Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.», sayfa 26

SPAIN

An attempt to assassinate the Queen of Spain was made by a priest named Martin Marino, on the 2d of February. The Queen was proceeding along the principal gallery of her palace toward the grand staircase, intending to go out upon a fête occasion, for which splendid preparations had been made, when she was approached by the priest, who kneeled to present a memorial. Her Majesty reached out her hand to take it, when he suddenly drew a dirk and made a stab at her side. Her arm, however, partially averted the blow, though she was severely wounded. She leaned against the wall, and one of her aids came up just in time to prevent a second blow. The assassin was arrested and confessed the crime – saying that his object was to render a service to humanity; and denying that he had any accomplices. He was tried on the 3d, and sentenced to death by strangulation. On the 7th, he was executed by the garote vil. He conducted himself with the most brutal indifference, refusing any of the usual offices of religion, and abusing all who came near him. The Queen suffered considerably from the wound, but was convalescent at the last accounts. Several arrests had been made, of persons suspected of having been concerned as accomplices with him, but no evidence was found to implicate any.

CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

o events of special importance have occurred in any of the continental nations. All the governments seem to be more or less agitated by rumors of differences with England and France, and their policy is somewhat affected by them. The suspicion of hostile intentions on the part of Louis Napoleon toward Belgium has enlisted a good deal of suspicion, and letters from Brussels, dated the 19th February, state positively that a convention had been entered into, by which Russia agrees to furnish 100,000 men for the defense of that territory in case it should be invaded or seriously menaced by France. Prussia has also promised similar assistance, and the Prince de Ligne is said to be now in Berlin for the purpose of arranging the details. These important statements, however, do not seem to be made on authority sufficient to command full credit.

In Austria, it is said, that Prince Schwartzenberg is preparing a general statement of the views of Austria concerning the state of Europe, and an indication of the line of policy which she will pursue. The mediation of Austria between Sardinia and the Pope has also been proposed, and amicable relations are again to be established between the Sardinian and Austrian governments. A new treaty has been concluded, by which Austria is to supply Russia annually with large quantities of salt.

In Switzerland the only movements of importance relate to the demand made by the French government that the Council should promise hereafter to expel any fugitive who might be designated as dangerous. The Federal Government, while firmly refusing to enter into any such engagement, avowed its readiness to take all proper and necessary precautions against the sojourn of political refugees in Switzerland becoming a source of disquietude to neighboring states. An official report on the subject states that in June last there were but 235 political refugees in the Swiss states, and that they were all under the strict surveillance of the police. Those who had taken any active steps likely to compromise the interests of other states, had been promptly expelled. There was a great deal of public interest manifested throughout Switzerland concerning the relations between their country and France, and considerable apprehension prevailed that their rights and liberties might not always be rigidly respected.

The government of the Duchy of Holstein was formally transferred by the Commissaries of Prussia and Austria to the Commissary of Denmark, Count Reventlow-Criminil, on the 8th of February, in an official conference held at Kiel.

In both Greece and Turkey there have been changes of Ministry. In the former country the change has no general importance. In Turkey, it is significant of reaction. Reschid Pacha, the most liberal and enlightened minister ever placed at the head of affairs in the Ottoman empire, has been dismissed, and is succeeded by Raaf Pacha, a man upward of eighty years of age, who was prime minister in 1838. The negotiation in regard to the Holy Sepulchre has been abandoned, and the French minister was to leave Constantinople forthwith.

Editor's Table

Science, it has been said, is essentially unpoetical. It must be acknowledged, nevertheless, that it not unfrequently furnishes some of our choicest similes. Homer had, indeed, long ago compared thought to the lightning; but how much more definite, and, on this account, more effective, is the kindred simile drawn from the discovery of the modern electric telegraph. And yet, is there not here something more than simile? Is not the communication from soul to soul literally, as well as figuratively tele-graphic, that is, far-writing, or writing from afar? We hope to interest our readers by a brief examination of the query we have started.

