Channing on Christendom and Socialism

Brownson's Quarterly Review, October, 1849

ART. II. — The Christian Church and Social Reform. A Discourse delivered before the Religious Union of Associationists. By WM. II. CHANNING. Boston: Crosby & Nichols.     184S.    8vo.    pp.  31.

WE perhaps said all that is really necessary for the refutation of the principles of this Discourse in our Review for last April ; but as we set out with the intention of giving them a somewhat thorough examination, we shall resume our comments, although in continuing them we may be obliged to repeat many things which, in substance, we have already said.
Our readers, we trust, will recollect that Mr. Channing supposes man to be composed of three elements, — love, intellect, power, — which give birth, respectively, in their outward expression, to the Church, the University, and the State ; and that his aim is to harmonize these three institutions in society, so as through them to harmonize in the interior of man the three elements from which they spring. He assumes that there has been a development of Christendom, that is, of the nations professing the Christian religion, and that, by ascertaining the law of this development, we can arrive at the principles and methods of effecting the harmony proposed. We let him now speak for himself.

" Now the development of Christendom may be best understood by tracing the formation, union, division, of its Church, University, State, — or its Religious, Scientific, and Political organizations,— in successive eras. Let us pass in review Four of these, already gone, which will lead us to a Fifth, in the unfolding of which our lot is cast.

" 1. In the first, era, the constituent elements of Christendom existed in a condition of relative Independence. Amidst the breaking up of once stately institutions and the incursions of fresh barbaric tribes, amidst desolating wars and corrupting courts, — amidst societies dissolving from decrepitude, or dying by suicide, — the life of love, the law of brotherhood, the hope of heaven, which from the divine benignity of Jesus had passed into the hearts of his followers, lay hid, like a vital germ in the decaying seed. Oriental philosophy, Greek and Roman mythology, the guesses of Alexandrian or Gnostic mysticism, the lawlessness and rude traditions of savage minds, offered no reconciling bond between small persecuted congregations united by the fluent power of charity, and distracted nations jostled together in violent destruction. Who, in that feeble embryo, foresaw a Godlike Humanity slowly maturing ? Yet, formless as were then the Church, the University, the State, and at first glance seemingly hostile, convergent tendencies gradually appear; till at length the faith of a Galilean sect becomes the religion of the Roman empire,— and sages, summoned to council from distant regions, announce a Creed.

" 2. And so we enter the second era of Christendom. This era is characterized by its pervading spirit of Authority, its aspiration after order, its determination at any cost and by any means to establish relations of intercommunion and of hierarchy among the yet incongruous elements. A vast confederacy of archbishops, bishops, and inferior clergy, ranked in grades around a common head, constitutes the aristocracy of the Church. Nobles, surrounded by loyal vassals, stand grouped in haughty circles about their kings, who strive by craft or war to establish one central monarchy which may hold the balance of power among the allied though rival nations ; and thus is organized the aristocracy of the Slate. Meantime, theology formed into a system, and ancient philosophy recast in modern moulds, and subtile metaphysics and stern logic, establish the dynasty of the Schoolmen, the aristocracy of the University; while the spiritual power threatening excommunication upon heretics, and the temporal power punishing as magic the discoveries and inventions of genius, uphold dictatorship in the realm of thought. The unity of Force fulfils its end, when Pope and Emperor and Council conspire to cramp elastic Europe with the leading-strings of a monotonous despotism.

" 3. But crosier and sceptre wielded by tyrants lose their claim to reverence; and a creed that makes believe is mentally abjured, while the lips profess it. The Church, claiming to use the purse and sword, the prison and fagot, becomes a corrupt politician ; the State, arrogating to itself control over conscience belonging to God alone, and turning religion into a prop of power, convicts itself of blasphemous usurpation ; while youthful thought, under the mentor-ship of classic antiquity, and cheered to adventure in the wide world which science discloses, laughs the censorship of the University to scorn.    The time for protest has come.    This is the third era of Christendom; its characteristic is Individual Freedom. The reform is at first incomplete, its progress slow; its very authors establish petty popedoms of their own, hold tenaciously to the shattered fragments of feudalism, and strive to fence in the new soil wherewith the freshet has overspread old landmarks. But it is all in vain. The thought of the inviolability of the individual has taken form in men's consciousness. In simple yet saintly souls, spiritualism abides like an angel of the Lord, suggesting the freest (lights of piety; to thousands of earnest seekers, truth comes, and, putting aside the masks of tradition, smiles out in original beauty; and the instincts of multitudes feel afar the gathering earthquake, which is to swallow up caste, privilege, and unjust distinctions. The variety, latent in the formal unity, buds forth and branches and blooms. The Church and University and State divide again for freer, fuller growth. Sect rises from sect, and system from system, and party from party ; restless aspiration, controversy, enterprise, stimulate the nations to gigantic exertions ; there is a prophetic yearning for a good not yet accomplished, a reaching forward to a new world.

" 4. Liberty of conscience, of thought, and of action, acknowledged in principle and partially exercised, cannot but thoroughly embody themselves in deeds. Asserting the direct communion of every spirit with God, through his appointed mediations, the reformer must carry out his doctrine of personal sacredness through all departments, intellectual and physical. An unconscious logic pervades nations and ages, and rigidly determines their conduct. And thus opens upon us the fourth era of Christendom, whose characteristic is Practical Equality. The unity of the Church is broken, and with the loss of its prestige has gone much of its sanctifying power; by unavoidable reaction, the senses, long curbed or constrained to deceptive indulgence, demand the rights which asceticism has denied; priests, proved guilty of outside morality, sink into objects of contempt; and goodness, manifested in kindly acts, becomes the only tolerable worship. Thus all are equals before God. Again, the authority of the University once shaken off, minds follow impetuously the lead of wild speculation; seated on the temporary judgment-bench of common sense, they call up for trial every time-hallowed rite, dogma, law, and custom; or, driven on by the mob-spirit of iconoclasts, blacken with flaring torches of skepticism the temples of faith, and deface with careless ridicule the shrines of once-honored sages. It is the sans-culottism of free inquiry, where learned and ignorant are ' hail, fellow, well met'; and every one, in his claim to hold and declare opinions, ranks as his neighbour's peer. Above all, as specially marking this epoch, is the desire for a practical test of principles manifested in the sphere of the State. The form of political institutions which it naturally seeks to organize is democracy, the establishment of equal rights. But — whether hindered from realizing this ultimate manifestation, or successful, as it has been in this nation, and will soon be elsewhere — it bursts on all sides resistlessly forth in Utilitarianism ; and, seizing control of industry, finance, commerce, social usages, the press, the pulpit, — under pretence of equal protection to property, — and in the name and authority of Political Economy, makes money the ruler alike over priests and scholars, over nobles and people. Intense individual selfishness, laissez-faire, competition, exaggerated estimate of outward good, expediency as the habitual rule, wealth as chief title to honor and power, are the final consummation of this fourth era of Christendom,— which is passing,— has passed.

" 5. When this last-described era is thus spoken of—like those which have preceded it — as already gone, let the assertion be understood to mean, that a new •principle, is working to-day throughout Christendom. Slowly, very slowly indeed, to one whose span is threescore years, sweeps by the procession of the ages, — each under its special banner, clothed with its own insignia, and bearing the emblems of its appropriate work. In the marching and countermarching of the mighty host, principles and tendencies may seem to approximate, and even to walk in parallel columns, which really are separated by the lapse of centuries; and laggards there arc, too, behind their times, who, limping after their own divisions, block up the path which of right belongs to the new-comers. Still, ever onwards moves mankind ; and the Tricolor banner of this generation is greeted with cheer on cheer of v Fraternity' from the hearts of millions, while hands long sundered by selfish jealousies are clasped in pledge of mutual service. We have entered a fifth era of Christendom, whose watchword is Cooperation. As, in the first era, he was the truest Christian who bore his glimmering light into the forests of barbarism, and translated from parchment manuscript the Gospel of peace to armed hordes camped around their watch-fires ; as, in the second era, he was the truest Christian who, in loyal consciousness of the unity of Christendom, took his station, high or low, with the magnanimous intent to sacrifice life, wealth, affections, conscience, all, for the collective good of the Kingdom of God, — now immersing himself in the cells of monasteries, now with dying breath upon the battle-field praying his fellow-crusader to bear his heart to the holy sepulchre ; as, in the third era, he was the truest Christian who confronted practice bigotry, corruption in high places, and vulgar prejudices, — who bore unmoved the ridicule of the courtier at his puritan primness, grew prematurely gray with study, or led out bands of stern and godly pilgrims to plant colonies in savage lands; as, in the last age, he was the truest Christian who, firmly centred in a pure conscience, trusted reason boldly in every field of investigation, followed out principles fearlessly to their extreme consequences in action, demanded the widest diffusion of learning, the freest exercise of speech, the most active charity, the strictest justice, and who unscrupulously brought his battery of reform to bear against every bastile of oppression and palace of exclusiveness; — so, in this generation, he is the truest Christian who most unreservedly yields up mind, heart, and energy to the grand impulse of RECONCILIATION.

