Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism: Considered in Their Fundamental Principles

DONOSO CORTES is one of the most profound thinkers of the nineteenth century. If the many and varied productions which have flowed from his learned pen had not raised him to the rank of eminent publicists, the work now offered to English readers, translated from the rich and harmonious tongue of Cervantes and Fray Louis de Granada, would be sufficient to immortalise him. It bears the modest title of Essays; but this insignificant title gives no index to the richness and sumptuousness of the splendid edifice he has built up under that name. True merit characteristically presents itself on the scene of the world without pretensions, and real virtue is known to everyone but itself. St Augustine, to refute the calumnies of the pagans, who laid all the evils which befell the Roman Empire at the door of the Christians, writes the City of God; and after attaining his object, he does what perhaps he had not intended—he creates a science unknown to the pagans, which was the science of the intervention of Providence in history, St. Thomas aims at writing a systematic textbook for students of theology in the thirteenth century, and his Summa raised theology to the category of a science, and became a book of consultation for the learned of all ages. Dante intends to write a poem after the manner of Virgil, and the Divine Comedy becomes the reflex of a civilisation, or rather is Christian civilisation sung in numbers by a bard. Cervantes aims at suppressing the books of knight-errantry by ridiculing their extravagances, and he becomes famous with posterity, not for his transitory victory, but for the deep and witty picture he gives of humanity, and the profound knowledge of the human heart he displays. Finally, Bossuet does not venture to call his history anything but a Discourse, and yet posterity has acknowledged Bossuet to be the father of what is known as the Philosophy of History. Well, what those giants of Christian thought were in their respective ages and in their own spheres, the present work of the Marquis of Valdegamas, under the modest title of Essays, is at the present day. He proposes to compare Catholicism with Liberalism and Socialism; and his work is not, as might appear at first sight, a simple comparison of the truth with the great errors of the present time; it is more—it is much more—it is incomparably more, than what he proposes. It is history, like the City of God, it is theology, like the Summa of St. Thomas; it is the portrait of Catholic civilisation, like the Divine Comedy; it is a profound knowledge of the miseries of the heart, of the errors of the intellect, and of the defects of human institutions, like the work of Cervantes Saavedra; and it is a philosophy of history much more profound than that of Bossuet and all other historians; for without the philosophy of these Essays, history is an enigma impossible to decipher. Spain may well be proud of producing the illustrious author of these Essays, a work which, without a controversial character, is the most glorious and sublime apology of religion, and the victorious refutation of Liberalism, Rationalism, and Socialism.