"I sometimes think
That I am less a person than a power,
Some engine in the right hand of the gods,
Some fateful wheel that, round in darkness rolling,
Knows this-its work, but not that work's far scope.
Hephestion, what is life? My life, since boyhood,
Hath been an agony of means to ends;

Aa ultimate end I find not. For that cause,
On reeling in the oppression of a void,

At times I welcome what I once scarce brook'd-
The opprobrium of blank sleep.”

There are many scenes of strong dramatic power in this drama-the death of Darius, the quarrel with Parmenio, the rebellion of the Greeks, the last scene with Philotas, and others; but the power and intensity deepen at the close, when death at last creeps into the veins of the conqueror. He has lost Hephestion earlier in the drama,

and this loss rends his heart. There is much truth in his singular, almost selfish love for his greatsouled friend, who stood to Alexan

der as a wife would stand to another man. But he to whom "his purposes were wife and child" could not lean on a woman. It must be a man, strong, brave, keeneyed as himself, but calmer, larger hearted, humbler, greater souled. Such was Hephestion, and his strong yet sweet character is not only admirably drawn, but affords an excellent foil throughout to the eager, impetuous, fiery nature and fiery words of the king.

Omens thicken around him, and the end comes at Babylon. The fever that burns at his heart seizes on his body while sailing on the Lake of Pallacopas. As the royal barge passes, a strain rises up from the waters:

"We sate beside the Babylonian river:

Within the conqueror's bound, weeping we sate: We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver Above the rushing waters desolate.

"If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness,

May this right hand forget the harper's art! If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness,

My tongue dry up and wither, like my heart!" It is a relic of the Babylonian captivity. The song forces from Alexander the sad confession, significant to all conquerors:

"The ages pass, like winds; The old wrong remains, rooted like tombs, and

moves not:

All may be done through Time; yet Time does naught.

Let kings look well to that."

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The end is on him.

Though maimed, and tamed, and shamed,"

he is resolute still, but impotent, and the empire lacks completion, he confesses, while

"The years, the months, The hours, like ravening wolves that hunt a stag, Come up upon my haunches."

Fighting time to the last, he succumbs; but he will not even die as

other men. In his half-delirium he tells Ptolemy:

"I have a secret-one for thee alone:
'Twas not the mists from that morass disastrous
Nor death of him that died, nor adverse gods,

Nor the Fates themselves; 'twas something mightier yet,

And secreter in the great night, that slew me."

And thus, surrounded by his warriors and his generals, with success within his grasp, but that grasp nerveless, his last moments troubled with awful visions and ill dreams, resentful to the last against what slew him, in doubt and in fear, in youth and glory and empire, in the fatality of success, staring with strained eyes into the dread void beyond that no ray of faith illumines, he whose nod was life or death to nations, Alexander, the god, passes away and dies-of a little slow fever that has entered and claimed for its own the clay of which he was made.

Mr. de Vere has written at once a magnificent poem and a powerful drama. We have devoted Our attention in both instances to the chief characters, and thus many scenes and personages in Alexander the Great on which in reading we have dwelt with much pleasure and admiration must pass unnoticed. The author, if we may say so, has surprised us by the strength and finish of this work. The action of the piece is rapid; the characters, small and great, founded and full; the scenes most varied and dramatically

set.

The clew to the play we take to be that old whisper which first. allured our parents from their allegiance, and tempts forever the race of man: Ye shall be as gods. The whisper runs through the piece from the first line to the last, and lends to it a purpose and a plan of its own. The dramatist has taken the man who in human history came the nearest to exemplifying its truth to prove its utter and miserable falsehood, and to read with a new force the old and eternal command that alone can order the life of man wisely and well: "Thou shalt love the

Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

When he died, Alexander was nearly thirty-three. With him really, though remnants lingered after him, his scheme and his empire passed away; and when to-day we look for what is left of the world's conqueror, of Alexander the god, we must search in musty tomes and grope in desert sands. Nothing is left of him, save some words and histories; and even were they los: also, and his very memory blotted out with them, the world to-day would in reality be little or none the loser.

Some centuries later there died Another at the age of thirty-three. He came into life silently; he went out of life ignominiously. He led no army; he had no following of any note; he was the son of a carpenter, and born of a despised race. He was born, he lived, he died, in poverty, sorrow, and suffering, a socia outcast even from his own people. The last three years of his life he spent in preaching in and about Jerusalem. His doctrines were strange and startling. They were utterly subversive of all human glory and greatness. Like Alexander, he proclaimed himself divine. and claimed to be the Son of God Like Alexander, he too died, but a death of ignominy. Before his name had spread far beyond Jerusalem, men rose up, Jew and Gentile, king and priest, church and state, together hanged him on a tree, nailed him there, tortured and slew him, and when he was dead sealed up the tomb in which he was buried And there, humanly speaking, was an end to him and his.

