culture the heterodox and pagan world surpassed, at least the modern orthodox world, and that what is now demanded for the advancement of mankind is the union of polished gentilism and Christianity; which, since polished gentilism, in so far as it has any thing not truly of Christian origin, or not created or inspired by the orthodox priesthood, is the product of the lay genius, is the union of the lay society and the sacerdotal, of secular culture and sacerdotal culture. We are not disposed to deny that the Græco-Roman civilization retained some valuable portions of the primitive revelation in the order of the intelligible, and that these gave it a certain worth, in some respects even a certain grandeur; but we do deny that the heathen world, even in its least corrupt nations, and in its most blooming periods, retained any portions of that revelation not retained by the chosen society, or the orthodox priesthood; and it seems to us not a little strange, that a writer who makes a boast of high-toned Catholicity, and holds the Catholic priesthood to be infallibly assisted and protected by the Holy Ghost, should send us from it to an acknowledged heretical and corrupt society to find portions of truth and manifestations of virtue not to be found in that priesthood itself, assumed to have always preserved the revelation in its purity and integrity. It is not an ordinary genius that would think of sending one in search of pure water from a pure to a corrupt fountain to obtain it. Gioberti tells us, over and over again, that philosophy cannot be preserved, or successfully cultivated, outside of orthodoxy and the Catholic society, yet he sends us to the old Pythagoreans and Platonists, and among the moderns principally to Leibnitz and Reid, that is, to heathens and heretics, to study it. The men he most praises are almost without exception heretics, infidels, or at least men of very questionable orthodoxy and piety. He praises Vico, indeed, but even Vico, as we have read him in a French translation, was hardly less pantheistic as to the foundation of his thought than M. Victor Cousin, whom the author wars against. He appears to hold Malebranche in high esteem, it is true, but whether this is well or not we are unable to say, for we know Malebranche only at second hand. But Leibnitz was an eclectic, as Cousin justly asserts, and the father of German rationalism, which Gioberti condemns and refutes. Dr. Reid was a Scotch Presbyterian minister, a mere psychologist, a sort of feeble prelude to the German Kant. The Pythagoreans, as Gioberti NEW SERIES. VOL. IV. NO. IV. 56 himself confesses, held to the heresy of the eternity of matter, and Plato he owns was a moderate pantheist. Yet it is to these impure and corrupt sources he sends us to draw the living waters which are to refresh and revivify our drooping scientifical world! We confess we are not edified by finding the Abbate proposing, as the condition of producing a higher and more perfect civilization than the world has yet known, the tempering together, or fusing into one, of "Plato and Dante, Brutus and Michael Angelo, Cato and Hildebrand, Lycurgus and Charles Borromeo." Dante would have been improved by more frequent prayer and meditation, by a more strict conformity to the teachings, the spirit, and the requirements of his religion, which would have softened the asperities of his temper, sweetened his affections, and relieved the darkness of his passions, and made him more amiable as a man, without detracting from his strength, or his sublimity as a poet; but we know not what Plato had which would have made him a more elevated or perfect character. An infusion of St. Francis of Sales, or of Fénelon, would, no doubt, have been an improvement, but not an infusion of Plato. Michael Angelo was far enough from being perfect, but we had always supposed that his defect consisted in his being too much, not in his being not enough, of a heathen, as was the case with but too many of his Italian contemporaries. What the weak-minded Brutus if Marcus Brutus be the Brutus meant, the ingrate, the conspirator, the assassin, the self-murderer, who conspired against his best friend, plunged his dagger into the only man worthy to govern Rome, and when defeated fell pitiably on the sword of his companion, exclaiming, "O Virtue, I have worshipped thee as a god, but I find thee an empty name!". had which it would have been to his advantage to possess, we are quite unable to conjecture. We know nothing in Brutus to admire, unless we are prepared to instaurate the worship of the dagger, and to proclaim the right of every man to assassinate whomsoever he takes it into his head does not understand liberty as he does, or who is not favorable to what he chooses to call patriotism. Then, what had the stoical pedant, Cato Uticensis, the Cato we presume the author means, stuffed with a double quantity of the superlative pride of his sect, shrinking as a poltroon from defeat, reading Plato on immortality, and cutting his own throat, to add to the elevation, or completeness, or finish of the character of the sainted Hildebrand, the illustrious Gregory