together by an underlying identity, and a compromise between the plurality and the unity-this is the essence of relation. The differences remain independent, for they cannot be made to resolve themselves into their own relations. And, if they did, either they would perish, and their relation would perish with them, or else their outstanding plurality would still remain unreconciled with their unity in the relation, and so would beget the infinite process. And the relation does not exist beyond the terms; for, if so, itself would be a new term which would aggravate the distraction. But, again, it cannot lose itself within the terms; for, if so, where is their common unity and their relation? They would in this case simply fall apart. And thus the whole relational perception has various characters. It has the character of immediacy and self-dependence, for the terms are given to it and not constituted by it. It has the character of plurality. It has (as representing the primitive felt whole) once more the character of an unity comprehending plurality-an unity, as before, not constituted by the differences, but added from without. And, contrary to its wish, it has further a restless infinitude, for such infinitude is the very result of its practical compromise. And what thought desires is, while retaining these features, to obtain them all in harmony, to have a whole which will not conflict with its elements, and elements that of their own. nature live within a whole. And so the idea of unity is not foreign, nor is plurality foreign, nor is unity reconciled with plurality foreign. There is nothing foreign that thought wants in desiring to be a whole, comprehending everything, but superior to discord. And yet, as we have

seen, such a completion, such an end would emphatically make an end of mere thought. It would bring its content into a form which would be reality itself, and where mere truth would perish. The object of thought aims at possessing the whole character of which thought already has the separate features. These features thought cannot combine satisfactorily, though it has the idea and even the partial experience of their complete combination. And, if the object succeeded in its aim, it would become reality; but it would cease to be an object. It is this completion of thought beyond thought which remains for ever an Other. Thought can form the idea of an apprehension, something like feeling in directness, which contains all the features desired by its relational efforts. It can understand that, in order to attain to this goal, it must get beyond relations. Yet it can find in its nature no other way of progress.

Therefore, to reach its end, it perceives that this essential side of its nature must somehow be merged, so as to take in the other side. But such a fusion would force it to transcend its present self-how in vague generality it does apprehend; but how in detail it cannot understand-and it can see the reason why it cannot. This self-transcendence is an Other, but to assert it is not a self-contradiction.

Now, I am not saying here that such an Absolute, in which thought transcends itself, does really exist. That is, of course, not a question to be dealt with summarily. All that I am urging is, that if such an Absolute is supposed, thought can find its Other there without inconsistency. The whole reality will be merely the object thought out-but thought out in such a way that mere thinking is absorbed. This same reality will be feeling that is satisfied completely, for in its direct experience we get restored to us with interest every feature lost by the disruption of our primitive felt whole. We have the immediacy and the strength of simple apprehension, no longer forced by its own inconsistencies to pass into the fruitless process of the infinite. And volition, if willed out, is this Absolute also. It is the identity of idea and reality, not too poor but too rich for division of its elements. Feeling, thought and volition have each of them a defect which suggests something higher. In that higher all are one, not that anything is lost, but that, to gain itself, each blends with that which seemed opposed, and the product of their union is richer than them all. The one reality, we may say from our human point of view, was present in each in a form which does not satisfy. To work out its full nature, it has sunk itself into these differences. But in each it longs for that absolute self-fruition which is reached only when the self bursts its limits and blends with another self. And so the desire of each element for a perfection which implies its fusion with the others, is not self-contradictory. It is rather an effort to remove a state of inconsistency, to remain in which would indeed be a fixed self-contradiction.

Now, if I am told that such an Absolute is the Thing-initself, I must venture to doubt if my objector understands. How that Whole, which comprehends everything, can deserve such a title is at least past my conjecture. And to the objection: "But the differences are lost in this whole, and yet the differences are, and therefore after all the differences are left outside," I must reply by a counter-charge of thoughtless confusion. For the differences are not lost, the differences are all inside; the fact that more is thefe than the differences hardly proves that they are not there. If an

element is joined to another in a whole of experience, so that on the whole and for the whole their mere specialities no longer exist, does that prevent each from still retaining its own speciality in its own partial experience? "Yes, but these experiences then at all events will fall outside the whole." They surely need do nothing of the kind. The self-consciousness of the part, its consciousness of itself even in opposition to the whole-all fall within the one absorbing experience, which contains all self-consciousness harmonised, though as such transmuted and suppressed. I admit, or rather I urge, that we cannot possibly construe this experience to ourselves; we cannot in any way imagine how in detail it can be. But to say that it exists and unites certain general characters within one undivided living apprehension is, I think, within our power. Whether we have sufficient reason to maintain this, and can justify it against objections, is not the question here at issue. That we can say it without any inconsistency I am myself convinced. And here (if I have not failed) I have shown that at least, from the point of view of thinking, we may assert such an Other without self-contradiction. This justification for thought of a possible Other may help both to explain and to refute the doctrine of a Thing-in-itself.

