on his system, must hold, that all judgments are formed by the activity of the mind itself, it is clear that he does not and cannot concede any synthetic judgments really à priori.* All synthetic judgments formed by the mind are necessarily a posteriori-or, as we say, empirical judgments, or facts of experience. The author adopts, as does Father Buffier, as does the Scottish school, the psychological method; and no man who adopts that method and strictly follows it, can do otherwise than make all begin and end in and with the soul. It is impossible for the psychologist to escape from subjectivism, and pure subjectivism is the assertion that I am myself my own object, therefore that I suffice for myself; and therefore, again, that I am independent being, or God.

The only way to avoid this conclusion is to abandon the psychological method for the ontological. No doubt the point of departure for philosophy is thought; but it is necessary to observe that thought is never a purely subjective fact, is never the sole product of the activity of the subject. In every thought there is object as well as subject, and it is the object that affirms the subject, not the subject that affirms the object. The psychologist assumes that it is the subject that at once affirms the object and itself. It affirms itself, and then affirms what it sees that is not itself. But only Being can affirm itself; only God can say, in and of himself, I AM. The ontologist starts from thought, indeed, but from thought in the sense that it is objective as well as subjective, in which it reveals and affirms the subject to itself. We do not see or perceive, or, as Mr. Ward would intue ourselves in ourselves, for we are not intelligible in ourselves. Not intelligible in ourselves, St. Thomas maintains, because we are not pure intelligences in ourselves. If we could see ourselves in ourselves we should be intelligible in ourselves, and if intelligible in ourselves, we should be in ourselves both subject and object, therefore God; for only God has, or can have, his own object in himself. We see, know, or recognize ourselves only in the object, which, therefore, must affirm, intuitively, both itself

say,

*Kant has approached much nearer the truth than we ourselves formerly supposed. His error was in making the categories the categories of the subjective reason, or innate ideas in the primitive Cartesian sense, instead of the objective reason illumining the subjective. Reduce all his categories, as may be done, to being and existence; supply, what he omits, the nexus, or copula, and regard them as forms of the ideal, and you will have the ideal formula itself, Ens creat existentias, which we ourselves maintain.

and us or the subject. In this way we easily escape all the difficulties, both of the skeptic and of the subjectivist. On the psychological method it is impossible to find any passage from the subjective to the objective, for if the mind can exist and act with no object but itself, how can you prove that any thing but itself exists? How prove that there is any thing exterior to me, or that what I take to be an objective world is not merely myself projected? But by the ontological method, which starts from the ideal, the objective intuition, we find that it is only by the object that the subject exists and comes to a knowledge even of itself. The skeptic's problem cannot come up, for it is only by virtue of the presence and activity of the object, existing à parte rei, that there are, or can be, what Mr. Ward calls judgments of consciousness. Without the presence and activity of the ideal, the source of our internal light, there can be no consciousness, for the precise definition of consciousness is, the recognition of the soul as subject in the intuition of the object. Hence we maintain that the true scientific philosopher never has occasion to discuss the prin ciple of certitude; the principle asserts itself.

The mistake of most philosophers in modern times is in placing the question of method before that of principles, as if principles were found or obtained, instead of being given. The principles determine the method, not the method the principles; and when once we understand principles are objective, we understand that our method must be objective, instead of subjective. The object determines the form of the thought, and all our faculties are distinguished and named, as every theologian is aware, from their respective objects. Everybody knows that first principles are and must be à priori, for the mind can neither exist nor act without them. They must, then, be given, and the first act in intuition must be on the part of the ideal, or intelligible. object. We cannot, then, say with Mr. Ward, that we intue, see, or perceive the ideal, or necessary truth, but that it intuitively, directly, immediately affirms itself, and in affirming itself it creates the mind, and is its immediate object and light. Reflection, which must be distinguished from intuition, or this primitive à priori or ideal affirmation, or divine judgment, discovers, as we never cease to repeat, that, like every affirmation or judgment, it is a synthesis of three terms, subject, predicate, and copula, expressed in the ideal formula, Being creates existences. We

do not, of course, assert that we know by direct and immediate intuition that this formula expresses the primitive judgment, or judgment à priori, any more than that we know intuitively that necessary truth or the being affirmed, is identically the eternal and self-existing God. The identification, or the drawing out of the formula, is the work of reflection, operating on the original affirmation. This is the great work of philosophy, a long, laborious, and difficult work, and one which few of our race ever successfully accomplish. The intuitive judgment contains the three terms in their real relation, but we do not know intuitively that it contains them, and few persons ever reflect that the necessary truth we all assert in every judgment we form, is God himself intuitively present in reason. The demonstration of this identity is what is called the demonstration of the existence of God.

