seek to prove faith, to get rid of doubt. Reason appears to teach one thing, faith another; and they seek, by mutual explanations and refinings, to make the teachings of the one coincide with those of the other. Is not this the thought of our "Charles Elwood," of our "New Views," of Ripley's "Miscellanies," of Walker's "Lectures," of Cousin's labors? Taking this view, we necessarily imply, that philosophy is of purely human origin, and that the human reason, in which it originates, is competent to sit in judgment on all questions which do or may come up.

We proclaim its independence and sufficiency. If we believe, it is because reason has demonstrated our right to believe; if we disbelieve, it is because reason declares it to be unreasonable to believe. If we reject the Trinity, it is because we find it irrational; endless punishment, it is because it does not comport with our notions of justice, &c. Now, this being our state of mind, we necessarily transport it into the study of the Fathers and theologians of the Church; and because we do not find them asserting the independence and sufficiency of the reason, in our sense, because we do not find them studying to prove religion, to get rid of doubt, and to harmonize the independent teachings of reason with the independent teachings of faith, we conclude, forthwith, that they were no philosophers; or that, if they were so in their secret thought, they dared not be so in public. Poor men, they were bound by their actual belief in authority, or by their fear of it, to maintain certain prescribed dogmas, and so could not give free scope to independent thought, or free development to their own reason! Here is wherefore our modern philosophers can find no philosophy, properly so called, in the Church, prior to the Revival of Letters. Prior to that epoch, men believed, and when men believe, they do not philosophize. Does not this imply that philosophy is held to be of purely infidel origin?

Now, that philosophy has been, since the Revival of Letters, what this implies, we do not deny; and, if this

character, which it has since borne, be really the essential character of philosophy, we admit, most cheerfully, that there was very little, if any, philosophy in the Church prior to the epoch named. But it is precisely this fact we controvert. We maintain, with Saint Augustine and John Erigena, the identity of religion and philosophy. Philosophy is nothing but the practical teachings of religion, referred to their ontological principles, and reduced to doctrinal forms. Philosophy is the offspring, not of Doubt, but of Faith, and is impossible in unbelieving epochs. If the moderns could learn this fact, they would form a very different estimate of the Fathers of the Church, and of the Scholastics, from that which now very generally obtains. Without a knowledge of this fact, without rising to the identity of religion and philosophy, instead of their harmony, it is impossible to comprehend the Schoolmen, or the great Fathers of the Church.

In contradiction to the commonly received opinion, we regard the thought of the Church, from its birth down to the Revival of Letters, as profoundly philosophical. All the great questions debated were, at bottom, great ontological questions. Men believed; they had a doctrine of Life, and this doctrine they labored to comprehend and explain. The Revival of Letters in the fifteenth century marks a decline in religious faith, and the sixteenth century is itself a period of transition from philosophy to science, from religion to doubt.

M. Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, adopts the common opinion, that the Scholastic Philosophy was provoked by the celebrated passage of Porphyry, concerning genera and species, translated by Boëthius; and tries to connect, through Boëthius and Porphyry, the Scholastic Philosophy with the Neoplatonists, and, through them, with the ancient philosophy of Greece. We admit the connexion, but we do not believe this is the precise medium through which it actually took place. He adopts this hypothesis, because he always separates philosophy from theology, and must, therefore,

seek its continuity through a medium comparatively independent of theology. But, in point of fact, the celebrated passage of Porphyry had very little to do with the generation of the Scholastic Philosophy. That philosophy was provoked by the theological controversy raised up concerning the mode, or manner, in which Christ is really present in the Eucharist. That controversy necessarily involved discussions as to the nature of substance, and discussions as to the nature of substance open, of themselves, to philosophical minds, the whole question of genera and species. The Scholastic Philosophy originated, really and truly, in the theology of the Church, and was connected with the ancient philosophy chiefly by means of that portion of the ancient philosophy which the Church had received and assimilated through the early Fathers.

