Morning journal and courier., 1886-06-03


We writing a mere word of welcome to
Dr. Holmes, and not review of his books,
and shall therefore say nothing of the wealth
of witty and wise apherisms which lies scat
tered through his writings, or of the mar
velous skill with which he clothes ordinary
characters in flesh and blood, and makes us
sympathize with them as friends. We do
not care about his superordinary characters,
rather wearying of Iris and fFthe little gen
tlenian, !" regarding Helen, the teacher, as
impossible, bracketing Bernard Langdon
with Nicholas Nickleby as badly dressed lay
figures, and watching Elsie Venner as we
might any other monstrosity; but only Dick
ems ever surpassed DR.. Holmes in describing
subordinate characters, the keeper of the
boarding house and s'the old gentleman" in
the "Autocrat," the deacon and colonel of
the Principal of the Institoot," and above
all the Yankee ''hired man. Abel Stebbins
in ''Elsie Venner" We wish, however, as
DIR. Holmes calls himself at once poet, pro-
fessor and philosopher, to say a word upon
the philosophy which runs in steady
stream through all his writings, and the
drift of which is frequently mistaken. A
vague idea, or beginning of an idea, which
we trace, or fancy we trace, in all books of
true American flavor, an idea that matter
and spirit are more closely related than We
habitually believe, becomes in DR.. Holmes
writings clearly defined system of thought.
He is not in the least a materialist, still less
a determinist, holding indeed we should say
the old idea that the watch of itself proves
the matchmaker; but he has learned in his
profession to recognize the force of tenden-
cies, hereditary or other, and of circumstan-
ces such early poverty or the like, till he
believes that free will, though perfect with
in it's function, is limited in it's range and is
even liable in extreme cases to be temporari-
'ly suspended. Man with Dr.. Holmes is free,
but he cannot jump upon his own shadow or
get rid of the presence of any other envi-
ronment. He remains responsible for mean
ness even if he was born on clean streak
of country; but if he was SO born he will
have a tendency to meanness to keep down,
of which he can no moro be wholly rid than
of the shadow before mentioned. If ON the
other hand all circumstances predispose him
to generosity of temperament, generosity we
mean in the broad sense, the grand advan-
tage of that temperament will be his with
out his own exertion. DIR. Holmes is perpet-
ually dinning this truth into his readers, both
when he is most serious and when he is wild
with spirits. \ It to develop
this idea that he wrote that extraordinary
romance, Elsie Venner,' which so many peo-
pie find to be unpleasant. 1t had to be un-
pleasant, for DR.. Holmes wished to use, as
the most powerful illustration of his theory
the possibility of an influence from outside
the bite of a snake while the mother was
pregnant-causing congenital, and for time
irresistible impulses in the child, modifying
and spelling an entire life, influences SO
much stronger than the will that till released
from their bondage by the near approach of
death, and the consequent suspension of all
material influence, Elsie was never really
free. The book was at once denounced as
materialist; but no one who reads it atten-
lively will doubt that DR.. Holmes believed
the will when sane to be free, the soul to be
independent of its surroundings, and the
body to contain a spirit which can be ina
prisoned, but not die. The temptation which
bssets the artist may have induced him, has
induced him, even on his own hypothesis to
exaggerate Elsie's slavery; but the total drift
is unmistakable. DR.. Holmes deductions
from from his theory are first, the wisdom of
an almost limltless tolerance for human be-
ings as for immortals bound during the short
time we see them in cramping fetters; and
secondly Uniyersalism, the soul regaining
with its release from the conditions of earth
the character, or the possibility of acquiring
the character, which the creator meant it to
possess. The theory has its dangerous side,
but it's result with DR.. Holmes, as we once
heard very young critic say, is to make
him the ''friendliest of all philosophers"
and the most genial of the thinkers who full
ly admit that, whether original sin is true or
not, man sins and must be cleaned. He
wants the devil to be heard at the bar he
says, not that he may plead that sin is sin
less, but that the prosecutor may know what
the temptation to sin is and so waste no blow
in air.