Other disadvantages of the French system are still worse.—In (the nineteenth) century, an extraordinary event occurs. Already about the middle of the preceding century, the discoveries of scientists, coordinated by the philosophers, had afforded the sketch in full of a great picture, still in course of execution and advancing towards completion, a picture of the physical and moral universe. In this sketch the point of sight was fixed, the perspective designed, the various distances marked out, the principal groups drawn, and its outlines were so correct that those who have since continued the work have little to add but to give precision to these and fill them up.5347 In their hands, from Herschel and Laplace, from Volta, Cuvier, AmpÈre, Fresnel and Faraday to Darwin and Pasteur, Burnouf, Mommsen and Renan, the blanks on the canvas have been covered, the relief of the figures shown and new features added in the sense of the old ones, thus completing it without changing in any sense the expression of the whole, but, on the contrary, in such a way as to consolidate, strengthen and perfect the master-conception which, purposely or not, had imposed itself on the original painters, all, predecessors and successors, working from nature and constantly inviting a comparison between the painting and the model.—And, for one hundred years, this picture, so interesting, so magnificent, and the accuracy of which is so well guaranteed, instead of being kept private and seen only by select visitors, as in the eighteenth century, is publicly exposed and daily contemplated by an ever-increasing crowd. Through the practical application of the same scientific discoveries, owing to increased facilities for travel and intercommunication, to abundance of information, to the multitude and cheapness of books and newspapers, to the diffusion of primary instruction, the number of visitors has increased enormously.5348 Not only has curiosity been aroused among the workmen in towns, but also with the peasants formerly plodding along in the routine of their daily labor, confined to their circle of six leagues in circumference. This or that small daily journal treats of divine and human things for a million of subscribers and probably for three millions of readers.—Of course, out of a hundred visitors, ninety of them are not capable of comprehending the sense of the picture; they give it only a cursory glance; moreover, their eyes are not properly educated for it, and they are unable to grasp masses and seize proportions. Their attention is generally arrested by a detail which they interpret in a wrong way, and the mental image they carry away is merely a fragment or a caricature; basically, if they have come to see a magisterial work, it is most of all due to vanity and so that his spectacle, which some of them enjoy, should not remain the privileged of a few. Nevertheless, however imperfect and confused their impressions, however false and ill-founded their judgments, they have learned something important and one true idea of their visit remains with them: of the various pictures of the world not one is painted by the imagination but from nature.5349

Now, between this picture and that which the Catholic Church presents to them, the difference is enormous. Even with rude intellects, or minds otherwise occupied, if the dissimilarity is not clearly perceived it is vaguely felt; in default of scientific notions, the simple hearsay caught on the wing, and which seem to have flickered through the mind like a flash of light over a hard rock, still subsists there in a latent state, amalgamating and agglutinating into a solid block until at length they form a massive, refractory sentiment utterly opposed to faith.—With the Protestant, the opposition is neither extreme nor definitive. His faith, which the Scriptures give him for his guidance, leads him to read the Scriptures in the original text and, hence, to read with profit, to call to his aid whatever verifies and explains an ancient text, linguistics, philology, criticism, psychology, combined with general and particular history; thus does faith lay hold on science as an auxiliary. According to diverse souls, the role of the auxiliary is more or less ample it may accordingly adapt itself to the faculties and needs of each soul, and hence extend itself indefinitely, and already do we see ahead the time when the two collaborators, enlightened faith and respectful science, will together paint the same picture, or each separately paint the same picture twice in two different frames.— With the Slavs and Greeks, faith, like the Church and the rite, is a national thing; creed forms one body with the country, and there is less disposition to dispute it; besides, it is not irksome; it is simply a hereditary relic, a domestic memorial, a family icon, a summary product of an exhausted art no longer well understood and which has ceased to produce. It is rather sketched out than completed, not one feature having been added to it since the tenth century; for eight hundred years this picture has remained in one of the back chambers of the memory, covered with cobwebs as ancient as itself, badly lighted and rarely visited; everybody knows that it is there and it is spoken of with veneration; nobody would like to get rid of it, but it is not daily before the eyes so that it may be compared with the scientific picture.—Just the reverse with the Catholic picture. Each century, for eight hundred years, has applied the brush to this picture; still, at the present time we see it grow under our eyes, acquiring a stronger relief, deeper color, a more vigorous harmony, an ever more fixed and striking expression.—To the articles of belief which constitute the creed for the Greek and Slavic church, thirteen subsequent Catholic councils have added to it many others, while the two principal dogmas decreed by the last two councils, Transubstantiation by the council of Trent and the Infallibility of the Pope by that of the Vatican, are just those the best calculated to hinder forever any reconciliation between science and faith.

