tion. He will see, too, that the need of reconciliation arises, when it does arise, not from any real antagonism between the two orders of knowledge, but rather from a distorted notion of knowledge itself and a sceptical interpretation of the facts to which Religion and Science have a title in common.

LITERATURE.

EDWARD A. PACE.

The following list indicates some of the recent contributions by Catholic writers. Those which supply a bibliography, as noted after the title, will be found especially useful for wider reading.

LUCAS, Agnosticism and Religion (Dissertation for the Doctorate in Theology at the Catholic University), Baltimore, 1895. Good historical outline and criticism.

PACE, Das Relativitätsprincip in Herbert Spencer's psychologischer Entwicklungslehre, Leipzig, 1892. Criticism of the agnostic theory of knowledge.

SHANAHAN, Agnosticism, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I. Good bibliography.

SCHUMACHER, The Knowableness of God (Dissertation for the Doctorate in Philosophy at the Catholic University). Notre Dame, 1905. Exposition of St. Thomas' doctrine with extended bibliography.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASES OF MODERNISM.'

It is seldom anything more than a profitless task to trace an erroneous doctrine to its logical source. According to an adage current in the Schools, "Ex vero non sequitur nisi verum; ex falso sequitur quodlibet." The origin of a heresy cannot logically be a truth. If, however, we study a heresy from its historical side, we find it is quite possible that it may have sprung from the perversion of a truth; just as truth may, at times, have sprung from the discussion occasioned by an error. The doctrines now known as Modernism, which are explicitly condemned in the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, have lost in the eyes of Catholics whatever claim they may have made to be regarded as contributions to philosophical truth. Nevertheless, the student of the History of Philosophy may find it interesting and profitable to trace those doctrines to their historical sources and to point out the influences which determined their development.

In the few months which have elapsed since the publication of the Encyclical Pascendi, the literature on Modernism has grown to considerable proportions. The Latin text of the Encyclical, together with the syllabus Lamentabili and the Allocutio of April 17th, 1907, appear in a brochure Acta Pii PP. X Modernismi Errores Reprobantis, etc. Innsbruck, 1907; the Latin text with English translation, introduction, etc., are published by Dr. Judge, The Encyclical of His Holiness Pius X, etc., Chicago, 1907; an English translation is published as a number of The Catholic Mind, New York, 1907. The canonical provisions of the Encyclical are studied in a brochure by Father A. Vermeersch, S. J., De Modernismo, Bruges, 1908, and the theological problems involved in Modernism are discussed in several articles of the Civiltà Cattolica for October, 1907, also in Father Christian Pesch's Theologische Zeitfragen, Vierte Folge, eine Untersuchung über den Modernismus (written before the publication of the Encyclical), Freiburg, 1908. The following treat more or less fully the philosophical aspects of Modernism: Bishop O'Dwyer, Cardinal Newman and the Encyclical Pascendi, London, 1908; C. S. B., Modernism, What it is and why it is condemned, Edinb., 1908; Canon Moyes, in Nineteenth Century and After, Jan., 1908; Father Gerard in Hibbert Journal, Jan., 1908; The Month, March, 1908; Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Oct.,

The Encyclical indicates very clearly the philosophical sources of Modernism. They are: philosophical agnosticism, the doctrine of vital immanence, the misuse of the principle of development and the depreciatory estimate of scholastic philosophy. The object of the present paper is to show that these doctrines and principles are derived from tainted sources, and setting aside the prestige of the great names with which some of them are associated, to test these principles and doctrines of Modernism by the standard of philosophical criticism.

The philosophical agnosticism with which the Encyclical deals is the doctrine now universally recognized as the most fundamental principle in Kant's theory of knowledge, namely, the inability of the human mind to know in a scientific manner anything but the phenomena, or appearances, of things. Kant, as is well known, began his philosophical examination of human knowledge in the hope of discovering some unshakeable basis on which to build the great spiritual and moral edifice of man's higher life. In the Preface to the first edition of the Kritik