V. THE LESSON OF NEO-SCHOLASTICISM.

By FRANCIS WINTERTON.

A FEW years back, the English philosophical world was not a little astonished at the reappearance of the old Scholastic philosophy, supposed to have been dead and buried long ago. The harshness of tone with which more than one critic reviewed F. Harper's Metaphysics of the School and other works recently issued showed sufficiently well that they considered resurrectionists' of his type as engaged in a most improper task. But while, in their point of view, Neo-Scholasticism is little better than a vampire, it is nothing less than a phoenix in the opinion of its upholders. It is the system, the only one, the sole reasonable explanation of the universe, and will soon again have the whole intelligent world under its influence.

According to the writer's belief, neither of these two opposite views is just. Scholasticism seems to him to contain much truth, and truth established by demonstration as clear as has yet been possible in the metaphysical field; but its method was such as to condemn it to complete and absolute immobility, after a few important steps forward. In its recent revival, it is thus rather to be compared to a paralytic invalid seized with a fit of convulsive energy. This idea will be developed at greater length, after a brief historical sketch of the new movement.1

At the beginning of the present century, Scholasticism had long been overthrown, and the place it had formerly held as the official philosophy of the Catholic Church was in consequence vacant. The Church would have had no objection to a dozen official philosophies, provided they did not come into conflict with any of the dogmas she taught; and although Scholasticism was always looked back to with regret by ecclesiastical authorities, few or no attempts were at first made to incline the minds of the faithful that way. There was much unwillingness amongst Catholics to return to so discredited a form of thought, and many endeavours were made to establish other and better

I wish here to acknowledge my obligations to Rev. F. Morawski, S.J., from whose polemical and historical work, Filozofia i jej zadanie, many statements contained in the following sketch are taken.

systems. To this we owe the doctrine of Rosmini, expounded in English by Mr. T. Davidson and others; the Fideism and Traditionalism of Lamennais, de Bonald, de Maistre, Bonnet and F. Ventura; and the different systems of Ontologism and Catholic Transcendentalism, respectively upheld, the former by Ubaghs and Fabre (of Louvain University), by Gioberti, Hugonin and Gratry; the latter by Günther, Staudenmayer and Deutinger, in Germany.

Each and all of these modes of thought found deadly opponents in the Jesuits, who, from the first days of their renewed existence, had seen the importance of taking up and holding fast the position of defenders of the faith. Their hostility to Rosmini is well known; but Mr. Davidson seems to think that Rosmini agrees better than the Jesuits with the doctrines of St. Thomas. That they (or rather a few of the Italian Fathers) were well advised in denouncing the system of Rosmini as dangerous to Catholicism. is very doubtful: they certainly did not succeed in obtaining its condemnation. Whether they had the right to oppose it was a question for their own conscience; and, of course, it is very easy to suppose them prompted by unworthy motives. But as for the assertion that Rosmini represents St. Thomas, I think that any person acquainted with Scholastic terminology, who has read the philosophical parts of the Summa Theologica, or even only the second part of the Summa contra Gentiles, could hardly help smiling. Rosmini admits an innate idea of Being. According to St. Thomas, the origin of all our ideas is sensation (intelligibile in potentia) which, perceived by the intellect as active (intellectus agens) and received in the intellect as passive (intellectus possibilis), is the source of the idea (intelligibile in actu). This doctrine I should have thought every student of St. Thomas knew by heart.

Fideism and Traditionalism both exalted faith and depreciated natural reason. According to the former doctrine, we can know nothing with certitude, not even our own existence, except by supernatural faith. The infallible Pope, as representative of the unanimous human race, is the source of all knowledge. Abbé Lamennais, who invented this overstrained Catholic system, was attacked by the Jesuit F. Rosavin, condemned by his own infallible Pope, refused to submit, and died excommunicated. The different shades of Traditionalism, according to which God revealed all or some items of natural cognition to our first parents and to us subsequently, together with the use of speech-so that words are not only the signs but the primordial causes