Thus, for Catholic nations, the dissimilarity, instead of diminishing, is aggravated; both pictures, one painted by faith and the other by science, become more and more dissimilar, while the profound contradiction inherent in the two conceptions becomes glaring through their very development, each developing itself apart and both in a counter-sense, one through dogmatic verdicts and through the strengthening of discipline and the other by ever-increasing discoveries and by useful applications, each adding daily to its authority, one by precious inventions and the other by good works, each being recognized for what it is, one as the leading instructor of positive truths and the other as the leading instructor of sound morality. That is why we find a combat in each Catholic breast as to which of the two concepts is to be accepted as guide. To every sincere mind and to one capable of entertaining both, each is irreducible to the other. To the vulgar mind, unable to combine both in thought, they exist side by side and clash with each other only occasionally when action demands a choice. Many intelligent, cultivated people, and even savants, especially specialists, avoid confronting them, one being the support of their reason and the other the guardian of their conscience; between them, in order to prevent any possible conflict, they interpose in advance a wall of separation, a compartment partition,5350" which prevents them from meeting and clashing. Others, at length, clever or not too clear-sighted politicians, try to force their agreement, either by assigning to each its domain and in prohibiting mutual access, or by uniting both domains through the semblance of bridges, by imitation stairways, and other illusory communications which the phantasmagoria of human eloquence can always establish between incompatible things and which procure for man, if not the acquisition of a truth, at least a pleasure in the play of words. The ascendancy of the Catholic faith over these uncertain, inconsequent, tormented souls is more or less weak or strong according to time, place, circumstance, individuals and groups; in the larger group it has diminished, while it has increased in the smaller one.

The latter comprises the regular and secular clergy with its approximate recruits and its small body of supporters; never was it so exemplary and so fervent; the monastic institution in particular never flourished so spontaneously and more usefully. Nowhere in Europe are more missionaries formed, so many "brethren" for small schools, so many volunteers, male and female, in the service of the poor, the sick, the infirm and of children, such vast communities of women freely devoting their lives to teaching and to charity.5351 Life in common, under uniform and strict rules, to a people like the French, more capable than any other of enthusiasm and of emulation, of generosity and of discipline, naturally prone to equality, sociable and predisposed to fraternity through the need of companionship, sober, moreover, and laborious, a life in common is no more distasteful in the convent than in the barracks, nor in an ecclesiastical army more than in a lay army, while France, always Gallic, affords as ready a hold nowadays to the Roman system as in the time of Augustus. When this system obtains a hold on a soul it keeps its hold, and the belief it imposes becomes the principal guest, the sovereign occupant of the intellect. Faith, in this occupied territory, no longer allows her title to be questioned; she condemns doubt as a sin, she interdicts investigation as a temptation, she presents the peril of un belief as a mortal danger, she enrolls conscience in her service against any possible revolt of reason. At the same time that she guards herself against attacks, she strengthens her possession; to this end, the rites she prescribes are efficient, and their efficiency, multiplicity and convergence—confession and communion, retreats, spiritual exercises, abstinences, and ceremonies of every kind, the worship of saints and of the Virgin, of relics and images, orisons on the lips and from the heart, faithful attendance on the services and the exact fulfillment of daily duties—all attest it.

Through its latest acquisitions and the turn it now takes, Catholic faith buries itself in and penetrates down to the very depths of the sensitive and tried souls which it has preserved from foreign influences; for it supplies to this chosen flock the aliment it most needs and which it loves the best. Below the metaphysical, abstract Trinity, of which two of the three persons are out of reach of the imagination, she has set up an historical Trinity whose personages are all perceptible to the senses, Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Virgin, since the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, has risen to an extraordinary height; her spouse accompanies her in her exaltation;5352 between them stands their son, child or man, which forms the Holy Family.5353 No worship is more natural and more engaging to chaste celibates in whose brain a pure, vague vision is always present, the reverie of a family constituted without the intervention of sex. No system of worship furnishes so many precise objects for adoration, all the acts and occurrences, the emotions and thoughts of three adorable lives from birth to death and in the beyond, down to the present day. Most of the religious institutions founded within the past eighty years devote themselves to meditation on one of these lives considered at some one point of incident or of character, either purity, charity, compassion or justice, conception, nativity or infancy, presence in the Temple, at Nazareth, at Bethany, or on Calvary, the passion, the agony, the assumption or apparition under this or that circumstance or place, and the rest. There are now in France, under the name and patronage of Saint Joseph alone, one hundred and seventeen congregations and communities of women. Among so many appellations, consisting of special watchwords designating and summing up the particular preferences of a devout group, one name is significant there are seventy-nine congregations or communities of women which have devoted themselves to the heart of Mary or of Jesus or to both together.5354 In this way, besides the narrow devotion which is attached to the corporeal emblem, a tender piety pursues and attains its supreme end, the mute converse of the soul, not with the dim Infinite, the indifferent Almighty who acts through general laws, but with a person, a divine person clothed with the vesture of humanity and who has not discarded it, who has lived, suffered and loved, who still loves, who, in glory above, welcomes there the effusions of his faithful souls and who returns love for love.