" What Humanity commands to-day is not destruction, but construction ; not revolution, but reform ; not dissolution, but resurrection. It would keep all it has gained in past eras of divergence, and multiply each partial good by prolific interchange. It wishes Independence for the Church and University and Stale, not as unrelated, but as correlated in concentric spheres, — the THREE ESTATES, whose functions are diverse, though complementary to each other ; whose boundaries should be mutually inviolate, while their forces are allied. It wishes Unity throughout the Divine, — the Spiritual, — the Natural departments of life, collective and individual, not by constraint or sacrifice, but by fulness of development and harmonious counterpoise. It sanctions Individual Freedom without bounds, in religion, science, and politics; but it teaches that the only liberty in the universe is love,— that finite creatures live in and for one another, and that their common destiny is compassed by an Infinite original and end. Finally, it demands Practical Equality, — the only equality, that is to say, which, in a universe of graduated relations, whereon as a ladder the angels of God's mercy are for ever descending and ascending, is practical, — unchecked opportunity for every being to develop its powers symmetrically, and to use them for the common good. The privileges and responsibilities, the temptations and encouragements, the trials and the joys, of such an age are as many as the results which it aims to realize are magnificent. And the devotedness, the reverence, the heroism, the energy, of earlier times, like silver-headed ancestors, are gathered round the baptismal font of this New Era, to anoint it with their benedictions."'—pp. 8- 15.

It strikes us, with our very limited knowledge of history, that these five eras or epochs are purely arbitrary, and, if modern history is really divisible into distinct periods, Mr. Channing has failed to characterize them. We must complain, moreover, of the absence of chronology. We can guess at the date of the commencement of the series, but where the author ends his first' era, and begins and ends his second, his third, or his fourth, it is impossible to determine with any tolerable degree of certainty. This is a serious defect, and gives him a chance to evade, if he chooses, many of the criticisms we
might be disposed to offer, by replying that they are applicable only to an earlier or later period of time than is included in the given era. This is not fair. A man who writes to instruct, to communicate truth, and not merely to confuse the reader, to support a theory, or to escape conviction, should study to be definite and exact. In reasoning on history, facts and dates are of considerable importance.

Mr. Channing assumes that there has been a development of Christendom, and supposes it capable of a scientific exposition.   He aims at what is called philosophy of history, and, in creating it, attends only to what are called principles.    Facts and  dates, as nations and individuals, he counts for nothing. All he looks for is the ideas which the race is engaged in realizing, and he determines the idea of a given era a priori, — deduces  it from the psychological or ontological principles recognized by his theory, not from the actual facts and events in space and time which history records.    It is necessary to his purpose,  or the purposes of  his  theory, that history should have been so and so, therefore it was so and so, and may be written without any reference to the chronicles or annals  of nations.      This is convenient for the system-monger, or the philosopher who fancies that he can spin the world, spider-like, from his own bowels; but it can hardly satisfy the man who seeks truth, and would build his castle on solid ground, not in the air.     It presupposes, also, a system of fatalism, which is unsupported by any authority, and is contradicted by all the laws, usages, and common sense of mankind.    History can be written a priori, reduced to a science, or logically deduced from either psychological or ontological principles, as Hegel and Cousin would have us believe, only on condition that there is nothing contingent in the universe, that there is nothing in history but these principles themselves, and that they are developed by a law of stern and invincible necessity.     But this is not true ; for in human affairs we must always recognize the freedom of God on the one hand, and the free agency of man on the other, which no philosophy can measure, and the influence of which on the events of history no science can determine,  either beforehand or afterwards.    History is simply  a record of facts, and can be ascertained, without special Divine inspiration, only in the study of the facts themselves.    Hence your philosophies of history are and must be all arbitrary, illusory, chimerical, unworthy of the least confidence.    You must measure the infinite freedom of the infinite and eternal God, and calculate the free agency of man, as elements in the production of historical events, before you can reasonably aspire to the creation of a philosophy of history, in the sense of modern philosophers.

Assuming a regular development of Christendom, the author supposes that this development has been in four successive eras, which have passed, and is now entering the fifth era ; — yet not because he finds this number of eras distinctly marked in history, but because his theory of development requires that there should be that number to give an era to each of the principles he wishes to find successively developed. The principle on which he writes is not the old one of bending theory to facts, but the modern one of bending facts to theory. Why should not facts bend to theory ? Theory is deduced from principles intuitively apprehended by reason ; facts rest on the authority of ignorant chroniclers, stupid annalists, and uncertain tradition. Is not theory, then, superior to facts, and ought it not to govern facts ? If the facts were as they ought to have been, will they not harmonize with theory ? And, if they do not, is it not a proof that they were not what they ought to have been, and therefore wicked or rebellious facts, with which the less we have to do the better ? Well, having determined that there ought to be the number of successive eras mentioned, the author concludes that there has been. Having determined, again, what, according to his theory, should have been their several characteristics, he concludes what they actually were, and proceeds to state his conclusion. The first epoch was characterized by the " relative independence" of the Church, University, State, or the religious, scientifical, and political organizations of Christendom ; the second, by the "pervading spirit of authority "; the third, by the predominance of " individual freedom "; the fourth, by " practical equality"; and the fifth is to be characterized by the principle of " cooperation," or association, d la Fourier, or d la somebody else. Let us examine the question for the moment, and see if history really bears out the author in his statements.
1. The limits of the first era are not given, but we shall assume it to extend from the time of our Lord and his Apostles to the accession of Constantine the Great. We are not certain but the author means to extend it even from the birth of our Saviour to the downfall of Rome, say from the beginning of the first to the close of the fifth century ; but we take the shorter period as the more favorable to his view.    But during this period there was no Christendom in the sense in which the author uses the term ; lor the State was pagan, and Christians had no political organization, except the Church herself. How, then, can he say that the three institutions were relatively independent ? If he object, and insist on including the pagan state as one of the elements of Christendom, he can with still less propriety, if possible, say the three elements were relatively independent ; for the pagan state claimed supreme authority in spirituals over the religion of all its subjects, and promulgated its edicts against Christians, and sought by the most cruel persecutions to suppress the Church. The political order occasionally tolerated the Church, we grant, but in no respect acknowledged her independence. Nor was the University, that is, education, independent of both Church and State. The Church claimed authority over the education of her own children, and required it to be Christian and orthodox. The State maintained a system of public schools, had the supreme control of them, could open or close them at its pleasure, and determine what should or should not be taught in them. We cannot understand, then, in what sense the University, that is, education, was independent, or how scientific institutions were independent of both civil and ecclesiastical control. It seems to us somewhat singular that the author should have selected the period known in history as the martyr age — which is specially characterized by its fierce and unrelenting persecution, when the political authority exerted its whole power to suppress, to exterminate, the Christian religion, and also many of the forms of Oriental paganism — as the era of freedom of thought and conscience, the only meaning of the independence of Church and University. Does the author find the characteristic of an era in what it has, or in what it has not ?

The author, it will be seen, still further asserts, that, during his first era, the Church, the University, and the State were "formless,"—that is, were unconstituted, and therefore no institutions at all. These institutions, according to the author, are the constituent elements of Christendom, and therefore without them there can be no Christendom. But in the first era they were " formless," that is, had no actual existence. The author must therefore suppose that there passed an entire era of Christendom before there was a Christendom ! Again, nothing exists without form ; how, then, during the era when Church, University, State, were formless, that is, non-existent, can the author say that they " existed in a condition of relative independence " ? Would the author teach us that there is no difference between existence and non-existence ?
Then, on what authority does the author assert, that, during his first period, Church, University, ' and State were " formless " ? Surely, the State was formed, was constituted, under Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan, the Antonines, and Diocletian, — thoroughly formed, whether well formed or not, •—as it was under Constantine, Theodosius the Great, and Justinian, if the author chooses to bring his first era down to a later date than we have supposed. Of the particular constitution of what the author calls the University, that is, of public education, we are only imperfectly informed ; but we know that public provision was made for education, and that celebrated schools flourished in most, if not in all, of the great cities of the empire. As to the Church, she certainly was not " formless " in the third century, but was constituted with a hierarchy, as at present. We know, also, that she was not " formless " in the first century ; for St. Paul, at least good historical authority, writing to the Corinthians, tells them, that " God hath set some in the Church, first, apostles, secondly, prophets, thirdly, teachers," &c.,*(footnote: 1 Cor. xii. 28)  which implies that the Church then had a constitution, and, if it had a constitution, it was not " formless." That she had a constitution in the second century, we may learn from Irenaius and Tertullian, and various other sources. During the first three centuries, then, the Church had a constitution, though what constitution she had is foreign to our present purpose to inquire. Since the third century, nobody pretends that the Church has been formless, for we see her constitution as complete at the Council of Nice as at the Council of Trent. The author, then, drew upon his imagination or his theory, instead of history, when he asserted, that, during the first era, Church, University, and State were "formless."

2. The second era, according to the author, was characterized by the "pervading spirit of authority." Of the extent of this era we are not informed ; but we judge, from the author's incidental remarks, that he extends it from the downfall of Rome to the rise of Protestantism, and intends to include the whole period commonly called the Middle Ages. Now, according to our historical reading, this period is characterized, so far as in its endless variety it can be characterized by any one element, by the spirit of lawlessness, barbarity, tyranny, and contempt of authority.    It opens, for all Western, Central, and Northern Europe, with the destruction of the political order, and long ages passed  away in the effort to restore it ; and at no period do we find authority as all-pervading, as well established, and as peacefully discharging its functions, as it was under imperial Rome, pagan or Christian.    The University, during the first half of the period, hardly existed ; and when it was reestablished in the twelfth century, it was with a freedom  and independence  it never  before enjoyed.      The academic bodies were   almost independent polities,  wellnigh able to resist both the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities. The Church claimed, as always, her spiritual supremacy ; but she was restricted in its exercise by the civil powers and the barbarity and turbulence of the times.     The high society were perpetually questioning her authority, and were less submissive to it than they had been in the first era. or than they were in the third.    It strikes us that an age marked by the struggle to preserve the wrecks of civilization, and to establish order, to check despotism, and to vindicate the freedom of religion and conscience, the   independence   of the   spiritual   society,  can hardly be said to be characterized by a "• pervading spirit of authority," which is, as every one knows, or ought to know, the basis of all order and all real freedom.

