Newman on the True Basis of Theology

BROWNSON'S QUARTERLY REVIEW, OCTOBER, 1851.

Art. I.  1. The Soul, her Sorrows and her Aspirations. An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, as the True Basis of Theology. By Francis William Newman. Second Edition. London: Chapman. 1849. 12mo.    pp. 264.
2. Phases of Faith; or Passages from the History of my Creed. By Francis William Newman. London: Chapman.    1850.    12mo.    pp. 234.

Mr. Francis Newman is a younger brother of the Very Reverend John Henry Newman, D. D., the Superior of the English Oratorians. He was formerly Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford, and, as far as he reveals himself in the works before us, is a man of a grave and earnest turn of mind, good natural parts, and respectable scholarship. He evidently has a kind and warm heart, and full persuasion of his own honesty and sincerity. As a man, he interests us much, and we regret to see him wasting his fine powers and attainments in the unpraisewprthy effort to obliterate faith from the human heart, and reduce mankind in their own estimation to a level with the beasts that
perish.

It were easy to say severe things against Mr. Francis Newman, and to prove even from his own writings that his persuasion of his own sincerity and guilelessness is simply a delusion. We cannot respect his complaints of the coldness or harshness with which he says his religious friends have treated him, and we regard him as quite wrong in alleging that he could not honestly have escaped the infidel conclusions at which he has arrived. No man, brought up and liberally educated in a country where Christianity is preached as extensively as it is in England by the Catholic clergy, can be an unbeliever, except through culpable ignorance, or wilful persistence in error. In fact, no modern infidel's plea of sincerity can be entertained, for no really sincere mind, honestly and loyally seeking the truth, can ever fall under the gross delusion that truth warrants the rejection of Catholicity. Nevertheless, Mr. Newman must stand or fall to his own master. We remember our own past delinquencies, and the great mercy of God in bringing us to the truth, as it were in spite of ourselves, and we can speak of no one personally in severe or censorious terms. We can interpret his unbelief, and even his blasphemies, by our own past experience, and although unable now to sympathize with him, we remember all too vividly the time when we should have done so, and have hailed him as one of the lights of the age.
But however we may be disposed to treat the man, we can have no toleration for the author. His principles and doctrines are utterly abhorrent to Christian faith and piety, and we have the right to subject them, if we choose, to the most rigid criticism. In setting them forth, he has challenged the Christian world to mortal combat, and he is not permitted to complain if his challenge is taken up, and some stripling from the camp of Israel shall do his best to discomfit the modern son of Anak, who rashly defies the armies of the living God. Between his system and the Gospel there can be only war, and war to the death ; for if the Gospel is true, if our Blessed Lord was not an impostor, but what he declared himself, his system is false and destructive; and if his system be true, the Gospel is a cheat, and all who adhere to it are wretched idolaters, enemies of God and man, laboring only to keep the human race bound in the chains of ignorance, vice, and superstition.

For Mr. Francis Newman as a man, and before his Protestant brethren, there may, indeed, be some excuse; for he has only followed out to its last consequences the Evangelicalism in which he appears to have been brought up. He was reared in the bosom of the so-called Church of England. The members of that crazy Establishment are divided, among other divisions too numerous to mention, into High-Churchmen and Low-Churchmen.    High-Churchmen speak always with a double tongue, a thing which God   abhors.    They  both   assert  and  deny sacramental grace.    They assert it against Low-Churchmen or Evangelicals, who deny it, and they deny it against Catholics, who always assert it.    If they are right against Evangelicals, they are wrong in protesting against Catholics, and can never clear themselves of the charge at least of schism, since they are severed from the Holy See, and are out of Catholic unity.    If they are right against Catholics, they are, since distinguished from Evangelicals, mere formalists, holding that the observance of a few outward forms and ceremonies, or, at farthest, the practice  of mere natural morality, is sufficient for salvation, than which nothing is more unchristian   or  unreasonable.     No   earnest-minded man, with tolerable intellectual capacity, can  long continue a High-Churchman.    He must either press forward to Rome, or fall back on Evangelicalism, as Mr. Francis Newman says he told his illustrious brother, as far back as 1823.    Protestantism is essentially in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as its whole history proves, and for a Protestant, holding as he invariably does to imputed justice, to embrace what the Puseyites call " the sacramental system," is suicidal, since justification by faith alone, in his sense, is simply the denial of sacramental grace.

Evangelicalism  on  one side stands  opposed  to mere formalism, and is so far  commendable;  but on   another side it stands opposed to sacramental grace.    Its blunder is in recognizing no distinction between mere formalism and the infusion of sanctifying grace into the heart by the Holy Ghost through the  sacraments as its instrumental cause.    Denying habitual grace, infused through the sacrament of Baptism, and renewable, if lost, by the sacrament of Penance, the second plank after shipwreck, as the Fathers are accustomed  to  call  it, the Evangelical has no resource but the assertion of justification by faith alone. But this justifying faith, since it is not an infused habit, cannot be'intellectual faith, for the devils believe and tremble.    Nor can it be an affection of the will; for, since the will is unelevated  by habitual  grace, such an affection could not rise above the order of natural morality.    Justifying faith, then, must be an affection of the sensitive nature, and be essentially a feeling or a sentiment.    Hence Evangelicalism, as every body knows, is mere sentimen-talism, and teaches that sanctity consists in a right state of the sensitive affections. Consequently, it teaches that concupiscence is in itself sin, and that its motions are sinful, even when not assented to by the will, but actually resisted.

Starting as an Evangelical from this point, with the doctrine of imputed justice, that is, that Christ justifies forensically, without sanctifying, you fall practically into Antinomianism, and conclude with Luther that the regenerate are in effect relieved from the obligations of the moral law. Or if, to escape this difficulty, you hold, with the more recent Evangelicals, that there is a twofold imputation of the merits of Christ, one which justifies us in the eye of the law, and another which effects in some way internal sanctity, you fall, if of a tender conscience, into despair; for you always find concupiscence, a law in your members, warring against the law of your mind, and bringing you into captivity to the law of sin and death. Brought to this point, what are you to do ? Feel right and you will be right. Perhaps so, perhaps not so. But the precise difficulty is that you do not feel right, and your feelings arc not under the control of your will. Here was our great difficulty, when, awaking from our rationalistic dream, we felt it necessary to escape from sin, and to strive after real sanctity; and God in his mercy sent us to the Church for a solution. The Church solved it for us by teaching us that concupiscence, when not assented to, is not sin, that our merely sensitive feelings count for nothing, and that all we need strive after is to have the will or the voluntary affections right, in which, through the aid of Divine grace, never withheld, we may be always successful. But this solution is no solution at all to those who reject the Church, deny sacramental grace, and place sanctity in a right state of the sensitive affections. For them there are only three alternatives;  1. The practical Antinomianism just mentioned, that is, that sins committed after justification are not imputed or reckoned as sins; 2. Perfect despair of God's mercy and salvation; or 3. The denial of sin itself, by resolving all that passes under the name of sin into simple imperfection, natural defect, or natural infirmity. The first alternative is the one generally adopted by Evangelicals.    They make a superb act of hypocrisy, and persuade themselves that they ave regenerated by the Spirit, and therefore that they are saints. Assuming that whatever saints do must be saintly, they conveniently conclude that they may do whatever they list, without detriment to their sanctity or danger to their salvation. How can this thing be a sin, since he who does it is a saint ? A smaller number, yet at times comparatively large, adopt the second alternative, and fall into complete despair, conclude that they are reprobates, predestined to hell, and become religious maniacs, and not unfrequently murderers and suicides; or, assuming that their doom is sealed, and that nothing they can do will affect it one way or the other, give loose reins to their appetites and passions, and plunge into every excess of vice and iniquity. Mr. Francis Newman adopts the third alternative, and denies sin to be properly sin, and considers it the necessary result of natural imperfection, and as naturally tending to develop and perfect the sinner, or the one we should call a sinner; which is only another phase of the first alternative, or Antinomianism.