But, in the progress of the discussions Berengarius had provoked by his doctrine of impanation, the disputants began to study more and more attentively the ancient masters, especially Aristotle. They also made themselves more or less familiar with the contemporary Jewish and Arabic schools. Aristotle, the Jews, and the Arabs, all became to them sources of wisdom extraneous to the Church, and, of course, must have more or less weakened the hold the Church had on their minds, if not on their hearts. None of these extraneous sources contained the true Christian doctrine of Life, the unadulterated Word of God. Study of them, naturally and almost inevitably, carried the Scholastics away from the truth, and involved them in the mazes of error. They must necessarily lose more and more the deep sense of the Church; and, in proportion as they lost the sense of the Church, they must cease to love and reverence its authority. In this way was effected the moral and intellectual state which admitted the revival and triumph of heathen literature in the fifteenth century. The Scholastic Philosophy, in its progress, necessarily involved this revival. Ancient heathen literature once revived, and everywhere studied as an authority, faith in the Church could hardly be maintained, and must

continue to become every day more and more difficult; for this literature did not contain, or at least but very imperfectly, the Christian ontology, and, therefore, in proportion as it took possession of the mind of the scholar, must it obscure his perception of the real sense of the Church. The Schoolmen were carried away, by their discussions, into the society of the Peripatetics, Jews, and Arabs, and these carried them away from the deep meaning of the Church.

The Church, to all who had lost the sense of its profound significance, could appear to be only an arbitrary authority, and its dogmas only empty formulas and unmeaning rites and ceremonies. As an arbitrary authority, it could have no right to command; and for it to assume to command, to continue to enjoin its dogmas and discipline, could be regarded only as intolerable tyranny, demanding to be resisted. To this point matters were brought at the close of the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century opens with the dominant character of revolt against the whole moral, intellectual, social, political, religious, and ecclesiastical order founded and developed by the Church. This revolt, embodied and directed by Luther against the ecclesiastical phase of this order, becomes PROTESTANTISM; embodied and rendered victorious by the monarchs of the time, under its political phase, it becomes the SUPREMACY OF THE STATE, to be subsequently transformed into the Supremacy of the People, and the subjection of both Church and State to the will of the multitude; embodied, and directed especially against the Schools, by Descartes, it becomes what by courtesy we call MODERN PHILOSOPHY, the last word of which is Kant's "Critic of Pure Reason."

Now, if we regard the origin of Modern Philosophy, if we pay attention to the circumstances of its birth, we see at once, that it could have been only a doctrine of Science. It was the offspring of Doubt and Rebellion. It must vindicate its own right to be, and its own right to rebel. It must needs find, or erect, some tribunal before which it could summon the Schools, and

compel them to appear and give an account of their right to command, -to show by what authority they pretended to reign. This, evidently, demanded preliminary inquiries as to the origin, the conditions, the extent, and limitations of human knowledge, the evidence and grounds of certainty. It must find the law by which it could justify itself, and condemn the Schools.

Where could this law be found? The first rebels had sought it in antiquity. But antiquity was divided. Men began to study Plato, and, if some quoted Aristotle, others could quote Plato against them, and one ancient school could be overthrown by another. The sixteenth century exhausted itself in the vain effort to get some solid ground, by means of the ancients, on which it could stand. There were great men, and great victims, but nothing solid was obtained. It became evident that the law could not be taken from antiquity; it could not be taken from the Church, because the Church was precisely that which was to be tried; nothing remained, then, but to leave antiquity and the Church, and to fall back on human reason itself, and, starting from that, proceed to the construction of a general doctrine of Life. This was attempted by Telesius and his disciple Campanella in Italy, Bacon in England, and Descartes in France.

Of the Italian school, our knowledge is too limited. to speak at much length. We will only add, in passing, that Campanella, the contemporary of Bacon, deserves not less than the Englishman the honorable mention of the historian of philosophy. He is equally admirable under the point of view of method, and much profounder, more comprehensive, more systematic, and complete in his views. As a philosopher, as well as a man, we should place him far above Lord Bacon. Lord Bacon we shall soon proceed to speak; we stop now for a few moments with René Descartes, who is, after all, the real father of modern science. Peter Ramus, or Pierre Rameau, one of the greatest of the Platonists of the sixteenth century, had successfully com

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