The good point in Mr. Ward's Treatise is his assertion of the identity of necessary truth with God, although his psychological method does not enable him to prove it. The error of most of our philosophers is in attempting to distinguish between the necessary and God, and this error is in no one more striking than in Rosmini, whose system has at least one able advocate in England, the young professor who writes for the Rambler, under the signature of M. All use the conception of the necessary as the basis of their demonstration that God is; but there are few who do not proceed on the assumption that it implies God, rather than that it is God, and thus fall into the fallacy of maintaining that more may be contained in the conclusion than in the premises, or that reflection can attain to a truth not given in intuition. There is affirmed to us in intuition that which is God, but that it is God we know only as demonstrated by reflection. The demonstration, however, is a simple identification, but an identification which the mass of mankind. are practically incapable of making; and hence the mass of mankind, though asserting in every judgment they express that God is, would have no formal belief in God, if it were not for the supernatural or social instruction they receive, the truth on which Traditionalism builds, but which, unhappily, it exaggerates and abuses. Perhaps the remarks we have just made on this point will relieve those of our friends who cannot see their way clear to accept the ideal formula, because they suppose its defenders maintain that it is not only given intuitively in its several terms, but is

given, as distinctly and formally stated by and for the reflective reason; which is a great mistake, for, if it were so, we should never meet either skepticism or subjectivism, atheism or pantheism.

Leaving what the author says of intuitions, we proceed now to the second section of his first chapter, which is "On the Essential Characteristics of Moral Truth." Here we find, or seem to find, the author very confused and obscure. We very naturally expect him to give us clear, distinct, and categorical statements of what, in his view, are the essential characteristics of moral truth. We expect him to define it per genus et per differentiam, so that we may recognize what it is in itself, and distinguish it from every thing else. But he hardly meets our expectations. He does not deal in definitions, nor in direct categorical statements; he prefers to leave us to collect his meaning from instances and illustrations, in which he is not always felicitous. All we can gather is, that moral truth is a simple intuitive judgment; a synthetic, not an analytic judgment; an intuition, not an inference; a necessary, not a contingent intuition. Its characteristics are simplicity and necessity, given us in direct, immediate intuition. But may not the same be said of all truth in the ideal order, indeed of the simply good itself? What special meaning, then, does he attach to the epithet, moral? What, in treating of moral truth, does he say that he would not say were he treating of truth, goodness, or fairness, each regarded as absolute? What, then, is the characteristic of moral truth, or by what does he distinguish it from other truth?

Moral truth, he says, is a simple, not a complex idea; synthetic, not analytic; given intuitively, not discursively obtained. As an instance of what he means, he says: "Å friend of mine, who has loaded me with benefits, entrusts to my keeping a jewel of great value, for the sake of the safe custody, while he goes to seek his fortune in other lands. He returns in a state of great distress, and reclaims his jewel. I recognize immediately, and without the faintest shadow of doubt, that I ought to restore it: or, in other words, that I am under the moral obligation of restoring it." "Who has loaded me with benefits," and "in a state of great distress," may be dismissed as having nothing to do with the obligation of restoration. I should be equally bound in justice to restore the jewel on its reclamation by the depositor, if neither circumstance existed. This obli

gation is, we take it, what he means by distinctively moral truth, and this, he says, is "a simple necessary intuem," or idea, or immediate intuitive judgment; but, to our understanding, it is clearly an illative judgment, or logical conclusion. I am bound to render unto every one, especially when he reclaims it, his own, or what is his. The jewel deposited with me for safe keeping is my friend's; it is his property, therefore I am bound to restore it on his reclaiming it. The moral judgment, I am under moral obligation to restore my friend's deposit, is but a particular application of a prior moral judgment, namely, "render unto every man his own." Suum cuique.

According to the author, to say I am under the moral obligation to restore the jewel is the same as to say it would be morally evil not to do it. Undoubtedly. But that is only a play on words. The term moral includes, in this case, all that we express by the term obligation, or the term ought, and the two propositions are, therefore, equivalent. But this is not the point. Does the epithet moral, applied to good or to evil, add any thing to simply good or simply evil? Is the judgment morally good, the same as the judgment good; or the judgment morally evil, the same as the judgment evil? If so, what is the difference between virtue and good, vice and evil; between the judgment virtuous man, and the judgment a good dog; between the judgment a vicious action, and the judgment a deformed leg or a clubbed foot? If not so, then the epithet moral must express something not expressed by the simple term good, or the simple term evil. What is this something? Be it what it may, it must be the characteristic of moral truth; and without telling us what it is, it is clear that the author does not and cannot tell us "what are the essential characteristics of moral truth."

We have a very profound respect for the author, but he must permit us to doubt if, in the present matter, he really understands himself. He maintains that moral truth is a simple necessary idea-intuem, as he says. The judgment is simple, like sweet or bitter, and morally good can be defined only as the opposite of morally evil, and morally evil can be defined only as the opposite of morally good. It is not only a simple idea, but a necessary idea. In his third section, On the Relation of God to Moral Truth, he maintains very properly, as we hold, that all necessary ideas, or what some philosophers call necessary truths, are God. But that