Again, by placing the faith by which the sinner is assumed to  be justified in the sensitive nature, as distinguished from reason, that is, intellect and will, Evangelicalism necessarily declares all dogmatic theology and all belief in   dogmas  proposed to the  intellect,  unessential, and really worthless, if not absolutely hurtful.    It leaves the believer, therefore, free to reject, without any impeachment  of his  religious character or  danger to his salvation, any intellectual proposition he pleases.    If he has the approved feelings or affections, he has all that is required, although he denies every article of the creed, and even the existence of God ; and perhaps the farther he carries his denial the better, because the affirming of dogmas requires an intellectual exercise, and4eads to  a reliance on intellect, which tends to impair the purity and intensity of the feelings, and therefore the true religious life.    The nearer one approximates the pure animal, or, it may be, the mere sensitive plant, the better Evangelical   he is.  ^ Moreover, placing religion in the sensitive affections as its subject, Evangelicalism makes one's feelings the test or criterion of truth, and therefore binds him to reject as false and hurtful  whatever is disagreeable to them.    Mr. Francis Newman finds the inspiration of the Scriptures, the Church, ecclesiastical authority and discipline, the sacred mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, and especially the doctrine of future retribution and the endless punishment of the wicked, very disagreeable to his feelings, and therefore boldly and decidedly rejects them as blasphemous errors, as lets and hinderances to Christian freedom and genuine piety. All this is deplorable, but it is only the legitimate development of Evangelicalism, and no Protestant has the least right to complain of it.

We have foreshadowed in these preliminary remarks the general character of Mr. Francis Newman's doctrines, or rather negation of doctrines. His system, if system it can be called, is no novelty to us or to our readers, and we have on several occasions discussed its chief principles and main features, especially in our admonitions to Protestants and our articles on Parker, Channing, Morell, Bush-nell, and the Mercersburg Reviewer. The author is a De-velopmentist, and belongs to the great Protestant neological party of our times. In this city, he would be classed with the Transcendentalists, though transcendentalizing in very tolerable Anglo-Saxon. The second title of the first-named of the works on our list reveals at once his principle and method;  An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, as the True Basis of Theology. His system, be it what it may, is derived, then, from the natural history of the soul, and therefore excludes the supernatural order, and can be only naturalism. If derived from the natural history of the soul, it must be pure humanism, egotism, or psychological idealism; for from the soul alone, only the soul can be obtained. This in the very outset asserts both the unchristian and the unphilosophical character of his system, and ranks it among the later forms of infidelity.

" By the soul," the author says, " we understand that side of human nature upon which we are in contact with the Infinite, and with God, the Infinite Personality; in the soul, therefore, alone is it possible to know God ; and the correctness of our knowledge must depend eminently on the healthy, active, and fully developed condition of our organ." (Preface, p. vii.) The author, therefore, it would seem, distinguishes between the Infinite and God. Can he tell us what the Infinite is as distinguished from God? or what God is as distinguished from the Infinite ? Nothing is or exists but God and his creatures ; no creature is or can be infinite, and consequently, if God is not the Infinite, there is no Infinite, and if no Infinite, then no God.    What, we  may ask, does  the  author  mean by  "our organ"? Does he, as   his words  seem to imply, mean   the   soul? Does he then regard my soul as distinct from me ?    What, then, am I whose organ is the soul, and who am distinguishable from it?    The human personality, then, is not in the soul, and does not pertain to it, but uses the soul as its  organ!    What is this personality?    Of what is the soul an organ ?    And what sort of an organ is it ?    Material, or spiritual ?    If spiritual, what is a spiritual organ ? Moreover, what is the test or criterion of the soul's healthy, active, and fully developed condition ?    How is the author, or how are we, to know whether the soul is in that condition, or whether it is in an unhealthy state, abnormally developed, and morbidly active ?    Unless he can determine this, he cannot determine the correctness of his knowledge, and his utterances are worthless for him and for us, for they may turn out to be those   of a diseased soul or a madman.    Here is a grave difiiculty at the very threshold, and one which  excites  numerous   misgivings.    But let this pass.

The author says that it is in the soul alone that it is possible to know God.    But he distinguishes, as is evident from his book, the soul from the intellect or understanding, and therefore must make it, in itself  considered, a mere blind faculty, like the will, and without light except as enlightened by some other faculty.    How, then, can the soul be a medium of knowledge, correct or incorrect, of God, or of any thing whatever ? ' The soul distinguished from the intellect cannot know any thing at all, and consequently we can know in it or through it only what is intelligible, or an object of intellect.    The soul, in Mr. Francis Newman's sense, is the sensitive nature, or the capacity of feeling as he supposes, of feeling the infinite; but feeling is always, as feeling, purely subjective, and never of itself introduces us to any object distinguishable from the sensitive subject or feeling itself.    The apprehension of an external, material, or sensible object as the exterior occasion or cause of the feeling or sensitive affection, is never the work of the feeling, or of the soul as simple, sensitive subject, but always of the intellect, that is, of the soul as understanding, or  intellective  subject.    If, then, the author distinguishes the soul from understanding, as he certainly does, and maintains that it is only in the soul that we do or can know God, he virtually denies that we can know God at all, and excludes from his religion all objective reality, that is, resolves religion into mere egotism or psychological idealism.

That religion has a subjective side is unquestionably true ; but to assume that it is purely subjective is to deny it outright. Religion, or worship, the author says, " is a state of the affections "; and that he means sensitive affections is evident from his adding, that they " are not under the control of the will," and defining them to be " gentle emotions," or a lower degree of the same thing. But worship can be a state of the affections, sensitive or otherwise, only in relation to an object really existing. The author elsewhere calls worship " a spiritual exercise " ; but it cannot be a purely subjective exercise, for by the very force of the term it is an exercise in reference to and for an object, that is, God, and therefore an exercise not possible without intuition or intellectual apprehension of God, or the object who commands it, and to whom it is due. In point of fact, every exercise of the soul demands as its essential condition intuition or intellectual apprehension of its object. None of our faculties can operate without their specific objects. The specific object of the eye is light, and where there is no light there is and can be no seeing ; the specific object of the intellect is truth, and where there is no truth, that is, no objective reality, there can be no intellection, or act of knowing ; the specific object of the will or of love is good, and where there is no good apprehended, there can be no act of will or of love. No faculty creates its object, because no one can operate without its object. Abstract the subject from all object, and you annihilate its actual existence ; abstract any particular faculty from its specific object, and you annihilate it as an active faculty, render it inoperative, and practically as if it were not. Consequently, the author by losing the object loses the subject, and by excluding religion as objective necessarily excludes it as subjective, that is, even as a spiritual exercise, or state of the affections.

The author asserts in his very title-page that the natural history of the soul is the true basis of theology, and therefore, in philosophical language, supposing him really to intend to admit objective reality, that psychology is the true basis of ontology. Nobody can suppose that the author in this really means to affirm that the soul is the true basis of all being, and that God is merely a creature or emanation of the human soul; yet this is the real import of his assertion, for psychology can be the true basis of ontology, or the natural history of the soul the true basis of theology, only on condition that the soul is the true basis of all being, and therefore of God himself From the natural history of the soul, strictly defined, we obtain only the soul and its subjective affections, and therefore no predicates of which the soul is not the subject. This fact is evident enough of itself, and has been proved again and again by modern philosophers. To call any thing we thus obtain theology, which is the science of God and whatever pertains to him as cause,  either first cause or final cause, whether evident per se to natural reason or evident only by faith, is to assume, either that God and the soul are identical, or that God is an affection or mere product of the soul.