" A vast confederacy of archbishops, bishops, and inferior clergy, ranked in grades around a common head, constitutes the aristocracy of the Church." But this confederacy, if the author chooses so to call it, — although " a confederacy ranked around a common head " is rather unintelligible to us,— whether good or bad, is no peculiarity of the author's second era. In the only sense in which it exists in one of his eras, it exists in them all ; nay, it had, apparently, more the character of a confederacy in the first era than in the second, for the power of the patriarchs, primates, and archbishops was then greater than in subsequent times ; that is, while the great patriarchates of the East remained steadfast in the apostolic communion, fewer cases were carried to Rome for decision, and the monarchical or papal element of the Church was less apparent. Yet, a confederacy there never was, for a confederacy supposes a union by the will of the parts, whereas, in all the eras enumerated, the union of the parts of the hierarchy has been held to derive from the head, the centre of
unity, which makes the hierarchy not merely a union or confederacy of independent bodies, but one body, dependent for its unity on the head, the Pope, who is, so to speak, the personality of the Church. For this reason, the author makes a gross mistake when he states that the archbishops, bishops, and inferior clergy constitute an aristocracy. In an aristocracy, as in a confederacy, the unity derives from the parts, and therefore is never, properly speaking, unity, but merely a union ; whereas in the hierarchy it derives from the common centre, from the head, which is one, and not from the members, which are many.

" Meantime, theology formed into a system, and ancient philosophy recast in modern moulds, and subtile metaphysics and stern logic, establish the dynasty of the Schoolmen, the aristocracy of the University." We are at a loss to understand what the author means. His thesis is, that the Church, the University, and the State, during his second era, were subjected to authority, that is, were not free. But in what does he place their freedom ? The Church is free when she is not controlled by any power foreign to herself, and can teach, govern, discipline, worship, according to her own constitution and laws. The State is free when no foreign or extraneous element interferes with its discharge of its legitimate functions. So, also, must be the University. How, then, the University is pervaded by a spirit of authority, is controlled in the discharge of its functions, when it is free to govern itself, and is subject only to its own laws, we do not and cannot understand. Perhaps the author means less by the Church, University, and State than we suppose. He uses these words to designate both the interior elements, love, intellect, power, and the outward institutions which spring from them ; or rather, he confounds the interior elements and the outward institutions, and means one or the other, both together, or not exactly one or the other, as he finds it most convenient. The interior element, love, is the Church, in its principle ; and when he complains of authority exercised over the Church, perhaps he means merely that the interior element, which founds the outward Church, is not free to push itself out at will, to overthrow existing, and to found new church organizations at pleasure. The grand defect, then, of the Middle Ages would be, under the point of view of Church, that they attempted to preserve the Church they received, and to maintain ecclesiastical order, or, in other words, that they labored to maintain for the inward element its outward organization.    Under the point of view of State, the defect would he, that they labored  to  restore  political  order, and  preserve  society   from dissolution  or  anarchy, and thus interfered with the liberty of revolutions.     So the defect of the  University would be, that it sought to give to the inward conception an outward expression, and to satisfy the intellect by clear, distinct, and well-established truths.    The doctrine of the author would seem to be, since he is  severe upon all revolutionists and destructives, that nothing should be fixed  or established in Church, State, or University, and that every organization, every institution, every law, every formal statement, is repugnant to the interior freedom of man, and contrary to the true liberty.    He would cure all the vices, crimes, and errors of society, as Lycurgus cured adultery, by abolishing the law which enjoined conjugal fidelity.    But be this as it may, the dynasty of the Schoolmen, in so far as dynasty it could be called, and as distinguished from the political authority, on the one hand, and  from  the ecclesiastical, on the other, was the result of the free intellectual development the author contends for, and proves, not the presence, but the absence of the authority to which he objects. " While the spiritual power threatening  excommunication upon heretics, and the   temporal   power   punishing  as   magic the discoveries and inventions of genius, uphold dictatorship in the realm of thought."    That the spiritual power not only threatened excommunication upon heretics, but actually excommunicated them, during the Middle Ages, is no doubt true ; but so it did in the primitive age, and so does it even now ; it therefore  is nothing peculiar to the author's second era, and cannot be  adduced to prove its peculiar character.     That the temporal power punished magic in the Middle Ages is possible; it did so under the pagan emperors, and has done so almost within our own day; but we shall be obliged to Mr. Channing to name to us one well-authenticated discovery of genius, or scientific discovery, that was punished as magic in the Middle Ages, or in any other age.    We are aware of no instance of the sort.    The dictatorship in the realm of thought was no greater in the author's second than in his first or his third era.    " The unity of Force fulfils its end, when Pope and Emperor and Council conspire to cramp elastic Europe with the leading-strings of a monotonous despotism."    The author here uses force as the synonyme of authority, or he changes, without notice, his subject, neither of which is allowable.    If force fulfils its end, it does what is legitimate; what, then, is there to complain of? But when and where did " Pope and Emperor and Council conspire to cramp elastic Europe with the leading-strings of a monotonous despotism"? Popes and councils have not seldom labored to check despotism, and to secure the freedom of conscience and worship ; but we recollect no instance in which they conspired to establish a despotism. If the author does, we wish he would name it, — the place where, and the time when. It is easy to make loose assertions if one is unscrupulous, but an honest man is cautious how he makes assertions for which he has no authority, to the prejudice of his neighbour. That there was despotism in the Middle Ages we do not dispute, for there is always despotism where there is barbarism; but that there was in them a monotonous despotism we have yet to learn. So far as we have studied those ages, monotony was by no means one of their characteristics. The only monotony we have detected in them is the monotony of the ocean in a storm, — the monotony of the mountain torrent, swollen by recent floods, — the monotony of movement, change, and variety. But this may be owing to the fact that we have not read them, lately, through the spectacles of a world-reformer, by which one sees much that is not to be seen.

3. The third era is characterized by " Individual Freedom," and therefore, negatively, we suppose, by the absence of authority in Church, State, and University. This era, like the others, is left indefinite; but we shall assume that the author means to extend it from the breaking out of Protestantism to the peace of Utrecht, in 1713. We cannot commence it earlier without running back into his second, nor extend it later without running forward into what is obviously his fourth era. This period of two hundred years is, we had supposed, remarkable for the absence of individual freedom. It is the period of the rise, progress, and decline of Protestantism, the destruction in favor of monarchy of the old feudal nobility throughout the principal states of Europe, the suppression of the Estates in Sweden and Denmark, of the States General in France, the Comuneros in Spain, and, virtually, the Parliament in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts, the centralization of government, and the consolidation of the power of the monarch. It is the golden age of absolute monarchy, as we see in the Austrian House of Hapsburg and the Prussian House of Hohenzollern ; in Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth, and James the First and his son Charles, in England ; Richelieu and Louis the Fourteenth in France ; and Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second in rtpain. indeed, the principal outward effect of Protestantism for these two hundred years, aside from the destructive and protracted wars to which it gave rise, and which threatened to replunge Europe into barbarism, from which the Church, by a thousand years of unremitting labor, had in a measure rescued it, was the establishment of absolute monarchy in nearly all Protestant, and, indirectly, in nearly all Catholic Europe, it did this by its resistance to the Papal authority, and by the centralization of the powers and administration of government it rendered necessary on both sides to carry on the wars it engendered.

In the University, there was very little of what Mr. Channing calls individual freedom. Indeed, in Protestant countries, during the whole period, very little is done for education ; the great mass of the people are suffered to grow up in utter ignorance, and the Universities that flourish are entirely under the control either of the sect or of the state. As to Catholic countries, it is enough to say that it is the glorious era of the Jesuits, who are the masters, under the Church, of education, and the principal educators ; and Mr. Channing will hardly contend that the most striking feature of Jesuitism is individual freedom in his sense of the term, although, we grant, it may be in ours; for no man is or can be more free than he who has no will but that of his legitimate superior.

The Protestant nations, we grant, threw off the authority of the Pope, but they fell under the civil despot; they discarded the authority of the Church, but only to become slaves of the sect, — to say the least, as hostile to individual freedom as the authority discarded, Mr. Channing himself being judge. Under a religious point of view, in the Protestant world, there may have been a struggle for individual freedom, but there was no individual freedom obtained. It was, we must remember, the period when Protestants not only persecuted Catholics., fined, imprisoned, massacred them without mercy, — which we do not expect a Protestant to regard otherwise than as praiseworthy, — but when they persecuted one another,— Calvinists, Socinians ; Gomerites, Arminians ; Lutherans, Anabaptists and Sacra-mentarians ; Anglicans, Puritans ; and Puritans, Anglicans ; and both Puritans and Anglicans, Quakers and Unitarians. It is the period, we must also remember, of Cavaliers and Roundheads in England, of Irish and English penal laws, of Episcopalian intolerance in Virginia and Maryland, and of Congregational exclusiveness in New England, where the law even forbade, as it is said, the making of minced pies or plum-puddings on Christmas, lest some countenance might be shown to prelacy and Papacy. Surely, in the Protestant world, there was, in Church, State, University, anything but individual freedom.