All this is incomprehensible, bizarre or even repulsive to the public at large, and still more so to the vulgar. It sees in religion only what is very plain, a government; and in France, it has already had enough of government temporally; add a complementary one on the spiritual side and that will be more and too much. Alongside of the tax-collector and the gendarme in uniform, the peasant, the workman and the common citizen encounter the curÉ in his cassock who, in the name of the Church, as with the other two in the name of the State, gives him orders and subjects him to rules and regulations. Now every rule is annoying and the latter more than the others; one is rid of the tax-collector after paying the tax, and of the gendarme when no act is committed against the law; the curÉ is much more exacting; he interferes in domestic life and in private matters and assumes to govern man entirely. He admonishes his parishioners in the confessional and from the pulpit, he lords it over them even in their inmost being, and his injunctions bind them in every act, even at home, around the fireside, at table and in bed, comprising their moments of repose and relaxation, even hours of leisure and in the tavern. Villagers, after listening to a sermon against the tavern and drunkenness, murmur and are heard to exclaim: "Why does he meddle with our affairs? Let him say his mass and leave us alone." They need him for baptism, marriage and burial, but their affairs do not concern him. Moreover, among the observances he prescribes, many are inconvenient, tasteless or disagreeable—fasting, Lent, a passive part in a Latin mass, prolonged services, ceremonies of which the details are all insignificant, but of which the symbolic meaning is to-day of no account to people in attendance; add to all this the mechanical recitation of the Pater and of the Ave, genuflections and crossing one's self, and especially obligatory confession at specified dates. Nowadays the worker and the peasant manage without these constraints. In many villages, there is nobody at high mass on Sundays but women, and often, in small numbers, one or two troops of children led by the clerical instructor and by the "Sister," with a few old men; the great majority of the men remain outside, under the porch and on the square before the church chatting with each other about the crops, on local news and on the weather.

In the eighteenth century, when a curÉ was obliged to report to the "intendant" the number of inhabitants of his parish, he had only to count his communicants at the Easter service; their number was about that of the adult and valid population, say one half or two fifths of the sum total.5355 Now, at Paris, out of two millions of Catholics who are of age, about one hundred thousand perform this strict duty, aware of its being strict and the imperative prescription of which is stamped in their memory by a rhyme which they have learned in their infancy;5356 out of one hundred persons, this is equal to five communicants, of which four are women and one is a man, in other words, about one woman out of twelve or thirteen and one man out of fifty. In the provinces,5357 and especially in the country, there is good reason for doubling and even tripling these figures; in the latter case, the most favorable one and, without any doubt, the rarest, the proportion of professed Christians is that of one to four among women and one man out of twelve. Evidently, with the others who make not attend Church regularly, with the three women and the eleven other men, their faith is only verbal; if they are still Catholics, it is on the outside and not within.

Besides this separation from the main body and this indifference, other signs denote disaffection and even hostility.—In Paris, at the height of the Revolution, in May and June 1793, the shopkeepers, artisans and market-women, the whole of the common people, were still religious,5358 "kneeling in the street" when the Host passed by, and before the relics of Saint Leu carried along in ceremonial procession, passionately fond of his worship, and suddenly melted, "ashamed, repentant and with tears in their eyes, when, inadvertently, their Jacobin rulers tolerated the publicity of a procession. Nowadays, among the craftsmen, shopkeepers and lower class of employees, there is nothing more unpopular than the Catholic Church. Twice, under the Restoration and the second Empire, she has joined hands with a repressive government, while its clergy has seemed to be not merely an efficient organ but, again, the central promoter of all repression.— Hence, accumulated bitterness that still survives. After 1830, the archbishopric of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois is sacked; in 1871 the archbishop and other ecclesiastical hostages are murdered. For two years after 1830 a priest in his cassock dared not show himself in public;5359 he ran the risk of being insulted in the streets; since 1871, the majority of the Parisian electors, through the interposition of the Municipal Council which they elect over and over again, persists in driving "Brethren" and "Sisters" from the schools and hospitals in order to put laymen in their places and pay twice as much for work not done as well.5360—In the beginning, antipathy was confined to the clergy; through contamination, it reached the doctrine, to include the faith, the entire Catholicism and even Christianity itself. Under the Restoration, it was called, in provocative language, the priest party, and under the second Empire, the clericals. Afterwards, confronting the Church and under a contrary name, the anti-clerical league was formed by its adversaries, a sort of negative church which possessed, or tried to, its own dogmas and rites, its own assemblies and discipline: and for lack of something better, it has its own fanaticism, that of aversion; on the word being given, it marches, rank and file, against the other, its enemy, and manifests, if not its belief, at least its unbelief in refusing or in avoiding the ministration of the priest. In Paris, twenty funerals out of a hundred, purely civil, are not held in a church; out of one hundred marriages, twenty-five, purely civil, are not blessed by the Church; twenty-four infants out of a hundred are not baptized.5361