What deceives many excellent people on this point is their not taking note, in stating their thesis, that the facts they include under the name of psychological facts are always complex facts, having always a twofold character, the one psychological and the other ontological. As the soul never actually exists or operates abstracted from its object, so we never do or can apprehend our soul without at the same time, and in the same act, apprehending that which is not the soul, but its object, really distinguishable from it, and existing objectively a parte rei. Contemplating this object, which we intuitively apprehend in apprehending ourselves, or rather, in apprehending which we recognize ourselves as apprehending subject, and reflecting on it as it is presented to us anew in language, we without much difficulty find it to be real1and necessary being, that is, God ; but having neglected to distinguish the intuition of it from the recognition of ourselves as the subject of the intuition, they conclude it to be a product of our intuition of ourselves, and therefore that psychology is the basis of ontology, the natural history of the soul the basis of theology,  a grave mistake which vitiates all modern philosophy.
Chronologically considered, it is no doubt true that the psychological fact and the ontological, the primum psychologicum and the primum ontologicum, are given to the mind simultaneously;but they are not given as identical, nor is the ontological given as contained in the psychological, but the psychological is  given as proceeding from the ontological.    It is this fact that  the psychologue  overlooks, when he makes war on the ontologist, and contends that psychology is the basis of ontology.    He assumes that all the facts he studies in studying psychology are simple psychological facts, and neglects to observe that in all these facts there is an element purely ontological in its origin and character.    In every cognition, or distinct act of knowledge, there is unquestionably a recognition of the soul as knowing subject, or subject of the act, in scholastic language, as ens percipiens, and it would be a grave mistake to regard the intellectual act as a pure intuition of the object.    But it were equally a mistake to regard any intellectual act as a pure apprehension or recognition of the subject perceiving, including no intuition of object.    There is no apprehension where no object is apprehended; and there is no apprehension of the soul by itself, where there is no intuition of object distinguishable from it, and existing objectively a parte rei, that is, there is no ens percipiens where there is, distinguishable from it and independent of it, no ens perceptum.    This ens perceptum, regarded simply under the relation of object perceived, is consentaneous with the ens percipiens, but in itself, in the order of reality, it must be prior to the perception, or ens percipiens; because no ens can be perceived before it is, since what is not is not perceptible, and because the ens percipiens is percipiens only in perceiving.    As the soul is percipient, or ens percipiens, only in perceiving the object, as perception or intuition does not create its object, and as the object must be in order to be perceived, it follows that also in the order of science the object is logically prior to the subject.    Hence the order of science, contrary to the pretension of the psychologists, follows the order of reality, or the ontological order, and therefore the primum logicum, or primum phi-losophicum, must be  the primum ontologicum.    The primum psychologicum  is  the  recognition  of   ourselves   as percipient, or ens percipiens, and it can never be the primum   philosophicum, as   Mr.   Francis Newman and modern psychologism assert, because, though chronologically simultaneous with the primum ontologicum, it is logically subsequent to it, and dependent on it, since the soul perceives itself only in perceiving the object which is not itself. The principium, or primum philosophicum, must then be the primum ontologicum, and the first verse of the book of Genesis gives us the principium of all philosophy as well as of all theology, namely, In principio creavit Deus ccclum et terram.
The mistake of psychologists on this point lies in supposing that what they call the genesis of ideas, that is, the genesis of knowledge, is in the reverse order of the genesis of things, and that the primum philosophicum, or principle from which in philosophizing we are to start, is not the primum ontologicum, that is, the principle of things, but the primum psychologicum, or the soul apprehending itself. They suppose that we do not see things as they are in the order of reality, in the order in which they exist to the Divine mind, but in a contrary order; and therefore they imagine a mundus logicus, or logical world, distinct from the mundus physicus, or real world, The former they give as the immediate, and the latter as only the mediate, object of intuition, or of knowledge. They appear to have been led into this error by the doctrine of Aristotle, that the mind can know only in itself, and by their laudable effort to escape Platonic pantheism. But they should recollect that this mundus logicus, as distinguished from the mundus physicus, is a mere abstraction, and, in itself considered, a sheer nullity, for there are no abstractions in nature ; and they should also bear in mind, that, if the soul has immediate intuition only of this logical world, it is impossible to assert any real existence, for nothing can be concluded from abstractions not contained in them, and if in intuition of them there is no intuition of the physical or real world, no such world is contained in them. Moreover, if the mind can have intuition only of what is in it, since whatever is in it is it, the mind can know only itself, and then can assert nothing but itself. How the soul can perceive what is not in it, or what is objective to it, we for ourselves do not know, any more than we know how it can know itself or any thing in itself. How it can know at all is to us an inexplicable mystery, and we take good care to refrain from all attempts to explain it. We know that we know, and we know that if the soul cannot know what is objective to itself, or if it can know only in identifying the object with itself, or if knowledge be the identification of the subject with the object, as some of the Alexandrian philosophers seem to teach, we cannot really know at all. We explain nothing by means of the phantasms and species of the Peripatetics. There is no tertium quid between subject and object conceivable. What is not subject is object, and what is not object is subject. The subject either apprehends the object, or it does not; if it does not, there is the end of the matter, and science or knowledge is out of the question ; if it does, it apprehends it where and as it is, in so far as it apprehends it at all.

The Peripatetics sought very properly to escape the pantheism evidently involved in the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Plato made all science consist in the intuition or knowledge of ideas, and ideas were in fact the only reality he recognized. All else he regarded as merely phenomenal. The idea in his system is the Divine paradigm, or archetype in the Divine mind or reason, and therefore God himself; for whatever is in God, or the Divine reason, is God. Hence St. Thomas says, " Idea in Deo nihil est aliud quam essentia Dei." Plato, then, must have regarded God as all and the only reality, and the universe merely as phenomenal, of which God is the substance or subject, which is sheer pantheism. To avoid this fatal conclusion, the Peripatetics, in accordance with their doctrine that the mind apprehends only in itself, conceived ideas to be in the mind, and a tertium quid between the mind and the object existing a parte rex. Hence they regarded ideas, which are also the forms or possibilities of things, as something distinguishable from the mind on the one hand, and from God on the other. Hence they asserted an ideal or logical world, in itself neither ontological nor psychological, neither God nor creature, like the ens in g-enere of Rosmini. Hence the interminable question of the scholastics as to possibilities^ which a slight reference to the pages of St. Augustine would have speedily disposed of. Plato was right in asserting the objectivity of ideas, and the old realists, like St. Anselm, St. Bernard, and St. Bo-naventura, were perfectly right in asserting their reality, their existence a parte rei; Plato was also right in considering them as the paradigms, archetypes, or models of things in the Divine reason or mind, for as St. Thomas says,  " Deus  secundum   essentiam   suam  est  similitudo omnium rerum";* (footnote: Summa 1, Q. xv., a. 1 ad 3.) but he erred in regard to the fact of creation, and in considering actual things not as creatures, but as the mere impress of these ideas or forms on an eternally existing matter, as the impress of a seal on wax. Man according to him is this Divine idea or eternal form impressed on  matter, instead of a real creation by God from nothing, according to, or after, this idea, form, or ar-chetpye in the Divine mind.    Bat this idea, regarded as paradigm or archetype, is simply the Divine Intelligence, and is the same whether there be or be not a creature ad extra created after it.    The Divine Intelligence, being infinite, includes all  ideas, paradigms, archetypes, or creata-ble existences, which  God may or may not create as it seems to him good.    As paradigms, archetypes, models, or ideas, they are creabilia, or possible creatures, the possibilities of things, or, as some say, essentia rerum metaphy-siccc, and therefore the Divine  Omnipotence, and consequently really and identically God, for no distinction in re is admissible in God between one attribute and another, or between his attributes and his essence.    Ideas, the eternal  forms,  essences, or  possibilities   of things, are  then neither  mental   conceptions   existing   only  in   oar  own minds, nor a mundus logicus distinguishable from the real world, but are God himself, apprehended by us in him, and real with all the reality of his being.    God is himself the ideal or the possible, the paradigm and possibility of all things.    The distinction we are to make is not a distinction" between God and the possible, nor between ideal or possible and real, but between God and creature, between the idea and the actual existence created after it.    The possible creature is God ;  the actual creature is the product of God's creative act, creating according to his own Divine idea, or the form eternal in his own mind, that is, according to his own Divine essence, the similitudo omnium rerum.