An identity might, perhaps, be shown in the very medium of communication, so far as the process has a material medium. There is no difficulty, and no danger, in admitting that the electric fluid may be the agent in the cerebral and organic transmission, as well as in the galvanic battery. But it is mainly in the process itself that we may trace the striking correspondence between the two modes of intelligence. The primary element of all thought is a spiritual emotion. The end of all communication, mediate or immediate, is to produce the same emotion or feeling in another soul. To this every other step is subordinate. Even thought is not so much an end, in itself, as is the spiritual feeling, or exercise of soul corresponding to it. This spiritual emotion, then, must first be brought under the form of a conception, or an objective picture, without which it can not be distinctly read and understood, even by the soul in which it first exists, much less communicated to another. So far the process is strikingly the same with that adopted in the telegraphic dispatch. The soul, by its own spiritual energy, first turns the emotion or feeling into a thought. It translates the thought from the abstract to the concrete, from the intuitional to the conceptive. It brings it down into the soul's chamber of imagery, and imprints it on the brain. In other words, the message is reduced to writing and given to the clerk at the station-house, who translates it into telegraphic signals. The more immediate transmitting power is now set in operation. An influence is imparted from the brain to the nerves (or wires) of the vocal organs. It is continued to the lungs, and sets in motion a current of air. This impinges on the outward atmosphere, and is carried on through successive undulations until it reaches the other station for which it was designed. It enters the office-chamber of the ear, communicates with the other cerebral battery, and then writes off from the auditory nerve or wire, the signals which, by the other logical and linguistic faculty, or the clerk at the second station, are translated into the pictorial symbols understood by all, and thus written on the second brain. The spiritual inhabitant to whom it is directed, again translates it, in a reverse order, from the verbal to the conceptive, from the conceptive to the emotional – the intuition is spiritually seen– the emotion is felt– and thus the circuit is completed.

This is substantially the process every time we hold intercourse by means of speech. The operation is ever imperfect in all, and more imperfect in some than in others. We make mistakes in translating our own intuitions and emotions. We make still greater mistakes in taking off from the wires, and in re-translating the conceptual language which brings to us the feelings and intuitions of others. But there is no other way. The author of our spiritual and material constitution hath literally shut us up to this, and we can not get out of the limits within which He has confined our intercourse with other spirits. Clairvoyance boasts of having broken through them, or over them; but clairvoyance is yet a fact to be established. Even, too, if it has any claims upon our belief, it will doubtless be found, in the end, to be only a stenographic shortening of some of the steps, without being, in reality, any more an immediate action of mind upon mind than the ordinary process.

Spirit can only communicate with spirit through outward symbols, and by more or less steps, all of which may be regarded as outward to the most interior effect. By long familiarity this circuitous chain assumes to us the appearance of directness. But in truth we never see each other; we never hear each other; if by the terms be meant our very self– our very spiritual form, our very spiritual voice. Even to our human soul may be accommodated without irreverence the language which Paul applies to the Deity. Even of us it may be said, although in a far lower sense, "Our invisible things are only understood by the things that are done," even our temporal power and humanity. Each soul is shut up in an isolation as perfect, in one sense, as that which separates the far distant worlds in the universe. Had there been round each one of us a wall of adamant a thousand feet in thickness, with only the smallest capillary apertures through which to carry the wires of telegraphic signals, we could not, as to the essential action of the spirit, be more secluded than we are at present. We say the essential, or first action of the soul – for doubtless there may be various degrees of difficulty or facility in the modes of mediate communication. But in this more spiritual sense each one of us exists by himself. We live apart in utter loneliness. The seclusion of each spirit knows no infraction. Its perfect solitude has never been invaded by any foreign intrusion.

To one who deeply reflects on the fact to which we have been calling attention, the first feeling, and a just feeling too, might be one of pride. The dignity of our nature would seem enhanced by such a constitution. Each man's "mind is his kingdom," in which he may be as autocratic as he wills. It makes even the lowest in the scale of humanity such an absolute sovereign within his own spiritual boundaries, so perfectly secure, if he please, against all foreign intervention. It sets in so striking a light what in its physical and etymological, rather than its moral sense, may be styled the holiness—the wholeness, hale-ness, or separate integrity of each man's essential being. It is in this point of view, too, that to every hale mind the pretensions of clairvoyance must appear so inexpressibly revolting. We allude to its assumption of having the power of committing what, for the want of a better name, we can only characterize as spiritual burglary – in other words, of breaking into our spiritual house, and taking its seat in the very shrine of the interior consciousness. What can be more degrading to our human nature than to admit that any other human power, or human will, can at any time, and from any motive, even for purposes of the most frivolous amusement, actually enter this inner sanctuary, turning the immortal spirit into a paltry show-house, and rudely invading, or pretending to invade, the soul's essential glory, its sacred and unapproachable individuality?