To the world what had he left? A memory-nothing more. Men said that he had wrought wonders, that virtues flowed out of him, that

OUR readers sometimes complain that the philosophical articles of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are too hard to be understood. Yet some of these very readers make a great effort to read these articles, and ask questions about metaphysical subjectsamong others, about the very topic of the present article-showing a great desire to gain some knowledge about them. We are going to try to make this article intelligible to these readers, even to those who are yet quite young persons, in whose laudable efforts to improve their minds and acquire knowledge we are greatly interested.

We shall begin, therefore, by explaining some terms which need to be well understood before they can. be used in a satisfactory manner, and especially the two which make up the title of this article. Ontology is the name given to one branch of metaphysics, which is also called general metaphysics, in distinction from the two other principal branches of that science-to wit, logic and special metaphysics. It is derived from two Greek words that is, the first two syllables from a word which means being, and the last two from one which means reasoning. It is therefore a reasoning about being, or the scientific exposition of the object of the idea of real being, of metaphysical truth, good and evil, beauty, substance, accident, quantity, causality, the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc. chology is also a Greek derivative signifying a scientific exposition of the rational soul of man, its powers

Psy

and operations, which is a sub-division of special metaphysics. Therefore every philosopher must be an ontologist and a psychologist, in the proper sense of those terms Yet, there is a difference between ontology and ontologism, psychology and psychologism. Ontologism and psychologism are names denoting opposite philosophical systems which diverge in opposite directions from the scholastic philosophy, or that philosophy commonly taught in the Catholic schools after the method and principles of the Angelic Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas. Of the authority which this philosophy possesses in the church we cannot now treat at length. We will, however, cite here the latest utterance of the Sovereign Pontiff which has come to our knowledge, as a sample of a great number of similar official expressions of approbation from the Holy See. In a letter to Dr. Travaligni, founder of the Philosophico-Medical Society of S. Thomas Aquinas, dated July 23, 1874, Pius IX. says: "With still greater pleasure we perceive that, faithful to your purpose, you have determined to admit only such members to your society as hold and will defend the doctrines propounded by the sacred councils. and this Holy See, and in particu lar the principles of the Angelic Doctor concerning the union of the intellective soul with the human body, and concerning substantial form and primary matter (materia prima)." We shall take for granted at present that in all its essential parts, as well as in those speci

fied in the above quotation, the philosophy of S. Thomas has the highest sanction and authority in the church which any system of philosophy can have, and that it is the only true and sound philosophy. The system of ontologism differs from it by proposing a totally different ontology, which is made the basis of an essentially different philosophy. The advocates of that system call themselves ontologists, as claiming to be the only philosophers who understand rightly real being and the relation of intelligence to it as the object of its intuition and knowledge. They are also called by that name by their antagonists for the sake of convenience and courtesy, as those who believe in God, but not in revela. tion, are called theists, although neither party has an exclusive right to the appellation given to it by usage. Psychologism is a system which makes the basis and startingpoint of philosophy to lie exclusively in the individual soul and its modifications, like Des Cartes, whose first principle is, "I think, therefore I am." The opponents of the scholastic philosophy who pretend to be ontologists give it the nickname of psychologism, because they either misunderstand or misinterpret its ontological and psychological doctrine. The scholastic philosophy is also frequently called Aristotelian, because S. Thomas derived a great part of his metaphysics from the great philosopher of Greece; and Peripatetic, which was the name given to the school of Aristotle, because the teachers and pupils used to walk up and down during their lectures and discussions. Those who diverge from the philosophy of S. Thomas in the same direction with the ontologists are also frequently called Platonists,

because they follow, or are supposed to follow, Plato, in regard to certain opinions differing from those maintained by Aristotle.

The philosophical disputes which have been lately carried on with so much vehemence about questions of ontology are by no means of recent origin. They have been waged both within and without the limits of the Catholic Church. Des Cartes, the great modern master of psychologism, always professed to be a loyal son of the church, and had many disciples among Catholics. Malebranche, the author of modern ontologism, was a devout priest of the French Oratory; and Cardinal Gerdil, who began as an earnest advocate of the same doctrine, but gradually approached toward the scholastic philosophy in his maturer years, was really the second man to the Pope for a long time in authority and influence, as well as a most illustrious model of virtue and learning. More recently, the principal advocates of ontologism have been very devoted Catholics. The Louvain professors, Hugonin, Branchereau; for anything we know to the contrary, Fabre, and many others, have been most zealous and devoted Catholics. Only Gioberti, who was, however, the prince among them all, and one of the most gifted men of the century, among the well-known leaders of that school, was a disloyal Catholic. We have heard on very good authority that Gioberti continued to receive the sacraments up to the time of his death, and was buried with Catholic rites. Nevertheless, as a number of priests were still in the external communion of the church at the time Gioberti was living in Paris, who were really heretics and have since apostatized, this fact alone does not count for much as a