Bøger af Brother Hermenegild Tosf

With an increasing interest in the Latin Tridentine Mass, this work will prove quite useful to those who truly appreciates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The earnest hope is entertained that this explanation of the Mass will help to a deeper appreciation of the greatest act of worship in the Church. It is impossible to have laboured for many years in London without painfully realizing that the Mass is neither known, nor understood, nor attended, nor loved as it deserves. Surely there are many Catholics who might with a little self-denial hear Mass, if not daily, at least sometimes in the week. If we inquire the reason from those who find time for other things and not for Mass, we shall probably learn that they do not understand what they lose. Mass is a closed book to them. The love, self-sacrifice, and humiliation of a Divine Person lies before them in the Eucharist; they have eyes and see not. With an intelligent grasp of the doctrine of the Mass they would discover a method of discharging every obligation of the creature to the Creator, and of procuring all they want from His gracious bounty. Let me explain simply the object of the Mass. Mass is the supreme act of worship, in which Christ as the Head of our race, offers His own Body and Blood in acknowledgment of the Creator's dominion over Him and over all mankind. Our Lord is the chief celebrant at every Mass, and at the altar renews His profession of perpetual service. Reason alone proves the obligation of giving God honour and glory. Our best is indeed small, whether we consider the deeds performed or the abject condition of every man, clad in infirmity from head to foot. Our deficiency is supplied in the Mass, which gives infinite honour and glory to God's Supreme Majesty. One Mass, for which we cannot spare half an hour, yields more honour and glory to God than the adoration of the blessed in Heaven and of their Queen. Once more. Thanksgiving is another duty of the creature to the Creator. "Thank you" are almost the first words a mother teaches her child. The duty of thanking God is so obvious that any explanation weakens its claims. The duty is self evident. We are surrounded by the unmerited blessings of Heaven as a fish by the waters of the sea. Man is the neediest and most helpless and most ungrateful of all creatures, and for him God has done incomparably more than for the angels. The Crib, the Cross, and the Tabernacle are three fountains of mercy and love whence grace floods this earth. Man is powerless to thank God for all His benefits. "The unsearchable riches of Christ" paid the debt of gratitude a thousandfold in the first Mass in the Supper Room. The Church calls the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, just as pain means punishment. At the Mass Christ chants His Te Deum in honour of His Father, or rather the Mass is His Te Deum, and the faithful on earth, in Purgatory, and Heaven, join the song of praise. You have received great temporal and spiritual blessings; have the Mass offered in thanksgiving, and assist at the Holy Sacrifice for the same intention. And though we may not aim so high, it is useful to remember that the saints recognized mercy even in crushing sorrow. "Although He should kill me I will trust in Him." (Job)And they thank God at the Mass for sending it to them. Once again: We are sinners. In this all men are akin; and we need some Being to appease the anger of God, to obtain His forgiveness and to avert or lessen the punishment due to crime. Mass is the great appeasing power of the world, for Mass is Calvary over again. The scene on Calvary is re-presented to us in the drama of the Mass. Death on Calvary was the consummation of the Sacrifice. That death was caused by the separation of the Blood of our Lord from His Body, that separation is, to use the words of the Council of Trent, represented to us, placed again before our eyes in the double consecration of bread and wine.

No-great men and little, we are all of us formed out of the same clay and the same spirit is breathed into each one of us. We stand, as it were, on different steps of the same ladder, which springs from one and the same nature and reaches up to one and the same God.-We may aggravate the original weakness of our nature by yielding to it, or we may use the help offered to us and so develop all the potential strength and beauty it possesses, but whichever course we take, we can never completely destroy a single one of the features of our complex humanity. No matter how degenerate on the one hand, or perfect on the other, they may become, our fellow-men never fail to be objects of warning or encouragement to us. The resemblance we bear to one another affords us the means, while it teaches us the necessity, of applying the lesson to ourselves. It is under the influence of this conviction that the following essay has been written. One by one the strange facts recorded in saints' lives which were scouted by the hot-headed scepticism of a century ago and considered to discredit all hagiography, are now recognised as instances of well-known psychological manifestations. It is little to the purpose that they are explained as due to hypnosis, thought-transference, expectant attention, or other" word-causes"; the point is that, the philosophy which once denied these things as superstitions, is now convicted of superstition in that very denial. The tendency of this reaction to explain all the phenomena in question by purely physiological or psychological laws needs to be counteracted by a sounder criticism which shall fix the limits of what may be so explained, and shall assign to Nature the things that are Nature's and to God the things that are God's; and this is the task to which M. Joly addresses himself in the little volume which is here presented to the public in English dress. It will, however, serve a no less important end if it enables educated Catholics to approach the lives of the saints with a more intelligent sympathy. The spiritual benefit derived from that study depends obviously on the applicabiHty of their example to our own case; and this again, on the resemblance we see between their nature and circumstances and our own. It is this that spurs men to emulate their betters in the various walks of life, -a desire to equal or approach them, as well as a belief in the possibility of the enterprise. When the saints are set before us rather as wonderful than lovable; when we have no conception of the process of their spiritual evolution, how from rudiments of sanctity which are in us all, and by the aid of resources and faculties which we all possess, they obtained a result so different; until we have learnt to set aside all that is merely the clothing and expression of sanctity, and to find that the underlying substance is simply the love of God and of things Divine carried to an heroic degree; we cannot expect to gain much definite profit from the study of saints' lives. Nothing comes out more clearly in these pages than that the saints themselves have been careful to separate from the essence of sanctity those extraordinary gifts and" charismata" in which it is vulgarly supposed to consist; and to place its whole inner substance in an eminent or heroic degree of that charity which is possessed by every soul in grace, and which St Paul sets above tongues, above prophetic insight or foresight, above miracles, even above martyrdom and self-sacrifice when they are notthe fruits of charity