And, from Paris to the provinces, both sentiment and example are propagated. For sixteen years, in our parliaments elected by universal suffrage, the majority maintains that party in power which wages war against the Church; which, systematically and on principle, is and remains hostile to the Catholic religion; which has its own religion for which it claims dominion; which is possessed by a doctrinal spirit, and, in the direction of intellects and souls, aims at substituting this new spirit for the old one; which, as far as it can, withdraws from the old one its influence, or its share in education and in charity; which breaks up the congregations of men, and overtaxes congregations of women; which enrolls seminarians in the army, and deprives suspect curÉs of their salaries; in short, which, through its acts collectively and in practice, proclaims itself anti-Catholic. Many of its acts certainly displease the peasant. He would prefer to retain the teaching "brother" in the public school and the "sister" in the hospital as nurse or as teacher in the school; both would cost less, and he is used to their dark dresses and their white caps; moreover, he is not ill-disposed towards his resident curÉ, who is a "good fellow." Nevertheless, in sum, the rule of the curÉ is not to his taste; he does not wish to have him back, and he distrusts priests, especially the aspect of their allies who now consist of the upper bourgeoisie and the nobles. Hence, out of ten million electors, five or six millions, entertaining partial dislikes and mute reservations, continue to vote, at least provisionally, for anti-Christian radicals. All this shows that, through an insensible and slow reaction, the great rural mass, following the example of the great urban mass, is again becoming pagan5362; for one hundred years the wheel turns in this sense, without stopping, and this is serious, still more serious for the nation than for the Church.

In France, the inner Christianity, has, for all that, through the dual effect of its Catholic and French envelope, grown warmer among the clergy especially among the regular clergy, but is has cooled off among the people and it is especially here that it is needed.

Post Scriptum:

Taine died in 1893 not long after having written this. Much has happened since and the struggle between "Lay Republicans" and the Catholic Church has continued. In "QUID 2000," a French popular reference manual containing on page 515 some notes on the evolution of the Catholic religion in France, we can read the following:

"1899-11-11 the police occupies l'Assomption, 6, rue FranÇois Ier. The Augustin brothers are accused in court for breaking the law forbidding unauthorized assemblies... 1900 Thomas, mayor of Kremlin-BicÊtre, forbids the wearing of the ecclesiastical costume in his town. This example is followed by others..." Reading further we may learn that later in 1901 to 1904 the various Catholic orders are forbidden or dissolved and most French Church property seized. In 1905 a law decreeing a separation between the State and the Church is narrowly and bitterly voted and a struggle between France and the Pope begins ... Between 1914 and 1918 25 000 priests and seminarians are mobilized and app. 5000 among them fall. This disarms many of the Church's enemies and in 1920 funds are appropriated for the re-establishment of the French embassy to the Pope in Rome. etc. etc. Today the Catholic religion is tolerated more or less in the same manner as Judaism, Islam etc. (SR.)

5301 (return)
[ The Budget of 1881. 17,010 desservans of small parishes have 900 francs per annum; 4500 have 1000 francs; 9492, sixty years of age and over, have from 1100 to 1300 francs. 2521 curÉs of the second class have from 1200 to 1300 francs; 850 curÉs of the first class, or rated the same, have from 1500 to 1600 francs; 65 archiprÊtre curÉs have 1600 francs, that of Paris 2400 francs; 709 canons have from 1600 to 2400 francs; 193 vicars-general have from 2500 to 4000 francs.—AbbÉ Bougaud, "le Grand PÉril," etc., p.23. In the diocese of Orleans, which may be taken as an average type, fees, comprising the receipts for masses, are from 250 to 300 francs per annum, which brings the salary of an ordinary desservant up to about 1200 francs.]

5302 (return)
[ The fees, etc., of the curÉ of the Madeleine are estimated at about 40,000 francs a year. The prefect of police has 40,000 francs a year, and the prefect of the Seine, 50,000 francs.]

5303 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici, II., 264-267.]

5304 (return)
[ Ibid., II., 268.]

5305 (return)
[ "The Ancient RÉgime," pp. 119, 147. (Ed. Laffont I. pp. 92, 115.) (On the "Chartreuse" of Val Saint-Pierre, read the details given by Merlon de Thionville in his "MÉmoires.")]

5306 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici, II.,205. (Edict of Louis XIII., 1629, art. 9.)]

