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visible as a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the enjoyment, of the native-in a.word, the home and centre of his chief earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.

The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object, objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent. This

judgment is an evolution from that cognition which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is-that is, by his essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an obscure perception. of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the soul.

In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions, which expresses the aforementioned theory, as taken in connection with the fifth. This third proposition is: "Universals, objectively considered, a parte rei, are not really distinguishable from God"; and the fifth: "All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived as simply being-tamquam ens simpliciter intelligitur." Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are fivegenus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the good, the true,

the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals, although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as an instance, and follow it down to man-substance, corporeal substance, organized substance, animal, rational animal, i.e., man. His proximate genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men. The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, a parte rei, in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance, corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also, are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men.

For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd, therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful, or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a

concept of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic, specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things, considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance, and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.

Neither the absurdity nor the heterodoxy of ontologism is avoided by the system of Gioberti. The objection of Giobertians to pure ontologism, that it furnishes no dialectic principle uniting natural theology with other branches of special

metaphysics and with ontology, is, indeed, well taken. But this only shows that pure ontologism is absurd and incoherent. It does not remove the absurdity of that which is common to pure ontologism and the ontologism of Gioberti. Neither does it remove its heterodoxy. Saying that we have immediate cognition of something which is not God does not make it more orthodox to say that we have immediate cognition of God. Moreover, Gioberti's doctrine, as taught by himself, and understood by his European disciples and admirers, as well as by his acutest and most orthodox opponents, is far more heterodox than that of any other ontologist who is also a Catholic. Evidence has been furnished which has never been rebutted that Gioberti was a pantheist even before he published his Introduction to Philosophy. In a letter to Mazzini, written before that date, but only afterwards published from a motive of pique against him, he says explicitly that he is a pantheist after the manner of Giordano Bruno, though a Christian pantheist. What does this mean, unless it means that he had conceived a plan of combining pantheistic philosophy with the Catholic dogmas, as a part of his grand scheme of reconciling paganism with Christianity, and the European revolution with the Papacy? On this supposition he must either have acted the part of a deliberate har and hypocrite-a baseness of which we believe him to have been incapable or he must have intended, and in a subtile manner insinuated pantheism in the guise of his famous ideal formula, Ens creat existentias. In this case whatever may bear a pantheistic interpretation or seem to point to a pantheistic conclusion must be pantheistically interVOL. XX.-24

preted, so far as the sense of the author is concerned. It is not strange, however, that many have understood him in a sense not directly heretical, or even, perhaps, quite compatible with Catholic faith. For his works are filled with passages which, taken in a Catholic sense, are gems of the purest and most precious sort. If the formula Being creates existences be taken in the orthodox sense, as equivalent to God creates the world, it is obviously a directly contrary proposition to any one expressing pantheism. To make it bear a pantheistic sense, definitions of being, create, and existences must be subintroduced which vitiate its orthodox meaning. But, leaving aside this question, we have already proved that a Catholic must hold that the human intellect cannot have an immediate cognition of the first extreme of the formula, viz., that real and necessary Being which is God. Without this he cannot have an immediate cognition of the creative act, as the act of God, or of created things in their ideas, considered as the divine ideas themselves in the divine mind, and really identical with the divine essence. It is certain that the Holy See did not intend to condemn pantheism in the decree respecting the seven propositions, for it would never have affixed such a mild censure if it had so intended. Ontologism, whether couched in Gioberti's formula or not, is condemned in that sense which is not pantheistic, and under every formula which includes an affirmation of the immediate cognition of God by the human intellect, as deûned by M. Fabre in the passage quoted at the beginning of this article.

Before concluding we are obliged reluctantly to add a few words

about a personal controversy with Dr. Brownson, with whom we always regret to have a difference respecting any matter which belongs to Catholic doctrine. We desire to explain, therefore, that we made no statement to the effect that the ontologism condemned by the Holy See had ever been formally and explicitly taught in philosophical articles, whether written by himself or any one else, in this magazine. Moreover, in the passage where his name is mentioned there is no direct statement that "his own ontologism" falls under ecclesiastical censure. The utmost implied or asserted is that some educated men might think that some of his statements are "unsound," philosophically or theologically, and demand a certain benignity of interpretation in order to escape the censure which a professed theologian would justly incur if he made such statements in a book written for school-boys or young pupils. Dr. Brownson's own defence of his doctrine, as based on his definition of intuition: "Intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject," was cited as the precise distinction between his own doctrine and the one condemned, upon which the question of the theological soundness of his peculiar ontologism turns. We called it "a newly-invented distinction between ideal intuition and perception or cognition," and qualified the definition above quoted as an "assumption," which we think is quite correct. It is new in Catholic philosophy, and has not been proved. We think, therefore, that the phraseology of Dr. Brownson makes his doctrine liable to an interpretation, even by educated men, which makes it similar to that of the condemned ontologism. That it is sound and safe we are not