the Seventh, who, not from pride, but from humility, never - bowed but to his God, and never lost an opportunity of asserting truth and sanctity, of withstanding the lordly, royal, or imperial oppressor, or of befriending the friendless, protecting the weak and innocent, and helping the helpless, who, when sacrilegiously driven from Rome to Salerno, bore his exile with true Christian fortitude, in resignation, and without a murmur, and exclaimed, in yielding up his pure and heroic spirit, "I have loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile"? Or what could the great Cardinal St. Charles Borromeo the learned, polished, enlightened, wise, energetic, tender, vigilant, brave, faithful, and eminently meek and affectionate Archbishop of Milan, who conferred by his heroic virtues blessings on Italy and the world, not yet exhausted — borrow to perfect his character as a man, a prince, a priest, or a saint from the stern old Spartan lawgiver, who legalized theft, adultery, and murder, forbade whatever could charm or embellish life, and rejected every virtue not a virtue of the camp? Really the learned and philosophic Abbate must be joking, or else he must suppose that we have forgotten to study history. We ourselves, like most men, at some period of their lives, who have studied Greek and Roman antiquity, and read the classics, especially Livy and Plutarch, have at times been disposed to rank the Græco-Roman civilization above its merits, and, indeed, we have not long since expressed our views of it in terms not fitly chosen, and which require qualification; but we have never dreamed of commending it in the sense in which we now understand Gioberti to approve it. The heathen standard of greatness and the Christian are different, and in all important respects diametrically opposed one to the other. Tried by the heathen standard, the great men of Livy and Plutarch had qualities which the moderns have not in an equal degree; but tried by the Christian standard, in respect to either of the qualities demanded or tolerated by our religion, they shrink, even as men, into insignificance, before the great men of the Bollandists. The principle of heathen greatness is pride, and if pride is the principle of true greatness, we certainly ought, with Gioberti, to sympathize with and admire the Græco-Roman civilization, and to hold that in the human order it far surpassed the modern. That kind of culture which takes man instead of God for its principle, and substitutes the glory of man for the glory of God, pride for humility, and earthly pleasures for heavenly, we believe was really carried, by the ancient Greek and Roman people, to a degree of perfection to which no modern Catholic nation has as yet succeeded in carrying it. Thus far Gioberti's doctrine is unquestionably sound and undeniable. us. But when it is proposed to combine this gentile culture with the superhuman excellences of the Gospel, the question changes. The spirit of ancient Athens, Sparta, Samnium, and Rome was the spirit of the world, and proposed as the end the glory of man, individual or social, and the embellishment and enjoyment of this mundane life. Now is this spirit compatible with the spirit of the Gospel? Here is the question, and we know on Divine authority that it is not; for our Lord expressly opposes his maxims to the maxims of the gentiles, and tells us that the spirit of the gentile, the heathen, and, let Gioberti say what he will, his favorite Italo-Greek or Pelasgic nations were heathen, was what we have just described it to be. "For after all these things do the heathen seek," that is, what shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewith shall we be clothed, or, in other words, the goods and pleasures of this life. He bids us not be like them, but "seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto "" There can be no union between the two, no alliance between pride and humility, Christ and the world. Our Lord says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, that is, the humble; the heathen adored pride. The Lord says, Blessed are they who weep; the heathen said, Blessed are they who rejoice. The Lord says, Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice's sake, and blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; the heathen thought this a calamity, and more than flesh could endure. The Lord says, Lay not up treasures on earth, but lay up treasures in heaven; the heathen said, Lay up treasures on the earth. The Lord directed us not to look for our reward here, but to wait for it in heaven; the heathen said, Seek your reward in this world, and study to enjoy yourselves here, eat, drink, and be merry, while life lasts, for we know not what comes after it. Now, though Gioberti talks much about conciliating contraries, and harmonizing opposites, we have found in his dialectics no way by which these two opposite, contradictory spirits can be reconciled, and brought to operate in unison. The one can live only by the destruction of the other. Hence the perpetual warfare which rages in the bosom of Christian individuals and Christian nations, a warfare |