Part 33
Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes; and because upon that fluctuating mirror, rising from the fens of death, most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews nor the holy dawn could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But as _you_ draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would Domremy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but _you_ know them, bishop, well! Oh mercy! what a groan was _that_ which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this moment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not _so_ to escape the woman, whom once again he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In glades where only wild deer should run, armies and nations are assembling; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, Regent of France. There is my lord of Winchester, the princely cardinal that died and made no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of Domremy a second time? No; it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit upon the judgment seat, and again number the hours for the innocent? Ah! no; he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting; the mighty audience is gathered, the Court are hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel?--"Counsel I have none; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, counselor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_; all are silent." Is it indeed come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity; but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of somebody that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counselor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you: yes, bishop, SHE--when heaven and earth are silent.
PAUL DEROULEDE
(1848-)
[Illustration: Paul Deroulede]
Paul Deroulede received his education in Paris, where he was born. In accordance with the wishes of his friends, he was educated for the law; but before even applying for admission to the bar he yielded to the poetic instinct that had been strong in him since boyhood, and began, under the name of Jean Rebel, to send verses to the Parisian periodicals. When only twenty-three years of age he wrote for the Academie Francaise a one-act drama in verse, 'Juan Strenner,' which however was not a success. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in the same year roused his martial spirit; he enlisted, and at once entered active service, in which he distinguished himself by acts of signal bravery. A wound near the close of the hostilities took him from the field; and it was during the retirement thus enforced that he wrote the lyrics, 'Songs of the Soldier,' that first made him famous throughout his native country.
Not since the days of the 'Marseillaise' had the fighting spirit of the French people found such sympathetic expression; his songs were read and sung all over the country; they received the highest honor of the Academy, and their popularity continued after peace was declared, nearly one hundred and fifty editions having been exhausted up to 1895. Deroulede now devoted himself to literature and politics. 'New Songs of the Soldier' and a volume of 'Songs of the Peasant,' almost as popular as the war songs, were interspersed with two more dramatic works, also in verse, one of which, 'L'Hetman,' was received on the stage with great favor. A cantata, 'Vive la France,' written in 1880, was set to music by Gounod. He also wrote a novel and some treatises dealing with armies and fighting, but his prose works did not attract much attention.
Deroulede's best verses are distinguished for their inspiration and genuine enthusiasm. Careless of form and finish, not always stopping to make sure of his rhymes or perfect his metre, he gave the freest vent to his emotions. Some of the heart-glow which makes the exhilaration of Burns's poems infectious is found in his songs, but they are generally so entirely French that its scope is limited in a way that the Scotch poet's, despite his vernacular, was not. The Frenchman's sympathy is always with the harder side of life. In the 'Songs of the Soldier' he plays on chords of steel. These verses resound with the blast of the bugle, the roll of the drum, the flash of the sword, the rattle of musketry, the boom of the cannon; and even in the 'Songs of the Peasant' it is the corn and the wine, as the fruit of toil, that appeal to him, rather than the grass and the flowers embellishing the fields.
THE HARVEST
From 'Chants du Paysan'
The wheat, the hardy wheat is rippling on the breeze. 'Tis our great mother's sacred mantle spread afar, Old Earth revered, who gives us life, in whom we are, We the dull clay the living God molds as he please.
The wheat, the hardy wheat bends down its heavy head, Blessed and consecrate by the Eternal hand; The stalks are green although the yellow ears expand: Keep them, O Lord, from 'neath the tempest's crushing tread!
The wheat, the hardy wheat spreads like a golden sea Whose harvesters--bent low beneath the sun's fierce light, Stanch galley-slaves, whose oar is now the sickle bright-- Cleave down the waves before them falling ceaselessly.
The wheat, the hardy wheat ranged in its serried rows, Seems like some noble camp upon the distant plain. Glory to God!--the crickets chirp their wide refrain; From sheaf to sheaf the welcome bread-song sweeping goes.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.
