ANTONIO FOGAZZARO

(1842-)

NTONIO FOGAZZARO, the Italian poet and novelist, was deeply moved by the poetry of the idea which inspired Evolution as a scientific hypothesis. Like St. George Mivart, he acknowledged fully the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in matters spiritual, but he wrote a notable series of essays intended to demonstrate that the idea of perpetual improvement going on throughout all nature as a result of a supreme law of goodness, operating even through what appears to be evil, is in itself a necessary deduction from the fundamental ideas of Christianity. With Mivart and Drummond, he did much to allay the fear that religion is in any way threatened by the theory of a progressive natural evolution, governed by the inherent qualities of matter, and going on for the improvement of all nature. Fogazzaro was born at Vicenza, Italy, in 1842. His best-known poems are "Miranda" and "Valsonda," the latter a volume of lyrics published in 1876.

E

W®

man.

FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEAL

NOW believe no longer that the universe was created solely for humanity; that sun, moon, and stars are set in heaven only to give light to the earth; or that plants and animals exist for the sole purpose of being of service to We believe instead that within the ordering mind of the universe all things are directed, both in themselves and relatively to other things, toward infinitely diverse ends, very few of which are visible to us, very few of which with our intelligence we can apprehend. We believe that these infinitely numerous aims are arranged in accordance with greater designs, and that these are ordained to produce others still greater; and that these latter are in their turn but parts of one single immense design, of which it is hardly possible for human reason to know more than that in its general lines it ascends from the imperfect to the perfect. By these ideas we mean to raise, and not to lower

human dignity. We shift the origin of man from the statue of clay to the first nebula; we confide the sublime task of preparing for Adam and for the birth of the personal and immortal spirit to millions of ages, to all the powers of nature, to myriads and myriads of living beings. Finally, in the name of the law which evolved it from primeval matter, we promise to our species an endless ascent toward the Infinite.

At the same time we raise the dignity of inferior nature, hitherto trodden down with proud, superstitious, and unjust contempt by its offspring, Man. We recognize the action of the omnipotent Divine Will, constantly working for lofty ends, of which only those parts which concern our own species are even dimly visible to us; and to this lower nature also we promise a future unlimited Ascent of its own. Finally, our doctrine raises and enlarges the idea of the Divinity in the human intellect. Just as the entire absence or crude materialization of this idea belongs to the lowest intellectual conditions of the race, so, as culture becomes higher, the nobility and grandeur of the idea become more developed in the minds of more cultivated believers. There is no doubt that between scientific progress and the idea of God there is some spiritual correlation, similar to that mysterious correlation which we observe in the organic world, causing the development of one organ to correspond to the development of another, so that if the calyx of a flower grow deeper, there will be a corresponding growth in the length of the proboscis of the insect which depends on that flower for existence. Or, to use a still more material but more appropriate metaphor, I may say that there is a secret natural passage connecting the sources of human knowledge with the sources of the idea of God, by means of which, almost in accordance with the physical law of communicating vessels, the human spirit laboriously toiling at science must necessarily and spontaneously ascend to the conception of God. With each new step in scientific progress our mind is able to conceive God as greater, and, above all, as more unlike man in his method of operation. The progress of astronomy, revealing the true order of the solar system and its probable subordination to other greater systems, has amplified and glorified our conception of the Creator, multiplying the designs and aims of his divine action, and carrying them into the remotest and most invisible realms of space. Once, as they gazed at the stars, believers fancied that they were upheld in space by God, who stood

like a magician, a man furnished with supernatural faculties, on the outside of things, compelling them against the laws of nature to obey him. Newton's discovery has shown us that God governs the stars and all the atoms in the world in a radically different way, just In the very way, that is to say, which we call the laws of nature. It is impossible to conceive a human being, however grand and noble he might be, operating thus. By these laws of universal attraction, the creation, immensely widened by previous discoveries, is brought back to a rigorous unity. All things are attracted and balanced according to weight, number, and measure; and the infinitely different, but contemporaneous manifestations of a single force resound in a harmony which is expressed by the mechanical order of the universe. For cultivated and believing minds this ideal and harmonious music of the spheres conveys immensely more of the grandeur of the idea of God than the sight of a starry sky, even though powerful telescopes assist the eye to penetrate the furthest solar nebulæ. Now the theory of Evolution presents to us, not a Deity who works intermittently, creating the world in separately finished pieces, and then putting them together like a man making a machine; but a God who is at work always and everywhere, within and without everything, producing the progressive variety of types from the original unity with such orderly and continuous action that it may be called by the names of Nature and Law; a God who works from an infinite number of partial designs which all converge to one single infinite design. And the order of the universe, which, according to the law of attraction, resounds contemporaneously in space like a marvelous harmony, by the law of Evolution, develops in time with the material and logical continuity of a spoken thought. It is like a marvelous melody, passing from grandiose movements to impassioned, from the splendors of light to the splendors of intellect and love; a melody truly divine because, though never completed, it never wanders, but with increasing magnificence gives expression to an idea which is for the human soul the highest ideal possible, not absolute perfection, that is to say, for to that it can never in all eternity attain, but a continuous and indefinite ascent toward it. Never has the human spirit been able so well to trace the sublimity of the Creator from the evidence of things of sense as in these visions.

