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 EMPIRICISM

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EMPIRICISM

Then followed what she dreaded on account of its pubhcity, an episcopal commission to inquire into her Ufe and the reahty of these wonderful signs. The ex- amination was very strict, as the utmost care was necessary to furnish no pretext for ridicule and insult on the part of the enemies of the Church. The vicar- general, the famous Overberg, and three physicians conducted the investigation with scrupulous care and became convinced of the sanctity of the "pious Beg- uine", as she was called, and the genuinenessof her stig- mata. At the end of ISIS God granted partially her earnest prayer to be relieved of the stigmata, and the wounds in her hands and feet closed, but the others re- mained, and on Good Friday were all wont to reopen. In 1819 the government sent a committee of investiga- tion which discharged its commission most brutally. Sick unto death as she was, she was forcibly removed to a large room in another house and kept uiitler the strictest surveillance day and niglit for tliree weeks, away from aU her friends except her confessor. She was insulted, threatened, and even flattered, but in vain. The commission departed without finding any- thing suspicious, and remained silent until its president, taimted about his reticence, declared that there was fraud, to which the obvious reply was: In what respect? antl why delay in publishing it? About this time Klemens Brentano, the famous poet, was induced to visit her; to his great amazement she recognized him, and told him he had been pointed out to her as the man who was to enable her to fulfil God's command, namely, to write down for the good of innumerable souls the revelations made to her. He took down briefly in writing the main points, and, as she spoke the Westphalian dialect, he immediately rewrote them in ordinary German. He would read what he wrote to her, and change and efface until she gave her complete approval. Like so many others, he was won l)y her evident purity, her exceeding hunulity and patience under sufferings indescribable. With Overberg, Sailer of Ratisbon, Clement Augustus of Cologne, Stolberg, Louisa Hcnsel, etc. he reverenced her as a chosen bride of Christ.

In 1S33 appeared the first-fruits of Brentano's toil, " The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ ac- cording to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emme- rich" (Sulzbach). Brentano prepared for publication "The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary", but this ap- peared at Munich only in 1S52. From the MS. of Brentano Father Schmoeger published in three vol- umes "The Life of Our Lord" (Ratisbon, 1S5S-80), and in 18S1 a large illustrated edition of the same. The latter also wrote her life in two volumes (Freiburg, 1S67-70, new edition, 1884). Her visions go into de- tails, often slight, which give them a vividness that strongly holds the reader's interest as one graphic scene follows another in rapid succession as if visible to the physical eye. Other mystics are more concerned with ideas, she with events; others stop to meditate aloud and to guide the reader's thoughts, she lets the facts speak for themselves with the simplicity, brev- ity, and security of a Gospel narrative. Her treat- ment of that difficult subject, the twofold nature of Christ, is admirable. His humanity stands out clear and distinct, but through it shines alwaj'sa gleam of the Divine. The rapid and silent spread of her works through Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere speaks well for their merit. Strangely enough they produced no controversy. Dom Gueranger extolls their merits in the highest terms (Le Monde, 15 April, 1860).

Sister Emmerich lived during one of the saddest and least glorious periods of the Church's history, when revolution triumphed, impiety flourished, and several of the fairest provinces of its domain were overrun by infidels and cast into such ruinous confusion that the Faith seemed about to be completely extinguished. Her mission in part seems to have been by her prayers and sufferings to aid in restoring Church discipline, es-

pecially in Westphalia, and at the same time to strengthen at least the little ones of the flock in their belief. Besides all this she saved many souls and re- called to the Christian world that the supernatural is around about it to a degree sometimes forgotten. A rumour that the body was stolen caused her grave to be opened six weeks after her death. The body was found fresh, without any sign of corruption. In 1892 the process of her beatification was introduced by the Bishop of Mtinster.

Wegener, tr. McGowan*, Sister Anne Katharine Emmerich (New York, 1907); de C.\zales. Life of A. C. Emmerich prefixed to the 2d ed. of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord (London, 1907): VnBAS\ in Kirchenlexikony s, v.; MigN'E, Diet, de mys- tique chretienne (Paris, 1S5S).

E. P. Graham.

Empiricism (Lat. empirismus, the standpoint of a system based on experience). — Primarily, and in its psychological application, the term signifies the theory that the phenomena of consciousness are simply the product of sensuous experience, i. e. of sensations vari- ously associated and arranged. It is thus distin- guished from Xativism or Innatism. Secondarily, and in its logical (epistemological) usage, it designates the theorj' that all human knowledge is derived ex- clusively from experience, the latter term meaning, either explicitly or implicitly, external sense-percepts and internal representations and inferences exclusive of any superorganic (immaterial) intellectual factor. In this connexion it is opposed to Intellectualism, Rationalism, Apriorism. The two usages evidently designate but two inseparable aspects of one and the same theorv', the epistemological ijeing the application of the psychological to the problem of knowledge.

Empiricism appears in the history of philosophy in three principal forms: (1) Materialism, (2) Sensism, and (3) Positi\'ism.

(1) Materialism in its crudest shape was taught by the ancient atomists (Democritus, Leucippus, Epicu- rus, Lucretius), who, reducing the sum of all reality to atoms and motion, taught that experience, whereof they held knowledge to be constituted, is generated by images reflected from material objects through the sensory organs into the soul. The soul, a mere com- plexus of the finest atoms, perceives not the objects but their effluent images. With modern materialists (Helvetius, d'Holbach, Diderot, Feuerbach, Mole- schott, Biichner, Vogt, etc.), knowledge is accounted for either by cerebral secretion or bj' motion; while Hackel looks on it as a physiological process effected by certain brain cells. Avenarius, Willy, Mach, etc. subtilize this process so far as to reduce all experience to internal (empirio-criticism).

(2) Sensism. — All materialists are of course sen- sists. Though the converse is not the case, neverthe- less, by denying any essential difference between sensations and ideas (intellectual states), sensism logically involves materialism. Sensism, which is found with Empedocles and Protagoras amongst the ancients, was given its first svstematic form by Locke (d. 1704), though Bacon (d. 1626) and Hobbes(d. 1679) had prepared the data. Locke derives all simple ideas from external experience (sensations), all com- pound ideas (modes, substances, relations) from in- ternal experience (reflection). Substance and cause are simply associations of subjective phenomena; uni- versal ideas are mere mental figments. Locke admits the existence, though he denies the demonstrability, in man of an immaterial and immortal principle, the soul. Berkeley (d. 1753), accepting the teaching of Locke that ideas are only transfigured sensations, subjecti- vizes not only the sensible or secondary qualities of matter (sensibitia projiria. e. g. colour and sound) as his predecessor had done, but also the primary quali- ties {sensibitia communid, extension, space, etc.), which Locke heUi to be objective. Berkeley denies the objective basis of universal ideas and indeed of the