IN GOOD QUARTERS
From 'Poemes Militaires'
MIREBEAU, 1871
Good old woman, bother not. Or the place will be too hot: You might let the fire grow old-- Save your fagots for the cold: I am drying through and through.
But she, stopping not to hear, Shook the smoldering ashes near: "Soldier, not too warm for you!"
Good old woman, do not mind; At the storehouse I have dined: Save your vintage and your ham, And this cloth--such as I am Are not used to--save it too.
But she heard not what I said-- Filled my glass and cut the bread: "Soldier, it is here for you!"
Good old woman--sheets for me! Faith, you treat me royally: And your stable? on your hay? There at length my limbs to lay? I shall sleep like monarchs true.
But she would not be denied Of the sheets, and spread them wide: "Soldier, it is made for you!"
Morning came--the parting tear: Well--good-by! What have we here? My old knapsack full of food! Dear old creature--hostess good-- Why indulge me as you do?
It was all that she could say, Smiling in a tearful way: "I have one at war like you!"
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.
"GOOD FIGHTING!"
From 'Poemes Militaires'
The Kroumirs leave their mountain den; Sing, bullets, sing! and bugles, blow! Good fighting to our gallant men, And happy they who follow, when, Brothers in arms so dear, these go.
Yea, happy they who serve our France, And neither pain nor danger fly; But in the front of war's advance Still deem it but a glorious chance, To be among the brave who die!
No splendid war do we begin, No glory waits us when 'tis past; But marching through the fiery din, We see our serried ranks grow thin, And blood of Frenchmen welling fast.
French blood!--a treasure so august, And hoarded with such jealous care, To crush oppression's strength unjust, With all the force of right robust, And buy us back our honor fair:--
We yield it now to duty's claim, And freely pour out all our store; Who judges, frees us still from blame; The Kroumirs' muskets war proclaim:-- In answer let French cannon roar!
Good fighting! and God be your shield, Our pride's avengers, brave and true! France watches you upon the field. Who wear her colors never yield, For 'tis her heart ye bear with you!
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Katharine Hillard.
LAST WISHES
From 'Poemes Militaires'
A grave for me--a grave--and why? I do not wish to sleep alone: Let me within the trenches lie, Side by side with my soldiers thrown.
Dear old comrades of wars gone by, Come, 'tis our final "halt" is nigh: Clasp your brave hearts to my own.
A sheet for me--a sheet--and why? Such is for them on their beds who moan: The field is the soldier's place to die, The field of carnage, of blood and bone.
Dear old comrades of wars gone by, This is the prayer of my soul's last sigh: Clasp your brave hearts to my own.
Tears for me--these tears--and why? Knells let the vanquished foe intone! France delivered!--I still can cry, France delivered--invaders flown!
Dear old comrades of wars gone by, Pain is nothing, and death--a lie! Clasp your brave hearts to my own!
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh.
RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650)
[Illustration: RENE DESCARTES.]
The broad scope of literature is illustrated by its inclusion of the writings of Rene Descartes (Latinized, Renatus Cartesius). Deliberately turning away from books, and making naught alike of learned precedent and literary form, he yet could not but avail himself unconsciously of the heritage which he had discarded.
This notable figure in seventeenth-century philosophy was born of ancient family at La Haye, in Touraine, France, March 31st, 1596; and died at Stockholm, Sweden, February 11th, 1650. From a pleasant student life of eight years in the Jesuit college at La Fleche, he went forth in his seventeenth year with unusual acquirements in mathematics and languages, but in deep dissatisfaction with the long dominant scholastic philosophy and the whole method prescribed for arriving at truth. In a strong youthful revolt, his first step was a decision to discharge his mind of all the prejudices into which his education had trained his thinking. As a beginning in this work he went to Paris, for observation of facts and of men. There, having drifted through a twelvemonth of moderate dissipation, he secluded himself for nearly two years of mathematical study, as though purposing to reduce his universe to an equation in order to solve it. The laws of number he could trust, since their lines configured the eternal harmony.