There is, however, another aspect of the thought in which it may give rise to a very different, if not an opposite emotion. There may be, too, at times, a feeling of the deepest melancholy called out by that other consideration of our spiritual solitude, of our being so utterly alone upon the earth – a feeling which has never been set forth with so much power and, at the same time, truthful simplicity, as in the touching language of inspiration – "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger meddleth not with its joy." And then, again, although we would in general shrink from it as a painful ordeal, there are periods when we long for a more searching communion with other spirits than can ever be expected from the most intimate methods of mediate intercourse. There are periods when we are irresistibly drawn out to say – O that some other soul were acquainted with us as we think we are acquainted with ourselves, not only with our fancied virtues and our mere real sins, as they appear imperfectly manifested by misinterpreted signals from within, but with our very soul itself. Yes, there is sadness in the thought that we are so unknown, even to those who would be thought to know us best – unknown alike in that which makes us better as in that which makes us worse than we seem; – for we are all better, and we are all worse than we appear to our fellow-men.

And here, we think, may be found an argument for the existence of Deity, built on stronger and more assuring ground than is furnished by any of the ordinary positions of natural theology. It is an argument derived from one of the most interior wants of our moral constitution. There is no doubt that in our fallen state a feeling of pain – at times of intense pain – may connect itself in our minds with the recognition of the Divine idea; but there is also an element of happiness, and, if cherished, of the highest and most serious happiness, in the thought that there is One Great Soul that does penetrate into our most interior spirituality. There is one Soul that is ever as intimately present with us as our own consciousness – that holds communion with us, and with whom we may hold communion, in a manner impossible for any other. There is One that thinks our thoughts, and feels our feelings, even as we think them, and as we feel them, although, along with this, in another manner, too, of its own, that transcends our thinking "even as the heavens are high above the earth," and is as far removed from all the imperfections of our own spiritual exercises. There may seem an inconsistency in this apparent mingling of the finite and the infinite in the Divine Nature, but it is the belief of both which unlocks for us the meaning of the Scriptures, and sheds light over every page of revelation and of providence. There is a higher Soul that pervades our spiritual entity, not as an impersonal or pantheistic abstraction, but as the most distinctly personal of all personalities – not as a mere Law of nature, but as a Father "who careth for us," as a Guardian "who numbereth the very hairs of our heads," as a Judge who taketh note of every thought, and gives importance to all our forgotten sins, while He is, at the same time, present with, and caring for every other individual soul in the universe. As in some previous musings of our Editorial Table, we might have adverted to the Divine physical power as the ever-present dynamical entity in the seeming vacuities of space, and binding together the isolated material worlds, so here we may regard the Higher Spiritual Presence as the true bond of union among all those isolated souls that fill the spiritual universe. Thus viewed, the fact of such communion would be the highest truth in philosophy, as a belief in the reality of its possible consciousness would be the highest article of faith.

History is Philosophy teaching by Example

The thought has been deemed so profound as to give rise to some discussion respecting its origin. As a definition, however, the maxim is liable to serious objection. It presents, rather, the uses, or the chief use, of history, than the essential idea. The individual memory may also be said to be philosophy teaching by example; but then it becomes only another name for that experience which is but the application of remembered facts to the guidance of the future life. So history may be called the World's Memory – the memory of a race – of a nation – of a collective humanity.

It is in vain, then, for us to say what facts, in themselves, ought to constitute history. The matter is settled. It is not what any philosophy, or any theology, or any science of history may deem worthy of remembrance, but what has actually been thus remembered, or is now so entering into the common mind as to form the ground of memory in the future. The parallelism in this respect between the individual and this national, or common mind, is striking and complete. The true history of each man is not so much what he has done, as what he has thought and felt. The thought is the form of the feeling, and the act merely the outward testimony by which both are revealed. It is not, therefore, every act, or doing, which enters into his history – not even those which have formed the greater part of his constant daily exercise – but simply such as for any reason have made the deepest impression on the inner man, and which, therefore, stand out in the records of his memory when all else has perished. What this chronicles is the man's veritable history. However important other parts of his conduct may appear externally, this is his true spiritual life. It is the record, the imperishable record of that which has reached and stirred the depths of his soul, while other acts, and other events, have had their lodgment only in the outward un-emotional existence.

