the whole of the Rig-veda. The writer concluded with a resumé of the different points of interest which these hymns, though by no means fair specimens of the best religious poetry of the Brahmans, present; the healing powers of the hands, the constant dwelling on divinities

which govern the life of man, and the clear conception of a soul as separate from the body-of a soul after death going to Yama Varvasvata, the ruler of the departed, or hovering about heaven or earth ready to be called back to a new life.-Ibid

A

CONVERSATION ON UNION AMONG CHRISTIANS; THE GOSPEL DOOR OF MERCY; WHAT SHALL I DO TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN? THE CHURCH AND CHILDREN; A VOICE IN THE NIGHT, OR LESSONS OF THE SICK ROOM; THE GOSPEL CHURCH; WHO IS JESUS CHRIST? TRACTS NOS. 13-19; CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 145 Nassau st. New-York.

The number of Tracts issued and distributed by the Catholic Publication Society through direct sales and the aid of auxiliary societies is so great that its noble and zealous project must, by this time, have become a subject of interest to every Catholic in the country. It is hardly one year since the first steps were taken to establish it, and already over half a million Tracts have been distributed through the length and breadth of the land. This distribution goes on increasing; that made in the month of February alone amounted to seventy-five thousand. Large orders are constantly coming in for the books and tracts issued by the Society from the Rt. Rev. Bishops, the Rev. Clergy, and zealous laymen of every condition of life.

Encouraged by these marks of universal approbation, and accredited with the high sanction of our late Plenary Council, the Society will enter upon its work this spring, upon a scale commensurate with the increasing demands made upon it for its publications and the magnitude of its enterprise. A Publication House will be obtained, supplied with its own types and presses and bindery, which will enable it to conduct its operations with greater rapidity, and furnish its publications at the lowest possible cost.

Not a few have expressed themselves surprised at its present unparalleled suc

cess, and are anxious to know by what means so much has been accomplished in so short a time.

For the information of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD, who, we are sure, are all deeply interested in the work, it may be stated that a good fund was contributed by a number of wealthy gentlemen, principally in New York, that enabled it to begin its work, and which has been increased by the proceeds of lectures delivered in the diocese of Boston, Albany, and New-York, the aid of auxiliary societies, and the sales of tracts and books.

It cannot be denied that within even the last five years, our holy religion has made great advances in the spiritual care of its own children, in the multiplication of churches, the foundation of seminaries for the priesthood, the greater interest shown in the working of Sunday schools and religious associations of both sexes, as well as in the numerous conversions that have been made from the different denominations of Protestants, and in the earnest consideration of the claims of the Catholic Church manifested by the people of our country, of whom so many have hitherto been either indifferent to, or ignorant of it.

The Catholic Publication Society being by its very character a ready arm for the diffusion of Catholic truth, must therefore commend itself to the warmest syinpathies and generous co-operation of every Catholic who rejoices to see his holy faith spreading abroad and winning a multitude of souls to a knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of Christian virtue. In fact, the Society owes its existence to the ardently cherished wish of a large class for such an organization, which found an almost simultaneous ex

pression. Letters of encouragement and inquiry are being constantly received from the venerable bishops and clergy, heads of literary and benevolent associations, superintendents of Sunday-schools, and from different individuals in the humblest walks of life. The news of the enterprise has even penetrated to some of the most distant parts of the world; as is shown by a letter of sympathy containing an offer of inter-communion sent to the Society by a zealous priest in Bombay, India, who had started a Publication Society in that far-off city. It may not be judged out of place to repeat here the article of the constitution referring to the conditions of membership. It will show any of our readers who desire to become copartners in this great work, and thereby secure for themselves the blessing of having aided in the "instruction of many unto salvation," how they may practically bring that aid to bear upon the realization of their pious desires.

Any person paying, at one time, one hundred dollars into the treasury of the Society, may, by request, become a Patron,' and shall be entitled to receive three dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually. Any person paying fifty dollars at one time may become a Life Member, and shall be entitled to receive two dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually.

"Any person paying thirty dollars may become a member for five years, and shall be entitled to receive one dollar's worth of the Society's publications for five years.

"Persons paying five dollars at one time shall be members for one year, and be entitled to receive of the Society's publications to the value of half a dollar."

It is plain, however, that while many will be found to associate themselves as members of the General Society, in order to carry on the work in other places, auxiliary societies should be formed which receive all the publications at cost price. It is to the rapid formation of these auxiliary associations that those many zealous friends of the work should turn their attention. The same object will also be gained by making it one of the labors of Societies of St. Vincent de Paul, guilds, confraternities, sodalities,

and the like.