At the age of twenty-one he entered on a military service of two years in the army of the Netherlands, and then of about two years in the Bavarian army. From 1621, for about four years, he was roaming as an observer of men and nature in Germany, Belgium, and Italy, afterward sojourning in Paris about three and a half years. In 1629 he began twenty years of study and authorship in practical seclusion in Holland. His little work, 'Discours de la Methode' (Leyden, 1637), is often declared to have been the basis for a reconstitution of the science of thought. It would now perhaps be viewed by the majority of critics rather as a necessary clearing of antiquated rubbish from the ground on which the new construction was to rise. Next to it among his works are usually ranked 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophia,' and 'Principia Philosophiae.'
The long sojourn in Holland was ended in September 1649, in response to an urgent invitation from the studious young Queen Christina of Sweden, who wanted the now famous philosopher as an ornament to her court. After some hesitancy he sailed for Stockholm, where only five months afterward he died.
It has been said of Descartes that he was a spectator rather than an
## active worker in affairs. He was no hero, no patriot, no adherent of any
party. He entered armies, but not from love of a cause; the army was a sphere in which he could closely observe the aspects of human life. He was never married, and probably had little concern with love. His attachment to a few friends seems to have been sincere. For literature as such he cared little. Erudition, scholarship, historic love, literary elegance, were nothing to him. Art and aesthetics did not appeal to him. Probably he was not a great reader, even of philosophic writers. He delighted in observing facts with a view to finding, stating, and systematizing their relations in one all-comprehending scheme. He never allowed himself to attack the Church in either its doctrine or its discipline. As a writer, though making no attempt at elegance in style, he is deemed remarkably clear and direct when the abstruseness of his usual themes is considered.
Descartes's method in philosophy gives signs of formation on the model of a process in mathematics. In all investigations he would ascertain first what must exist by necessity; thus establishing axioms evidenced in all experience, because independent of all experience. The study of mathematics for use in other departments drew him into investigations whose results made it a new science. He reformed its clumsy nomenclature, also the algebraic use of letters for quantities; he introduced system into the use of exponents to denote the powers of a quantity, thus opening the way for the binomial theorem; he was the first to throw clear light on the negative roots of equations; his is the theorem by use of which the maximum number of positive or negative roots of an equation can be ascertained. Analytical geometry originated with his investigation of the nature and origin of curves.
His mathematical improvements opened the way for the reform of physical science and for its immense modern advance. In his optical investigations he established the law of refraction of light. His ingenious theory of the vortices--tracing gravity, magnetism, light, and heat, to the whirling or revolving movements of the molecules of matter with which the universe is filled--was accepted as science for about a quarter of a century.
In mental science Descartes's primary instrument for search of truth was Doubt: everything was to be doubted until it had been proved. This was provisional skepticism, merely to provide against foregone conclusions. It was not to preclude belief, but to summon and assure belief as distinct from the inane submission to authority, to prejudice, or to impulse. In this process of doubting everything, the philosopher comes at last to one fact which he cannot doubt--the fact that he exists; for if he did not exist he could not be thinking his doubt. _Cogito, ergo sum_ is one point of absolute knowledge; it is a clear and ultimate perception.
The first principle of his philosophy is, that our consciousness is truthful in its proper sphere, also that our thought is truthful and trustworthy under these two conditions--when the thought is clear and vivid, and when it is held to a theme utterly distinct from every other theme; since it is impossible for us to believe that either man who thinks, or the universe concerning which he thinks, is organized on the basis of a lie. There are "necessary truths," and they are discoverable.
A second principle is, the inevitable ascent of our thought from the fragmentary to the perfect, from the finite to the infinite. Thus the thought of the infinite is an "innate idea," a part of man's potential consciousness. This principle (set forth in one of the selections given herewith) is the Cartesian form of the _a priori_ argument for the Divine existence, which like other _a priori_ forms is viewed by critics not as a proof in pure logic, but as a commanding and luminous appeal to man's entire moral and intellectual nature.
A third principle is, that the material universe is necessarily reduced in our thought ultimately to two forms, extension and local movement--extension signifying matter, local movement signifying force. There is no such thing as empty space; there are no ultimate indivisible atoms; the universe is infinitely full of matter.
