no natural destiny; and nothing natural, not even the natural vision of God, which is only a vision per speculum, not an intuitive vision of his essence, can satisfy the wants of his soul. He certainly has desires both to know and to love which transcend the whole natural order. He has these desires prior to faith. Whether these desires belong to him as pure nature or not, certain it is that he has them, and with them enters into all his acts, or rational operations. It is impossible to find a mind which has not aspirations beyond nature, and which nothing in nature can satisfy. Every man proves it in his own experience. The natural vision of God is insufficient to satisfy our craving to know, for it is remarkable that Reason, when she has attained the ultimate limits of rational knowledge, seems to herself to know perfectly well that there is an infinite unknown reality beyond. She never can persuade herself that the limits of what she knows are the limits of what is. Now how explain this? How explain this knowledge, if we may so say, of the unknown and the naturally unknowable. Gioberti explains it by claiming for man a faculty of superintelligence, of seizing, in some sense, the superintelligible, and regards it as the soul's secret apprehension of her own potentiality. We do not attempt to explain it; we only call attention to it as a fact, a mysterious fact, no doubt, but a fact of the last importance. We do not know how to explain it, but we are disposed to regard it as the natural aptitude of the soul for the supernatural, by virtue of which the supernatural is as it were linked with the natural, joined on to it, and so that it can elevate the natural without superseding it. From this it would follow that in the highest sense man is completed, perfected, only in the supernatural, which is, if we understand it, the doctrine of St. Thomas, and which should be the case, if man was originally intended for a supernatural, not a natural, destiny.

There are, as M. Gratry after the theologians maintains, two degrees of the Divine intelligibility, or of knowledge of God, the knowledge of God per speculum, a knowledge of him by his works as the light which illuminates them, and the knowledge of God in his essence, as he is in himself. The first is within the powers of natural reason, the second is not, and is possible only in heaven, by the light of glory. But these two degrees are connected even in

this life, by supernatural faith, which, resting on the first as its basis or preamble, is a beginning or a foretaste of the second. There are then really three degrees or stages in the knowledge of God, philosophy, faith, and the beatific vision. The last two are supernatural, the first is natural. But is the natural without any connecting link with the supernatural? Must there not be a natural relation of philosophy to faith, as well as of faith to the beatific vision? If we examine the great philosophers, Gentile as well as Christian, we shall find a distinct recognition of the first. two degrees of knowledge of God which we have described, but a confession that one of them is not naturally attainable. Whence this recognition by Philosophy of the existence of an order of knowledge confessedly beyond her reach? All men naturally, that is, prior to faith, aspire to it, at least implicitly, and find no real repose short of it. Whence this aspiration to the unseen, the unknown, and the naturally unknowable? Does it not result from some aptitude in the soul for the supernatural, a consciousness of an undeveloped power, or the secret perception of the infinite, that is, that the infinite really is, with the consciousness that we neither possess it nor know what it is? As every perception is also an aspiration, and as every man does perceive, in perceiving God per speculum, that the infinite is, though he perceives not what it is, why may we not say that man naturally aspires to the infinite, and that in this aspiration there is in some sense a natural basis of supernatural faith? Faith, and even the beatific vision, though above reason, cannot be wholly foreign to it; for if they were, how could we speak intelligibly of them, and how could what we say of them have any meaning for the natural understanding? It seems to us, therefore, that the three degrees of the Divine intelligibility are to be considered, not as three separate itineraries, but as three stages in one and the same itinerary of the soul to God. Philosophy, if worthy of the name, has then a natural aptitude for supernatural faith, and conducts to faith, as faith conducts to the perfect knowledge of God in the beatific vision. This, if we understand our author, is what he holds, and what he has attempted in these volumes to bring out and establish, and, so far as we are able to judge of such profound matters, with complete success.

Our readers will readily excuse us from doing more here

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than stating as well as we are able the doctrine of the author. We shrink from its discussion, as being altogether beyond our depth. But they will see, if his doctrine be admissible, that, while it confines philosophy within the sphere of the natural, it removes all discrepancy between it and faith, and enables the natural understanding to perceive the unity of man's whole intellectual life, or at least the possibility of such unity. Revelation gives us a foretaste of a knowledge of God far above that which is possible by natural reason alone; but revelation must be made to reason, as its subject, and there must be in some sense a fusion of the natural and supernatural into one uniform light, or else the revelation would be to us as if it were not. But this could not be if reason had not in itself a certain aptitude for the supernatural, if reason were not. the preamble to faith, as faith is the preamble to the beatific vision. Supposing this to be so, all true philosophy, though falling always below faith, though never faith itself, yet conducts to faith, and finds its complement in it; and therefore all those intellectual systems, called Philosophy, which conduct to doubt or scepticism, are false, and unworthy of the least attention.

