exaggerated rationalism; but we have never arranged ourselves on the side of the exaggerated supernaturalists, against him; and we assure him, that we find very little in this new volume, that, with some distinctions and quali-· fications to which we think he would not seriously object, we cannot and do not in fact most cordially accept.

It is due to ourselves to say, that we have never attempted to set forth a philosophical theory of our own, and in discussing, in hastily prepared essays, various philosophical questions, for a special purpose and under a special aspect, which is all we have done, it is very likely, even when our own general views were just, we have used expressions which are too exclusive, and which need more or less qualification. We came to Catholicity from a school of exaggerated rationalism, and though it has never been in our thought or intention to underrate natural reason, our main purpose has been to show the necessity of supernatural revelation, not only in regard to truths of the supernatural order, but even to a full and systematic view of the higher truths of philosophy. Bred amongst those who gave all to human reason and human nature, we have wished to bring out and establish the opposing truth, and it is not unlikely that we have, on many occasions, apparently expressed an undue sympathy with the views of the Traditionalists, as we should not have done had our special purpose been to vindicate the value of human reason; yet we think our pages afford ample evidence that we have never denied or underrated that value. Our natural tendency, no doubt, has been to sympathize with the Traditionalists, and we have believed that less danger was to be apprehended in our times and our country from an exaggerated supernaturalism than from an exaggerated rationalism.

But we confess that some attention to the study of Jansenism has latterly led us to suspect a more practical danger from Traditionalism than we had at first apprehended. Traditionalism, as Father Chastel understands it, is, after all, only a form of Jansenism, and the controversy which he is now waging with the Traditionalists is at bottom only the old controversy waged by the Fathers of his Order with the Jansenists, a hundred and fifty years ago; and very likely the charge of rationalism is as undeserved by him as that of Semi-Pelagianism was by them. The essence

of Jansenism, as we have said in a foregoing article, is the destruction of nature to make way for grace; and if our author rightly represents it, the essence of Traditionalism is the denial of reason to make way for the assertion of revelation, an error precisely analogous, indeed precisely the same. We are by no means prepared to admit that the Traditionalists intend to go thus far, or that they will accept this statement in its full extent; but the principle of their error, which with many of them is certainly only a tendency, if logically developed and reduced to its last expression, is nothing else. Man is essentially a rational animal, and to deny his reason, or to suppose it acquired or adventitious, is to deny his nature, is to deny man himself; and the error of the Traditionalists, if carried out, would resolve itself into pantheism, and in an opposite direction into that very rationalism and humanitarianism against which it seems to be a protest. Looking at the question from this point of view, the danger from exaggerated supernaturalism, if less immediate, is perhaps not less serious, than the danger from exaggerated rationalism.

It is worthy also of note, that exaggerated rationalism has not originated exclusively in excessive confidence in human reason. It has to a great extent originated in the reaction of the mind against the Calvinistic and Jansenistic exaggerations of the supernatural. The immediate origin of French infidelity was in French Jansenism, and some persons have believed that the leading Jansenists intended to drive men into infidelity by making religion a burden too heavy to be borne. Certain it is, that Calvinists and Jansenists do place religion and nature in opposition, so that we must reject the one in order to follow the other. It is the feeling that to accept grace we must annihilate nature, or to accept revelation we must forego reason, rather than any overweening confidence in reason itself, that drives not a few into rationalism and naturalism. It is not that they do not feel the insufficiency of reason and of nature for themselves, but that they are repelled by a religion which seems to them to place itself in opposition to their natural reason, and to demand its destruction. As between Calvinism or Jansenism, and rationalism and naturalism, they are right. A religion which requires us to divest ourselves of the nature God gave us, and to forego the exercise of that reason with which he endowed

us, cannot be from God. That is certain, if anything is certain. Their repugnance is not to the Catholic religion, which presents itself simply as superior to reason, and as its necessary complement, not in opposition to it, but to Calvinism or Jansenism, which latterly they are prone to confound with Catholicity, and which certainly does present itself in opposition to reason, and seek to supersede it. We think, therefore, that, looking to the world as it is, it is not less important to the interests of religion to rescue it from the exaggerations of the supernaturalists than from the exaggerations of the rationalists, and perhaps even more important, although we are always to be on our guard against excessive rationalism. We are inclined to believe, with the Abbé Gratry, that it is more necessary, just now, to labor to rehabilitate reason than revelation; for, after all, scepticism more than rationalism is the disease of our times.