A fourth principle is, that the soul and matter are subsistences so fundamentally and absolutely distinct that they cannot act in reciprocal relations. This compelled Descartes to resort to his strained supposition that all correspondence or synchronism between bodily movements and mental or spiritual activities is merely reflex or automatic, or else is produced directly by act of Deity. For relief from this violent hypothesis, Leibnitz modified the Cartesian philosophy by his famous theory of a pre-established harmony.
Descartes did a great work, but it was not an abiding reconstruction: indeed, it was not construction so much as it was a dream--one of the grandest and most suggestive in the history of thought. Its audacious disparagement of the whole scholastic method startled Europe, upon the dead air of whose philosophy it came as a refreshing breath of transcendental thought. Its suggestions and inspirations are traceable as a permanent enrichment, though its vast fabric swiftly dissolved. The early enthusiasm for it in French literary circles and among professors in the universities of Holland scarcely outlasted a generation. Within a dozen years after the philosopher's death, the Cartesian philosophy was prohibited by ecclesiastical authorities and excluded from the schools. In the British Isles and in Germany the system has been usually considered as an interesting curiosity in the cabinet of philosophies. Yet the unity of all truth through relations vital, subtle, firm, and universal, though seen only in a vision of the night, abides when the night is gone.
With the impressive and noteworthy 'Discours de la Methode' (Leyden, 1637), were published three essays supporting it: 'La Dioptrique,' 'Les Meteores,' 'La Geometrie.' Of his other works, the most important are 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophia' (Paris, 1641; Amsterdam, 1642), and 'Principia Philosophiae' (Amsterdam, 1644). A useful English translation of his most important writings, with an introduction, is by John Veitch, LL.D.,--'The Method, Meditations, and Selections from the Principles' (Edinburgh, 1853; 6th ed., Blackwoods, Edinburgh and London, 1879). See also, English translations of portions of his philosophical works, by W. Cunningham (1877), Lowndes (1878), Mahaffy (1880), Martineau (1885), Henry Rogers, Huxley, and L. Stephen.
For his Life, see 'Vie de Descartes,' by Baillet (2 vols. 1691); 'Descartes sa Vie,' etc., by Millet (2 vols. 1867-71); 'Descartes and his School,' by Kuno Fischer (English translation, 1887).
OF CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF ELEMENTARY LOGICAL THOUGHT
From the 'Discourse on Method'
As a multitude of laws often only hampers justice, so that a State is best governed when, with few laws, these are rigidly administered; in like manner, instead of the great number of precepts of which Logic is composed, I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided I took the firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them.
The _first_ was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The _second_, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
The _third_, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and as it were step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
And the _last_, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that it might be assured that nothing was omitted.
The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things to the knowledge of which man is competent are mutually connected in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another. And I had little difficulty in determining the objects with which it was necessary to commence, for I was already persuaded that it must be with the simplest and easiest to know, and, considering that of all those who have hitherto sought truth in the Sciences, the mathematicians alone have been able to find any demonstrations,--that is, any certain and evident reasons,--I did not doubt but that such must have been the rule of their investigations. I resolved to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth, and to a distaste for all such reasonings as were unsound. But I had no intention on that account of attempting to master all the particular sciences commonly denominated Mathematics: but observing that however different their objects, they all agree in considering only the various relations or proportions subsisting among those objects, I thought it best for my purpose to consider these proportions in the most general form possible; without referring them to any objects in particular, except such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them, and without by any means restricting them to these, that afterwards I might thus be the better able to apply them to every other class of objects to which they are legitimately applicable. Perceiving, further, that in order to understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by one, and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the aggregate, I thought that in order the better to consider them individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines, than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other hand, that in order to retain them in the memory, or embrace an aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest possible. In this way I believed that I could borrow all that was best both in geometrical analysis and in algebra, and correct all the defects of the one by help of the other.
AN ELEMENTARY METHOD OF INQUIRY