It is true that every phase of scientific progress has been accompanied also by the denial of God, but all that this proves is

that the choice between the confession and denial of God is always open to every human intellect, whether the most cultured or the most ignorant. Those who deny God refuse to recognize this, and seek to establish the logical contradiction between scientific truths and the idea of the Divinity. Seconded by a religious public, which was in terror lest the small and feeble god of its own conception should be overthrown, they concluded - first, that if the earth had been proved not to be the centre of the solar system, it was also proved that the Christian God should be relegated to a place among false and lying gods; and then, that if the stars of the solar system had been gradually formed by a mechanical process from matter in rotation, according to Lamarck's theory, the old stamp of supernatural manufacture might be obliterated at least from the planets and satellites.

All that could be proved from either of these arguments was that a God such as the vulgar herd imagine him could not exist, and each time answer was made that God was verily far greater. Finally, when the doctrine of Evolution had been published to the four winds, it was proclaimed, amid the groans, lamentations, and maledictions of believing people, that animals, plants, and man had made themselves by chance, out of a single substance, by means of natural selection; and that if the old idea of the Creator had been enabled to resist so many former blows given it by science, this time it had exploded forever.

Now the poet also is called to take his place in the ranks of those who, amid all this empty tumult, rise with heads uplifted and a smile on their lips to the defense of the new truths, together with the old beliefs. When we spiritualist poets listen to the secret voices of things, and feel dim stirrings of life, germs and traces of almost human joy and sadness in the winds and waves, the forests and running streams, in the delicate forms of flowers, in the expressive lines of rocks, in the ridges of the pensive mountains, you sometimes tell us that we are dreaming; and it is true, only that, like all dreams, ours is founded on realities. Our love of nature, except when it is an empty rhetoric badly learned, reveals a true affinity between men and things, a close relationship which science is always trying to prove by documentary evidence, while we have long since felt it in our hearts. And even if we put aside the laws of Evolution and the prophecies of St. Paul, we find within ourselves a true and intimate inspiration which assures us that all this dear beauty of earth is

not destined continually to decay and be lost, but that those hidden voices, the melancholy and joy of nature, signify the desire and expectation of a better state. When we have willingly and reverently depicted pain, you have sometimes told us that our art is inhuman. And now science comes to our aid and answers for us: "Pain is indeed a noble thing, because without the instru mentality of pain man could not have been raised from the dust, nor civilization from barbarism."

When we describe love, we represent it, not indeed as that false and imaginary phantom of love which has no power over the senses, nor as that fever of mere instinct which debases the spirit, but as a love which by its very nature aspires to unite two beings in one. At the same time, we pass over, I will not say the material part, for that would be impossible, but the merely animal and physiological part, that we may describe instead those refined and exquisite sensations which can only belong to the man who loves, and that we may glorify the passion of souls. When, I repeat, we describe love in this way, many set us down as timid consciences, as minds incapable of appreciating the glory and beauty of life, and of all that propagates life. Yet if the universe truly be governed by a law of indefinite progress, even from the human species a higher species may arise, it matters little when or how. And if the sexual instinct, which grows ever more active as we ascend the scale of organisms, has been a preparation for human love, this same human love may also be a preparation for some unknown form of sentiment in the future, its evolution continuing throughout the present phase of life, which is undoubtedly tending toward an ever greater refinement of matter and an ever greater power of the spirit.

Now a lofty moral law is written in the books of Nature, according to which no superior species can issue from an inferior one, without effort being made in the direction of the higher type. Wherever this effort is found wanting, there you find decadence and degeneration. If in the representation of love, other artists gravitate backward toward the brute, we, on the other hand, gravitate onward toward that higher type which man bears within himself, and must develop by himself. When our art, which can be a stranger to no form of beauty, seeks inspiration in moral beauty, we sometimes hear ourselves called cold and pedantic; but we know that we are fighting a just and necessary battle, if it be true, as it certainly is, that man is being carried by a law