Father Chastel divides his book into four parts. The first part is devoted solely to the refutation of Traditionalism, as he finds it in the writings of De Bonald; the second part discusses what human reason can do in a society without tradition; the third part, what it can do in civilized society without revelation; and the fourth part, what it can do in Christian society by itself. He is always learned and able, but we hope he will permit us to say that he seems to us to succeed in the negative part of his work better than in its positive part. His refutation of the theory of the Traditionalists, as he sets it forth, and of the grounds on which they defend it, is triumphant, and leaves nothing to be desired; but his account of what reason is, how it can develop itself, and what it can do, is far less satisfactory. In this part of his work he is less clear, less definite, and leaves us in much doubt and uncertainty. He convinces us that reason can do something, but we do not see precisely what it has done, or what it is intrinsically able to do. In fact, he leaves us with the impression, that, though man by reason alone is theoretically able to do a great deal, practically he really has done little or nothing without revelation. He might have invented language, but as a fact it was given him originally by his Creator; he might have discovered the elementary truths of natural religion and morality, but as a fact Adam was created in possession of them, and they have

since been learned from society, for man has always been taught them. The savage tribe might, perhaps, spontaneously rise to civilization, but there is no well-authenticated instance of its ever having done so. He concedes that, practically, men have received their ideas very much in the way the Traditionalists contend, and limits himself, for the most part, to proving that they do not prove that they might not have received them in some other way. This is something, but it is not all that we could wish he had done. M. de Bonald, whom Father Chastel regards as the father of the Traditionalists, apparently maintains that all ideas, and reason itself, are acquired, and that in purely intellectual matters, in general, moral, and religious truths, man knows only by being taught, and only what he has been taught from without by society, and originally by a positive revelation from God. His great proof of this theory is that man cannot think without language, and that he has and can have language only as he has been taught it. This proof Father Chastel examines at great length. He alleges, in opposition, that man can think without language or words, and that he might even have invented language for himself. We think it quite certain that man can think without language, and M. de Bonald's famous saying, that " Man thinks his word before speaking his thought," says nothing against it. To make language or sensible signs absolutely necessary to the production of thought seems to us absurd; for to a nonthinking being signs have and can have no significance. M. de Bonald himself, on more occasions than one, concedes that thought must precede its verbal expression, and it may well be doubted if he ever held the contrary. Words can present no meaning to a mind that has not as yet thought, and none to a mind that has not already thought their meaning; otherwise a foreign language could be understood before having been learned. Language, that is, a sensible sign of some sort, is necessary, not to present, but to re-present or represent the purely intelligible; but we assure Father Chastel that we have never for a moment entertained the notion that man cannot think without language.

The error on this point of which the Traditionalists are accused, and a grave error it is too, seems to arise from their not sufficiently distinguishing between the pre

sentation and the re-presentation of thought, or between intuition and reflection in the intelligible order. To think, pensare, as the Italians say, does not require language, but to re-think, ripensare, does require it in the case of intelligibles. This distinction is from Gioberti, and, in our judgment, is true and important. La Civilità Catholica rejects it, as it does everything from that able but unhappy man, and contends, too hastily, we think, that to maintain that we cannot reflect on the purely intelligible without language, is to assert the whole error of the Traditionalists. We should say, it is to recognize and accept their truth without their error. Father Chastel takes note of the distinction, and maintains, contrary to what we suspect is the fact, that it was not recognized by M. de Bonald; but whether he rejects it or not for himself, he does not expressly say. We believe the Traditionalists have an erroneous theory, but every erroneous theory even has as its basis some truth, or truth under some aspect. We are not willing to believe that M. de Bonald was all wrong in his theory of language. Judging from Father Chastel's citations, we should say he erred in his expression rather than in his thought. We see no objection to admitting that in reflection, in distinguishing, in comparing, in reasoning, language, or artificial signs which represent the thought, are indispensable, and we believe this is all that M. de Bonald ever really meant. Father Chastel does not, perhaps, feel the necessity of language in this respect, because he apparently does not admit direct and immediate intuition of the intelligible. He appears to be undecided whether ideas are innate, or whether they are obtained, as Aristotle taught, by the active intellect, abstracting them from phantasms. Either, he seems to think, is a tenable doctrine. When ideas were regarded as a sort of intelligible species, image, or representation of the intelligible, distinguishable alike from the object apprehended and from the intellectual apprehension of it, it was not impossible to conceive it possible for ideas to be innate; but now, when we must regard ideas, not as something intermediate between subject and object, but either as subjective or as objective, either as the intelligible object apprehended or as the subjective apprehension of it, to call them innate borders, to the least, very closely on the absurd. Des Cartes asserted that the idea of God is innate; but, when hard pressed on

say