5307 (return)
[ The following are other instances. With the "Filles de Saint-Vincent de Paule," the superior of the "PrÈtres de la Mission" proposes two names and all the Sisters present choose one or the other by a plurality of votes. Local superiors are designated by the Council of Sisters who always reside at the principal establishment.—With the "FrÈres des Écoles ChrÉtiennes," assembled at the call of the assistants in function, a general chapter meets at Paris, 27 rue Oudinot. This chapter, elected by all professed members belonging to the order, comprises 15 directors of the leading houses and 15 of the older brethren who have been at least fifteen years in profession. Besides these 30, the assistants in function, or who have resigned, and the visitors of the houses form, by right, a part of the chapter which comprises 72 members. This chapter elects the general superior for ten years. He is again eligible; he appoints for three years the directors of houses, and he can prolong or replace them. With the Carthusians, the superior-general is elected by the professed brethren of the Grande Chartreuse who happen to be on hand when the vacancy occurs. They vote by sealed ballots unsigned, under the presidency of two priors without a vote.]

5308 (return)
[ The reader may call to mind the portrait of Brother Philippe by Horace Vernet. For details of the terrible mortifications inflicted on himself by Lacordaire see his life by Father Chocarne. "Every sort of mortification which the saints prized, hair-cloth jackets of penance, scourges, whips of every kind and form, he knew of and used.... He scourged himself daily and often several times during the day. During Lent and especially on Good Friday he literally scored and flayed himself alive."]

5309 (return)
[ Notes (unpublished) by Count Chaptal.]

5310 (return)
[ "État des congrÉgations, communantÉs et associations religieuses, autorisÉes et non-autorisÉes, dressÉ en execution" according to article 12, law of Dec. 28, 1876. (Imprimerie nationale, 1878)—"L'Institut des frÈres des Écoles chrÉtiennes," by EugÈne Rendu (1882), p. 10.—Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France, p.81. (Conversation with Brother Philippe, July 16, 1845.)—"Statistique de Institut des FrÈres des Ecoles ChrÉtiennes," Dec.31, 1888. (Drawn up by the head establishment.) Out of the 121 houses of 1789, there were 117 of these in France and 4 in the colonies. Out of the 1,286 houses of 1888, there are 1,010 in France and in the colonies. The other 276 are in other countries.]

5311 (return)
[ Émile Keller, "Les CongrÉgations religieuses en France" (1880), preface, xxIII., xvIII., and p. 492.]

5312 (return)
[ In 1789, 37,000 Sisters; in 1866, 86,000 Sisters ("Statistique de la France," 1866); in 1878, 127,753 Sisters ("État des congrÉgations," etc.).]

5313 (return)
[. (But today, around 1990, there are only 5 nuns per 10,000 inhabitants. SR.)]

5314 (return)
[ Émile Keller, ibid., passim.—In many communities of men and of women the personal expenses of each member are not over 300 francs per annum; with the Trappists at Devielle this is the maximum.—If the value of the useful labor performed by these 160,000 monks and nuns be estimated at 1000 francs per head, which is below the real figures, the total is 160 millions per annum; estimate the expenses of each monk or nun at 500 francs per head and the total is 80 millions a year. The net gain to the public is 80 millions per annum.]

5315 (return)
[ "La CharitÉ À Nancy," by AbbÉ Girard, p. 245.—The same judgment is confirmed by the Rev. T. W. Allies, in a "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1848, p. 291. "The dogma of the real presence is the centre of the whole religious life of the Church (Catholic): it is the secret support of the priest in his mission, so painful and so filled with abnegation. It is by this that the religious orders are maintained."]

5316 (return)
[ This question is examined by St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica.]

5317 (return)
[ For the past twenty years, owing to the researches of psychologists and physiologists, we have begun to know something of the subterranean regions of the mind and the latent processes taking place there. The storing, the residue and unconscious combination of images, the spontaneous and automatic transformation of images into sensations, the composition, disassociations and splitting into dual personalities of the ego, the alternate or simultaneous coexistence of two, or more than two, distinct persons in the same individual, the suggestions accomplished later and at fixed dates, the chock of the return from the inside to the outside, and the physical effect on the nervous extremities of the mental sensations, all these late discoveries have resulted in a new conception of mind, and psychology, thus renewed, throws a sharp light on history.]

5318 (return)
[ See in "Herodiade," by Flaubert, the depicting of these "kingdoms of the world or of the century," as they appeared to Palestinian eyes in the first century. For the first four centuries we must consider, confronting the Church, by way of contrast and in full relief, the pagan and Roman world, the life of the day, especially in the baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working classes, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves, depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to his glebe, the workman to his tool, the curiale to his curie, the administrative interference of the centralized State, its fiscal exigencies, all that it sucked out of the social body, and the more strenuously inasmuch as there was less to be sucked out of it. Against these sensual habits and customs and this economic system the Church has preserved its primitive aversion, especially on two points, in relation to the theatre and to loaning money at interest.]

5319 (return)
[ See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, ch. I., 26 to 32; also the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. XIII.]

5320 (return)
[ The First Epistle of John, II. 16.]