Such memory, or such history, may not be what it ought to have been; it may not be the measure of accountability. All that we insist upon is the fact, that, whether right or wrong, it is the true history of the individual, because it is his real life. But then there are degrees of memory. It is not always, in all its parts, either present to the mind, or capable of recall at will. Still, what has once in this manner truly affected his soul, has by this become a part of it, and can, therefore, never be lost. Like some old historical record it may be laid aside for a season, but sooner or later must it come forth, and claim its place as belonging to that individual personality into which it enters as a constituent and inseparable portion.

The parallel may be traced to almost any extent. Like the memory of our earliest years, so is the dawning history of a young world or nation, except so far as positive revelation has shed its light upon it. Both are mythical. In other words, facts are remembered, not as they are in themselves, but as seen through the magnifying and coloring influence of the emotional medium with which they are ever afterward associated. Like stars observed through a densely refracting atmosphere, they stand apart, each in its own seclusion, and hence they loom upon the vision without any of those mutually connecting associations that belong to our subsequent thinking. There is, too, in both cases, the same chronicler – the pure remembrance, a tradition unaided by any of those outward helps that are afterward employed. At a later period more regular annals succeed this mythic handing down of isolated facts. The state has its formal remembrancer, its συγγραφεύς, or historical arranger of events in a connected story, and in their mutual relations. Corresponding to this, then, arises in the individual that orderly habit of thinking which produces associations, having a similar effect in causing a stricter union between the outer and inner relations of the soul.

Again, there are times when the man gets to himself what may be called an artificial memory. He would change the natural flow of thought, and determine what he will remember, and what he ought to remember – forgetting that before he can effectually do this he must be changed himself in the innermost springs of his being. He studies mnemonics. He manufactures new laws of association. But this effort ever fails in the end. Nature will have her way. The old course of memory will return; and with it the spiritual history of the man will go on as before.

So, too, the state or nation may have its artificial periods, and its systems of political mnemonics. The mythical, the epic, the heroic, and not only these, but the later, yet not less thrilling chronicles of stirring events that carried with them the whole heart of the national humanity, give way to statistics, and documents of trade, or tables of revenue, or in a word, to what are deemed the more important records of political economy. Here, too, there may be an attempt to change the course of nature, and make that to be history which never can be such, except at the expense of some of those attributes, which, although liable to great and dangerous perversions, are still the noblest parts of our humanity.

Such artificial records of history may be highly useful in their connection with the interests of particular classes and occupations. The time also may come in which they may gather around them an antiquarian value, blending with some of the more universal emotions of our common nature. But aside from this, although they may furnish rich materials for other departments of useful knowledge, they are not history, simply because they lack that catholic element, by which alone they enter into the common memory, and thus become a part of the common national mind.

Some say the world has heretofore been all wrong in the matter. History has been but a record of wars, of tumultuous national movements, of theological dogmas, of religious and political excitements. It has been but the biography of monarchs and royal families, or a narrative of popular commotions as connected with them. It has presented us only with names of isolated pre-eminence. The time has now come when we "must change all that." The daily pursuits of the masses, and all the statistics of ordinary life – these ought to have been history, and good writers will henceforth make them so, not only for our times, but for the periods that are past. "The history of the world," it has been said, "is yet to be written." But, alas! for these plausible and philanthropic reforms, there are two serious obstacles in the way. In the first place, the records of such matters as they would make the grounds of history are too scanty and uncertain, because they never have had that catholic interest which would give them an abiding place in the common national memory. In the second place, it will be equally difficult to secure for them such lodgment in the universal thinking of the present age, or of ages yet to come. Not that the world will always continue the same, or that there will not be ever new matters of genuine historical interest. The course of things and thinking may greatly change. Wars may cease. Monarchy may expire. Even democracies may become obsolete. Such changes may be for the better or the worse. Faith may go out. Those religious dogmas and discussions, which politicians and political economists have regarded as such useless and troublesome intruders into the province of history, may lose their hold upon the mind. Still our essential position remains unchanged. It will not be what the masses severally do but what moves the masses, not their several occupations and pursuits, but what has a deep and moving interest for the common national soul, that will constitute history. The wars of the White and Red Roses were the true history of England for that period, because they were the only subjects that could be said to occupy all minds alike. It was not because the chronicler forgot the masses, and thought only of the great, but because he wrote for the masses, and for the masses not only of his own time, but of times to come.

