reflection

Irish Jesuit Province

ReflectionAuthor(s): William SuttonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 14, No. 151 (Jan., 1886), pp. 23-26Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20497352 .

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Ref n. 23

flung himself apon his knees, and, after a brief and almost dis painng prayer, he rushed from the spot.

In a few minutes after Ferrand left the church, a hurried messenger was observed to enter the cabaret, where his companons still continued their casa and addressed a few words to the leader of the party. He startecl up with an air of alarm, and the.

whole company hastily quitted the shop and retumed in confusion to Paris.

About a dozen Tear since an Irish traveller heard the above

story related in a very affecting sermon on the religious education of youth, from the pulpit of the cathedral of St. Denis. The preacher-a venerable old man, bowed down by the weight of years and apostolic labours-was the long-lost but penitent Ferrand him self. He died in a few months afterwards, a most holy and edify ing death, and is still affectionately remembered by the villagers as the good old CUAPLALN OF ST. DENis.

REFLECTION.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM SUTTON, S.J.

A PHILOSOPH R, when asked what philosophy had done for him, replied:-" It has taught me to talk with myself."

That is a man's own reward for all the labour implied in becoming even something of a philosopher. Andi is a great one. Congenial society is one of the greatest blessings we can enjoy; uncongenial, among the greatest and most clinging miseries, almost as bad as ill-health or habitual heart-heaviness. Wisdom reconciles incom patibilities or what seem so. Man is social or communing. Unphilosophic man only knows himself in others, thinks of himself as related to others, instinctively flees from himself; being by himself is living death to him. Inconsistently he loves and prizes himself as only such men can, and at the same time hates and despises his own conscious company, that is when he is not occupied in or planning what will enlarge his life with others.

* This sketch was written more than forty years ago, when Dr. Russell was a young professor in Maynooth College.-ED. I. M.



24 Reflection.

Philosophic man is a world to himself-never less alone than when alone, for as such omnia sua secwm portat. His possessions are one, -reflection. How he got it, is not easy to say. He spent a good number of years reading and mastering what others had thought and taught. He found great difficulty in coming at their minds and experienced great pleasure after the toil, as thought revealed itself to his thought, like far-off stars which one sees through a telescope when he looks long into the black firmament. They come out from the deep dark sky around-so small, so still, so clear, meaning so much, so easily lost, if one is careless. After awhile he found himself seeing the same thing in different ways, dividing, combining, comparing. He began to understand how language was to be used in order to command attention, how words

were to be combined, that would give new things the solidity and power of maturity, and old things the freshness and pleasing vigour of youth. Coleridge says philosophy begins and ends in wonder. Men are but children of a larger growth. If a child could express its emotions, its fresh surprises and wondering imaginings, it would be, not indeed a philosopher, but a literary genius, for wisdom is separable from and often unpossessed by masters of expression. The puzzles of the child become the problems of the philosopher. How came we into the world?

Why are we here? What is the meaning of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Asiatic History? Why are there so many and so con flicting religions in the world? How can people be idolaters?

Why are men so cruel? Why do they kill and torture one another ? Why so much suffering, cold, hunger, disease? And savages, has God care of them? Does God really mind what we do? Are his rewards and punishments so vast ? What is God ?

What are we ? What is the soul ? The answers that will stop a child's inquiries will but stimulate the philosopher's obstinate questionings. One of the most curious results of philosophic research is that the ideas of children on the most fundamental truths are perfectly sound, while -the ideas of numberless philo sophers on the same points are utterly wrong. Two very striking examples of this are the notions of causality and free will. These are simple, self-evident ideas, overwhelmingly clear to the unpre judiced, unsophisticated intellect. But as the notion of and belief in God is easy and natural for the child and unsophisticated reasoner, which a little surface philosophy renders difficult and often undermines ancd practically destroys, which again much and deep philosophy strengthens and developes, so in their own way



Reflection. 25

with these ideas. No one indeed can help acting and thinking, as if his theories of causality and moral responsibility were not all that they should be, and St. Augustine says hcc est vis verw

Deitatis, -t nun q am _possit penitus abscondi. The idea of God is so

natural that it never can be completely extinguished. We must not think that thinkers are necessarily professed

metaphysicians, musing on abstractions and all the necessary truths connected with every mode of being. We have a famous example of this in one of the greatest geniuses and thinkers of the age, Cardinal Newman. All his writings are redolent of the full flavour of thoughtfulness, throbbing with the stimulating power of " the words of the wise, which are like goads and like nails

deeply fastened in." Writing and speaking as he does with vast intellectual power and vast erudition his simple language conveys, such wide-reaching meaning that we return again and again to his poems, and sermons, and essays with renewed, varying, un exhausted delight, certain each time to see what we never saw before, certain to take away fresh energy and subject for thought. And still he seems to make it his deliberate purpose to bring what

is behind the mysterious veil as far as possibly can be done into

the world of shapes and symbols, which the intellectual imagina tion may figure to itself and realize. With this object when treating of abstract ideas he does not inquire what they are in

themselves, but how we store them and consider them in the algebra of practical thought and reasoning.

Genius is a large word. It is originality of conception and

expression. To some it comes without effort, in others it is the fruit of "accumulated reflection." Buffon says:-" Le genie, c'est la patience." Newton, when asked how he discovered the universality and the formuila of the law of gravitation, replied,

"By constantly thinking about it." I remember reading in a review of some work in the Times, that it gave signs of careful

work, of the exercise of that infinite capacity for taking trouble

which is but another name for genius itself. On 'the other hand

Shakespeare is said to give us his own method of writing when

describing how Hamlet "devised a new commission." "Ere I

could make a prologue to my brains, they had begun the play."

Mozart tells us when a little boy melodies and harmonies he had

never heard came surging through his brain, sounding on his mental ear unbidden. Nevertheless for the production of their balanced work Shakespeare and he and all such had need of accu

mulated reflection, of trained and indomitable will, no less than of



26 To Cardinal Newnan.

the consciousness of genius and its seasons of inspiration. Talent is receptive, genius is creative. Talent takes in and expresses the

minds of others. Genius throws its own silver light on all it assimilates. Cardinal Newman says it is the work of genius to give old things the freshness of new, as well as to produce what is wholly new, and he himslf is great in both performances. For conveying truths that will work on the mind like leaven, an ounce

of originality or genius is worth a ton of talent. Often too, the simple little words in which a new view of an old truth is con veyed are an explosive bullet which strikes at first like any other

message, but straightway then proceeds to shatter preconceived notions and encrusted prejudices. Thoughtful work, though not always genius as commonly understood, is fed at least on the cruimbs that fall from its table, and produces analogous effects. Hence the utility even of spending years in acquiring the habit of reflection.

TO CARDINAL NEWMAN.

Bor-n in Feb. 1801, converted in Oct. 1845.

qCARCE forty years of energising brain HU ad set thee king o'er all that walk sincere

Without the fold. A loss thou didst not fear Of kingship seemed thy joining us; a gain Immense it proved: then thousands felt thy reign,

Now loving millions hail thee Prince most dear, And countless alien slaves of style thy peer

In soul-compelling prose have sought in vain.

These other forty years of life mature, How vastly nobler in their silent sway

O'er England's heart and English-thinking mind! Decoy divine, thy deeds, thy words! they lure

To God. The ", kindly light " that led thy way Full oft through them on searcher true hath shined.

LEWIS DRUMMOND, S J.

St. Boniface College, Manitoba.



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