of human culture, yet with neither do I find that hearty sympathy which I desire. They are men of fair talents and generous purposes, yet destitute of deep and fervid enthusiasm, and of that kindling genius which ennobles our nature and fits it to the happiest actions. . . . Both chop logic, both are men of understanding, neither apprehends the being of poet and seer: the high works of poetic genius, the marvels of holiness, are beyond their grasp, although both are good and useful men. They eschew belief in other than bare and barren reasoning, which is the life of the eclectic school, and refuse credence to all else. There are a few minds whose views do not in all respects coincide with the doctrines of the eclectic school."

We all know what faith Alcott had in the operative power of ideas, all his life, and how little they accomplished for him, or for the world, at his hands. Brownson wished to see them moving in actual institutions; and his apprehension of the holiest influences, not being on the surface alone, was certainly more profound and far reaching than Alcott conceived.

Of the eclectic school, mentioned by Alcott with such delicate scorn, Victor Cousin was the chief exponent. Charles Sumner, during his famous youthful tour in Europe, visited Cousin in 1838, and noted in his journal that the French philosopher spoke of Brownson "as a man of great talent, and indeed as a most remarkable person. . . . His interest in Mr. Brownson appears to be unfeignedly great." In a letter to Judge Story, also, he reported of Cousin: "He has read some of the productions of Mr. Brownson, whom he thinks one of the most remarkable persons of the age, and wishes to see placed where he can pursue philosophy calmly, thinking his labors will redound to the credit of science throughout the globe."

At this period Brownson was deeply interested in Cousin and in Jouffroy, to both of whom he, to the end, felt him

self indebted "hardly less by their errors than by their truths." than by their truths." We may quote aptly again from Sumner, who, in 1840, sending from Boston to Professor Whewell at Cambridge, England, "two numbers of a journal called The Dial, which has been started by Mr. Emerson," wrote: "People have laughed at it here very much. . . . Emerson and his followers are called Transcendentalists.' I am at a loss to know what they believe. Brownson has lately avowed some strange doctrines [the Christian socialism and anti-capitalistic utterances], for which he has been sadly badgered both by politicians and philosophers." The positions of both Emerson and Brownson were evidently still undetermined in the minds of their cultivated, thoughtful contemporaries and countrymen. Both were looked at askance and somewhat derided for their originality and independence. No two personalities could appear to us now more dissimilar, less likely to harmonize. Yet it was of Emerson, doubtless, as Brownson's son believes, that the following passage in The Convert was written: "One man, and one man only, shared my entire confidence and knew my most secret thought. Him, from motives of delicacy, I do not name, but in the formation of my mind, in systematizing my ideas, and in general development and culture I owe more to him than to any other man among Protestants. We have since taken divergent courses, but I loved him as I have loved no other man, and shall so love and esteem him as long as I live. He encouraged me, and through him chiefly I was enabled to remove to Boston and commence operations' on the line of preparing for the new order of society and the new Christianity.

II.

It was upon Brownson's removal to Boston, where he lived in suburban Chelsea, eight years previous to his conversion

to Catholicity, that he developed his curiously interesting Doctrine of Life. He started from the idea of Pierre Leroux, that what Catholics call "infused grace may equally well be supplied by the mere natural communion of man with man, or of the individual with the race. He thought the Creator might raise certain individuals to an extraordinary supernatural communion with himself, men who would thus lead a divine life; and that the rest of us, by communion with them, might be elevated in some proportionate degree. By this thought he was enabled at least to perceive that the natural and the supernatural correspond, instead of -as so many imagine being opposed. He supposed Christ, as a man, to have been taken up into supernatural communion with God, and therein discovered, as he thought, a realization of the divinehuman life. The divine-human life of Christ, as thus understood, he believed had been infused into the apostles and disciples, and by them into others, and so on from one generation to another. All life being organic, all who receive this infusion of the divine-human are formed into one body; they live one and the same life, that of Christ, and therefore are termed the Church. On this theory he held that the life of Christ is not only life, but actually the principle of life. This real body and living principle of Christ in the Church, so conceived, must be authoritative and its traditions final as against private judgment.

It is easy to see how, by this rather strange road, he reached the point of becoming a Catholic. Discontinuing his Review for 1843, he started another in 1844, called Brownson's Quarterly Review, expressly to teach his "doctrine of life." But he soon found that he had thought and read himself for good and all into Catholicity; and although he continued his editorial enterprise, it was henceforth as a convert.

In the forsaking of his pet theory, and submission to the Roman Catholic Church

as the true body of Christ, Brownson did not abandon liberty of thought, but simply let it be bounded by law, as all true liberty must be. Pass beyond law in any field, and you step into anarchy. Consider human law, common, statutory. or of decree. It is a vast corporate mass of thought, of enactments, decisions, and orders, which limits not only lay folk, but lawyers and judges as well; far more minutely than the Catholic Church limits its members. Yet who will deny that while lawyers and judges and legislators must work within these certain confines only, and the whole people must submit to the same restrictions upon thought, they still all enjoy intellectual liberty, which the very existence of these metes and bounds alone makes possible?