Nov., Dec., 1907; The Tablet, Jan. 11, Jan. 18, Feb. 1, 1908; Lemius, A Catechism of Modernism, translated from the French, New York, 1908; Civiltà Cattolica, Nov. 2 and Dec. 7, 1907; Bulletin de littérature Ecclésiastique, Feb., 1908; La Nouvelle France, Dec., 1907, Jan., 1908; Revue Augustinienne, Dec. 15, 1907; Etudes, especially Oct. 5, 1907 and Feb. 5, 1908; La Démocratie Chrétienne, Nov., 1907; L'Association Catholique, Oct., 1907; Revue Pratique d'Apologétique, Dec. 15, 1907; Rázon y Fe, Jan., 1908. The following treat of the theological questions raised by Modernism: Jones, Old Truths Not Modernist Errors, London, 1908; Catholic World, Jan., 1908; p. 519; Amer. Eccl. Review, Jan., 1908; Lebreton, L'Encyclique et la théologie moderniste, Paris, 1908; Mgr. l'Evêque de Beauvais, La liberté intellectuelle après l'Encyclique Pascendi, Paris, 1908. A new review, La foi Catholique, the first number of which appeared in January, 1908, has for its subtitle "Revue Critique anti-Kantienne des questions qui touchent la notion de la foi." In Germany, much of the literature treats of the practical portions of the Encyclical. For theological comment on the Encyclical see Der Syllabus Pius X . . . mit dem Pastoralschreiben der Kölner Bischofskonferenz vom 10 Dez., 1907. Freiburg, 1907. The Stimmen aus Maria Laach, March 14, 1908, calls attention (pp. 355 ff.) to the favorable comment of the Protestant press on the Encyclical. Since the above list was compiled, there have appeared Ambrosini, Occultismo e modernismo (Rome, 1908); Barlier, Les democrates Chrétiens et le modernisme (Paris, 1908); Cavallanti, Modernismo e modernisti, 2d ed. (Rome, 1908); I veicoli del modernismo in Italia (ibid., 1908); Ferrari, Rassegna del modernismo, etc. (ibid., 1908).

mena.

der reinen Vernunft 2 he tells us that his chief concern is to save Metaphysics from the neglect into which the Queen of Sciences has fallen, owing to the influence of the Dogmatists on the one hand and that of the Sceptics on the other. The mind, he says, is assailed with doubts and beset with difficulties in the presence of problems which it cannot decline to discuss because they arise from the nature of the mind itself, and which it cannot answer because they transcend the powers of human reason. The remedy which he offers is Transcendental Criticism, in other words, an examination of the powers of Pure (speculative) Reason for the purpose of determining which elements in our knowledge are transcendental, that is, go beyond experience. In the Preface to the second edition he claims that his solution of the problem has revolutionized the world of thought in the same way as Copernicus' discovery established an entirely new point of view for the study of celestial phenoThe comparison is apt. Up to Kant's time it was held by philosophers without exception that in knowledge the subject should conform to the object. Kant was the first to suggest that the object should conform to the subject, that is to say, that the subject should confer something of its own on the object and thereby make it knowable. What is it, then, that the mind confers on things in order to make them knowable in the scientific sense? Universality and necessity, he says, are the marks of scientific knowledge, and these are not found in objects outside the mind, but conferred on these objects by the mind out of its native endowment. This is the initial fallacy of the Kritik. Why should Kant assume (and he does not attempt to prove) this dictum? Are there not universally valid laws of things as well as of mind? Are there not unalterably necessary properties of things which, as the scholastics saw, indicate a necessary and unalterable source (essence) in the things themselves? Kant chose to assume that there are not, that only in the mind itself is there universality and necessity. When, therefore, he comes to examine sense-knowledge,

2 Kant's Gesammelte Werke, herausgegeben von der königlich preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, (Berlin, 1904, ff.), IV, 7 ff.

judgment and reason, he applies everywhere this principle: Whatever is universal and necessary in our knowledge does not come from experience, but from the mind itself. Hence, our knowledge of the material world around us is limited to a knowledge of the changeable qualities or appearances (Erscheinungen, phenomena) of things, and we can never by means of scientific knowledge, reach the essence (Ding-an-sich, noumenon). We cannot know what matter is, or what mind is; we cannot prove that matter is divisible or indivisible, that the soul is mortal or immortal, that the world is an ordered cosmos with God as its Author, or a discordant jumble of chaotic forces which come from nowhere and are tending no man knows whither. On all these questions Pure (speculative) Reason is obliged to confess its ignorance. If, however, we interrogate Practical Reason, that is, if we view these same questions in the light of Will, Conscience, Duty, we get a satisfactory affirmative answer to the ever-recurring query of the human mind regarding God, Immortality and Freedom.

From this restriction of the scope of Pure Reason comes modern agnosticism, as far as philosophy is concerned. Hamilton and Spencer in England, Renouvier and Sécrétan in France, and the whole school of Neo-Kantists in Germany, whether or not they acknowledge their indebtedness, are debtors to Kant in this regard, and their agnosticism is merely a modification of his. The "infiltration" of these doctrines among certain Catholic philosophers and theologians in France has been, and is, admitted to be equally undeniable. When in 1899 the Abbé Mano, defending his Doctor thesis at Toulouse, repelled the charge of Kantism in sensu adversarii, he did not deny that he, like Abbé Denis and others had drawn from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft their chief philosophical tenet, namely, that modern science knows nothing of essences, and that we can know only those qualities of things which laboratory analysis and accurate scientific observation reveal. The note of philosophical agnosticism that rings so clearly through the writings of the Modernists is unmistakably and confessedly Kantian. "Nous acceptons la critique de la raison pure faite per Kant