The error of the Platonists lies precisely in confounding the creature, the creatum or creatura, with the creatable, or creabile, that is, in overlooking or denying the intervention of God's creative act, and thus asserting only God and in him the possible world, but no actual world created ad extra.    The error of the Peripatetics lies in distinguishing the ideal or possible from God, making it neither something nor yet nothing, and at best only subjectively real. Such modern philosophers as follow the Platonists tend to pantheism; and such as follow the Peripatetics tend to conceptualism, nominalism, and nihilism. The former lose the creature as actual existence. The latter lose God, for the creature is inconceivable without the creator. To escape atheism, we must understand that ideas are the Divine Intelligence, and possibles the Divine Omnipotence, therefore truly and identically God; and to escape pantheism, we must understand that ideal or possible existences are actual and distinguishable from God only mediante the creative act of God, or that the idea or the possible is actual existence distinguishable from God only as an existence, responding to it as its type or paradigm, is actually created by God from nothing.

It follows from this that there is and can be no mandus logicus distinguishable from the mundus physicus, or possible world, interposed midway, as it were, between reality and nullity. God and actual creation include all that is or exists, and what is not actual creation is God, and what exists and is not God is creation. As what is not is neither intelligible nor conceivable, it follows that in every intuition there must be intuition of some object existing a parte rei) and this object must in all cases be either God or actual creature. The ens possibile of the philosophers is ens reale in God, is God himself, and therefore in conceiving it we really conceive God. In conceiving it as possible, or in denominating it possible, we only say it is an idea in the Divine mind, which he can endow with existence if he chooses. We conceive it in conceiving the Divine Intelligence and Omnipotence, and it is intelligible to us only in the intelligibility of the Divine attributes, and known only in so far as we know them, in which it is real, because identically God in his own being. The logical order and the real then are identical, and the genesis of knowledge follows the genesis of things ; that is, in knowledge we know things themselves and as they are, not the mere images, species, or phantasms of things, and things as they are not. Consequently, the primum philosophicum must be the primum onlologicum, and as God creating is the principium in the ontological order, so God creating must be the principium in the order of science.    To deny God the creator in the order of science is as really to deny-all knowledge, as to deny him in the ontological order is really to deny all existences.   Psychology, then, strictly defined, can no more be the basis of ontological science, than the soul can be the physical basis of all existences.    Utterly impossible, then, is it, that the natural history of the soul should be the true basis of theology.    Theology, on the contrary, is the true basis of the natural history of the soul.    Instead of its being true that we know God only in the soul, it is only in our knowledge of God that we can know the soul itself.    We must study, not God in the soul, but the soul in God, as all masters of  spiritual life uniformly teach;  and it is only in proportion as we know God that we ever do know ourselves,  the natural history of the soul, her wants, her sorrows, or her aspirations. The reason why some learned  and good men, whom we   love   and   venerate,   shrink from  admitting  that  the primum   ontologicum   is   the   primum   phi/osophicum,   is their   supposing  that  they who   assert  it   hold   that  we have a distinct and conscious knowledge of God prior to our knowledge of existences or consciousness of ourselves, which manifestly is not the fact.    The primum ontologi-cum is undeniably the formula, God is, and is the creator of all things or existences distinguishable from himself, as faith teaches us all.    In proving that the genesis of knowledge follows the genesis of things, and therefore that in every intuition the immediate object apprehended is pod, we have proved that this   formula   must be the  primum philosophicum.    But while we assert intuition of God in every intellectual act, and that the soul in the intuition really apprehends God, we yet maintain, as St. Augustine says, that it does not intuitively advert to the fact that what it thus apprehends is God.    Though it really apprehends God intuitively, it does not take note intuitively that it apprehends him.    It comes to know this only subsequently, by means of reflection on the intuition repeated in language, the indispensable  instrument of all reflection. To be able to say to others or to ourselves, God is, and is the creator of the world and all things therein, demands, besides the immediate intuition, both instruction and reflection ; and to prove that God is, to him who rejects instruction, demands reasoning, and not seldom long and intricate processes of reasoning, of which  St. Thomas has given us, in his Summa Theologiae most admirable specimens in his five well-known arguments for the existence of God.
The question between us and the Peripatetics is not as to the necessity or the legitimacy of these arguments in a controversy with atheists, but as to the principle on which they as arguments are conclusive. They could not prove the existence of God, if we had no intuition of God, if in the act or fact of knowledge or intellectual apprehension we did not along with the apprehension of that which is not God apprehend also that which is not ourselves or creature,  that which is increate, independent, real, necessary, and eternal, on whose creative energy we and all other creatures depend, and without which neither we nor they could either begin or continue to exist. The real office of the argument in the case is not strictly to prove that God is, but to prove that what we thus intuitively apprehend is God. As a matter of fact, in arguing against atheists we use the very arguments and method used by theologians in all ages and of ail schools. We have invented or discovered no new method or argument, and we have not the temerity to assume that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have never understood how to combat atheism. We do not believe in modern discoverers. We use the syllogism precisely as others use it, only we deny what some few pretend, that we can conclude in it matter which transcends the matter of intuition. Demonstration docs not supply new matter; it only clears up and establishes the matter already intuitively apprehended, and never enables us to assert any existence not apprehended in the intuition. From our intuitions of what are really creatures, we demonstrate the existence of God, but solely because in these intuitions there is always intuition of that which is not creature, and which therefore is God. The real demonstration is in detecting this intuition, and showing that its object is God the creator. Here the basis of the demonstration is this intuition, really and truly intuition of God, an ontological, not a psychological intuition.

The doctrine we oppose is, that the existence of God is concluded from the pure intuition of creature, or that his existence or being is a deduction from the simple intuition of created existence, or recognition of ourselves as thinking subject.    Its error lies in assuming that God may be concluded from  data in which he is not given, or in which there is no  intuition of his being or attributes.    It is a principle of logic, that there can be nothing in the conclusion not contained in the premises.    If God is not contained in the premises intuitively given, or rather intuitively evident, he cannot be concluded from them.    They who fall into this error do so by confounding proof with knowledge, and the intuition of God with the intuition of creature.    They take in their reasoning the complex fact as a simple psychological fact; but as it really is a complex fact, and really does contain intuitive apprehension of God, they in point of fact, though illogically, arrive at the conclusion that God exists.    This conclusion being true and evident per se> they cannot or will not be persuaded that they have not attained it by a strictly logical process.    But having formally excluded God from their premises, from the intuitions from which they reason, the conclusion, on their ground, is logically unsound.    The fact is, in all our intuitions which include intuition of the relative, the finite, the contingent, the temporal, we have always intuition of real being, of the independent, the infinite, the necessary, the eternal; and real being, the independent, the infinite, the necessary, and the eternal, are God, and if we have intuition of these, we have all that is meant by intuition of God. If we have no intuition   or intellectual  apprehension   of these, we have no means of proving the existence of God. Without intuition of the necessary, for instance, we could not in the syllogism assert that the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, and therefore could not reason in proof of any proposition whatever.    All reasoning rests on the supposition of a necessary nexus between the conclusion and the premises, or between the effect and the cause.   And if we have no intellectual apprehension of the necessary, how can we conceive even the possibility Of this nexus ? " And yet the necessary is always God, for he is necessary being, and he alone is necessary being, since all that is distinguishable from him is contingent, created by him, and dependent on his free will.