Brownson was not a mere subservient advocate of the Church in every particular of its policy or administration, on the unavoidable and often unfortunate and ill-judging human side, either in the past or in the present. He was often a severe critic upon these matters, albeit with constant reverence for her great spiritual traditions and authoritative teachings. His outspokenness sometimes got him into very hot water; against which, however, his sincerity and fidelity had the effect of a protective coating. Because of his pugnacious quality, Catholic Americans to this day are divided in their estimate of him. Those of vigorous mind, large perceptions, and self-reliant character give him the tribute of an unbounded enthusiasm, while others who imagine that faith depends upon timidity and colorlessness shake the head or shrug the shoulder, half sadly, half cynically. They regard vigor and independence as dangerous," but are indifferent to the greater danger of stagnation.

One of the strongest witnesses to his increased strength and freedom of thought after becoming a Catholic is his powerful treatise on the American Republic, issued in September, 1865, twenty-one years subsequent to his conversion.

may

Never has the genius of our country and our nationhood been so grandly, so luminously interpreted, from so lofty a point of view, as in this masterly book, published when he was sixty-two. Mulford's The Nation, which I have already mentioned, was brought out five years later. One note the remarkable correspondences and the greater depth and broader sweep of Brownson's exposition. He distinguishes between the spirit of the nation and the mere government. The danger of the American people is in their tendency to depart from original federal republicanism, and to interpret our system in the sense of "red-republican" and social democracy. As commonly defined, democracy must, he thinks, be classed among the barbaric and anti-republican constitutions; the principle of barbarism being that power is a private or personal right, as asserted in this species of democracy. Power is not really a private, it is a political right, and, like all political rights, a public trust. All power of government comes originally from God, and there can be no government without society, no society without government. "Barbarian individual freedom" (or crude democracy) was never generalized into altruistic freedom, which is the creation of Christianity alone. Christianity, in the secular order, is republican; and although, as St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Suarez, great doctors of the Church, all maintain, the republic may change its magistrates and even its constitution, yet the people are not the source of authority. It is derived by them, collectively, from God. Were the American people originally one people, or several independent states? The Constitution simply organizes the government, and determines nothing on this point. When the colonies declared their independence, they did so jointly, as the United States, to form "a more perfect union " than the union already existing. Brownson contends that the American people were not made one by the written Constitution, as

Jefferson, Madison, Daniel Webster, and so many others supposed, but were made so by the "unwritten constitution" born with and inherent in them, "the provi dential constitution of the American people or civil society." The American democracy is "territorial," not "personal" or individual. There can be no progress without both stability and movement. We have stability in the divine trust of national power conferred upon us, and the direction of our movement is indicated by the responsibility which that implies, and in the mission which the author predicts for the United States of taking "the hegemony of the world.”

But it is useless to attempt giving here any adequate outline of this treatise. Brownson's practical faith in his country was vividly exemplified by his three sons, who joined the volunteer army for the defense of the Union in the civil war. Two of them were killed in battle. The third, surviving still, brought from the field his wounds and the rank of major, and loyally and with pious care collected and edited his father's works in thorough and able fashion.

Of the twenty volumes, four are devoted to Politics, and include a fascinating variety of themes. Four more group his essays on Civilization, in its various phases. There are four devoted to Controversy, three each to Religion and Philosophy. One treats of Scientific Theories, and another of Popular Literature. The last contains, along with much that is valuable, discriminating, suggestive, or profound, certain things which will impress the average cultivated and tolerant reader as curiosities of criticism; for example, that passage, in a review of Emerson's poems (1847), where, alluding to the weird and mysterious feelings of a "deluded insight" which come to persons who are without faith, he declares that Emerson's poems 66 are not sacred chants: they are hymns to the devil. Not God, but Satan do they praise, and they can be relished only by

devil-worshipers." To a certain extent, one can see how, judging from the extreme point of austerity in dogmatic faith, the writer might have looked upon portions of the poems written by this eminent man once his intimate and most sympathetic friend as being so at variance with purely Christian teaching as to seem devoted to the devil. But that was not a sound or wise view, and the language was most intemperate.

Brownson was not a good appreciator of literature. He lacked in a measure the large and also the fine artistic sense. Yet, on the other hand, no one could be at heart more generously disposed, or, at times, more charitable in expression towards non-Catholics; more ardent in recognition of the principle that the Holy Spirit may operate on countless souls outside the visible Church, — the principle sometimes embodied in the phrase "the baptism of desire." It is true that in one short essay, Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (1874), he went to the uttermost point of maintaining that if one actually dies a Protestant he is damned, "and will never see God as he is." This utterance, I believe, when taken nakedly by itself, is regarded by the most competent Catholic theologians as excessive and unsound. Certainly it is not sustained by the sublimely charitable expression of Leo XIII. concerning even so aggravated a case as that of the archskeptic Ernest Renan, that, since he had died without recanting, there was hope for him, because the fact showed at least that he was conscientious in unbelief. And again, Brownson's own essay, ten years earlier (1864), on Civil and Religious Freedom, extended to those outside the Catholic Church the broadest, tenderest good will, and declared a conviction that the sincere among these were as likely to be saved by God's mercy as any one else. One should not too hastily accuse him of inconsistency, in contrasting these two essays. The subject at issue is complicated, and a writer may

say different things at different times, apparently conflicting, which, if more carefully stated, would be found to result mainly from the different conditions or grades and shades of distinction he was considering at the moment.