prepared to say. Neither do we say positively that it is not. If it is, we think Dr. Brownson can place it in a clearer light than he has yet done, and we shall heartily rejoice to see him distinctly enunciate and vindicate his fundamental doctrine, whether it does or does not accord with that which is held by the disciples of S. Thomas. Of his loyal intention to conform his doctrine to the decisions of the supreme authority in the church there can be no doubt. That he has so far succeeded in doing so, at least by an exact and explicit expression of it, we cannot help doubting. We cannot see that the distinction between ideal intuition and cognition, so far as we apprehend it, suffices.

We understand him to define ideal intuition as an act of God presenting himself to the intellect as its object, and to call the act of the intellect apprehending this ideal object empirical intuition. derstand him also to identify the immediate object on which the active intellect exercises its discursive operations with real, necessary being-i.e. God—although it does not make the judgment that eternal verities are real being, and that real being is God, immediately, but by means of reflection and reasoning Now, we cannot see any essentia. difference between this doctrine and that of M. Branchereau and other ontologists. We do not think it possible to escape the ecclesiastical censure on the doctrine of the immediate cognition of God, unless something is placed, ratione object visi, between God and the intellect, making the cognition mediate. More over, we consider that the term cognition in the Roman decree covers intuition and simple apprehension, even in their confused state, as well

as distinct conceptions and judgments. Dr. Brownson's peculiar terminology and informal method of arguing make it, however, more difficult to understand his real doctrine and compare it with that of standard authors than if it were expressed in the usual style and method.

Dr. Brownson has also further charged the author of Problems of the Age with having actually taught in the opening chapters of that essay, as first published in this magazine, the very ontologism condemned in the seven propositions. That there are ambiguous expressions and passages which taken apart from the whole tenor of the argument are liable to such an interpretation, we do not deny. But in reality, it was the doctrine of Gerdil which was intended, and expressed with sufficient distinctness for a careful and critical reader. This doctrine is expressed by the illustrious cardinal in these words: "God, who contains eminently the ideas of all things, impresses their intellectual similitudes in us by his action, which constitute the immediate object of our perceptions." Upon which Liberatore remarks: "In these words Gerdil did not modify the ontologism which he professed in his youth, but retracted it. And indeed, how can even the shadow of ontologism be said to remain, when the immediate object of our perceptions is no longer said to be God, or ideas existing in God, but only their similitudes, which are impressed by the divine action upon our minds."* A few quotations from the Problems of the Age will prove the truth of our assertion that it proposed a theory similar to the theory of Gerdil.

"It is evident that we have no di

De Orig. Idearum, art. v. obj. 3.

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rect intellectual vision or beholding of God. The soul is separated from him by an infinite and impassable abyss." 'God affirms himself originally to the reason by the creative act, which is first apprehended by the reason† through the medium of the sensible. . . . Thus we know God by creation, and creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side." "The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation." "It is of the essence of a created spirit that its active intuition or intellective vision is limited to finite objects as its immediate terminus, commensurate to its finite, visual power. sees God only mediately, as his being and attributes are reflected and imaged in finite things, and therefore its highest contemplation of God is merely abstractive." ||

It.

More passages might be quoted, but these may suffice. The form of expression is frequently Giobertian, especially in the early chapters.

But the author understood Gioberti in an orthodox sense. In our opinion Dr. Brownson, as well as ourselves, failed to a very great extent to understand his artfully-expressed meaning. We used language similar to that of ontologism, but the sense in which we asserted the intuition of God was that of an infused idea of necessary and eternal truths; having their foundation and eminent, but not entitative existence in God, as Father Kleutgen teaches; by virtue of which the mind can rise by discursive reasoning through the creation to an explicit conception of what God is, and make the judgment

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