Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860

When Bishop Burnet was travelling in Italy, in the year 1686, the doctrines of the Spanish priest Molinos, the founder of the famous sect of Quietists, had lately become the object of attack of the Jesuits and of suspicion at the Papal Court. His system of mystical divinity is still of interest from its connection with the lives of Fénelon and Madame Guyon, if not from its intrinsic character. Like most other mystical doctrines, his teachings seem to have been open to the charge, that, while professedly based on the highest spirituality, they had a direct tendency to encourage sensuality in its most dangerous form. Molinos was at first much favored at Rome and by the Pope himself; but at the time of Burnet's journey he was in the custody of the Holy Office, while his books were undergoing the examination which finally led to the formal condemnation of sixty-eight propositions contained in them, to the renunciation of these propositions by their author, and to his being sentenced to perpetual imprisonment Burnet relates that it happened "in one week that one man had been condemned to the galleys for somewhat he had said, another had been hanged for somewhat he had writ, and Molinos was clapt in prison, whose doctrine consisted chiefly in this, that men ought to bring their minds to a state of inward quietness. The Pasquinade upon all this was, " Si parliamo, in galere; si scrivemmo, impiccati; si stiamo in quiete, all' Sant Uffizio. Eh! che bisogna fare? " "If we speak, the galleys; if we write, the gallows; if we stay quiet, the Inquisition. Eh! what must we do, then?"

With the changes of times and the succession of Popes, new material was constantly afforded to Pasquin for the exercise of his peculiar talent. Each generation gave him fresh subject for laughter or for rebuke. Men quickly passed away, but folly and vice remained. "Do you wonder," said Pasquin, once, in his early days, referring to his changes of character, "do you wonder why Rome yearly changes me to a new figure? It is because of the shifting manners of the city, and the falling back of men. He who would be pious must depart from Rome."

During the eighteenth century Italy did not abound in poets or wits, and Master Pasquin seems to have shared in the dulness of the times. Toward its end, however, when Pius VI. was building the palace under the corner of which the statue was to find shelter, the marble representative of the tailor watched his proceedings with sharp observation. Long ago he had rebuked the nepotism of the Popes, but Pius had forgotten his epigrams. "Cerberus," he had said, "had three mouths with which he barked; but you have three, or even four, which bark not, but devour."

Every one who has been in Rome remembers how often, on the repairs of ancient monuments, and on the pedestals of statues or busts, are to be seen the words, " Munificentiâ Pii Sexti " thrusting themselves into notice, and occupying the place which should be filled with some nobler inscription. The bad taste and impertinence of this epigraph are often enhanced by the slightness of the work or the gift which it commemorates. During a season of dearth at Rome, in the time of Pius, when the bakers had reduced the size of their loaves, Pasquin took the opportunity to satirize the selfishness and vanity of the Pope, by exhibiting one of these diminished loaves bearing the familiar words, " Munificentiâ Pii VI. "

The French Revolution, the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, the brilliant essays of liberalism of Pius IX., the Republic, the siege of Rome, the reactionary government of late years, have alike supplied matter for Master Pasquin, which he has shaped according to the fashion of the times. He still pursues his ancient avocation. Res acu tetigit. But the point of the needle is not the means by which the rents in the garment of Rome are to be mended,—much less by which her wounds are to be cauterized and healed. The sharp satiric tongue may prick her moral sense into restlessness, but the Roman spirit is not thus to be roused to action. Still Pasquin deserves credit for his efforts; and while other liberty is denied, the Romans may be glad that there is a single voice that cannot be silenced, and a single censor who is not to be corrupted.

The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of Nature.

Or, bringing in the word species , which is well defined as "the perennial succession of individuals," commonly of very like individuals,—as a close corporation of individuals perpetuated by generation, instead of election,—and reducing the question to mathematical simplicity of statement: species are lines of individuals coming down from the past and running on to the future,—lines receding, therefore, from our view in either direction. Within our limited view they appear to be parallel lines, as a general thing neither approaching to nor diverging from each other. The first hypothesis assumes that they were parallel from the unknown beginning and will be to the unknown end. The second hypothesis assumes that the apparent parallelism is not real and complete, at least aboriginally, but approximate or temporary; that we should find the lines convergent in the past, if we could trace them far enough; that some of them, if produced back, would fall into certain fragments of lines, which have left traces in the past, lying not exactly in the same direction, and these farther back into others to which they are equally unparallel. It will also claim that the present lines, whether on the whole really or only approximately parallel, sometimes fork or send off branches on one side or the other, producing new lines, (varieties,) which run for a while, and for aught we know indefinitely, when not interfered with, near and approximately parallel to the parent line. This claim it can establish; and it may also show that these close subsidiary lines may branch or vary again, and that those branches or varieties which are best adapted to the existing conditions may be continued, while others stop or die out. And so we may have the basis of a real theory of the diversification of species; and here, indeed, there is a real, though a narrow, established ground to build upon. But, as systems of organic Nature, both are equally hypotheses , are suppositions of what there is no proof of from experience, assumed in order to account for the observed phenomena, and supported by such indirect evidence as can be had. Even when the upholders of the former and more popular system mix up revelation with scientific discussion,—which we decline to do,—they by no means thereby render their view other than hypothetical. Agreeing that plants and animals were produced by Omnipotent fiat does not exclude the idea of natural order and what we call secondary causes. The record of the fiat—"Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed," etc., "and it was so"; "let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so"—seems even to imply them. Agreeing that they were formed of "the dust of the ground" and of thin air only leads to the conclusion that the pristine individuals were corporeally constituted like existing individuals, produced through natural agencies. To agree that they were created "after their kinds" determines nothing as to what were the original kinds, nor in what mode, during what time, and in what connections it pleased the Almighty to introduce the first individuals of each sort upon the earth. Scientifically considered, the two opposing doctrines are equally hypothetical.