It was in this paper on Civil and Religious Freedom that he attacked the Jesuits as being far behind the age, ultraconservative, seeking to perpetuate sixteenth-century ideas and methods, and having outlived their usefulness. The special outburst against the Jesuits was unduly petulant, and, as it seems to me, undeserved. No doubt, in the Catholic Church, as in any large aggregate of persons, one runs up against many things which are painful, disappointing, even repulsive. The convert is sometimes sickened by the discovery that various great principles of conduct and duty, which are so firmly upheld in catechism, sermon, and Catholic literature, are treated with a more than non-Catholic indifference by priests and prelates, when a practical case arises; and that the muchboasted " authority" of the Church in keeping people to their common duties and sacred vows becomes a nullity in the hands of weak pastors and bishops, of petty and intriguing curates, or even of officious laymen and women, who are allowed to domineer and set aside the rules of faith because they are wealthy or influential. It is perhaps part of the price we pay for the ineffable beauty of the Church's truth, and for the interior discipline which may be had from her teachings, if not from the practice of such unworthy representatives. I do not think Brownson is much to blame for having exploded once, to the extent of a few pages, after twenty years of chafing under these or other disappointments. In nearly every period there have been true, brave, loyal Catholics who have spoken as plainly as he did, with good intention; and in much that he said he was justified.

With all his vehemence and even self

will when he thought he was right, he yet was capable of great repression and docility, as was shown when Father Walworth (another eminent convert, the son of Chancellor Walworth, of New York) objected to an article he had offered to the Catholic World. After a sharp discussion, in which Brownson stoutly resented all criticism, he suddenly tore the manuscript in pieces, and proceeded to write a new one on the lines proposed by Walworth. He wrote a good deal for that magazine between 1865 and 1873, having removed to Elizabeth, New Jersey; and he was also lecturer on constitutional law at Seton Hall in 1871, when the college was under the presidency of Father, now Archbishop Corrigan. In 1874 he revived his own Review once more, in a new series; but he died in 1876, the "Centennial Year." He had much to do with helping to guide into the Catholic Church Isaac Hecker, afterwards founder of the now famous and useful society of the Paulist Fathers in New York.

A curious instance of the influence which he exerted upon other minds, in religious matters, was told me by his

son.

Orestes had a brother, Orrin, who lived at Dublin, Ohio, and became a Mormon. In August, 1851, he visited Orestes at Mount Bellingham, Chelsea, and entered into a long argumentation with him on religion. Orrin would put a question, which Orestes would answer with uncompromising, unsparing force. Then Orrin, without saying a word, would dart out of the house and walk a long time in the hot sunshine; after which he would return and put another question. The same process was then repeated; Orrin still making no rejoinder. When this odd dialogue ended, there was no summing up: Orrin went away in silence. After nine years, during which the brothers had not met again, Orrin wrote to Orestes that he had become a Catholic. From Dublin, Ohio, he had gone to Dublin, Ireland, where

he was received into the Church, and was confirmed by Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati; and a notice of the fact appeared in the Paris Univers.

as a man

One impression of Orestes Brownson is that he was self-absorbed who had so much to study, to think of, and to write about might well be — and had no bosom friends. If he had not such friends in the sense of permanent cronies, he made up for the lack by his devoted affection for his family and the overflowing abundance of his kindness to mere acquaintances or strangers who sought his counsel. In personal appearance he seems to have blended the leonine aspect with something of apostolic benignity; his strong, incisively pointed beak nose and magnificent forehead giving him a mien of grandeur. "We all remember Brownson," writes the son of an old friend and admirer, "as a large, heavy man, with bushy beard and hair, quite white when I knew him; a rugged and rather gruff-voiced old fellow, but with real refinement of feeling, warmhearted, and full of sympathy for his fellows, individually and at hand as well as generally. Bishop, afterwards Archbishop Bailey [of Newark] nicknamed him Ursa Major,' he was so big and hairy and gruff.

was fluent and strong.

. . . His talk

...

He spoke with

a dominating air, as of a powerful and all-grasping mind. . . . A well-known Boston man said of him that the only safe way, in arguing with Brownson, was to deny everything. If you admitted anything, even the most simple and obvious, that he proposed, you were lost: he would proceed logically and prove his point triumphantly." In conversation, he was inclined, like Coleridge, to voluble monologue, which seemed to some hearers excessive; but not so to one gentleman who called upon him once in New York. This gentleman was then a Protestant, but wished to make some inquiries about Catholicity. Brownson received him cordially at ten