THIS is not what is commonly called a work of reconciliation; it is rather one of delimitation and explanation. Its first object is to present an outline of the attitude of Science to-day towards various problems. physical and biological, and to show how very few of these problems come in any way into contact with dogmatic religion. If some writers were to be believed. there exists and must always exist between the Church and Science so fundamental and inexorable an enmity that it is utterly impossible for any person honestly to serve both. That such is not the case is proved by scores of instances which need not here be insisted upon. Another of the chief objects of this book is to show why this is so, and incidentally to make clear how wide a range for speculation the Church permits even, for example, on such a subject as the interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. On the other hand, no attempt has been made to minimise tle teachings of the Church, nor is it denied that there are points where her teaching and the theories of certain men of science come into direct conflict. But a further object of the book is to make it clear that these are theories, at present unproved and perhaps insusceptible of convincing proof; that scores and scores of such theories have been put forward and will continue to be put forward; that score) and scores of them have been thrown on the scrapheap of abandoned ideas, whither others will follow them; and that the believer in Christianity may possess his soul in patience, well aware that no theory which is really in opposition to revelation can be true.

As the particular object of this Essay is limited to 8 consideration of the Eucharist in its sacrificial character, it is not my intention to enter with any detailed proof into the question of the Real Presence and Transubstantiation. These doctrines are undoubtedly 8 necessary basis to that of the Sacrifice, but since they have been treated of with great erudition and copiousness in many English works of controversy, to them, being easily accessible, I beg to refer those of my readers who require a complete exposition of that part of the subject. It will be sufficient for my present purpose to adduce S. Paul in proof that the real Body and Blood of Christ were made present by virtue of the words Qf our Lord. He declares that the bread which he broke was 8 'partaking of the Body of the Lord, ' and the chalice 8 'communion of the Blood of Christ' (1 Cor. x.16); also, that those who partook unworthily of that bread. and that chalice were 'guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord, ' and did not' discern the Body of the Lord' (1 Cor. xi. 27-9). He says, moreover, that communicants, although numerically 'many, ' become 'one bread----one body' by 'partaking of the Body of the Lord' (1 Cor. x. 17). The whole point of S. Paul's argument would be utterly lost, his parallel unmeaning, and his denunciation aimless, if the real Body and Blood of Christ were not in the Eucharist. How could anyone be justly punished by sickness and death, therefore there are many infirm and weak among you, and many sleep' (1 Cor. xi. 20)-for not discerning an absent Body? How could men be 'guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ, ' if the figure alone of Christ was there, and if that figure was only bread? How also can anyone be truly described as partaking of the Body and Blood of the Lord, through the reception of the consecrated bread and consecrated chalice, if that bread which 'is broken, ' and that chalice so communicated, conveys no Body and no Blood of Christ? The Apostle was inspired, erudite, and not a mocking sophist; and yet, if the Protestant explanation be true, he could not, if he had tried, have used language more calculated to mis

