Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/769

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DE LA CROIX


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DELACROIX


trliost is radical and common. The fault of some anthropologists is in neglecting the distinction, in rniifusing both under the name of spirits, and in de- n\ mg both from the ghosts of the dead. In Polynesia till' gods are called attui; the spirits and souls of the il'|i:irted tiki. Their conceptions of the heavenly liwilUngs of the gods and the underground kingdom of tlic dead (Po, Pulotu) are greatly developed and not I h irly defined. The Fijians have the term kalou, \\ hirh signifies beings other than men. All gods are ' / ■!/, but not all beings that are kaloit are gods. I ^i.ls are kalou vu; deified ghosts are kalou yalo ; the f' riiier are eternal, the latter subject to infirmity and (\iii death. Their supreme deity, Udengei, is ne- u'lt'ted But so would Jehova have been neglected,

iimI Iwc'ir.p a mere name, if not for the Prophets.

A. I., Ill- s,!ys,"The Old Testament is the -story of the pri 1'uil:i'.1 effort to keep Jehova in the supreme place. I'll make and succeed in this was the differentia of It 111." The Zulus believe their first ancestor Un- k I'lunkulu was the Creator and prior to death. Re- \ illi> does not understand, in Spencer's system, "why, in so many places, the first ancestor is the Maker, if <!•<[ the Creator of the world, Master of life and death, I jiossessor of divine powers not held by any of his ■udants. This proves that it was not the first stor who became God, in the belief of his descend-

: t -, but rather the Divine Maker and Beginner of all

hIih, in the creed of his adorers, became the first an- ci >tiir." Miss Kingsley maintains that a clear line of (|i niarcation exists between ghosts who are wor- sl lipped and gods; that the former never developed iiiiii the latter; warns us against confusing the ofter- ii 4^ to the dead with sacrifices made to the gods; she > > s \Vest.\frica has never deified ancestors.

I'inally, as de La Saussaye states, in Greece other I i.s are applied to the altars, sacrifices, and offerings ii'cted with the dead than those used in the worship 11' Olympian gods. The altar of the ancestors is tia, of the gods ;3w^6s ; the offering of sacrifice to the -tors is ivaytfeiv or ivriixveiv^ to the gods 8iiiv\ the imns to the ancestors x""'. to the gods (TwovSal. \ _■ 1 in, the temples of the gods in Greece were so con- -iiic-ted that the statue in the main shrine should f ■ the rising sim; the temple of the hero opened to A est and looked toward Erebus and the region of n. With .Eschylus the homage of the highest - is kept apart from that of the powers below. ii' Greeks sacrificed to the gods by day, to the In '•Ill's in the evening or by night; not on high alt ir>, but on a low sacrificial hearth; black-colored animals of the male sex were killed for them, and the heads of the victims were not, as in the case of those intended for the gods, turned toward the sky, but pressed down to the ground. M. Miiller tells us that in the Vedas the exclamation used in sacrificing to the gods is sraha, to the departed srndha. Rightly, therefore, Jevons holds that tlie ghost never became a god and rejects the theory that all the deities of the earlier races, without exception, were the spirits of dead men divinized. "If Mr. Spencer", writes M. Miillcr, "can find a single scholar to accept this view of the origin of Zeus in Greek or Dyaus in Sanscrit, I shall never write another word on mythology or re- ligion." Thus the Ghost-theorj' is needed only for the rise of ghost-propitiation and genuine ancestor- worship. It reveals something in man apart and dis- tinct frotn the material elements of the body. Thus viewed, its arguments are so many reasons for the be- lief in the future life of the soul after dissolution of the body.

Thus the history of religion reveals (1) the belief in a powerful, moral, eternal, omniscient Father and Judge of men ; (2) the belief in somewhat of man which ex- ists beyond the grave. These truths are found in every nation historically known to us. The latter belief, developed into an animistic ghost-worship, ob- IV.— 44


scures, but docs not obliterate, the former. "Chris- tianity", writes A. Lang, "combined what was good in .\nimism, the care for the individual soul as an im- mortal spirit imder eternal responsibilities, with the One Righteous Eternal of prophetic Israel."

lio-Kon. llfii /,'./wi,)ji.«ws,-n Nalurvulker (Leipzig, 1880); EiiKi— :' I :! ihondon,lS93); TiKW, Elements of

tif i^Nii); DAILME.STETER, Zeiul-Avesta \n

Mil the Easl (Oxford, 18S0-83). I, II;