We have enlarged on this point, because necessary to show the radical falsity of Mr. Francis Newman's principles, and the utter viciousness of his method, common to nearly all British and American neologists.    Evidently we do not mean that Mr. Francis Newman, in asserting that the natural history of the soul is the true basis of theology, admits, in fact, no objective reality, and therefore falls into absolute nihilism. Common sense and common tradition in general get the better of speculation, and even the wildest theorizers, by a felicitous inconsistency, seldom fail to recognize more truth than their theories can embrace. No man, can be totally depraved in a rational, any more than in a moral sense, and every one always retains some traces of the image and likeness of God to which he was originally created. Moreover, no man ever really divests himself of all traditional faith or science. What we mean to charge upon Mr. Francis Newman is, that he cannot consistently with his own principles and method assert any existence but the soul itself, and this is amply confirmed by the details of the book under review. Undoubtedly, as a matter of fact, there is an ontological element in the premises from which he reasons, but he does not distinguish it; he even denies it, and contends that his only ontological element is concluded from purely psychological data. Logically, according to his own principles, his prin-cipium or primum philosophicum, or point of departure, is the soul, which is therefore necessarily the subject of all his ontological or theological predicates. Analysis of the soul, however sharp or thorough, can obtain only the soul and its subjective contents. No man capable of any degree of reasoning can deny this; consequently, from psychological data alone, supposing it possible, which it is not, to commence with such data alone, it is impossible to conclude any God but the human soul. In the sense of his system, Mr. Francis Newman's God is simply an abstraction of himself, the several faculties, qualities, or properties of his own soul, taken abstractly, and carried up, in imagination, to infinity, and concreted in an imaginary perfect soul. Systematically considered, this is the only God of the majority of our modern metaphysicians. Their God is no objective reality, but a mere logical abstraction of themselves, and hence their reasonings to prove that God is seldom satisfy any one really troubled with atheistical doubts. Their arguments professedly proceed on the supposition, that we can conclude beyond what is contained in our premises,  that from intuition of the soul, without any intuition of an objective reality distinguishable from it, we can conclude that which is distinguishable from it, and in fact its creator and preserver.    But reasoning never supplies its own premises, and can operate only on premises given ;   hence the premises   are   called data. They must be given, that  is, intellectually apprehended, prior to reasoning, and must be intuitively evident, or science is not possible, and the reasoning concludes nothing. If intuition supplies only psychological data, gives us only the soul for our premises, or our principium, we can conclude only the soul.    To conclude something beyond, we must have intuition of  something beyond, and therefore to conclude God we must have intuition of that which is really God, although not without reflection   distinctly known to be God; that is, he must be really given us in our principium, or intuitive  premises.     As   Mr.  Francis Newman does not concede this, but  avowedly proceeds from purely psychological data, his system necessarily excludes God, and all objective reality, and is mere egotism, and in the last analysis mere nullism.

But our diiliculties with Mr. Francis Newman's doctrine do not end here. The theology he proposes to construct from the natural history of the soul is natural theology, that is, what we call philosophy ; and as he derives it from the natural history of the soul, and denies all supernatu-rally revealed and all traditional data, it is evident that he proposes to construct it by the independent operations of his natural reason alone. He then assumes two things. First, philosophy is an independent discipline, and secondly, reason by her own light and energy, without the aid of tradition or the light of faith, is competent to construct it. We can admit neither of these assumptions. Philosophy is not properly an independent discipline, and it is not possible without faith or supernatural revelation to construct for even the natural order a complete and coherent system of philosophy, or of natural theology.

Others than Mr. Francis Newman, it is true, maintain that philosophy is and should be an independent discipline, and that it can be constructed by natural reason alone. Some go so far in this direction, as to maintain that moral obligation may be asserted even on the supposition that there is no God, and that a respectable code of atheistical ethics is not impossible. But all moral obligations, even in the natural order, and the natural relations of men, are resolvable into the single obligation to worship God in the way and manner he prescribes, or to render unto him, as our Final Cause, the tribute of our whole being; and therefore no moral obligation is conceivable without God. The atheist may practically observe some of the precepts of the moral law, but if there were no God there could be no moral law, and therefore no morality ; as an atheist may be a geometrician, but, as St. Thomas says, if there were no God there could be no geometry. Morality does not consist in fitness, propriety, or utility. Its basis is not the Greek vofios, but the Latin lex, which imports on the one hand authority which has the right to command, and on the other a subject bound to obey. It implies the Supreme Lawgiver and the obligation of obedience, and therefore is inconceivable without God ; for neither men nor nature have in themselves any legislative authority, or lawmaking faculty.

No doubt, as a matter of fact, the atheist has the conception of justice, or sense of duty, and therefore, to some extent, does hold himself bound to observe what is due from man to man, as well as from man to society ; and this we suppose is all that they really mean, who assert the possibility of atheistical ethics. But this conception of justice, or of duty, is manifestly an inconsequence in the atheist, and wholly incompatible with his atheism ; for the denial of God is really the denial of justice. God is justice, and justice in itself, and therefore there can be justice aside from him only by participation of his justice. Doubtless, the atheist can have the conception of justice without any distinct or reflex conception of God, but not without a conception of that which really is God, though he may not take note or even deny that it is God. The conception depends on the intuition of God, which, as we have seen, is an element of every intellectual act. The fact that even the atheist has it is not a proof that atheism and morality are compatible one with the other, but that no man can wholly divest himself of the virtual conception of God, or make himself really, truly, and consistently an atheist; for let him do his best, there will always be at the bottom of his thought intuition of God.
We therefore deny the possibility of atheistical morals, and we even go farther and deny the possibility of constructing a code of natural ethics, theology, or philosophy, by reason alone. We say nothing in the present discussion of the purely industrial, or strictly material order; but aside from that order, whatever he may be within it, man is neither an inventor, nor an original discoverer of truth, and is restricted in his knowledge to what has been taught him, and at first immediately by God himself. This is as true of that portion of his knowledge which pertains to the natural order as of that portion which pertains to the supernatural order. What man in the pride of his heart calls his progress in philosophical, ethical, political, and social science, is but a forgetting, is but his departure from truth, and unhappy fall into error. He walks securely only as he walks in the path of instruction,  in the light, only as he walks in the wisdom of the fathers in primitive tradition, under the guidance of its Divinely assisted and protected guardians.

The truth man has been taught from the beginning is twofold,  truth pertaining to the natural order, and truth pertaining to the supernatural order ; but both were taught by supernatural revelation to the first man, save further explications of the supernatural subsequently made by our Lord and his Apostles,  as two parts of one whole, and in the Holy Scriptures they are never found separated, or even formally distinguished from each other.    In the Holy Scriptures philosophy is never disengaged from theology, or reason from faith; or if St. Paul, for instance, sometimes distinguishes philosophy, and seems to speak of it as an independent discipline, it is only to condemn it, as the folly of the gentiles, to declare its impotence and vanity, and to bid the faithful to beware of being spoiled or deceived by it.    The sacred writers and even the Doctors of the Church treat the two orders of truth uniformly as one complex body of truth, neither able, in the present providence, to subsist without the other, as they always treat man himself as a being with a single, never with a twofold destiny.    The man of Christian theology, though a natural creature and endowed with reason, exists only in a supernatural providence, destined either to a supernatural recompense or to a supernatural punishment.    He has no natural destiny, for he is not in a state of pure nature; and if no natural destiny, it is certain that he can have no independent   natural  discipline.     Every  such   discipline must be adapted to an order which does not exist, and to a purely imaginary man.
        
Let it not be objected, that we confound the natural and supernatural, and therefore identify either faith with philosophy or philosophy with faith. We no more confound the natural and supernatural, than the theologian confounds nature and grace, when he says nature accomplishes nothing without grace, and grace always supposes nature. Reason and faith stand in the same relation to each other in which stand nature and grace; and as man cannot fulfil even the law of nature without the assistance of grace, so reason cannot construct for even the natural order an adequate philosophy or theology, without the light of faith, as all imply who attempt to prove from reason alone the necessity of supernatural revelation. Yet as we distinguish in the meritorious act, without separating them, the part of nature and the part of grace, since there is no such act without the concurrence of both nature and grace, so in the truth transmitted us, or presented for our assent, we distinguish, but also without separating them, a part belonging to the natural order, and a part belonging to the supernatural order. The two parts are distinguishable, but both must mutually concur to make either the perfect theologian or the perfect philosopher. Theology is mutilated without the rational element, indeed inconceivable, as grace would be without nature; and philosophy without the light of supernatural faith, or separated from the revelation of the supernatural order, would be unable even to state its problems, and would fall not to the level of reason merely, but far below it.

The natural and supernatural truth are distinguishable, but not separable, first, objectively, in that they pertain to two different creations, and, second, subjectively, as to the conditions on which we assent to them, or affirm them. The natural is evident per se> or intuitively evident, to natural reason; the supernatural is not evident per se, and is assented to or affirmed by us only on the authority of God revealing it. The former is reason or philosophy ; the latter is faith, and, when drawn out by reflection and its several propositions placed in their logical relations with one another and with reason, supernatural or Christian theology. So, in saying both are originally given supernaturally by Divine revelation, and therefore in admitting no distinction between them as to the mode or manner in which they are made objects of the reflective understanding, we do not, as some suppose, fall into the absurdity either of basing philosophy on faith, or faith on philosophy. We give a supernatural basis for faith, and a rational basis for philosophy, which is all that is required to save science on the one hand, and faith on the other.

