nature was bathed in self-surrendering love to God, and in what the author of Ecce Homo felicitously calls the enthusiasm of humanity, the true Christian charity, which seeketh not her own, but rejoiceth in the truth. God, man as the image of God, and nature as the shadow of God, were the objects of his love, and the contemplation of any one of them was sufficient to move him to tears, and, in the language of Wordsworth, to "thoughts that do lie too deep for tears." His highest blessedness he found in rapt communion with God, his chief happiness in cordial interchange of thoughts and feelings with other pure souls, and his keenest pleasure in repose of spirit among the lonely grandeurs of nature. His letters to his friends, especially those written in the earlier part of his life, remind us of those of Hegel to Hölderlin and Schelling, and his poetry also has a strong resemblance in tone to that of the great German thinker.* As we have already said, this attitude of selfsurrendering love and faith was in Rosmini coupled with a complete submission of his will to God through freedom. In his Anthropology (Book iii., On Spirituality, p. 329) he defines Freedom as "the faculty which determines the will to a volition contrary to its own," whereas "Will is the faculty which tends to a known object." Æschylos had a profound insight when he wrote, "No one is free save Zeus ” (“ Ελεύθερος γὰρ οὔτις ἐστὶ πλὴν Διός” Prometh. Vinct., 50), and since his day many a one has felt the direct conclusion from this to be, that whoever else wishes to be free must seek to identify his will with that of the supreme power. "Our wills are ours, to make them Thine," says Tennyson. This was one of Rosmini's central doc See Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel, pp. 62-80, and compare the poem on pp. 78-80 with Rosmini's youthful effusion quoted on pp. 5-8 of Nicolò Tommaséo's Antonio Rosmini (Turin, 1855). trines, and it explains a great deal in his character. He was not a man of executive ability, or indeed of enterprise in the sphere of practical activity. Having surrendered his will, he became entirely passive, waiting in complete faith for the prompting of the Divine Spirit, before entering upon any grave undertaking. This attitude of passivity was an entirely conscious one with him, so much so that as early as 1825 he laid it down as the guide and principle of his life. In his diary of that year he wrote: "I, most unworthy priest, have resolved to shape my conduct in accordance with two principles, which are these: "(1) To devote myself seriously to setting myself free from my most enormous vices [!] and purifying my soul from the iniquity with which it has been loaded since my birth, without going in search of other occupations or enterprises for the good of my neighbour, feeling as I do my utter powerlessness to do anything of myself for their good. "(2) Not to refuse any offices of charity toward my neighbour, if ever Divine Providence shall offer or present them to me, inasmuch as God is able to make use of any instrument, and, therefore, even of me, for His purposes; and should this happen, I will preserve perfect indifference as to the nature of these offices, and perform those laid upon me with the same fervour as if I had assumed them of my own free will." However we may regard such principles, it was, after all, love and intellect, and not faith or submission of will, that made Rosmini great; and so closely, indeed, are the two former elements bound up together in him, that it is almost impossible to treat them separately. Love deepened, without narrowing, intellect, and intellect broadened, without attenuating, love. To his consciousness, more perhaps than to that of any other man that ever lived, might be applied the inimitable lines of Dante 66 'Light intellectual, filled full of love, Love of true good, filled full of gladsomeness, Light and love, distinguishing subtlety and combining force, these are the fundamental characteristics of high intelligence, and the balance of the two is the infinite joy of contemplation which, as Aristotle says, we sometimes enjoy, God always † (Metaph. A. 7). Both elements the intellect of Rosmini possessed in a very high degree. His surprising analytical subtlety, which reminds us of that of Aristotle, enabled him to unravel perplexities of thought that had puzzled centuries, while his synthetic power, which never for an instant lost sight of the absolute whole in the relative parts, made it possible for him to build up a system of ordered truths which, had he lived to complete it, would have in vain sought for an equal. True, his dogmatic faith narrowed his field of vision, and consequently his sympathies; but this was in great measure atoned for by the care with which he distinguished faith from science, and the intense enthusiasm which the former lent to his mind. In regard to the institution founded by Rosmini, a few words must suffice. Its proper title is the Institute of the Brethren of Charity (Istituto dei Fratelli della Carità); but its members are better known by the shorter name Rosminians. The fundamental idea of it is the principle of passivity, already spoken of, and its aim the moral perfec "Luce intellettual, piena d'amore, Paradiso, c. xxx. † “ Ως ἡμεῖς ποτέ, ὁ θεὸς ἀεί” (1072 b, 25). tion of souls, through obedience to every law, human and divine, natural and revealed. Moral perfection implies and supplements the two other forms of perfection, that of essence and that of intelligence, and is synonymous with holiness.* The essential part of the life of the Brother of Charity is, therefore, the elective or contemplative, whose aim is his own perfection; but this only prepares him for the assumptive or active part, whose aim is the well-being of others, and which he is bound to undertake, whenever he feels himself called to it by God, without any regard to his own preferences. The principle of all action is to be charity, material, moral, intellectual, "the love of the good, of all the good." The Brethren of Charity undergo a two years' novitiate, take the three monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, wear no distinguishing habit, and conform to the laws of the country in which their lot may happen to be cast. Each retains a sort of title to his own property, but makes a continual sacrifice of it, by disposing of it as the general of the order enjoins. The order, as such, owns no property. The Institute of Charity, containing, as it does, both clerical and lay members, and claiming no special vocation, is the most considerable attempt that has been made to adapt the principles of Catholic Christianity and monasticism to the needs of the present time. If its success has not been marked, this is due, not to any defect in its principles or constitution, but to the determined opposition which, from the first, it encountered at the hands of that party in the Church whose chief aim is despotic power, such as can be maintained only through distrust of human intelligence and the substitution of blind obedience for the * See §§ 212, 219. conviction that comes of insight. In spite, however, of all unscrupulous opposition, the Institute is in a fairly prosperous condition, and, if its members are not numerous, those who have entered it are among the most human-hearted men and the truest Christians that the present world has to show. They are almost exclusively Italians or Englishmen. The order has two novitiates, one at Domodossala in Piedmont, and one recently removed from Rugby to Wadhurst in Sussex. It has also several colleges and religious houses in various parts of Italy and England. Such is a very meagre account of the life of one of the most remarkable men of this century, a man who, without courting publicity or fame, laboured for forty years, with all the force that was in him, to do the good as he understood it. The good which he sought to do met with many obstacles in his lifetime, and many more since that came to a close; but his order still keeps alive his spirit of piety, hope, and charity, and his works, in spite of all wilful misinterpretation, calumny, and denunciation, are slowly, but surely, extending their influence in every direction where influence is desirable. If a certain hostile body of men sharing his own creed have made it one of their special aims to oppose his good and his truth, their loss is greater than his, and this they will in time discover to their cost. 'As for us who do not share his creed or its intolerance, we can, with a charity even greater than his, overlook the fact that he held it, and, in spite of it, do him justice. We may differ with him in many, even fundamental, views and beliefs; we may think he wasted his powers in pursuing impossible aims; we may admit that he was in certain things far too credulous; we may see that he did not understand or appreciate some of the most manly and humane movements of his time; we may feel that he was frequently |