Events may have more or less of a personal connection with monarchs, but it would not follow from this that the history which records them is a history alone of kings and statesmen. It is only so far as they and their acts were the representatives of the national heart, and the national thought, that they came down in the national memory, and the national records. The separate ordinary pursuits of men may, in one sense, occupy more of our ordinary thinking, but the other or historic interest we recognize as being of a higher, a more exciting, and even a more absorbing kind, because belonging to us, and felt by us in common with multitudes of other souls. The mechanic or farmer may consult books of a professional or statistical nature, but as history they will be ever unreadable. Even in the workshop and in the field, although the habitual current of his thoughts may be upon what would seem to him the nearest, and therefore the more important concerns of life, these other elements of history will yet have the greater charm, and occupy a higher place both in his feelings and his intelligence.

It is what he thinks with others that constitutes the higher life of his being. Hence the tendency of the popular mind, in all ages, to be absorbed in the recital of deeds most remote from the daily associations of ordinary life. Hence the popularity of the rhapsodist, the minstrel, the chronicler, and, in our own age, of the Magazine and the Newspaper. Hence, too, in the more free and popular governments of modern times, the universal devotion to what is called politics. Why is the farmer more excited by an election than by the sale of his wheat? Most false as well as unphilosophical is the view which would ascribe this to any calculating patriotism, to any utilitarian vigilance, or to what is commonly called an enlightened self-interest. The mechanic thinks more of politics than of his trade; for the same reason that led his ancestor to the crusade or the tournament. Instead of being the offspring of utilitarian views, this public spirit is often most blindly destructive of the private interest, and most directly opposed to all the teachings of that political economy which recognizes its own utilities as alone the true and rational ends of human action. In a much higher sense, too, is all this true, when a religious element enters into the common or catholic feeling.

To illustrate the view we have endeavored to present, let us select some particular date – say the 5th day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy. What was the history of our own country for that day? What the masses were doing would be the answer which some of the new school would promptly make. But even could this be ascertained it would not be history. On that day the three millions of our land were engaged in the various avocations connected with their ordinary life and ordinary interests. On that day, too, there was a particular, and, perhaps, ascertainable state of agriculture, of the mechanic arts, of education, &c., such as might furnish the ground of a most valuable statistical essay. There were also, doubtless, thousands of striking incidents every where transpiring. But none of these constituted the then history of our country. This was all taking place in one narrow street of one single city, away off in one remote corner of our land. A quarrel had arisen between a few foreign soldiers and a collection of exasperated citizens, in the course of which some few of the latter were slain. In this event was centred, for the time, the whole history of the English colonies in North America, and of what afterward became the great American nation. Among all the acts and states, and influences of that day, this alone was history, because it alone, whether right or not, entered into the universal national memory. It was thought by all, felt by all, and therefore became, for the time in which it was so thought and felt, the one common history of all. Again – on the 19th day of April, 1775, the one fact which afterward formed the common thought and the common memory, was the battle of Lexington. On the 4th of July, 1776, it was the Declaration of American Independence. On the 23d day of September, 1780, there might have been seen, in a secluded valley of the Hudson, three rustic militia men busily examining the dress of a British officer. One of them is in the act of taking a piece of paper from the prisoner's boot. This, in a most emphatic sense, was American history for that day; may we not say the history of Europe also, and of the world. And so in other departments. A single man is standing before a company of statesmen and ecclesiastics. It is Luther before the Diet of Worms. This is the one common thought which represents that momentous period in the records of the Church. The subject tempts us with further illustrations, but we call to mind that our Drawer and Easy Chair are waiting impatiently for the delivery of their contents. It is time, therefore, to exchange the prosings of the Editor's Table for their more varied, and, as we trust the reader will judge, more attractive materials.