In order to render the Logic more easy and more practical, First, the author has omitted the perplexed, undiscussed and indeterminate Greek derivatives, which give vagueness or obscurity to the matter contained in many popular text books of Logic; and he has aimed to use in their stead the most plain and simple terminology. This perpetual multiplication of indefinite and unintelligible technicalities, which are devised as if to embody new forms of thought, helps much to render the study of Logic and Philosophy discouraging, and their very names repulsive, even to the most ambitious and the most intelligent young minds that attempt to master the established elementary principles of these an-important branches of a good education, The introduction of a new term into a book on Philosophy, does not necessarily imply the actual discovery of a new truth. It is a significant fact that, while eccentric thought and novel phraseology possess a peculiar charm for ill-educated, rambling and superficial minds; yet, the language which remains in prevailing use, is the embodiment of deep and true philosophy; and the words as well as the conclusions, which convey what is absurd or preposterous, it must necessarily repudiate, by the genera1law of human thought. It was judged best, also, for the interests of learners in general, to omit the discussion of the modes and figures of the syllogism; for, in practice they are not attended to, even by those who actually argue in form, the simple rules of demonstration sufficing for all practical purposes, and being all that is even really useful in the strictest argumentation. On the other hand, it was deemed expedient to introduce some matters that pertain to branches of Philosophy, whose full treatment is appropriate to another volume; e. g., certain subjects which strictly belong to Psychology, Cosmology and Natural Theology.

There are very few works on Scholasticism in print from a Traditional Catholic viewpoint. It is with great pleasure that we return this work to print for he edification of Catholic clergy, scholars and faithful. Other works available are ABC of Scholastic Philosophy and Scholasticism Old and New. A philosopher is literally a lover of wisdom, a seeker after wisdom. Wisdom means relishable knowledge-in our case, that knowledge which gives the highest and fullest natural satisfaction to the human mind. Now the human mind, by its very nature, thirsts after knowledge-knowledge not of a few things or a few classes of things, but of all things, of all classes of things. Nor is it satisfied with any sort of information about its far-reaching subject-matter; it seeks to know the ultimate causes and reasons of things--what they are, whence they are, why they are, etc. Nor yet again is it satisfied with any obscure or doubtful view; it wants clear, certain, evident knowledge. Hence wisdom or philosophy, the object of the philosopher's quest, is defined-dear, certain, evident knowledge of the ultimate reasons and causes, internal and external, of things, as far as this can be reached by the natural powers of the human mind. The formal object, then, of philosophy, or that which, for its own sake, it investigates, are absolutely ultimate reasons and causes, as far as these are knowable with certainty and evidence by man's natural reason. As its material object or that in which it seeks its formal object, it embraces all things, all Being. Things may be considered either as they are in themselves, or as they are in our thoughts, or as they stand in relation to our will; and thus philosophy divides itself into Metaphysics or the science of real being, Logic or the science of -right thinking, Moral Philosophy or the science of right willing or moral action-. Metaphysics, again, is divided into: - Ontology, whose object is real Being as such, considered In itself and in its highest genera or most general classifications; us; Cosmology, whose object is the irrational world around Anthropology, whose object is Man; Theology, whose object is God. Understanding, then, that we speak of natural knowledge we may say that Logic gives us the ultimate in regard to right mental action; Ontology, in regard to real Being and its primary determinations; Cosmology, in regard to the irrational world; Anthropology, in regard to Man; Theology, in regard to God; Moral Philosophy, in regard to right moral action. Apart, therefore, from its excellence as an instrument of mental discipline and its necessity as a guide in specUlative and practical science, no subject can be worthier of earnest mental effort than this study "Of God, of Nature, and of Human Life."

In these days it is difficult to find a good Catholic work on the subject of Psychology. Modern works are tainted with the errors of Modernism and Liberalism. This work from the turn of the century (nineteenth to twentieth) is a solid work on this most important subject. The author notes: My aim here, as in the previous editions, has been not to construct a new original system of my own, but to resuscitate and make better known to English readers a Psychology that has already survived four and twenty centuries, that has had more influence on human thought and human language than all other psychologies together, and that still commands a far larger number of adherents than any rival doctrine. My desire, however, has been not merely to expound but to expand this old system; not merely to defend its assured truths, but to test its principles, to develop them, to apply them to the solution of modem problems and to re-interpret its generalizations in the light of the most recent researches. I have striven to make clear to the student of modem thought that this ancient psychology is not quite so absurd, nor these old thinkers quite so foolish, as the current caricatures of their teaching would lead one to imagine: and I believe I have shown that not a little of what is supposed to be Dew has been anticipated, and that most of what is true can be assimilated without much difficulty by the old system. On the other hand, I have sought to bring the scholastic student into closer contact with modern questions; and to acquaint him better with some of the merits of modern psychological analysis and explanation.