5321 (return)
[ Acts of the Apostles, ch. IV.,32, 34 and 35.]

5322 (return)
[ I cannot help but conclude that the two world wars, started by Christian Governments, led to socialism and religious decay. How large a role television played in removing the need for clerical guidance and comfort is hard to determine, the fact is that the Churches in Europe stand mostly empty and Taine's description fits rather will on today's society. (SR.)]

5323 (return)
[ Saint Athanasius, the principal founder of Christian metaphysics, did not know Latin and learned it with great difficulty at Rome when he came to defend his doctrine. On the other hand, the principal founder of western theology, Saint Augustin, had only an imperfect knowledge of Greek.]

5324 (return)
[ For example, the three words which are essential and technical in metaphysical speculations on the divine essence, have no real equivalent in Latin, while the words by which an attempt is made to render these terms, verbum, substantia, persona, are very inexact. Persona and substantia, in Tertullian, are already used in their Roman sense, which is always juridical and special.]

5325 (return)
[ Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "Ancient Law," p. 354. The following is profound in a remarkable degree: "Greek metaphysical literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance, and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meager Latin philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly the western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them."]

5326 (return)
[ Maine, "Ancient Law," p.357 "The difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law." Out of this arose the Western controversies on the subject of Free-will and Divine Providence. "The problem of Free-will arises when we contemplate a metaphysical conception under a legal aspect."]

5327 (return)
[ Ibid. "The nature of Sin and its transmission by inheritance; the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction; the necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement; above all the apparent antagonism between Free-will and the Divine Providence-these were the points which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East had discussed the articles of its more special creed." This juridical fashion of conceiving theology appears in the works of the oldest Latin theologians, Tertullian and Saint Cyprian.]

5328 (return)
[ Ibid. Among the technical notions borrowed from law and here used in Latin theology we may cite "the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict," the intercession or act by which one assumes the obligation contracted by another, "the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal Succession,"]

5329 (return)
[ Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "La Gaule Romaine," p.96 and following pages, on the rapidity, facility and depth of the transformation by which Gaul became Latinized.]

5330 (return)
[ The Church of England, in its confession of faith, makes this express declaration.]

5331 (return)
[ As called by Joseph de Maistre, referring to the Greek church.]

5332 (return)
[ Duke Sermoneta-Gaetani has shown in his geographic map of the "Divine Comedy" the exact correspondence of this poem with the "Somme" by Saint Thomas.—It was already said of Dante in the middle ages, Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatis expers.]

5333 (return)
[ Cf. "L'Empire des tsars et les Russes," by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, vol. III., entire, on the characteristics of the Russian clergy.]

5334 (return)
[ Bossuet, ed. Deforis, VI., 169. The Meaux catechism (reproduced, with some additions, in the catechism adopted by Napoleon). "What works are deemed satisfactory?"—"Works unpleasant to us imposed by the priest as a penance."—"Repeat some of them."—"Alms-giving, fastings, austerities, privations of what is naturally agreeable, prayers, spiritual readings."]

5335 (return)
[ Ibid. "Why is confession ordained?"—"To humble the sinner.. . "—"Why again?"—"To submit one's self to the power of the Keys and to the judgment of the priests who have the power to punish and remit sins."]

5336 (return)
[ Bossuet, ibid., CatÉchisme de Meaux, VI., 140-142.]

5337 (return)
[ "Manreze du prÊtre," by Father Caussette, I., 37. "Do you see that young man of twenty-five who will soon traverse the sanctuary to find the sinners awaiting him? It is the God of this earth who sanctifies him... Were Jesus Christ to descend into the confessional he would say, Ego te absolvo. He is going to say with the same authority, Ego te absolvo. Now this is an act of the supreme power; it is greater, says Saint Augustin, than the creation of heaven and earth."—T. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1845, p.97. "Confession is the chain which binds all Christian life."]

5338 (return)
[ "Manreze du prÊtre," I., 36. "The Mother of God has undoubtedly more credit than you, but she has less authority. Undoubtedly, she accords favors, but she has not given one single absolution."]

5339 (return)
[ Could one imagine that Stalin, that that apostate former student expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary, would, on reading Taine's text, have conceived the idea of having communist missionaries, directed by the KGB in Moscow, direct an army of agents inside the capitalist world? (SR.)]

5340 (return)
[ Like a central committee of the communist party? (SR.)]

5341 (return)
[ PrÆlectiones juris canonici, I., 101. "The power entrusted to St. Peter and the apostles is wholly independent of the community of believers."]

5342 (return)
[ Here Lenin pretended to install the Proletariat and announced its (his own) dictatorship. (SR.)]