In Catholic countries, the Church relaxed nothing of her claims, and perhaps in no previous period of her history was the Papal authority more resplendent, or more fully recognized, or more cheerfully submitted to, by the great body of the faithful, than in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tn no previous period had the Church been more vigilant in detecting and condemning heresy, or more rigid in her control over the doctrines held by the faithful. It was in this period that was celebrated the great Council of Trent, in which the Christian doctrine was defined to a far greater extent than it had ever been in any previous Council. If the Church lost the Northern nations of Europe, which became Protestant, she was compensated by her conquests in the East, and in the newly discovered continent of America ; and perhaps the number of her children had never been, for any previous two hundred years, greater, or more worthy of her name of Catholic. Indeed, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so calamitous to Protestants, may almost be called, for Catholics, the Age of Saints. Whatever else the author may say of this period of history, he cannot with the least truth represent it as characterized by the presence of individualism and the absence of authority, ecclesiastical or civil. Indeed, if he had reversed his statement, and represented his second era, the Middle Ages, as characterized by individual freedom, and his third by the " pervading spirit of authority," he would have been, though still incorrect, less far from the truth.
4. The author's fourth era is characterized by " Practical Equality," by which we understand him to mean equality in the material order, the material interests of life. This period, like the others, is left undefined; we presume, however, that we shall meet the author's views, as Air as he has any, if we consider it as extending from the peace of Utrecht, the commencement of the modern industrial system, of which Great Britain may be considered as the chief, to the publication of Fourier's Theory of Unity, in 1822, — what, in a loose way, is termed the eighteenth century. In some respects, the author's outlines of this epoch are just, though his tone and coloring are false; and he proves that he  has  at least glanced at its history, or rather, that the masters he follows, for the most part educated in   the  eighteenth   century,   were better  acquainted  with   its facts than they were with the preceding centuries.    Nevertheless, to name it the age of practical equality is wholly inaccurate.    Of all known ages, it was the least practical.    It was carried away in pursuit of Utopias, even more than the present. The wildest, the maddest schemes were imagined, and pursued as realities.   Was it not the age of Law's Mississippi Scheme, —of Mesmer, Cagliostro, and the Republic of all the Virtues, — of atheism, &Homme-plant, L'Tlommc-maclrine, Voltaire, Condorcet, Hume, Hartley, Price, Thomas Paine, Jacobinism, the perfectibility of human nature, and dreams of man's immortality on earth ?    It should be called the age of impracticable dreams, and mad fancies, —and yet not wholly, for it was also the age of Vico, Reid, William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Napoleon Bonaparte, and George  Washington.    As to equality, never was there less approach to it, nor was there ever set in operation a series of causes more hostile to it.    Political equality was established here, but it operates chiefly in favor of material inequality, in covering the land over with industrial corporations which defy  individual  competition.      Labor-saving machinery has been invented and introduced to an incalculable extent, but it results in throwing out of employment millions of laborers,  in concentrating the business of production in  the hands of capitalists or soulless corporations, in destroying the class of small manufacturers, and compelling the operatives to toil for the mere minimum of human subsistence.    It is to get rid of the effects   produced by it and other kindred causes, the hopeless inequalities and the terrible physical degradation of the laboring classes resulting, that Socialism is preaching up reform, and effecting its anarchical revolutions in Europe, if we may believe Mr. Channing and his friends.     The only sense in which the author can say the last century was marked by practical equality is in   the  sense that  it had  it not,  and   made wholly ineffectual efforts to gain it.

The author says the unity of the Church was broken, and its prestige lost. But this is a mistake. The unity of the Church has never been broken, and never can be broken as long as there is a successor of St. Peter, the centre of unity ; for where Peter is, there is the Church,— Ubi Pctrtis, ibi Ecclesia. Individuals and nations may lose the unity of the Church by breaking from her communion, and thus losing the Church herself; but, if they do, it is they, not she, that lose
unity. The unity of the Church was never more perfect than during the last century, when all the powers of earth and hell seemed to be let loose against her, and when Jansenism, Protestantism, infidelism, and Jacobinism, strengthened by gross impurity and unbounded license, made their combined assaults upon her, and in their madness shouted a triumph which proved to be illusory. And it was in the very moment of their intoxication and frantic excesses, when the Holy Father was stripped of his temporal dominions, and was dying in exile or languishing in prison, that the reaction in favor of Catholicity began in the heart of Protestant Europe ; a reaction which still continues throughout the world, — nay, which Mr. Charming himself has felt more than once, and to which, had he followed the promptings of Divine grace, and not struggled against tendencies which he was conscious of, he would long ere this have yielded.

5. The fifth era is the present, and is characterized by the principle of "Cooperation," or rather, is to be so characterized. Of this era we have not much to say, for we do not, like Mr. dimming, claim to be a prophet. The principle of cooperation, however, is no new principle, as Mr. Charming asserts ; it is as old as society, that is, as old as the human race itself. The " Fraternity " the author preaches was known from the beginning, and ceased to be a fact only with the confusion of languages and the dispersion of the human race. In the Christian sense, fraternity by election and grace, as distinguished from that by natural generation, has always been proclaimed and realized in the Church. Cooperation must be either by force of nature or by virtue of grace, cither compelled or voluntary. What it is or can be by force of nature, the author may learn from the history of gentilism, which, we imagine, is not precisely what he wishes for. It cannot be compelled without a despotic authority, against which he declaims. If voluntary and by grace, it can be realized only in the Christian Church, which reestablishes unity in the elected human race, or chosen people of God, and will make the elected commensurate with the natural human race, in proportion as men voluntarily submit to her authority.
We pass over what the author says of " Revolutionary Tendencies," or "the Position of Judge," and also what he says of" Unitary Tendencies," or "the Position of Prophet," the fourth and fifth general divisions of his Discourse ; for we do not know who has installed him as judge, and because he appears to us to be one of those prophets whom the Lord commands us not to hear, — prophets of their own hearts, of whom the Lord says, " I did not send these prophets, yet they ran." " The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream ; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word with truth ; what hath the chaffe do with the wheat ? saith the Lord."*(footnote: Vide Jer. xxiii 21-34) He who asks us to listen to him as a prophet must show us the seal of his commission from the Almighty. We pass over, therefore, these two divisions of his Discourse, and come at once to his official statement of what he terms the u fundamental principles of Social Science."

" 1. The One God, Infinite and Eternal, lives in three modes; of which Love is the Principle, — Beautiful Joy the End, — and Wisdom the harmonizing Medium ; and throughout creation every existence, us made in the likeness of the Being of beings, is triune also, — having an impulse of good for its motive power, a. cooperative use for its ultimate destiny, and a form of order as the law of its development.

" l. The Divine Idea of Man is of Many men made One, or, in other words, of a race unfolding, through ages, around the globe, from simple, original unity into every possible variety, and thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity. The centre of this race is God in Man ; its destined end, a Heaven of Humanity ; and the mode of its growth, the formation of Societies, whose members may be trained to wise beneficence, and in whose confederacies, peaceful and prosperous, may be brightly imaged the Divine Blessedness.

" 3. The Life of Man is Love, inspired continually by God, who, from everlasting to everlasting, attracts the members of every race to Unity, and to Himself, by rational freedom, — thus governing his children by the law of liberty, while rewarding them by the liberty of law ; and the method of holy and humane existence is so to harmonize Collective and Individual good, that societies and nations may be reconciled in all interests, and become fit temples for the indwelling Divine Spirit.

" 4. The Form of this Unitary Life is the Law of Series, by which, throughout creation, Divine Justice graduates, — intermingles,— combines the varieties latent in every unity, and out of seeming discord evolves sublimest concord. This plan of perfect order so distributes the functions of society, that each primitive affection finds the freest play, and persons the most diverse in character and power arc bound in one by mutual service, as are the organs of a living body.

" 5. As Divine Goodness is manifested in the impulses which animate all creatures, — and Divine Wisdom in the law which, regulating all movement, finds expression in intelligent spirits, — so Divine Power reflects itself in the beauty of the universe, whose every particle and coacting whole symbolize the perfect peace of God ; and as Nature, thus fashioned in image of the Almighty, is designed as the mould for finite energy, the indispensable condition of human refinement is Organized Industry, and Work exalted into Art.

" 6. The aim of a Community should be to form a Collective Man, wherein the inspiring principle of Love, the distributing method of Law, and the refining conditions of Beauty, may be severally developed and mutually completed, and thus, by interaction, their common end fulfilled. Property should be held in joint-stock ownership; — Labor made cooperative in groups and series of groups ; — economy, refinement, and pure influences secured by families united in a Combined Dwelling;—profits equitably distributed to partners, in proportion to Labor, Skill, and Capital ; — anxiety and sorrow lightened by a system of Mutual Guaranties, extending to all the risks and responsibilities of life ; — honors and trusts assigned by election according to approved Usefulness in special functions, or in general direction; — physical, mental, moral growth insured by an Integral Education, at once spiritual, scientific, and practical, and embracing the whole of life; — and chiefly the Divine rule of All for Each, and Each for All, embodied and actualized in Unity of Interests.

" 7. In such Organized Societies alone can Individual Men be formed to Integrity;— for only there can infants be worthily welcomed at birth, —children purely and symmetrically developed,— young men and women guided to vocations appropriate to their peculiar powers, — the mature upheld in magnanimous efficiency by a consciousness, that, in laboring for the commonwealth, they are insuring the welfare of their families, and their own highest good,— the aged reverenced, solaced, cheered, — and every person taught by life to know the worth of a human being, and the loyalty due to a united race ; and, finally, only from Societies thus constituted can States, Nations, Humanity, become One in that fraternity of freemen, which, in spirit, truth, and deed, will be the Kingdom of God." —pp. 22-24.