The efforts which have been made in recent years to provide the beginner in philosophy with a ten-book suited to his needs are justified both by the importance of the subject and by the requirements of educational method. It is obvious that an introduction should really introduce, in other words that it should presalt philosophy in such a way as to arouse the student's interest, gift him a firm grasp of essentials, and encourage him to further study. But how these results are to be secured is still an open question. The books that have so far appeared have, each from its own point of view, distinct advantage either as outlining the history of philosophical problems, or as aetting forth the claims of rival systems, or as explaining the principles which serve as the foundation of some special system and a basis of criticism in discussing variant theories. An introduction that will combine these several utilities seems to be our present need. Dr. Dubray's aim in this volume is to lead the student by easy approaches into the field of philosophy and to show him its divisions with their several problems and the solutions which these have received In accordance with the principles of correct method, the knowledge which the student has already acquired is made to serve as the starting-point, and from this he is led on to the consideration of more abstract philosophical concepts and theories. These again are presented in clear statement and orderly sequence, with sufficient indication of outstanding questions, yet without the mass of detail which sometimes destroys proportion or results in narrowness of view. At the same time, definite conclusions are presented with the evidence on which they rest, so that the student may get from his use of the book not merely a lot of vague question., but a certain amount of positive knowledge and critical direction for later investigation.

THE Revelation of God came to the world through the Hebrews, a people unused to abstract speculation, their very language too bald for Philosophy, so that Theology had to take the language of poetry, concrete images taking the place of definitions or syllogisms. These characteristics, whilst they prevented very great development of doctrine, were a safeguard against its perversion. When in the fullness of time Christ brought that complete Revelation of which Judaism was but the prologue, it was to the Hebrews that He spoke. He gave them His whole teaching-but in their own tongue, their own forms, not only of speech but of thought. Yet His Church was to be no longer the Jewish Church, but the Catholic Church. His Revelation was to all mankind and was to be received and assimilated not by the practical ethical Hebrew only, but by the subtleminded Greek, by the Eastern mystic, and by the childlike, untrained mind of far-off Goth and Barbarian. When on the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost descended upon that little band which Christ had formed and trained, they went forth to bring all minds into captivity to the truth; and these were not minds empty, waiting passively for the truth, but minds already active, with ideas, theories, and habits of thought of their own. Into minds thus preoccupied the Christian Faith was to enter-to seize and act upon and mould them, and, within certain very rigid limits, to be reacted upon by them. When Revelation took its rightful place as Ruler and Judge, then all of natural truth or mental power that a man had was enriched and crowned by it; al1 that was false or imperfect being abolished or rejected. The Faith itself being more clearly set forth, more deeply penetrated, as the minds of men were brought to bear upon it, gave forth all its strength, light, and sweetness. That way lay development-a process which began the first moment a Christian meditated on Christ's teaching, and it shall not cease as long as one of the Faithful remains to keep the Faith. But whenever Faith came to a mind not prepared to give it the first and ruling place, but determined to judge and test it by its own prepossessions, its own prejudices -then the truth became perverted, one-sided: and so were born heresies: so began the first heresy: so will heresies arise until Christ returns and Faith ends in Vision. Well might the Apostles have quailed at the task before them. Silnple Palestinian Jews, how should they commend their faith to the whole Gentile world, a world whose thought was so alien from their own? But their Risen Master had promised that the Holy Ghost should bring to their minds all things whatsoever He had told them. In this knowledge, with this strength, they went forward knowing that whatever their personal weakness, however limited their individual knowledge or capacity, their mission could not fail, for He who had sent them had promised that the gates of hell should not prevail against them and that He would be with them even to the consummation of the world.