5343 (return)
[ Here we have a clear model for an International Communist Party, tasked with the creation of a visible organization whenever this is possible, but with an invisible structure of missionaries, recruiters, controllers, policemen and agents, since any bourgeois state must, once it discovers the party's true aims, forbid it and drive it underground. To the Christian dream of an eternal life in heaven or hell, the communist movement has its promise of a millenary on earth contrasted by the immediate annihilation of any traitor or dangerous opponent. (SR.)]

5344 (return)
[ "Cours alphabÉtique et mÉthodique du droit canon," by AbbÉ AndrÉ, and "Histoire gÉnÉrale de Église, vol. XIII., by Bercastel et Henrion. The reader will find in these two works an exposition of the diverse statutes of the Catholic Church in other countries. Each of these statutes differs from ours in one or several important articles; the fixed, or even territorial, endowment of the clergy, the nomination to the episcopate by the chapter, or by the clergy of the diocese, or by the bishops of the province, public competition for curacies, irremovability, participation of the chapter in the government of the diocese, restoration of the officialitÉ; return to the prescriptions of the Council of Trent (Cf. especially the Concordats between the Holy See and Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, the two Hesses, Belgium, Austria, Spain, and the statutes accepted or established by the Holy See in Ireland and the United States.)]

5345 (return)
[ The brothers Allignol, "De l'État actuel du clergÉ en France," p.248. "The mind of the desservant is no longer his own. Let him beware of any personal sentiment or opinion!... He must cease being himself and must lose, it may be said, his personality."—Ibid., preface, XIX. "Both of us, placed in remotes country parishes,... are in a position to know the clergy of the second class well, to which, for twenty years, we belong."]

5346 (return)
[ The principal means of action of the State is the right of appointing bishops. The Pope, however, installs them; consequently, the Minister of Worship must have an understanding beforehand with the nuncio, which obliges it to nominate candidates irreproachable in doctrine and morals, but it avoids nominating ecclesiastics that are eminent, enterprising or energetic; once installed and not removable, they would cause trouble. Such, for example, was M. Pie, bishop of Poitiers, nominated by M. de Falloux in the time of the Prince-President, and so annoying during the Empire; in order to keep him in check, M. Levert, the cleverest and most adroit prefect, had to be sent to Poitiers; for many years they waged the most desperate war under proper formalities, each playing against the other the shrewdest and most disagreeable tricks. Finally, M. Levert, who had lost a daughter and was denounced from the pulpit, was obliged, on account of his wife's feelings, to leave the place. (This happened to my own knowledge, as between 1852 and 1867 I visited Poitiers five times.) At the present day, the Catholics complain that the government nominates none but mediocre men for bishops and accepts none others for cantonal curÉs. (Today, in 1999, we can look back on a century of quarrelling, even war, between Rome and Paris with the separation of the Catholic Church and the State in 1905, sequestration of all church property, impoverishment of the clergy, interdiction of the different orders, papal bulls, ending in 1914 when the State had to concentrate all effort towards winning the war. Today the church is allowed to operate but its influence is much reduced as it the case for all the religions since the advent of the consumer society with television etc. SR.)]

5347 (return)
[ "The Ancient RÉgime," pp 171, 181, 182. (Ed. Laffont I., p. 129 to 139.)]

5348 (return)
[ M. de Vitrolles, "' MÉmoires," I., 15. (This passage was written in 1847.) "Under the Empire, readers were to those of the present day as one to a thousand. Newspapers, in very small number, scarcely obtained circulation. The public informed itself about victories, as well as the conscription, in the articles of the 'Moniteur,' posted by the prefects."—From 1847 to 1891, we all know by our own experience that the number of readers has augmented prodigiously.]

5349 (return)
[ I wonder what Taine would have said of television, that system which allows its producers to make all mankind believe that the lies and figments of the imaginations put in front of them show the true and real world as it is. (SR.)]

5350 (return)
[ An expression by Renan in relation to AbbÉ Lehir, an accomplished professor of Hebrew.]

5351 (return)
[ Th. W. Allies, rector of Launton, "Journal d'un voyage en France," p.245. (A speech by Father Ravignan, August 3, 1848) "What nation in the Roman church is more prominent at the present day for its missionary labors? France, by far. There are ten French missionaries to one Italian." Several French congregations, especially the "Petites Soeurs des Pauvres" and the "FrÈres des Écoles ChrÉtiennes," are so zealous and so numerous that they overflow outside of France and have many establishments abroad.]

5352 (return)
[ "Manreze du prÊtre," by Father Caussette, II.,419: "Now that I have placed one of your hands in those of Mary let me place the other in those of Saint Joseph.... Joseph, whose prayers in heaven are what commands to Jesus were on earth. Oh, what a sublime patron, and what powerful patronage!... Joseph, associated in the glory of divine paternity;... Joseph, who counts twenty-three kings among his ancestors!" Along with the month of the year devoted to the adoration of Mary, there is another consecrated to Saint Joseph.]