This statement has evidently been drawn up with great care, and that it is satisfactory to the author we may infer from the fact, that he has recently republished it, as an official statement of principles, in The Spirit of the Age, a paper of which he is the editor, and which takes the place of The Harbinger, whilome the organ of the Fourierists, or American Associationists.    But however carefully it may have been drawn up, and however well satisfied the author may be with it, it is to us exceedingly obscure, confused, vague, and uncertain ; and without referring to the author's antecedents and concomitants, and drawing upon our own knowledge of the authors he has studied, and from whom he has borrowed most of his doctrines, we should be utterly unable to extract the least intelligible meaning from it. To analyze the seven paragraphs cited, or articles of the author's creed, to ascertain the precise number of propositions they contain, and to determine the precise sense and value of each, would far transcend our ability, or, if not our ability, at least our limits, and our patience, as well as — what is more to the purpose — the patience of our readers. We must therefore confine ourselves to some three or four of the more general and more fundamental propositions.

1. " The one God, Infinite and Eternal, lives in three modes." What does the author mean by saying that God lives ? Does he mean to distinguish between the Divine esse, or living, and the Divine exisltre, or existence ? We presume so. He, then, holds that our primary conception of God is that of pure essence, the reine Seyn of the Hegelians, and supposes that the conception of God as existence — das Wesen — is secondary. Hence God does not live or exist in himself, but in his evolutions, his works, or the universe, which express him. This is the doctrine of the school to which the author appears to us to belong, and is in accordance with what, in our former article, we found to be his own doctrine. Hence God is not conceivable as living or actually existing God without the universe, and the universe is as necessary to him as the medium of his life, as he is to the universe as the fountain of its being. God, regarded in himself, is the ideal of the universe, and the universe is his realization, — to him, as Mr. Channing once said to us in conversation, what the picture is to the ideal or design of the artist. But as God is the infinite Ideal, and tends to the infinite revelation of himself, he must run through an infinite variety of being in order to actualize his infinite potentiality. This tendency to infinite realization of himself implies his infinite progress in his life, and the infinite progress in the universe, from the lowest and least perfect forms of existence, to the highest and most perfect. Here is the foundation of the modern or pantheistic theory of progress, which we find in Hegel, Cousin, and Pierre Leroux, and the law of which Fourier professes to have determined.

But this doctrine implies, as ordinarily taken, that the ideal can realize itself, that pure essence can clothe itself with existence, and that the cause is completed, fulfilled, perfected, in the effect, — that is, what does not exist can act, and imperfection can, of and by itself, perfect itself. As we actualize our potentiality by our efforts, and may be said to grow and to consolidate and enlarge our powers by acting, and to live only by doing, so it is thought that the same may be predicated of God himself, — as if the reason why this is true of us, namely, that we live, move, and have our being in God, could apply in his case as well as in ours ! Under another point of view, the progression of life supposed is merely a progression in order, irrespective of space or time, — that is to say, God and the universe form one eternal and indissoluble whole, embracing in itself every conceivable variety or form of existence. This seems to us to have been the view of Hegel himself, and is the only consistent pantheistic view conceivable. This, so far from proving the common theory of progress, denies it, and reduces all to eternal immobility, and real silence and death,—teaching that life and motion are only sense-illusions, arising from the contracted sphere of our vision, without anything to respond to them in the world of reality. But take the doctrine in either sense, it is incompatible with the ends Mr. Channing contemplates. If the first view is taken, progress is impossible, because pure essence without existence is nothing but mere potentiality or possibility, and the possible cannot reduce itself to act,— that is, mere possible existence cannot make itself actual existence ; for it must be actual before it can act, or perform anything. If the second view be taken, progress is equally impossible ; for all is complete as it is, can be neither more nor less, nor other, than it is, either in whole or in part. Yet Mr. Channing and all the Associationists are great believers in progress, and will tolerate no immobility,—no, not even in God.

Theologically considered, the distinction between the Divine esse, or being, and the Divine existere, or living, is inadmissible. Being, abstracted from existence, is merely possible being, not actual being ; and therefore the distinction, if asserted, implies that God, considered in himself, in our ultimate conception of him, is merely potential or possible God, and must be reduced to act, before we can assert that he exists, or actually is. But the possible cannot reduce itself to act, for to reduce is to act, and only the actual can act. How, then, from merely possible God obtain actual, living God ?    The author must either say there is no God, or else suppose something more ultimate than God, which reduces the pure essence to existence. If he says the former, he concedes Unit his distinction is tantamount to the denial of God ; if he says the latter, he supposes an exterior cause of God, and therefore a cause prior to the first cause, and a cause of the cause of all causes, which, we need not add, is absurd. He cannot say this ; he is not at liberty to deny God, for he begins with the assertion of the existence of the one, infinite, and eternal God ; nothing, then, remains for him, but to agree with the Schoolmen, that God is most pure act, actus purissimus, excluding from his being all potentiality, and all conceivable distinction between his essence and his existence, his being and his life. His essence is existence, and his existence is essence. He is infinitely and essentially living, — living from, by, and in himself.

A little philosophy, of which Mr. Channing and his school claim to have so much, would suffice, we should suppose, to teach him that pure essence, or being, without existence, is absolutely inconceivable. God, non-existent, but as the dark background of existence, as some profess to conceive him, is absolutely unintelligible, and really indistinguishable, as Hegel himself says, from nothing. In God we live, move, and are ; and therefore it is only in him we can see, know, or conceive at all, as Malebranche has shown in his theory of Vision in God, whatever we may think of the theory itself. Every conception of which we are capable, whether of the actual or the possible, conceals at bottom, connotes, or implies (he conception of God as actually existing, living God. The idea of God logically precedes all our other ideas, and in fact chronologically, although not distinctly, or as distinguished from our other conceptions ; for to distinguish implies reflection,— what the Italians very finely term ripensare,— which belongs to a later period of life. This idea, the idea of God, — not of pure abstract being, as Rosmini, if correctly reported to us, maintains, — is the forma, or formative principle, of the intellect, or faculty of intelligence. It is the light by which the faculty is constituted intelligent faculty, and by virtue of which we see all that we do see. Take away from the mind this idea, you take away the very power of intellection, and leave to man nothing intelligible. To take away this idea is to deny God, and if you deny God, you deny, not only all actual existence, but all possible existence ; for the possible is conceivable as possible even only by virtue of the conception of God as actually existing being, whose actual power can reduce it to act, make it actual, if he pleases. Hence, we must either say that we can conceive nothing at all, and assert nihilism,— which is impossible, for we cannot, if we would, deny our own existence without at the same time asserting it, — or else we must concede that our primitive conception is the conception of God as living God, in whom no distinction between essence and existence is admissible or conceivable, as the Church has defined, as all Catholic theologians teach, as every sane philosopher maintains, and the common sense of mankind asserts.

But the One God, Infinite and Eternal, lives in three modes." Since we can admit no distinction between Deity and God, between the Divine essence and the Divine existence, whatever be the distinction of modes here intended, they must be understood as distinctions in the Divine being or nature. To suppose them to be in the Divine being or nature is to suppose that nature to be composite, essentially composed of substance and mode, or of subject and accident. But this is not admissible. The composite is subsequent to the components, and God, if composite, can be resolved into something more ultimate than himself. The substance is potential in relation to the mode, the subject in relation to the accident; but God, we have seen, is most pure act, and therefore excludes from his being all potentiality. If we suppose God to be composed of substance and mode, we must suppose a power anterior to him that composes him, or unites the substance and mode so as to form from their union the living God ; which, as we have seen, is to suppose a cause prior to the first cause, and a cause of the cause of all causes. Our readers may be inclined to believe, that Mr. Channing predicates the three modes of God operating out of himself, not of his being, but of his operations. This, however, is not the case ; for he is evidently speaking of God, regarded in his own life, not as operating in space and time, but as infinite and eternal, therefore above and prior to his external operations in time. He must, therefore, predicate the modes of his being, and not of his operations.
" The One God, Infinite and Eternal, lives in three modes; of which Love is the Principle, Beautiful Joy the End, and Wisdom the harmonizing Medium." But what is the antecedent of which ? Three modes ? Then what are the modes themselves ? Love will be the principle of all three, beautiful joy the end, and wisdom the medium ; but of all three what ? This does not appear.   Lives'?    It is not, we believe, according to Lindley Murray to make a verb not used as subject, or as subjective member of a sentence, the antecedent of a relative pronoun ; but world-reformers may, no doubt, reform grammar as well as other things, and we suppose the author really means to tell us, that, of the Divine life or living, love is the principle, beautiful joy the end, and wisdom the harmonizing medium. As God lives from, in, and by himself, and no distinction between his essence and his existence is conceivable, we must predicate the love, joy, and wisdom of the Divine being, and they are themselves the three modes of its existence ; which, after what we have said, must mean, if anything, that God, in our highest conception of him, is essentially composed of principle, means, and end, which are love, wisdom, joy. What all this means is more than we know. It is a doctrine of the author, that all existences mirror or image God, and he has told us that every man is constituted of three elements, namely, love, truth, power, related to each other as inmost, mediate, outmost, or as motive, means, end (p. 7). It is, therefore, only fair to presume that he holds that God is constituted, in like manner, of three elements, which are in him, as in man, related as motive, means, and end, as inmost, mediate, and outmost. God, then, is to be regarded as a whole, composed of beginning, middle, and end, like a good oration ; but what this really means is not very intelligible to us. That God, in operating out of himself, that is, in creating the universe, acts by means, from a motive, or for an end, may be said ; and that the motive is his own infinite love or goodness, wisdom the means, and, as to his creatures, beautiful joy the end, may also be said ; but this has nothing to do with Mr. Channing's doctrine. He asserts that God lives in three modes, and that he lives from love to joy, by or through wisdom. But what, since these three elements constitute God, is he who lives thus ? He cannot be the love, for that is his motive ; he cannot be the joy, for that is the end he seeks ; and he cannot be the wisdom, for that is the means he uses. To say he is no one nor all of these taken singly, but is all of them taken together, in their union or composition, is — besides the absurdity of supposing a being seeking an end which he essentially is — to suppose the Divine nature to be complex, and therefore subject to analysis and dissolution. It denies the unity and substantiality of God, by making him a mere union or totality, and is open to all the objections already urged.