It

The doctrine here asserted is the reverse of that of the Eclectic school founded by M. Cousin. That school regards faith as symbolic of the truths attainable by natural reason, and therefore as the preamble to philosophy, and destined to disappear in the light of natural science. places faith below philosophy, and harmonizes them by making philosophy a higher form of intellectual apprehension than faith, that is, by simply denying the truths revealed by faith, and recognizing no truths but those evident to natural reason! Faith is supposed to fade away in the clearer light of philosophy, instead of philosophy finding its complement in the higher truths revealed by faith. Catholic dogma is all very true, says this school, but it is the truth of the natural order expressed in a poetical or symbolical form, adapted to the wants of the simple, the rude, and the vulgar. It is not the office of philosophy to deny Catholic dogma, but to disengage the natural truth from the poetic form, and express it in a clear, distinct, and scientific form. For the vulgar, the mass of the people, dogma is necessary; but for philosophers, the élite of the race, it ceases to be necessary, because they

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have science, and where science begins, faith ends. But unhappily for this school, our natural science ends where faith begins, and is never a complete science, and, without that higher order of truth of which faith is a foretaste, can never rest satisfied with itself.

Faith undoubtedly is in some sense symbolic, and so far the Eclectics are right. But of what is it symbolic? Faith undoubtedly ends where the light of science begins; but of what science? The error is, not in assuming faith to be symbolical, but in assuming that it is symbolical of the truths naturally apprehensible, and that the science in which it ends is natural science, the science attainable by the natural light of reason, instead of that superior science attainable only in heaven by the light of glory. Faith is a medium science between the two sciences, beginning where natural science ends, and ending where the supernatural science, or the Science of the Blessed, begins, and partakes in some sense of the nature of both. Instead, then, of pitying the poor people who have only faith, we should pity the poor philosophers who have only philosophy. There is no exaggeration in saying that the youngest child who has learned his Catechism is above them, and is introduced to an order of reality far above anything they have attained to, not because the Catechism supersedes natural science, but because it adds to the highest philosophy the revelation of an order of truth for ever above and beyond the reach of the profoundest philosopher.

But to return. The itinerary of the soul to God includes, as we have seen, three stages, reason, faith, the beatific vision, and the true and direct science of God is complete only in the last stage. Without undertaking to explain here the precise relation of these stages to one another, we wish to remark, that through them all the itinerary is one and the same, and is the itinerary of one and the same soul, or rational subject. What is begun in reason is completed only in the beatific vision. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness." The journey terminates, and we can repose, only when we have attained to direct and immediate knowledge of God in his essence, or as he is in himself. Of course this last and perfect degree of science is not obtained by a simple development of our natural powers, and is obtained only by

the supernatural elevation of our natural powers, first, by the grace of faith, and, second, by the light of glory. As the natural desire of the soul to know cannot be completely satisfied, in the present providence of God, without this last degree of science, it follows that it is only in this that the soul can find its supreme good, or the object adequate to satisfy its natural craving to love. We do not, of course, pretend that man is naturally able to love God as so beheld, because he is not naturally able so to behold him; and though love may surpass science, and as it were overflow it, we cannot love what we do not in some degree intellectually apprehend. We do not say, by any means, that God could not have so made man that he would have been satisfied with that knowledge of him which is per speculum, but we do say, that as we find him now, even prior to faith, he does not so exist. Hence we learn that the soul can find its supreme good only in the complete knowledge and perfect love of God, and that this knowledge and love are not naturally attainable.

Without faith our philosophy is incomplete, and without the intuitive vision of God, in patria, our faith cannot be perfected. To this conclusion we are conducted by all sound philosophy. As Reason is able to detect her own limits, and to be well assured of the knowable infinitely surpassing the known, so Philosophy is able to detect her own insufficiency, and to assert the necessity, in order to appease the cravings of the soul, of faith or supernatural revelation. Reason itself is able to assert God, and to assert him as the final cause as well as the first cause of our existence. It is able, not to secure us unaided our supreme good, but to tell us that our supreme good is in the knowledge and love of God, who is the Supreme Good itself. It tells us, that we have a supreme good, and where that supreme good is to be found; but it cannot show it to us, tell us what it is, or of itself obtain it for us. For this last, grace is necessary to enlighten the understanding and to elevate the will, that is, to make us a revelation of God in a sense above that in which he is naturally apprehensible. It is idle, then, for any of us to seek any real and permanent good save as elevated by grace and guided by faith, or, in other words, without the teachings and sacraments of the Church.

This has been admirably set forth by Father Hecker