We have seen many communications in which inquiries have been made in reference to the publication of illustrated tracts and Sunday-school books, and the establishment of a cheap and attractive Sunday-school paper. The Society

has all these objects in contemplation, and will proceed to their execution as soon as the Publication House is in operation.

We would suggest, therefore, that each and every one who has this matter at heart, will make personal efforts to aid the Society in the establishment of the Publication House, by sending at once their own names as members with as many more as they can procure, and take measures to found at least one auxiliary society for home distribution in the community where they reside.

Our people have shown the greatest interest in the diffusion of Catholic literature, and are ever ready to make heroic sacrifices, if necessary, for any work of charity; and in the present aspect of affairs it must be evident that one of the most urgent calls upon our Christian zeal and love is that of bringing instruc tion home to the thousands who need it, and who, experience has proved, receive it gladly. One little thought we cannot refrain from expressing, suggested by a remark made in our hearing, that it will be for us and our children, when time shall show us and them the happy fruits of this truly Apostolic work, a most consoling reflection that we were among those who first encouraged and aided it, and bade it "God speed" as it started upon its high and glorious mission.

de Science et de Littérature. Montreal: Louis Ricard, Directeur.

By the Canadian public and the Frenchspeaking portion of our population of the States, this well-edited eclectic has, we are glad to know, received a hearty welcome and a liberal support. It purposes to afford its readers a choice selection of articles culled from the best European magazines and reviews, chiefly those of France, and it certainly has accomplished its task hitherto with much ability. It is not to every one we would care to confide the duty of choosing our literary repast from the current literature of the day; and, to any one at all acquainted with the French periodicals, it must be evident that it would require a caterer, who is himself possessed of high intellectual culture, to make from their pages a judicious and worthy selection of articles suited to the varied tastes of the American literary public. The " Écho de la France" is happily conducted by a

gentleman upon whose judgment and taste in this matter we can confidently rely, if we may judge from the numbers already issued.

We have only to add that it has our best wishes, and we recommend it especially to the notice of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD who are acquainted with the French language.

PRACTICAL HINTS ON THE ART OF ILLUMINATION. By Alice Donlevy. NewYork: A. D. F. Randolph. 1867.

Together with this useful and elegant publication we have received a set of plates, designed by the same author, to illustrate the poem of Miss Rossetti, called "Consider."

The work is intended, as we are told in its preface, to instruct those who wish to study illumination; to assist those who, having commenced, find many stumblingblocks in the way, and require aid in the minutis of the art; to furnish those who can paint, yet are unable to design with outlines, to illuminate, etc. This beautiful art is fast becoming with our young people a favorite recreation, and, with not a few, a remunerative study. To such as desire to engage in its pursuit, whether for pleasure or profit, we heartily recommend this volume as one calculated to give them much desirable information on the subject.

We have received advanced sheets of this volume, which is to be presented to the public in a few days. It is not our purpose to speak of it at length in this place, but reserve it for a more extended and appreciative review which we hope to give of it in the future pages of the CATHOLIC WORLD.

It is a remarkable book; the purity and beauty of its style fitly according with the saintly biographies which the distinguished authoress has so happily chosen to illustrate the three phases of a Christian woman's life and love. We have given us the life of St. Monica as the mother; of Victorine de Galard Terraube, a young French lady of rank, the maiden; and of the Venerable

Devos, superior of the Sisters of Charity, as the religious. It is a book we would wish to see placed in the hands of every woman in our country; for, whatever be her position in society, or whichsoever state of life she may have chosen, she will find in it an example of high Christian and womanly perfection, the view of which must claim her homage, and in turn exalt and refine her own character.

Mr. Kehoe, in republishing Bentley's Superb English edition, offers us a volume of equal beauty and finish. As a publi cation it must claim the attention of every connoisseur and lover of first-class books.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From LEYPOLDT & HOLT, New-York. The Journal of Maurice de Guérin, with an essay by Matthew Arnold, and a memoir by Sainte-Beuve, Edited by G. S. Trebutien. Transisted by Edward Thornton Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 173. Price 1.25.-Easy German Reading after a New System, by George Storme. Revised by Edward A. Open. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 206. Price $1.

each.

From P. F. CUNNINGHAM, Philadelphia. Conrad and Gertrude; The Three Petitions, a Tale of Poland; Alice, or the Rose of the Black Forest; Lauretta and the Fables. 4 vols, of the Young Catholic's Library, pp. 143, 141, 124, 126. Price 50 cents From D. APPLETON, New-York. The Merchant of Berlin; an Historical Novel by L. Mühlbach. Translated from the German by Amory Coffin, M.D. pp. 394. Price $2.-Berlin and San Souci; or, Frederick the Great and his Friends An Historical Romance. By L. Mühlbach. Translated from the German by Mrs. Chapman and her daughters. pp. 391. Price $2.