In republishing this first article of his creed in The Spirit of the Age, Mr. Channing has made a slight addition, which may help us to understand him.     " The Absolute Being, infinite, eternal, though in   Himself utterly   unapproachable,  is  presented to our highest conceptions as Triune, — the one, the one in many, and the many in one.   To us he appears to live,"-&c.    The doctrine of the author, we think we cannot be mistaken in saying, is, that God is for us human beings only in his manifestations,—that to our highest conceptions he is presented only as, so to speak, the manifested or actualized God, inseparable and indistinguishable from the principle, means, and end of the manifestation, or actually evolved universe.  Whether back and independent of the actual universe he exists, we know not; for out of the universe — that is, as living in and of himself, independent of the universe — he is inconceivable, " utterly unapproachable," even in conception.  Thus Cousin says : — " Le Dieu de la conscience n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire relegue par-dela la creation sur le trone desert d'une eternitd silencieuse et d'une existence absolue qui ressemble an n&int meme de l'existence ; c'est un Dieu a la Ibis vrai et reel, a la fois substance et cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, n'etant substance qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance, c'est-a-dire etant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, eter-nite et temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilite et totalite, principe, fin et milieu, au sommet de l'etre et a, son plus humble degre, infini et fini tout ensemble, triple en fin, c'est-a-dire a la fois Dieu, nature, et humanite.   En efl'et, si Dieu n'est pas tout, il n'est rien ; s'il est absolument indivisible en soi, il est inaccessible et par consequent il est incomprehensible, et son incomprehensibilite est pour nous sa destruction.    Incomprehensible comme formule et dans l'ecole, Dieu est clair dans le mondequi lemanifeste, et pour l'amequi le possede et le sent."*(Footnote: Fragments Philosophiques. 3e 6d, Paris, 1838, Tom. I. p.76) The identity, on this point, of Cousin's doctrine and Mr. Chan-ning's cannot be reasonably doubted.

God, according to Cousin and our author, is at once one and many, — is one in many, and many in one. But this is not conceivable. Unity necessarily excludes multiplicity, and multiplicity unity. If God is one, he cannot be many ; if many, he is not one. Nothing in the world is more certain. Mr. Channing is in pursuit of unity ; but if he supposes plurality in God the first cause, or the first link in his series of evolutions, he can never obtain unity ; for unity can no more be obtained from plurality, than perfection from imperfection. Plurality proceeds from unity, not unity from plurality. In God is the cause of multiplicity or plurality ; but not, therefore, is he himself multiple or manifold. It is false to say that God is many in one, or even that he is one in many. God does not lose his unity in creating variety, any more than an artist loses his, in producing a variety of pictures. Is the artist a man in designing a man, a horse in designing a horse, a flower in designing a flower, a fly in designing a fly ? And does lie become many in designing many, and they become one and identical in him ? If he loses his oneness in the variety of his designs, where is the unity in which they become one ? If God, in creating many, is himself many, he retains no unity in which the many can be one. The absurdity of Cousin's and Channing's doctrine results from the assumption, that God does not and cannot create, but simply evolves, and, in order to produce man, becomes himself man ; a horse, becomes himself horse ; a cabbage, becomes himself cabbage ; that is to say, what we call creatures are but forms or modes of the manifested God, — pure pantheism.

The author misapprehends the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and is mistaken in supposing that he represents God as triune. His God is not triune, but threefold ; for, by introducing divisibility, plurality, variety, diversity, into the one primary conception of God, he denies the unity of the Divine Being. His God is complex, not simple ; a totality, not a unity ; for a divisible unity is inconceivable, — a contradiction in terms. His love, wisdom, joy, are not the three hypostases of the Christian Mystery, and in no sense respond to them, or can by any possibility be the real sense of the Christian symbol,— what Christians would mean by it, if they understood themselves, as Mr. Channing would say ; because they are all three essential to the Divine nature. In neither one nor another of them is God without the other two. They are distinctions in the Divine essence. Love is not God, if distinguished from wisdom, nor wisdom, if distinguished from love. But the sacred Mystery asserts that God is absolutely one in his substance, being, nature, or existence ; indivisible, indistinguishable, and most simple. The triune God is not God existing in a threefold being or nature, but one nature, one essence, one substance, one being, one existence in three persons. Personality is the last complement of rational nature.    The Divine nature, which is rational nature, if we may so speak, is one and indivisible, in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the plurality is only in the last complement, or personality ; so that " the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, yet are there not three Gods, but one God." Mr. Channing cannot say, Love is God, Wisdom is God, and Beautiful Joy is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God ; for, according to him, God is only the union, or totality, of the three ; and, since they are distinct by nature, if he should call each separately God, he would assert three Gods, not one Divine Being in three persons. He therefore neither asserts the substance of the Christian Trinity, nor a triune God, as he supposes.

So far as the three elements Mr. Channing names arc to be regarded as attributes of the Divine Being, they are undoubtedly distinguishable from one another, in our apprehension of them, or manner of conceiving them ; but not in God, nor from his Divine esse or being. This distinction of attributes, which we concede, does in no sense respond to that of three persons ; because all the Divine attributes are common to each of the Divine Persons. Moreover, it is only virtually real, and exists in our minds with merely a foundation in reality. Regarded in himself} since God is most simple, — simplicissimus,—as he must be if, as we have proved, he is most pure act, — actus purissimus,— there can be no distinction between him and his attributes, nor between one attribute and another. His attributes are himself, and in himself all his attributes are identical. He is goodness, wisdom, justice, power, &c. ; and goodness, wisdom, justice, power, &c, are in him one and the same. But he being infinite, and we finite, we cannot conceive him adequately, and are obliged to conceive his attributes separately, and, in our conceptions, distinguish them both from his Divine esse and from one another. This is allowable, because he eminently contains the distinctions we make, or contains himself that which equals, and more than equals, all that we conceive in our separate conceptions.

But we must quicken our pace, or we shall never reach the end of our journey. " And throughout creation every existence, as made in the likeness of the Being of beings, is triune also, — having an impulse of good for its motive power, a cooperative use for its ultimate destiny, and a form of order as the law of its development." This throws some light on what has preceded, and proves that God, as well as his creatures, has, in Mr. Channing's view, an ultimate destiny, that is, Beautiful Joy. Who appointed to God his destiny ? Does God work to realize or perfect his own beautiful joy ? Do you suppose him, in the beginning, destitute of complete blessedness, and that he creates out of his own emptiness to fill up his joy, not out of his own fulness, and that his blessedness is completed or perfected in his creatures ? This is what we have all along seen to be Mr. Channing's doctrine. He does not appear to be able to conceive a God perfect in himself, and creating from pure disinterestedness, for the sake, not of increasing his own joy, but of communicating his goodness and blessedness to creatures. He condemns selfishness, and yet, with an inconsistency not uncommon in system-mongers and world-reformers, makes God himself intensely, infinitely selfish, laboring only to perfect his own existence, and to fill up the measure of his own joy. He would seem, then, not to wish us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, but more perfect, to have an altogether higher perfection, so as, by our noble and disinterested conduct, to help perfect God, and complete his " Beautiful Joy."

If every creature is made in the likeness of God, as Mr. Channing represents him, it by no means follows that every creature is triune ; for according to him, as we have seen, God is not triune, since he is a totality, not a unity, a mere union or complexity of different elements. Theologians find in man, who is made to the image and likeness of God, some faint analogy to the most Holy Trinity ; but that every creature's existence reproduces in itself the image of the three Persons of the Godhead, is a proposition the author may find it not a little difficult to prove. But letting this pass, we are unable to conceive — perhaps owing to our native and acquired dul-ness — how a being can be essentially constituted of an impulse, a cooperative use, and a law of development. An impulse implies some one who imparts and some one who receives it, and from both of which it is distinguishable. But who or what gives the impulse ? It cannot be man himself, because the impulse is a constituent element of his nature. Who or what receives the impulse, or is moved by it ? Not man, again, for he is indistinguishable from it. A cooperative use implies a thing used, distinguishable from the user, and an end to which it is used. What is the thing that is used ? Not man, because he is the use, — the use being one of his constituent elements.    Who  is  the user, or cooperator ?    Not man, for the same reason. What is the end to which the cooperative use is directed ? Beautiful Joy ? But that also is a constituent element of man, without which man is not constituted, and therefore identical with the use and user. Cannot the author see, that, if he makes the three elements constitutive of the creature, he must write — nonsense ? No being, conceived to contain its motive, means, and end in itself, as constitutive of its nature, can be conceived as active. The actor must be one, simple, indivisible, and the whole being must be on the side of the actor, and distinguishable from the end for which it acts. If man is divided into motive, means, and end, there is no entire man to be placed on the side of the actor, or to seek, by the means, the end. One third is detached, and set before the other two as the end ; and the other two, again, are separated, and one third takes the other third as its means of gaining the first. Is this really conceivable ? Can the third part of man, distinguished from the other two thirds, be a simple, complete, active being ? Or suppose Mr. Channing does not mean to separate them,—suppose he considers them united ; then he must consider the whole man essentially and entirely in each of the three terms, — that he is all motive, all means, all end, simultaneously and together, and therefore that man uses himself as the means to obtain himself! We have seen a young dog amuse himself running round after his own tail ; but that is nothing in comparison with a man running round after himself, like one of the characters in Jean Paul Richter's Titan, who is everywhere seeking his Ich, his Ego, which he fancies he has lost.