The point to be observed here is, that, while we adopt the  ordinary distinction between faith   and  reason, theology and philosophy, we reject the  doctrine  contended for by rationalists, that the principles of philosophy are originally discoverable by natural  reason.    These, when they admit Christianity, distinguish the two, by defining faith or theology as embracing all the matter supernaturally revealed, and philosophy as embracing all those first truths which are not only evident to natural reason, but discoverable by it.    But we deny that the principles of philosophy are ever distinctly discoverable by natural reason, although they are when stated intuitively evident to it,    We make a distinction between being intuitively evident when presented to reflection, and being  intuitively discoverable and presentable to reflection.    We assert, indeed, against the psychologists, direct intuition of the on-tological principles of all philosophical science, but we do not assert, nay, we deny, that reflection takes the principles immediately from intuition, because intuition is always indistinct and indeterminate, and because man is not a pure intelligence, but an intelligence united to a body, and has never in this life that sort of intuitive vision of intelligibles which supersedes reflection as essential to distinct science. Intuition affirms the principles, but does not teach them, or present them as objects of distinct and reflex thought. It is itself a universal and permanent fact, inseparable from the human intellect, and is really what is ordinarily called reason, when reason is distinguished from the intellectual faculty, and from the habit or act of reasoning. The real purport of what we affirm in affirming it is, that reason as so distinguished, instead of being a faculty of the soul, is a real intuition by the soul of the intelligible world. The importance of this, in settling the question of the validity of science, or of our cognitions, is very great.    All demonstration rests, in the last analysis, on reason as thus distinguished.    If, as most modern philosophers maintain, we assume reason to be a faculty of the soul, we assert only a psychological basis of certainty; and we may ask the value of this basis, and what is the voucher for reason itself. Having only reason, a psychological faculty, with which to answer, we are involved in a paralogism from which there is no escape but absolute scepticism. But understanding that it is not a faculty of the soul, but a real intuition of the intelligible world, affirming simply, not itself, but the object apprehended, we can ask no such questions, and scepticism becomes absurd and inconceivable. Proof or demonstration is then conclusive; for it rests on immediate intuition of the principle, and therefore on a real ontological basis.

The instrument of distinct science is reflection, in which the mind returns upon or rethinks the matter of the intuition; and the instrument of all reflection in the intelligible order, as distinguishable from the sensible, is language,  a sensible sign by which the primitive intuition is repeated, or its object presented anew to the mind and held there till the mind distinctly seizes it. The principle when thus presented, or re-presented, is immediately evident, or immediately affirmed, by virtue of the primitive and permanent intuition. With all the intuition of the intelligible wre claim for man, he would be practically unable to make any distinct affirmation either to his own reflex consciousness or to others, if deprived of language, and of all direct or indirect instruction through the medium of words or signs of some sort, repeating to reflection the matter of intuition. Hence M. de Bonald was right when he asserted that man cannot think, or, as we say, reflect) without language, and thus refuted those who allege that language is a human invention. Language is as essential to reflection as the algebraic signs are to the algebraist, and as man evidently could not invent it without reflection, it must have been a Divine creation and given to our first parents by their Creator. God in giving to the first man language must have given him the understanding of it, that is, infused into him with language the significance of language, or the knowledge of the truth it contains or is fitted to signify, and therefore all the principles of moral, philosophical, political, and social science that belong to our order of intelligence,  the principles of the whole science of the natural order, or what is evident per se to natural reason ; in like manner as through the infallible language of the Church he has given us in addition all the truth he has revealed of the supernatural order. Both orders of truth are alike taught us or communicated to us through the medium of language, and both have been preserved by language, and transmitted in substance from the first man by tradition from hand to hand even down to us, unseparated, in their unity and integrity, through the patriarchs, the Synagogue, and the Christian Church, but out of the Church altered, broken, corrupted, and travestied, as it is in all gentilism and heresy.

In the view taken here, two errors are avoided, which have vitiated much modern speculation.    M. Cousin claims for man intuition of the intelligible,'of what he calls absolute idea, or ideas of the Infinite, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, that is, of the principles of all science ; but he supposes the reflective understanding takes them immediately from the intuition.    This is the grand error of our modern  Transcendentalists.    It implies that man knows all that is intelligible to him at once, and distinctly, by direct and immediate intuition, thus denying the possibility of error, and claiming infallibility for every man.    It places the new-born babe and the full-grown man, the simple rustic and the ripe scholar, on the same level as to knowledge. Hence   instruction,  study,  reflection,  reasoning,   become quite superfluous, for all knowledge is obtained by immediate and open vision, than which nothing is more false or absurd.    The error lies in supposing that reflection discovers its principles immediately in intuition, or, what is the same thing, that intuition itself distinguishes and determines its objects.    This error is avoided by the doctrine that reflection takes its principles from language, as represented through the medium of words, and only finds them affirmed by immediate intuition.

M. de Lamennais fell into an opposite error, by denying that any thing is evident per se to natural reason, and reposing the principles of science for their certainty on faith. This seems to us to be the error of the estimable M. Bon-netti, with whose general spirit and tendency we sympathize not a little. He maintains that we know the principles of philosophy, that is, distinctly apprehend them, only as they are supernaturally revealed and taught us through the medium of words. Thus far we go with him ; but is what is taught formally assented to on the authority of the teacher or revealer?    Then it is received on  testimony, and philosophy is identified with faith, and science is denied to be possible. But if science be impossible, how establish the credibility of the testimony, or the competency of the authority ? Nay, how do we apprehend or take cognizance of the principles taught, or of the fact that they are taught at all ? Deny to man all power of knowing, deny that any thing is evident to him per se, and he becomes as little the subject of faith as of science. There must be somewhere, in some form, a nexus between science or reason and faith, or faith itself becomes wholly unreasonable, and therefore impossible. M. Bonnetti's doctrine, as we understand it, demolishes science to make way for faith, as Lutheranism demolishes free-will to make way for grace, and loses both in an inevitable and universal scepticism, as Lutheranism loses grace by leaving it no subject. This fatal consequence is avoided, by understanding that the truths taught us pertaining to the natural order, and constituting the principles of philosophy, do not rest, when taught, on the authority of the teacher, but are evident per se, or intuitively evident, affirmed by primitive and unfailing intuition.

Understanding now that the principles of philosophy are obtained neither immediately from direct intuition, nor by way of induction from psychological data, but from language in which, so to speak, they are incarnated, it is evident that the method of philosophy or of natural theology cannot be, as Mr. Francis Newman assumes, that of psychological observation and induction, or the natural history of the soul. Nothing is more fatal than the Baconian method applied to philosophy, to the moral and intellectual sciences, and it is due to the memory of Bacon, a great though not a good man, to say, that he himself proposed his method as applicable only to the purely physical sciences, and expressly asserted its inapplicability to the moral and intellectual, a fact his English and American disciples generally remember to forget. The Baconian method in the physical sciences, which are only secondary, is legitimate enough, because those sciences deal with sensible objects, which can be observed and distinguished without the medium of language, so long as they remain in their proper sphere below philosophy and under its dominion ; but it is inapplicable in the region of philosophy, which deals solely with principles, that is, with non-sensibles, or intelligible [intelligiuilia, mjrd], it is inapplicable, because the object cannot be observed and studied in the intuition, since to all observation an object sensibly represented is essential, and in the intelligible order language is the only sensible representation possible. In philosophy, then, the only proper method is to take the principium or primim philosophicum, that is, the primum ontologicum, from language, and proceed by way, not of observation, but of ratiocination, bringing every conclusion in the last analysis to the test of intuition. This is what we call the synthetic as opposed to the analytic, and the ontological as opposed to the psychological method.

