faith, that the passions might become domestic foes, against which it would be impossible to provide too many securities. Their language with respect to the danger of sense is more frequently taxed with exaggeration than with leniency; for in truth they saw connections which the men of later times cannot or will not discern: they knew what was the genius of pleasure, how unlike in reality to her appearance; they saw her deformed and cruel, and it seemed as if they continually heard her horrid reply to the poor victim who, too late, discovered her treachery. "Sink with me then; we two will sink on the wide waves of ruin, even as a vulture and a snake, outspent, drop, twisted in inextricable fight, into a shoreless sea. دو Nevertheless, of the light in which the passions were regarded by the Catholic instructors, and of the relative position of sense and spirit in the Catholic philosophy, the moderns are in general profoundly ignorant. They have yet to learn that the abuse, not the use, of nature, was condemned by it. The guides who apply that medicine to the intelligence of men, only observe that when the mind revolts from God, the senses in their turn revolt from the mind. In this situation they remark, that the body, though willingly yet impatiently follows the senses; and, as Marsilius Ficinus observes, "that thence arise the most monstrous opinions, and manners the most foul and execrable." These guides may remark indeed, with Plato, that "the body, through its wants, is the subject of a thousand occupations to deprive us of leisure; that the infirmities which it entails upon us, prevent us often from the search of truth; and that the passions with which it moves us, fill us with a multitude of delusions, so that we cannot see the real nature of things; for that wars, and insurrections, and battles, have no other origin but the body, and the desires arising from it +." Where expressions are stronger, and such as seem to warrant our concluding that the very use of nature, and the work of the Creator himself, are reprobated, a closer inspection will convince us, that these arise merely from a consideration of some peculiarity of circumstance, involving danger, of some accidental incongruity produced by the position of an individual, or perhaps from a willing re+ Plato, Phædo, 66. * Marsil. Ficin. Epist. lib. ii. nouncement of what is known to be intrinsically good and innocent, in order to satisfy the desires of a generous and feeling heart, as in the instance related by St. Martin of Tours, of the young maiden, whom Injuriosus, a senator of Auvergne, sought in marriage, and who exclaimed on her bridal day, "Would to heaven that the kisses of my nurses had been given to me in my shroud! The pomps of the world disgust me when I think of my Redeemer pierced upon the cross. I cannot bear the sight of diadems glittering with precious stones, when I think of his thorny crown!" Annihilation, however, or the rejection of any part of the Creator's work, as evil in itself, was a process unknown in the philosophy of the clean of heart; and so far were the Catholic instructors from imagining that sense is opposed to the spiritual life, that, according to their unanimous voice, the latter must commence with it. St. Bernard affirms this expressly. "As we are carnal," saith he, "our desires and our lives must commence by the flesh; and if this flesh be well regulated, if it be contained in order, perfecting itself by degrees under the guidance of grace, it will finally owe to the spirit the compliment of its perfection. It is not that which is spiritual which goes in the first line, but that which is animal. We must first bear the resemblance of the earthly man, before we bear that of the heavenly man *.” "Qui futurus erat etiam carne spiritalis," says St. Augustin; "factus est mente carnalist." Nor was it only in the first steps of the spiritual life that these guides accepted the attendance of sense. They required it during the arduous progress to consummate the union of the soul with God. Let us hear Hugo of St. Victor: "There is a certain medium to which the body ascends, that it may approach to spirit; and again, to which the spirit descends, that it may approach to body. Unless Moses had ascended, and God descended, they would not have met. Thus the spirit also ascends, and God descends, in the same manner as the body had ascended and the spirit descended. The body ascends by sense, the spirit descends by sensuality. The spirit ascends by contemplation, and God descends by revelation t." Richard of St. Victor speaks to the same effect; + De Civ. Dei. Hugo S. Vict. de unione Corporis et Spiritus. • Bern. de Amore Dei. 66 66 66 but as we proceed further, we shall have a more fitting occasion for hearing his sublime words. The passions, therefore, were to be directed, not extirpated; and St. Clement of Alexandria cites, with an approval which would have been echoed by all spiritual guides, the words of Plato, in the third book of his Republic: Επιμελεῖσθαι σώματος δεῖν ψυχῆς ἕνεκα ἁρμονίας *.” Passions, when they are consequent to reason," says the Angelic Doctor, are good; they exercise a twofold influence, by redundance and by election; that is to say, when the superior part of the soul is intensely moved towards something, the inferior part also follows its motion, and thus the passion existing in the sensitive appetite is consequently a sign of the intensity of the will, and indicates a greater moral goodness. In another manner also they act, by way of election; that is, when a man chooses with the judgment of reason to be affected by some passion, that he may work more promptly by the co-operation of the sensitive appetite; and thus the passion of the soul adds to the goodness of the action +." If the body were