2. " The Divine Idea of Man is of Many men made One, or, in other words, of a race unfolding, through ages, around the globe, from simple, original unity into every possible variety, and thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." This means, we suppose, that man, properly viewed, is many men made one, or unity unfolded, in space and time, into every possible variety, and through that variety becoming completed or actualized unity. But this, if it mean anything, must mean something which is not admissible. Mr. Channing recognizes in his system no simple, original unity, from which the race can unfold into variety ; for he makes man essentially the mere union of three distinguishable elements, related to each other as motive, means, and end ; and he also represents God, the fountain of all being and existence, essentially composite, composed, as man, of three distinct elements, which are in like manner related to each other in him. He supposes plurality, multiplicity, in Cod, or first link in his series of evolutions, which is reproduced in each and every evolution or existence, and therefore denies all simple, original unity as his point of departure, whether for God or for creatures. Besides, unity cannot unfold. Simple, original unity unfolding, is a contradiction in terms. Only complexity, multiplicity, plurality, can unfold, all of which are. excluded by simple unity, and, in turn, exclude it. Even if the author could, without contradicting himself, assert simple, original unity, he could not assert that the idea of man is of a race unfolding from unity. There is no difference between a unity that unfolds into variety, and no unity at all.

" And thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." Here is queer philosophy. The race unfolds from simple unity into every possible variety, and from variety into fulfilled, composite unity. Unity is fulfilled in variety ; that is to say, unity, considered in itself, is not actual unity, is only potential unity, and becomes actual unity only in multiplicity and composition ! Unity, then, must cease to be unity in order to be unity. Our modern philosophers have made strange discoveries. " Thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." Composite unity ! What sort of an animal is that ? Why not talk of a round triangle, or a square circle ? A composite unity is no unity at all, but a sheer contradiction in terms. Composition denies unity, and unity denies composition. By no conceivable combination of particulars can you obtain unity ; for combination gives only a union, a whole, an aggregation, all terms which are excluded by unity, and which exclude it in turn. Mr. Channing can hardly be ignorant of this, for he has once, unless our recollection fails us, been able to distinguish between union and unity.

The contradictions and absurdities which meet us at every turn in the author, and which we grow weary of pointing out, result, we suppose, from his eclecticism, or rather syncretism, in which he includes and attempts to harmonize systems essentially incongruous and irreconcilable. He has some reminiscences of Christian theism, which he would retain and reconcile with the pantheistic conceptions he has, consciously or unconsciously, adopted ; and these last he wishes to harmonize with the doctrine of progress furnished him by the dominant sentiment of the age, or modern WeU-geist, and which is his favorite  doctrine,  to  which all in his system is subordinate. Some whom he respects advocate Christianity ; others whom he respects equally as much, perhaps more, advocate pantheism ; and both these classes advocate progress. He concludes, therefore, that Christian Theism, German Pantheism, and French Socialism or Progressism are, at bottom, identical, or, at least, mutually reconcilable. He throws them all into the same category, and reasons from them as if there was no fundamental difference between them, and hence the confusion and contradictory character of his thought and speech.
Christian theism asserts one God, infinitely perfect, self-existing, eternal, independent, absolutely one and most simple, excluding from his being all potentiality, all complexity, composition, multiplicity, variety, distinction, and therefore asserts other existences, or the universe, visible or invisible, only as created by his omnipotent power out of nothing, or, what is the same thing, out of his own infinite fulness ;—fulness, we say, not stuff, as Cousin maintains, which would imply the eternity of matter, or that God is the materia prima of the universe. Pantheism denies the creative Deity, and asserts that God is all, or the whole, and that nothing but God exists. Man and nature, as distinguished from him, are, in its view, no real existences, are nothing but. the infinite fulness of his own being. The world of space and time is a mere illusion, for there are and can be no separate existences coexisting, and no succession of events. All is eternal, immovable, silent. But now comes the great difficulty. To reconcile the idea of a creative Deity, Dens Creator, with the idea of an uncreative Deity, — a God who creates the heavens and the earth, and all things visible and invisible, with a God who creates, does, nothing, and is all that is or exists, — is hard enough ; but to reconcile this latter idea, which denies the world of space and time, and therefore all progressives, with the idea of universal and unlimited progress, is for Mr. Channing a still harder, as well as a more pressing, problem.

To solve these problems, the author, while he asserts the creative God, as he must in order to assert the world of space and time, quietly assumes that creative and uncreative are the same, or that creation and evolution have one and the same meaning, -and that to assert a God unfolding himself in variety is the same thing as to assert a God creating the universe. This disposes of the first difficulty. He then, in order to be able to conceive of God unfolding, and to reconcile the idea of the uncreative Deity with the idea of progress, imagines multiplicity and variety in God himself; that is, in the first cause, or the first link of his series. All now is simple and easy. God contains infinite variety, which he is infinitely developing. Each evolution, since it is an evolution of God, is an image of God, — or, so to speak, God himself in miniature, God in its own sphere, — and therefore contains a variety in itself, which, in its turn, it must evolve. Its evolutions, again, each in its degree, contain a variety, which also must be evolved, that is, actualized. These successive or serial evolutions are what is meant by progress. When God, as the first evolver, has evolved all his variety, actualized his entire potentiality, and each evolved existence has evolved all its variety, actualized its entire potentiality, according to the law of the series ascertained and determined by Fourier, all potentiality is actualized, and the universe is the actualized God, — God in his completeness and integrity. Then nothing more remains to be evolved ; the work is done ; and God, from whom and for whom are all things, is completed. Plurality and variety are commensurate with unity, and God and the universe may go to sleep, or, as Fourier seems to hold, may die altogether, and universal night and silence close the scene.
But as simple, as beautiful, and as scientific as all this may seem to our modern philosophers, it by no means reconciles the different ideas which are forced into juxtaposition. By resolving creation into evolution, the author loses Christian theism, and falls into pantheism ; and by placing multiplicity and variety in God in order to be able to assert evolution and progress, he dissolves his pantheism, and falls into pure atheism ; for atheism consists precisely in the denial of unity, and the assertion of multiplicity, plurality, variety, in the first cause. Atheism, again, is irreconcilable with progress ; for multiplicity, plurality, variety, &c, are subsequent to unity, and inconceivable without it. Hence, if placed in the first cause, represented as essential in the first link of the series, by excluding unity, they deny themselves, and therefore all existences, and then all progressibles. Thus every effort the author makes only removes him the farther from the goal he seeks, which we have found to be uniformly the case with every one who engages, outside of the City of God, in schemes of world-reform, however great their abilities, or praiseworthy, in itself considered, the general or particular end they propose.

A little sound philosophy and common  sense, we should think, might enable the author to perceive, that, if he takes multiplicity and variety for his starting-point, though he must arrive at nihility, he can never arrive at unity ; and that unless he asserts Christian theism, he can never assert progress, for it is only inasmuch as he admits a creative God that he can conceive of progressives. He must assert the God of the Christian and common sense, or the dead unity or uncrea-tive God of old Xenophanes and the Kleatics : or, in fine, he must deny unity and assert plurality in the origin of things, with the atheist, and therefore nihilism, since we have already shown, that, without the conception of God, no conception is possible. If he asserts the second, he loses the universe, and can talk no more of progress ; for unity has no progression, and, however multiplied into itself, gives and can give only unity for its product. If he says the third, still he can talk no more of progress, for nihility has as little progress as unity. But if he takes the first, he escapes every difficulty, and can assert the universe with all its variety ; for then he supposes for it an adequate cause. He can also, since he has a world of space and time, talk of progress, not indeed in attaining to a perfection never actual, and by means of imperfection, but in recovering a perfection lost, and approaching a perfection eternally actual in God. Progress is conceivable only in space and time, and to be able to assert its possibility we must be able to assert the reality of the world of space and time, which we cannot do ekber as pantheists or as atheists. Progress also implies motion, but motion is inconceivable without a prime mover, who is himself immovable, at rest. This is as true in the moral as in the physical world. Pantheism denies the prime mover, by asserting a dead, uncreative unity, which, if immovable, nevertheless imparts no motion ; or, if you take Mr. Channing's view, God, as anterior to creation, is not actual, but merely potential ; and the potential cannot move, for it cannot act, since only the actual can act. Atheism, of course, denies the prime mover ; for, rendered consequent, it denies all things, is universal negation. Christian theism asserts a prime mover, the eternal and immovable God, who causes motion, but does not himself enter into motion. Under any and every point of view, then, our modern advocates of progress could never have committed' a more serious blunder than in denying the creative God, — Deus Creator, — and in seeking a foundation for their doctrine in pantheism and atheism.
But " the Divine Idea of Man is of Many men made One."