I.i . i.oiiiloii. ISNOi: Ellin. ;woon. Ort-

rri'-r \i ,.. I MIJ ; I', h I \ i . .\ , U< ! unnn oj I'rimi'

!i,. r •. \. I 1 , I i -I, , I II , I 1,1 I ,1,1 -, /, l,..mm,-s fos-

.viV., ■ ' i'lM , jxsi ; I.I II iKi.i,/., .li-,.s(a;

I]... I..: , ^;; ' ,:■ . t ri|. ■ IsiM : \1, ,,, >,;„„.r,/ Texts

(Loiuion, 1S7L'-71); Bro« -. / I 'n:,,,l,l „f the

Aryans of Northern Europe: I ' I: . i / ■'mnelnsions

de t'histoire des religions (Pin I -- : 1 v \ .'ir Studies

(1st ser. London, 1884; 2.1 mi I ,.■,,,,, i v.i ; u i serf. //*- berl Lectures (New York, 1879\ Mi i.i i u. n, , ,, „„,; (,r..ir//i of IMigion (2d ed. London, 1S78); Ii. . t »i;/,,,,;m/, .,;,,„/ i;,!,aion (London. 1892); Lang. Afaflic nti,l l;,l,.it,.n i I .ithIuti, New York, and Bombay, 1901); Id., Th, M.ikin;, .,f h',l,,i,,„i {Lon- don, New York, and Bombay, 1S9'^ ; \\ \ri/, Autfimpologic (6 vols., Leipzie, 1860-77); FAnM i r . /r,,/ ,/,,.,! „/ RrUgion (London and New York, 1905); Ki\..-,ijv. Ir.ivis ,n West Africa (London. 1897); Spencer, fruicpt,, ,,f Soeiologii (New York, 1874); Driscoi.u Christian Fhilo.'^ophy: Gorf (2d ed. New York. 1905).

John T. Driscoll.

De La Croix, Ch.\rles, missionary, b. at Hoorbeke- St-Corneille, Belgium, 28 Oct., 1792; d. at Ghent, 20 .\ug., 1869. He was educated at the seminary in Ghent. With his fellow-students he resisted the bi.shop forced upon the diocese by Napoleon I and was imprisoned with his brother Joseph in the fortress of Wesel, where the latter died. After the fall of the empire, De La Croi.x resumed his studies, was ordained in Ghent by Bishop Dubourg of Louisiana and, with several other seminarians and some Flemish workmen, followed the bishop to the United States. In May, 1818, he was sent to Barrens, Perry County, Missouri, where, beside his missionary duties, he was to superin- tend the building of a seminary for the Louisiana dio- cese. After the arrival of Father Rosati, president of the new seminary. Father De La Croix went to Floris- sant, also called St. Ferdinand, near St. Louis (3 Dec, 1818). Here, with the help of the newly arrived col- ony of Religious of the Sacred Heart, he laboured zealously and successfully, not only among the Cath- olic families of the district, but also among the Osage Indians of the Missouri plains. He prepared the way for De Smet and the other Jesuit missionaries, who came to Florissant in 1823. When Father Van Quickenborne, S. J., arrived with his eight compan- ions, all Belgians like himself, De La Croix had almost completed and paid for tiie brick church, started a farm, and opened a missionary field for the work of the young Jesuits. Having been appointed to St. Mi- chael's parish in Lower Louisiana, Father De La Croix prepared for the Religious of the Sacred Heart the convent in which they opened a boarding-school in 182S. The following year he went to Belgium, broken in health, but returned to his mission with funds col- lected in Belgium to build a substantial church which was completed in 1832. In 1833 he went back to Bel- gium, where he became a canon of the cathedral of Ghent, a position which he held imtil his death.

I)k Riemaecker, Joseph el Charles De La Croix: notice hiO" graphique (Ghent, 1894); Catholic DirecJoru (1S22. 18,33); Ameri- can Catholic Historical Researches (Philadelphia, Jan., 1907).

P. P. Libert.

Delacroix, Feudinand-Victor- Eugene, French painter, b. at Charenton-St^Maurice, near Paris, 26 April, 1798; d. 13 August, 18G3. He was the son of Charles Delacroix, minister of foreign relations under the Convention from 179.5 to 1797, and a grandson, by his mother, of Aben, the famous pupil of Boulle. From his earliest childhood his love for music was in- tense and exercised throughout his life a decided influ- ence on his work. He always .attributed his success in his representation of the Magdalen (Saint-Denis of