The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1870-07-03

this reason We may safsly infer that the
peoples who Aourished under their pre-
tended influence were indebted, not to the
error they embraced, but TO the dismem-
bored truth underlying II, for their natural
life. With . heterodox natioh, with q ma
tion which repudiates the whole truth, life
is the inverse ratio Of logic. Never lived,
nor over could live, the nation that did not
acknowledge . distinctisn between human
actions; thet did not distinguish against
the Pantheist and Nationalist, between
merit and demerit, and prcsuppose, in all
it's legislation, the entire freedom of the
members of which it is composed; but as
there are found both nations and individu-
ais, who profess doctrines philosophically
and religiously fatal, like the sensists and
the Turks, and yet practically live very
often as if they believed themselves to be
free agents, while they are only directed,
without their knowing anything abopt it,
by good old nature herself, which cares not
q straw for their false theories $50 also do
we meet with ins1ipiduals apd whole peo-
pies in history, who professed Pantheism,
of which fatalism is an ipevitable corollary,
but yet recognized q radical distinction be-
tween good and eyn. How in the world,
though, can theory intrinsicaliy vicious
be rectiaed by the deductions from a con-
trary principle, which that theory ignores
or deniesf This occurs, perhaps, through
some,kind of instinct; but, my dear fellow,
instinct appertains solely to brutes, and
please don't make brutes of us yet: our
aspirations are upwards towards the angel,
and not downwards towards the beast and
you. In one of the articles on Rationalism
published in these columns instinct was
assigned it's proper scientific place, as ap-
pertaining by right to brutes, and as it
were, lent to babies, until reason, of
which instinct is an aurora-like adumbra-
ton, had time to dawn. Instinct is itself
fatal, and therefore moral instinct, that is,
an instinct free and fatal at the same time,
not being conceivable, but essentially abb
surd, cannot exist Perhaps this happy
contradiction which we are trying to ac-
count for finds it's solution in the love of
all that is beautiful, and good, and true,
impressed with kind mother NATURES kiss
for it's stamp and seal in every mortal
heart. But, my dear Nationalist, the pre-
cious germ deposited by this tender means
in the breasts of rational beings, cannot
bud forth and bloom without the aid of
preliminary knowledge. Affection, which
left to itself simply plays hide and seek,
must, if it would result in anything perma-
nent and thence. .cognizible to science, and
especially to political and social science,
presuppose an antecedent scientific princi-
pie, in which it can find an anchorage. Pro-
badly you may look with some prospect of
success for the solution we are inquest of
in the Intuition of the True, Of which these 1
columns have, in season and out of season,
reminded you; as common to- every mind
and essentially inseparable from whatever
is mind. But even the intuition which we
have most zealously champioped, and
which we will champion till our last gasp,
though furnishing us with the germinal or
generic principles, of which all science is
but the progressive deduction, can give us
itself no scientific system. For this reflec-
tion is necessary, and reflection is impossi-
BILE without words as its signs, consequently
without the Word, by whom all things
were made. We may have been rashly
judged for insisting as energetically as we
have on the necessity of language to man
in this life, but we can pardon all the rash
ness of prejudice and stupidity as long as
we have ST.. Paul to back US, who tells
his favorite disciple to "hold fast to the
form of sound Words" and our Divine
Saviour Himself; all whose saeraments re-
quire articulate words for their valid ad-
ministration. We may find the explication |
of the enigma, of which hitherto we have |
been merely guessing at the proper read
ing, perhaps in reason itself. But reason,
with all its methods and processes, can only |
deduce the consequences involved in
principles which outlie it; and whatever is
in the consequences that is not involved in
the principles, reason, to be rational, must
reject as repugnant and absurd. In short,
the fact that we are viewing can be ac-
counted for only by referring it to another
fact, the fact of language having been
given as q common patrimony to mankind,
aud, consequently, of the tradition of
which language is the depositary and Gus
todian. Language, not being of human
albeit sharing the lot of all de-
posits intrusted by God to human manipu