From J. J. O'CONNOR & Co., Newark. The exclusion of Protestant Worship from the City of Rome. Ry Rev. George II. Doane, pastor of St. Patrick's Pamphlet. Price 20

OF THE

LIBRARY

THOSE of our readers who have studied with the care their importance demands the papers on the " Problems of the Age" which have appeared in this magazine, can not have failed to perceive that the great questions now in discussion between Catholics and nonCatholics lie, for the most part, in the field of philosophy, and require for their solution a broader and profounder philosophy than any which obtains general currency outside of the church. We think, also, that no one can read and understand them without finding the elements or fundamental principles of a really Catholic philosophy, which, while it rests on scientific truth for its basis, enables us to see the innate correspondence or harmony of reason and faith, science and revelation, and nature and grace-the principles of a philosophy, too, that is no modern invention or newfangled theory which is brought forward to meet a present emergency, but in substance the very philosophy that has always been held by the great fathers and doctors of the church, and professed in Catholic schools and seminaries. Yet there is one point which the

VOL. V.-10

writer necessarily touches upon and demonstrates as far as necessary to his purpose, which was theological rather than purely philosophical, that, without interfering in the least with his argument, already complete, may admit of a more special treatment and further development. We refer to the objectiv ity and reality of ideas. The reader acquainted with the history of philosophy in the middle ages will perceive at once that the question of the reality of ideas asserted by the writer takes up the subject-matter of the old quarrel of the nominalists, conceptualists, and realists, provoked by the Proslogium of St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century, really one of the profoundest thinkers, greatest theologians, and ingenious philosophers of any age.

St. Anselm wished to render an account to himself of his faith, and to know and understand the reasons for believing in God. He did not doubt the existence of God; he indeed held that God cannot be thought not to be; he did not seek to know the arguments which prove that God is, that he might

believe, but that he might the better know and understand what he already believed. Thus he says: "Necque enim quero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam." We believe that we may understand, and we cannot understand unless we believe a great truth which modern speculators do not recognize. They reverse the process, and seek to know that they may believe, and hold that the first step to knowledge is to doubt or to deny.

In his Monologium, St. Anselm had proved that God is, and determined his attributes by way of induction from the ideas in the human mind, but it would seem not wholly to his satisfaction, or, at least, that in writing that work he discovered, or thought he discovered, a briefer and more conclusive method of demonstrating that God is. He had already proved by psychological analysis, in the way Cousin and others have since done, that the human mind thinks most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be thought. This he had done in his Monologium. In his Proslogium he starts with this idea, that of ens perfectissimum, which is, in fact, the idea of God. "The fool says in his heart there is no God;" not be cause he has no idea of God, not because he does not think most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be thought, but because he does not understand that, if he thinks it, such being really is. It is greater and more perfect to be in re than it is to be only in intellectu, and therefore the most perfect being existing only in the mind is not a greater than which cannot be thought, for I can think most perfect existing in re. Moreover, if most perfect being does not exist in re, my thought is greater and more perfect than reality, and consequently I can rise above God, and judge him, quod valde est absurdum.

Leibnitz somewhere remarks that this argument is conclusive, if we first prove that most perfect being is possible; but Leibnitz should have remembered that the argument ab esse ad posse

is always valid, and that God is both his own possibility and reality. Cousin accepts the argument, and says St. Anselm robbed Descartes of the glory of having produced it. But it is evident to every philosophical student that the validity of the argument, if valid it is, depends on the fact that ideas are objective and real, that is, depends on the identity of the ideal and the real.

Roscelinus, or Rosceline, did not concede this, and pronounced the argument of St. Anselm worthless. Confounding, it would seem, ideas with universals, he denied their reality, and maintained that they are mere words without anything either in the mind or out of it to respond to them, and thus founded Nominalism, substantially what is now called materialism. He rejects the universals and the categories of the peripatetics, and recognizes only individual existences and words, which words, when not the names of individual things, are void of meaning. Hence he denied the whole ideal or intelligible world, and admitted only sensibles. Hobbes and Locke were nominalists, and so is the author of Mill's Logic. Mr. Herbert Spencer is a nominalist, but is better described as an atomist of the school of Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. We know very little of Rosceline, except that he lived in the eleventh century, was born in Brittany, the native land of Abelard and Descartes, and incurred, for some of his speculations concerning the Trinity, the censures of the church. None of his writings have come down to us, and we know his doctrine only from the representations of others.

Guillaume de Champeaux, in the following century, who professed philosophy for a time at St. Victor, and was subsequently Archbishop of Paris, is the founder, in the middle ages, of what is called Realism, and which counts among its disciples Duns Scotus and William of Occam. He is said to have maintained the exact opposite of Rosceline's doctrine, and to have held that ideas, or universals, as