It is evident that if, in philosophizing, we must take our principles, that is, the ontological data, from language, we can take them only as we are taught them, for it is only by instruction that we do or can learn the signification of words.    Words are no signs to us, but unmeaning sounds or characters, till we are taught what they signify.    Hence philosophy or natural theology is not possible by the independent operations of individual reason alone, and no individual deprived of all instruction and left to the operations of  his own individual mind could ever attain  to philosophy or natural theology, either as to its principles or its conclusions.    Instruction is indispensable ; the elders must instruct the juniors, as we assert in sending our children to school, or in providing masters for them.    But the elders, for the same reason, cannot teach unless they have been taught, and hence there must have been an unbroken series of instructors or teachers till we arrive at the first  man, and him   God himself  must have  instructed,  since for him no other instructor is conceivable.    So in philosophy, as well as in faith, we must assert Divine revelation and   tradition, and whoever  denies  the former or    . breaks the thread of the latter fails in philosophy as much as he  does in   religion.    To deny  revelation  and break away from tradition is the way, not to philosophize, but to remain fools all our life long.    In philosophical science, as in Christian dogmata, the method of ascertaining or knowing what is to be held is one and the same, namely, that of instruction, of learning from the teacher, though in the latter we take the truth learned on  the authority of the teacher, because it is not intrinsically evident to reason, and in the former on the authority of the intuition, or its intrinsic evidence.
       
But to true philosophy, then, as well as to true religion, it is necessary that language from which we take our principles should be preserved and handed down to us in its unity and integrity, and that the teachers have an infallible understanding of its sense. If language has become corrupt, as indeed our modern pantheists are corrupting it, or if the teachers have lost its original sense, in whole or in part, philosophy is vitiated in its source, and serves only to mislead. True philosophy becomes impossible, and we have for schools of philosophy only schools of sophistry, error, and vain speculations. But as language is preserved, even as to the natural order, uncorrupted, in its original purity and integrity, only in the Church or orthodox society, and as its original sense is retained unimpaired only in the Divinely assisted and protected teachers of the Church, it is evident that it is impossible to have sound philosophy out of the orthodox society, and that schism and heterodoxy in an ecclesiastical or theological sense involve schism and heterodoxy in a philosophical sense. The gentile philosophy was schismatic and heterodox, and deserves no respect any farther than it follows primitive tradition. It contains many fragments of truth, but it is always, systematically considered, even in its two greatest masters, Plato and Aristotle, radically false, for it always mistakes the fact of creation, the creative act of God, by which the world and all things therein are created from nothing. Gentile philosophy has no knowledge of the first verse of Genesis. Gentilism itself was the Protestantism of the old world, the falling away of the nations from the patriarchal traditions, as Protestantism is the gentilism of the modern world, the apostacy of the Protestant nations from the traditions of the Church ; and neither, how much soever it may philosophize, ever attains to sound philosophy. Either may have its schools, sects, or systems, but they only recall the confusion of tongues at Babel. No sound philosophy is ever to be looked for out of the Church, because out of her language is confounded or corrupted, and the chain even of scientific tradition is broken.

But even in the bosom of the Church it fares no better with those individuals who attempt to disengage philosophy from theology, reason from faith, and study to build up, distinct from the supernatural theology, a system of pure rationalism.    We have even amongst ourselves a great diversity of philosophies or philosophisms, and not seldom do we find men able to preserve their orthodoxy only at the expense of their logic, as in the case of the excellent Abbate Rosmini.    The reason of this is obvious enough.   When a Catholic waives his theology, and turns his back on the supernatural light of faith, and enters upon the field of independent philosophical speculation, he foregoes all the advantages of his Catholicity, and places himself  on  a  level  with the ancient Greek   or the modern Protestant, and  there  is  no  reason   conceivable why he should succeed better than a heathen or an infidel.    Moreover, success is impossible in the very nature of the case, because man since the Fall is neither in the state of integral, nor even of pure nature.    In his present state, he has no natural destiny, and his reason does not suffice for his reason, nor his nature for his nature; otherwise we could never conclude the  necessity   of supernatural  reparation from his present infirmities, and it would not be true that medicinal grace is necessary to enable us to fulfil the law of nature.    Every system of pure rationalism denies this, and proceeds on the assumption that man has a natural destiny, or at least, that in thought we can abstract him from the supernatural providence in which he now exists, and construct a system of philosophy, of metaphysics, and ethics, that would be true and conformable to his intellectual and moral state, were he, as he is not, and probably never was, in a state of pure nature.    Every such system proceeds, then, from false or at least unreal premises, and can at best end   only in falsehood or  vain   abstractions. The only safe way of reasoning is, to reason from man as he is, and not from him as he is not, and what is wanted is a discipline adapted to his present state, to his actual condition in the present providence, not a discipline adapted to some imaginary state or condition, which is not and cannot be real.

The grand heresy of our times is rationalism,  rationalism in religion, in politics, and in morals ; natural theology is set up against revealed, the state against the Church, and morals against religion ; and all this has originated, not in the denial of supernatural revelation outright, but in attempting to assert the independence of reason in the natural order.    The state did not begin to assert its independence by denying the Divine authority of the Church, or what is the same thing, its obligation to be Christian, but by disengaging the temporal from the spiritual, and asserting its supremacy in its own order,  claiming at first to be only the friend and ally of the Church, then her protector, and then her master and oppressor. Just so has it been in the philosophical order. Abelard, the father of modern rationalism, only sought to disengage philosophy from revealed theology, to erect it into a separate and independent discipline, supreme only in its own order. His philosophy would be the friend and ally of Catholic theology, would even serve her by vindicating her titles; but, under pretence of proving her titles, it assumed the right to sit in judgment on her dogmas, and therefore to be her judge and master. The movement, thanks to St. Bernard and the Roman See, received a check for a time; but ere long it manifested itself anew; and, strengthened by the political rationalism of Louis of Bavaria and Louis the Twelfth of France, and by the revival of Greek literature, it gradually became formidable, mastered some of the later scholastics, disputed the empire of the schools in the sixteenth century, won the victory in the seventeenth, and enjoyed its triumph in the eighteenth in the worship of an infamous prostitute as the Goddess of Reason. This tendency to rationalism manifests itself now everywhere, though not without some earnest voices to protest loudly against it. Unhappily, it is not confined to persons out of the Church. In the Church even we find men deeply affected by it, and, as they cannot indulge it in matters strictly of faith, they seem resolved to indulge it to the utmost extent in all else. But it would be well to bear in mind, that to contend for a system of rationalism in regard to matters extra fidem is not only to prepare a rival to faith, but to assume that there is a body of truth, and therefore a real good, for man without faith, which is not true, and thus, instead of weakening, to strengthen the very world, the flesh, and the Devil, which as Christians we are compelled to renounce and to wage unremitting war against. Let it not be supposed that we are to cure the prevailing disease of our times by homoeopathic prescriptions. The maxim similia similibus curantur is of as little value in relation to moral as to physical diseases, and as in the latter all trustworthy practitioners  adhere to the principles  of medical tradition, so in the former all sound Doctors rely on the Church and her teaching.

St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and all the great Doctors of the Church, are able reasoners, and some of them now and then, it is true, seem to recognize a quasi independence in philosophical discipline ; but it will be found that they accept and use philosophy only as the rational element of theology.    They use reason in the service of religion, and whenever they  discuss  questions of pure reason it is always with an eye to supernatural theology, and by the supernatural light of faith.    They regard philosophy, not as the independent ally of theology, or, as we Yankees say, " help," but as the audita, or slave of revelation, with no independence or will of her own, and bound to do the bidding of her mistress.    They compel her to serve, and to serve faith, her mistress, not herself, or mere rationalism, whether a rationalism assumed to be above or below faith. Hence, although we always find them making a free and noble use of reason, we never find in them a philosophy disengaged from theology,   and   presented   as a separate and complete body of independent rational truth.    They are Christian  theologians, and philosophers only in that they are Christian theologians.    They have true theology, and therefore they have always sound philosophy, that is, sound reason.    But all, whether in or out of the Church, who undertake to build  up  an  independent philosophy, that is, a system of pure rationalism, are sure to fall into grievous errors, even as to the rational order itself.