5353 (return)
[ "État des congrÉgations," etc. (1876). Eleven congregations or communities of women are devoted to the Holy Family and nineteen others to the Child-Jesus or to the Infancy of Jesus.]

5354 (return)
[ One of these bears the title of "Augustines de l'intÉrieur de Marie" and another is devoted to the "Coeuragonisant de JÉsus."]

5355 (return)
[ At Bourron (Seine-et-Marne), in 1789, which had 600 inhabitants, the number of communicants at Easter amounted to 300; at the present day, out of 1200 inhabitants there are 94]

5356 (return)
[ Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," III., p. 18: "M. Dufresne (July 1845) tells us that out of 1,000,000 inhabitants in Paris 300,000 attend mass and 50,000 are practising Christians."—(A conversation with AbbÉ Petitot, curÉ of Saint-Louis d'Antin, July 7.1847.) "2,000,000 out of 32,000,000 French are really Christians and go to confession."—At the present day (April 1890) an eminent and well-informed ecclesiastic writes: "I estimate the number of those who observe Easter at Paris at about 100,000."—"The number of professing Christians varies a great deal according to parishes: Madeleine, 4,500 out of 29,000 inhabitants; Saint Augustin, 6,500 out of 29,000; Saint Eustache, 1,750 out of 20,000; Bellancourt, 500 out of 10,000; Grenelle, 1,500 out of 47,500; and Belleville, 1,500 out of 60,000 inhabitants."]

5357 (return)
[ AbbÉ Bougaud, "Le Grand PÉril," etc., p.44: "I know a bishop who, on reaching his diocese, tried to ascertain how many of the 400,000 souls entrusted to his keeping performed their Easter duties. He found 37,000. At the present day, owing to twenty years of effort, this number reaches 55,000. Thus, more than 300,000 are practically unbelievers."—"Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by AbbÉ Lagrange, I., 5'. (Pastoral letter by Mgr. Dupanloup, 1851.) "He considers that he is answerable to God for nearly 350,000 souls, of which 200,000 at least do not fulfill their Easter duties; scarcely 45,000 perform this great duty."]

5358 (return)
[ "The Revolution," II.,390. (Ed. Laff. I., p. 177.)]

5359 (return)
[ Th.-W. Allies, "Journal," etc., p.240 (Aug. 2, 1848, conversation with AbbÉ Petitot):" In 1830, the priests were obliged for two years to abandon wearing their costume in the street, and only recovered their popularity by their devotion to the sick at the time of the cholera."—In 1848, they had won back respect and sympathy; "the people came and begged them to bless their liberty-poles."—AbbÉ Petitot adds: "The church gains ground every day, but rather among the upper than the lower classes."]

5360 (return)
[ Émile Keller, "Les CongrÉgations," etc., p.362 (with the figures in relation to Schools).—"DÉbats" of April 27, 1890 (with the figures in relation to hospitals. Deaths increased in the eighteen secularized hospitals at the rate of four per cent).]

5361 (return)
[ Fournier de Flaix, "Journal de la SociÉtÉ de Statistique," number for Sep. 1890, p.260. (According to registers kept in the archiepiscopal archives in Paris)—"Compte-rendu des operations du Conseil d'administration des pompes funÈbres À Paris" (1889): funerals wholly civil in 1882, 19.33 per cent; in 1888, 19.04 per cent; in 1889, 18.63 per cent.—"Atlas de statistique municipale." ("DÉbats" of July 10, 1890:) The poorer the arrondissement, the greater the number of civil funerals; MÉnilmontant wins hands down, one third of the funerals here being civil.]

5362 (return)
[ AbbÉ Joseph Roux (curÉ at first of Saint-Silvain, near Tulle, and then in a small town of CorrÈze), "PensÉes," p. 132 (1886): "There is always something of the pagan in the peasant. He is original sin in all its brutish simplicity."—"The peasant passed from paganism to Christianity mostly through miracles; he would go back at less cost from Christianity to paganism.... It is only lately that a monster exists, the impious peasant.... The rustic, in spite of school-teachers, even in spite of the curÉs, believes in sorcerers and in sorcery the same as the Gauls and Romans."—Therefore the means employed against him are wholly external. ("Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by AbbÉ Lagrange, pastoral notes of Mgr. Dupanloup, I., 64.) "What has proved of most use to you in behalf of religion in your diocese during the last fifteen years? Is it through this—is it through that? No, it is through medals and crosses. Whatever is given to these good people affords them pleasure; they like to have presents of Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. These objects, with them, stand for religion. A father who comes with his child in his arms to receive the medal will not die without confessing himself."—The reader will find on the clergy and peasantry in the south of France details and pictures taken from life in the novels of Ferdinand Fabre ("L'abbÉ Tigrane," "les Courbezons," "Lucifer,," "BarnabÉ," "Mon Oncle CÉlestin," "XaviÈre," "Ma Vocation").]