annihilated, and soul to have universal sway, it is not so certain that the consequence would be a paradise on earth. The scholastic philosophers remarked, that the soul is susceptible of some kinds of evil delight, which cannot be traced to the senses; as when it is delighted with pride, without any imagination. For the senses cannot represent this to it, nor can it be thought to be white or black, harmonious or harsh, sweet or bitter, odoriferous or of unpleasant odour, soft or hard. There are indeed, say they, more kinds of delight, in which the soul is delighted without the senses, than those to which they are instrumental +." Nor is this all; for the very difficulty of reconciling the use of passions with obedience to the eternal reason, was said by the schoolmen to conduce to the perfection of man. St. Augustin remarks, that the passion of mercy serves reason; and St. Thomas observing that the Stoics represented all passions of the soul as evil, says, "If we name passions simply, all the movements of the sensitive appetite, it appertains to the perfection of human good, that these passions should be * Stromat. lib. iv. c. 4. + St. Thom. Sum. p. 1. Q. xxiv. art. 3. moderated by reason; for, since the good of man consists in reason as the root, that good will be so much the more perfect, as it can be applied to more things which agree with man; therefore no one can doubt but that it belongs to the perfection of moral good that the acts of the exterior members should be directed by the rule of reason *.” The angel of the school shrinks not from the most delicate and subtle investigations here, and solves a difficulty in the way of reconciling cleanness of heart with conformity to the present disposition of nature in a manner most strikingly characteristic of the bright school whose hallowed light shows all things beautiful and pure. "Some of the ancient doctors," saith he, "considering the nature of concupiscence, supposed that in the state of innocence things had been otherwise ordained;" and St. Gregory Nyssen said that the human race would have been multiplied as the angelic, and that it was only from foreseeing the fall and its consequences that God created man male and female. But this is not to speak rationally; for the things which are natural to man were neither taken away nor given by sin: but it is manifest that the multiplication of the human race was ordained naturally as that of other creatures, connected with which two things are to be considered,-that which the order of nature requires, and a certain deformity of immoderate concupiscence, which was not in the state of innocence when the inferior faculties were subject to reason. Not that purity was passionless, as some say; for all sensible delight was so much the greater, as nature was purer and more susceptible: but that the power of concupiscence did not inordinately prevail in despite of reason, as one temperate in food has no less pleasure than one intemperate and to this agree the words of St. Augustin, that "the state of innocence did not exclude delight, but only the tyranny of sense and sin-bred disquietude of mind; and therefore in that state continence was not laudable, when there was fecundity without sint." St. Augustin says that "original rectitude consisted in perfect subjection of body to the mind;" and the Catholic instructors shew that this subjection in general may be in some degree re-established by maintaining the rational faculty in 1. Q. xxiv. art. 3. + St. Thom. Sum. p. 1. 9. xcviii. art. 2. subjection to God, the eternal reason. Modern philosophers remark with Novalis, that by faith man arms and strengthens all his powers, and that susceptibility and passion become durable and spiritual actions. The scholastic teachers who distinguish fourteen beatitudes of soul and body, seven of which they say, relating to the body, cannot be perfected on earth, but will be enjoyed in perfection hereafter*, would have found no difficulty in subscribing to the opinion of a late philosopher, who says, "The sentient principle may adhere to us in another state, and I sometimes imagine that many of those powers which have been called instinctive, belong to the more refined clothing of the spirit, which death may not destroy, though the organs of gross sensation, the nerves and brain, will be destroyed +." In what, then, was to consist the conformity which makes clean the heart of man? Let Albert the Great reply to this question in the name of Catholic generations: "The image of God, in the soul, consists," saith he, "in these three powers-reason, memory, and will; and so long as these are not wholly impressed by God, the soul is not deiform according to its primary creation; for God is the form of the soul by whom it ought to be impressed as if wax by a seal, and stamped as if stamped with a seal; and this cannot be effected unless reason be perfectly, as far as its capacity permits, illuminated with the knowledge of God, which is the highest truth, and the will be perfectly affected to loving the highest goodness, and the memory be fully absorbed in contemplating and enjoying eternal felicity. Therefore all phantasms, species, images, and forms of all things detached from the idea of God, must be expelled from the mind, that your exercise concerning God within yourself may depend wholly on the sole naked intelligence, affection, and will." He then proceeds to show that the end of all exercises is to intend and rest in the Lord God within ourselves by the purest intelligence and the most devout affection-an exercise which is not carried on in fleshly organs and in exterior senses, but by that which constitutes man-intelligence and affection. Therefore he concludes, as long as man plays with phantasms and senses, * S. Anselmi de Similit. cap. 47. |