We repeat that it must be so, because man is in a supernatural providence, not in a state of integral, or even pure nature. Being in a supernatural providence, if the words mean any thing, he has no natural destiny, that is, no destiny lying in the plane of his nature as it now is, or to which he can attain by his unassisted natural powers. Manifestly, then, his nature has no purely natural good, and therefore does not suffice for itself. It follows necessarily, then, that his reason alone cannot construct a system of rational truth complete and coherent in its own order, for truth is only the intellectual phase of good. Philosophy deals with principles, and last principles as well as first; it embraces always ethics, and ethics have always reference to final causes. If man has only a supernatural destiny, his final cause cannot be in the natural order, and consequently simple natural ethics must be impossible and absurd; and so then must also be the philosophy that not only asserts, but undertakes to teach them. What is the significance of a system of doctrines constructed in relation to the state of pure nature, and on the supposition that man has a natural destiny, when it is conceded that the state of pure nature does not exist, and that there is and can be no natural destiny ?

As nature subsists, though in a supernatural providence, questions of reason will arise, and must of course be solved; but they must be solved under the conditions of the providence in which we are, that is, in relation to supernatural theology. All rational questions needing to be solved can be solved, one after another, when taken up in connection with the dogma or theological principle to which they are related. When the revealed truth raises the question of pure reason, then is the time to settle it, because then it is raised in the form in which it can be settled, and reason is then, and then only, in the proper state to settle it. It is only by the light of Catholic faith that we can truly state even rational problems, and reason cannot solve them unless they are truly stated, that is, proposed to the understanding according to the truth of things. Who has not found that, in discussing a point with another, the chief difficulty is to make him understand the state of the question, the precise point in issue? A question properly asked is already virtually answered, unless a question as to simple matters of fact. But it is only Catholic faith that can rectify our point of sight, or place us in the position from which even questions of reason can be seen in their real character and relations ; for it is only from the point of view of supernatural faith that we see the natural universe in its real order, in the real relations of the several parts to one another, and of the whole to God as its first and as its last cause. We could not philosophize at all without the principle that God is, and creates the world and all things therein, and creates them for himself, as final cause, ox finis propter quern; and this principle, although when stated in language and subjected to reflection, it is evident per se to natural reason, could never have been distinctly known or practically available without supernatural revelation, and is attainable by us only from tradition as embodied in the Catechism.

Clearly, then, Mr. Francis Newman's doctrine, which is not only rationalism, but mere psychological rationalism, cannot be even entertained, and would deserve no respectful consideration as a system, even if it were conceded that we have received no revelation of a supernatural order ; for without revelation and tradition, by reason alone, man is utterly unable to construct even a complete and self-coherent system of rationalism, and for the best of all reasons, because he does not exist in a purely rational order. Our preliminary difficulties in the way of Mr. Francis Newman's theory are of themselves conclusive against it. We have no occasion to go beyond his title-page. That asserts his principle and method. His principle being false, and his method vicious, his theory, though it may contain by a happy inconsistency some slight traces of rational truth, must be, as a theory, utterly worthless, and, as far as it goes, mischievous. It is entirely unnecessary for us to take it up and examine it in detail. It is clearly antiehristian and repugnant to sound reason, and having refuted it in principle, we may dismiss it as unworthy of any further consideration; for a man who starts wrong, and travels in a wrong direction, is pretty sure never to reach the goal.

In fact, in what we have said we have had no special reference to Mr. Newman as an individual author. We have aimed to discuss rather the general question the principles and method of his book raise in the mind of the theologian. Our purpose has been to refute his psychological rationalism, and to vindicate the ontological method of philosophizing, not for the sake of substituting ontological rationalism in the place of the psychological, but for the sake of demolishing rationalism altogether, and bringing the student back to tradition and the method of the Catechism. What we really oppose is every system of pure rationalism, whether psychological or ontological. Logic, which teaches us to use and to make a good use of reason, we respect, we demand, and consequently we honor reason ; but we have, and we want, no philosophy any further than it enters as the rational element of true Christian theology. We have never known any good purpose answered by your independent philosophies or philoso-phisms. The attempt to disengage the rational from the supernatural element, and to give it an independent discipline, whether it be in the form of Gallicanism, natural ethics as distinguished from revealed religion, or metaphysics as disjoined from supernatural theology, never comes to any good, and we have never yet met a system of philosophy, that is, of pure rationalism, ancient or modern, that we could not push logically cither to pantheism or nihilism. The spirit that leads men to attempt the separation is at bottom a schismatic and heretical spirit, and we owe to its prevalence most of the schisms, heresies, and moral disasters of the last three or four hundred years, and we wish to protest not only against its effects, but against the spirit itself. They who cherish it are unwilling to admit the universal supremacy under God of the Church, but wish to have at least a subordinate sphere in which they can assert human independence, and be as gods knowing good and evil without having learned them. Let our readers ponder well, whether the spirit that dictates the wish is Christian or Satanic.

For ourselves, we aimed to be a consistent rationalist, to spin all knowledge, spider-like, from our own bowels, till we found the thing was impossible. There was for us no alternative but rationalism, and with it nihilism, or the Catholic Church and tradition. We were never able to comprehend, with our Anglican friends, a via media between truth and falsehood. Nihilism, therefore, pure rationalism, is pure falsehood, for pure falsehood is simply absolute negation. Then Catholicity must be true; for nothing else is or can be. We must then take the Church as supreme, and as supreme in the natural as well as in the supernatural order. Then nothing is independent of her, and as the vicegerent of God on earth she has authority over all disciplines, and in every department of life. Her appropriate sphere is universal, and whoever seeks in any thing to act as independent of her, sins against the very providence of God in which he is placed.

God has made us, and not we ourselves; he has made us for himself, to know, love, and serve him here, and to be happy with him for ever hereafter. This is our only end, the end of all life, and for this end and this alone we are to live. If we live for this end and for this alone, there is and can be nothing else for us to care for. The earth, society, the state, instruction, education, are valuable only in relation to and as they subserve this end.    The state, though it deals directly  only with temporal  matters, is bound to manage these matters themselves with sole rei-erence to this the only end of man, and woe to the state that forgets it, that imagines itself free from the law which binds it in its temporal enactments to consult only the spiritual good of its subjects, for sooner or later it will fill up the measure of its  iniquity.    « The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God."    Here is the most fearful condemnation of the rationalist polities that have reigned throughout all modern nations if we except  Austria,  and  even   her we cannot wholly except, and the bitter fruits of their madness are they now begm-nino- to reap.    The functions of the state are indeed secu-lsir^but  it is bound to  discharge them in relation  to  a spiritual end, and the spiritual end man himself is bound to seek.    All life, individual, social, political, is by the law of God subordinated to this end, and has no legitimacy, no right, no morality, but as rendered subservient to it.

How it is to be subordinated and made subservient to this end, God has not left us to find out by our individual reason ; he himself has condescended to teach us in his revelation, and continues to teach us by unfailing tradition, of which he has made the Church the depositary, the divinely assisted  and protected keeper  and  witness, teacher and judge.    It is to her, that is, to her pastors, and especially to her chief pastor, the successor ol   bt.  1 eter, that, directly or indirectly, all individuals, states and nations, subjects and rulers, must repair to learn their duty in the natural order and in the spiritual, for God has made her the judge of both laws, the natural and the supernatural, and in her courts made them but one law.    She is the keeper of the consciences of princes and peoples in all things, for she alone has received from God authority to teach and  declare his law.    This is what we must concede   if we  concede   the   Church, or   even1 truth  a.t   all. Men of the world, haughty statesmen, and proud philosophers may reluct at this, may turn away from it, and say they will never submit to an order so humiliating, so fatal to human independence ; but that will not alter the truth, and it will still remain true that true wisdom and sound reason approve it.    The Church is Catholic, for she subsists through all ages, teaches all nations, and maintains all truth.    We may learn sophistry and error outside of her; we may have pride and slavery without her; but truth and freedom, real virtue and beatitude, only in and from her. Happy are they who as docile children delight to sit at her feet and learn the gracious truths that fall from her lips, who wish to be humble, faithful Christians, and desire nothing more.