In what are they made one ? The unity of the human race, that is, of what is for Mr. Channing the human race, does not now exist, and he admits it does not by the very fact that he is seeking its unity, and proposes it as the end to he gained, if made one, then, they must be so made in something which they are not and have not. What is this something ? Variety ? So Mr. Channing appears to leach ; but this is a mistake. Never will you arrive at unity through variety ; for the farther you travel in variety the farther do you recede from unity. Mankind, in themselves considered, are many, as Mr. Channing himself concedes, otherwise he could not speak of " Many men made One." If many, if a multitude, as they certainly are, they have not, and cannot have, the principle of unity in themselves, and can be made one only by virtue of some principle of unity above themselves, existing out of them and independent of them. What or where is this principle, of which men may participate, and by participation become one in it. it is not in nature, for nature is multiple, diverse ; it is not in man, for the very idea of man, Mr. Channing says, is of many men made one, and therefore the many must participate of it before man is conceivable ; it is not in grace, for the author recognizes no order of grace distinguishable from the order of nature. If not in one or another of these, it can be nowhere, cannot be at all. Mr. Channing, then, really recognizes no principle of unity, nothing in which the many are or can be made one. And yet he calls his doctrine the unitary doctrine, — professes to be seeking unity, in obedience to unitary tendencies !

u The centre of this race is God in Man." Thus, according to Mr. Channing, God lives in man, and not man in God, as religion teaches. This confirms what we have presented as his doctrine, that God lives in his evolutions, and is completed, actualized, or perfected in them ; that is, the cause is completed, fulfilled, in the effect, and therefore the cause depends on the effect for its perfection ! " The centre of this race is God in Man." This proves conclusively that Mr. Channing recognizes no unity, or principle of unity. He cannot say the human race attain to unity by participating of God, and becoming one in him ; for he is in them, not they in him ; and although he is in them, they are, nevertheless, without unity. God cannot, then, impart unity to them, or. by their union with himself make them one. Let the author talk no  more of unity. But if God lives in man, what more do you complain of? " Its destined end, a Heaven of Humanity." The end of the race can, whatever it be, be actualized only in individuals. If the end is humanity, it can be nothing else than the production of individuals, that is, the fulfilment of the command, if command rather than permission it is, Cre-scite et multiplicamini super earn (sc. terrain). But what is the destined end of individuals ? Do they count for nothing in your world-scheme ? It is remarkable how little account our modern reformers make of individuals, and of individual rights. They are genuine philanthropists,—love all men in general, and no one in particular ; seek to make all happy in general, and render every one miserable in particular. " Its destined end, a Heaven of Humanity." A heaven of humanity !    What is that ?    We are sure we do not know.

But we are transcending our limits, and are weary of the subject. We have, either in what we have heretofore advanced or in what we have now said, anticipated all we wish to say on the remaining propositions we have cited. We have aimed throughout to preserve our gravity, and to treat Mr. Channing with the kindness and affection due to the sweetness of his disposition and the gentleness of his manners. Whether we have in all instances succeeded, or not, our readers must judge. Mr. Channing sees, as all men see, and not more clearly nor more vividly, perhaps, than thousands of others not of his school, that there are innumerable evils in the world ; and he holds that every man should do all in his power to remedy them. He believes men might and should live as brothers, and that, if they would, wrongs and outrages would cease, there would be no more war, no more oppression, no more injustice, and the whole earth would be filled with love and joy, — and so do we. If every man did right, nobody would do wrong ; if every one lived as he ought, nobody would live as he ought not to live. Nothing in the world more true, my brother. We agree with you exactly. But how do you purpose to make all men live as brothers ? Here is, for you, the question of questions. This, the only question that it was necessary to answer, Mr. Channing answers not ; and none of our modern world-reformers or system-mongers answer in a very satisfactory manner. We have listened to most, perhaps to all the more notable, of their answers, but not with much edification. The only direct and practical answer we recollect to have heard is the world-famous answer of the Jacobin, "Be my brother, or I will kill you."    This is plain and direct, and has, at least, the merit of expressing truly the spirit of those who deafen us with their everlasting declamations about "brotherhood," " universal fraternity."

Mr. Channing, we cheerfully admit, does not precisely hold to killing ; but he has a great affection for the Jacobin, and takes him under his protection.    Moreover, in his unwearied efforts to stir up discontent, to make people sensible of their sufferings, to tear open the wounds of society, to uncover its running sores, and  exhibit them to everybody,—in dwelling upon the evils we suffer, forgetful of the good we receive, so much more than we deserve, and exciting hopes that can never be peacefully realized, nay, never realized at all, — he, whatever his intention, effectually prepares the millions, as far as his influence extends, for the Jacobin movement, and the adoption of the Jacobin answer.    The Associationists, we deny not, profess to be opposed to the resort to physical force, and to advocate only peaceful modes of reform ; but, if we recollect aright, Robespierre made his first appearance before the public as the author of an essay against capital punishment.     The Associationists, whatever their  intentions   or  professions, are but panders to  the  physical-force party, or, if they like the figure better,  recruiting-sergeants to the destructive army of revolutionists.    Let them not imagine that we can be taken with their professions, even when we do not question their sincerity.    They cannot promulgate  their  principles, and continue their declamations against civilization and society, without loosening all social bonds in their adherents, and rousing up the wild and ferocious passions of our nature, — passions which no theory, no reasoning, no smooth-toned rebuke or mild entreaty, can restrain, and which, when once broken loose, will precipitate the populations moved by them into war, bloodshed, and plunder.    Hope not, madmen,   ye  can  apply the lighted torch to flax without having it burn, or to a magazine of powder and not have it explode.      You cannot go on, year after year, denouncing social order, denouncing society itself, denouncing every restraint of law, all faith, piety, conscience, everything the race has hitherto held sacred, and hope that the multitude, if they heed you, will remain quiet, charmed to peace  by the dulcet   persuasions you, at  rare   intervals, let fall from your sweet lips, or that they will not take up arms to realize the visions of Mahomet's paradise on earth, with which you have maddened their brains and inflamed their lusts. We should shudder at the bare thought of doing you injustice.  We would not willingly offend your pride or wound your sensibility ; but we tell you, pretended peaceful reformers, that the basest and most horror-inspiring criminals, on whom our society inflicts the supreme vengeance of the law, are harmless in comparison with you, pure-minded, moral, and heroic as ye fancy yourselves, and kind-hearted as ye really may be ; for you kill reason, you murder the soul, you assassinate conscience, you sap society, render order impossible, take from law its moral force, from our homes all sanctity, from our lives all security, and leave us a prey to all the low, base, beastly, cruel, violent, wild, and destructive propensities and passions of fallen nature. O, mock us not with the words Brotherhood, Fraternal Love, Universal Peace ! We have heard those words from profane lips too often; and never have we heard the multitude echoing them from their leaders but we have seen society shaken, order overthrown, virtue treated as a crime, the prisons crowded to suffocation with the loyal and the true, the scaffolds groaning beneath their burden of innocent victims, the guillotine growing weary with its unremitting toil, and the earth drenched with the blood of her fairest and her noblest children. Repeat those words outside of the City of God, in what gentle tones and peaceful accents you will, you, at least your followers, will come at last to the answer, " Love me as your brother, or I will cut your throat."

Yet suppose not that we war against the words themselves. Rightly applied, they are good, noble, and spirit-stirring words. Brotherhood, fraternity, the unity of the race, and the union of all men in one grand and true association, are great ideas, and, in their only practical sense, no discovery and no possession of yours. The human race began in unity, and their unity was preserved in the race, as perpetuated by natural generation, till the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the consequent dispersion of mankind, as recorded in Genesis. Since then, in that race, unity, brotherhood, fraternity, have not existed, nor been attainable. They have since been attainable only by election and grace in the chosen people, in the "seed of Abraham"; for there only has the ideal truth, in which alone man finds his unity, been preserved in its integrity. But there they have been, and are, and will continue to be, realized. You cannot have these without the principle from which they are derived ; and since that principle is lost in the natural human race, you can have it only as God supplies it by a new creative act, an act not included in nature, therefore supernatural,— and then only through the medium and on the conditions it pleases him to appoint. We know this is distasteful to you ; but, instead of rejecting it, you would do well to correct your taste, or put yourselves in the way of having it corrected.

Since the calling of Abraham, the father of the faithful, the true integral human race has been found only in his posterity by election, the chosen people of God, — that is, the Catholic Church. It is there only that the race, broken by the Fall, and deprived by guilt of the unity in which alone is true intellectual and true spiritual life, can be reintegrated, restored to pristine unity, and enabled to live a normal life. Out of this society you may vegetate, you may intellectually conceive of unity, nay, even intellectually apprehend many fragments of the truth which is whole and entire in it; but to come into immediate relation with it, to participate of it and become one in its unity, you cannot. Concoct as many theories of unity, of association, as you please, they will be only theories of unity, they will not be it ; contrive all the machinery you can invent for realizing it, and you will find yourselves with a well-spread table of— empty platters and glasses ; for if you have it not as the integral principle of your life, you must be born again or you cannot have it, cannot partake of it otherwise than as a hungry man eats rich viands in his dreams, and awakes and finds it was only in his dreams.

The history of gentilisrn, from the dispersion of mankind in the days of Phaleg, should have taught the Associationists all this ; and they might, one would think, have inferred as much from the failure of every attempt to recover unity, or to reform individuals or nations, outside of the integral elected race, or Catholic society. Out of that society, out of the Church, you have only the shadow or echo of truth, never truth itself; you have only far-oil' glimpses of life, which you mostly misinterpret,— only plurality, diversity, division, mutual repugnance, as you yourselves not only concede, but prove ; and what sane man, with these for his starting-point or his means, can hope to attain to unity, concord, peace ? Did not old Archimedes even demand a whereon to stand, a TTOV OT«O, in order to move the world ? Are ye so silly, then, as to fancy that you can move it with your fulcrum resting on nothing ?