In this time of economic upheaval and insurmountable debt, it is easy yo see the economics will shape the near future. How has it shaped the past? What can we learn from the past? The influences or laws that shape the events of history are many and various. They may, however, all be summed up under three great categories, namely: Physical Surroundings, Religion, and Economics. From time immemorial, the physical surroundings of a nation have vitally determined its history. Climate, whether hot or cold, the configuration of the country, whether it be an island or a part of a continent, the resources of the soil, whether agricultural or mineral, have their share in determining the political place and habitual occupations of a nation. Athens, Carthage, Venice, England, all became great maritime and commercial powers on account of their proximity to the sea. Small frontier nations, on the other hand, like Phenicia and Prussia, have been forced into a condition of hot-bed artificial strength, owing to the necessity of constantly providing against danger from their more powerful neighbors. To an almost equal extent have the productions of the soil been instrumental in determining the whole character and history of a nation. The abundance of precious metals, the bountiful supply of iron, or the exuberant fertility of the soil, all determine the aver- age occupation of the citizen and the wealth of the nation and the power of the State. Religion is another very important influence in the shaping of history. Man's conduct is swayed, to a great extent, by his religious belief. If we leave aside the influence of religion, the history of the Eastern peoples is an insoluble enigma. If, in Greek history, we leave religion out of account, the old Greek oracles with their inspiring utterances, obeyed alike by all classes of society, would no longer appear on the pages of history, and the Greek religious assemblies, such as those of the Amphictyonic Councils, which at one time seemed likely to bring about the unity of Greece, would likewise vanish. Indeed, Greek history, without the religious element, would be cut down by at least one half, and even the remaining half would be void of meaning. Finally, we come to the third category of formative causes, namely, economics. This element, as we shall see, is also of the greatest importance, and this not only on account of its own intrinsic activity, but because it is so intimately bound up with the other two important formative influences in history, namely, physical surroundings and religion. By economics is meant the science of wealth, and this, again, means the knowledge of the laws that govern the production of wealth, and its distribution. We might, perhaps, express this definition in simpler terms by saying that economics is the science of how a man makes his wealth, and how he gets it. It is evident, then, that economics must have an almost unbounded influence on human conduct, both public and private. For the great majority spend the greater part of their time either in producing or distributing wealth, and, from the point of view of extension, the time that an ordinary man has to employ in earning his daily bread is greater than that which he can possibly expend in explicit acts of religion. This all-pervading activity of economics is still more apparent in the State or commonwealth. In the whole course of ancient and modern history, there is scarcely any single important political event that has not been caused, either directly or indirectly, by some economic influence. Religion and physical causes may also have been present, but the economic factor seems to have been the most constant and the most pervasive. Although we shall be anticipating what will come afterwards, a few examples taken from typical nations will serve to illustrate this statement.

When Scholastic Philosophy ceased to be the subject of systematic study in Protestant U niversities, and was regarded as possessing an historical rather than a scientific interest, there was one branch of it that was treated with less dishonour than the rest. In Ethics and Metaphysics, in Psychology and Natural Theology, the principles handed down by a tradition unbroken for centuries came to be looked upon as antique curiosities, or as merely illustrating the development of human progress and human thought. Thesesciences were either set aside as things of the past, consisting of fine - spun subtleties of no practical value, or else they were reconstructed on an entirely new basis. But with Logic it was different. Its underlying principles and its received method were not so closely and obviously interlaced with the discarded system of theology. It admitted of being more easily brought into apparent harmony with the doctrines of the Reformation, because it had not the same direct bearing on Catholic dogma. It was, moreover, far less formidable to the ordinary student. Those who had no stomach for the Science of Being, were nevertheless quite able to acquire a certain moderate acquaintance with the Science and the Laws of Thought. Men chopped Logic harmlessly, and the Logic they chopped was the traditional Logic of the Schoolmen, with some slight modifications. The. Text-book of Dean Aldrich, which has not yet disappeared from Oxford, is medireval in its phraseology and its method; medireval, too, in its principles, except where an occasional inconsistency has crept in unawares from the new learning. It still talks of "second intentions," . and assumes the existence of an Infima Species, and has throughout the wholesome flavour of the moderate realism of sound philosophy. But this state of things could not last. Sir W. Hamilton, the champion of conceptualism, put forth in his Lectures on Logic a theory of intellectual apprehension quite inconsistent with the traditional doctrine which still lingered in the meagre and obscure phraseology of Dean Aldrich. Sir W. Hamilton's disciple, Dean Mansel, who carried on the work of philosophic scepticism which his master had inaugurated, published an edition of Aldrich, with explanatory notes and appendices, which pointed out his supposed errors, while John Stuart Mill, with far more, . ability and a wider grasp than either of the two just named, substituted for the halting conceptualism of Hamilton a nominalism which had but a thin veil of plausible fallacies to hide from mankind the utter scepticism which lay beneath it. Since then, the Kantian principle of antinomies which underlies the Logic of Mansel and Hamilton has boldly come to the front in England under the shadow of the great name of Hegel, and English logicians have either ranged themselves under the banner of one or other of these new schools, or else have sought to cover the glaring inconsistencies of some one of them with patches borrowed from the others, until the modern student has a bewildering choice among a series of guides, each of whom follows a path of' his own, leading in the end to obscurity- and confusion and selfcontradiction, but who are all united in this, that they discard and misrepresent the traditional teaching of Aristotle and of the mediaeval logicians. Their facility in so doing is partly owing to the fact that Aristotle has no methodical treatise cover the ground of modern Logic, and St. Thomas gives merely a rapid sketch of the technical part of it in one of his Opuscula. But from the pages of the great philosopher of Pagan times and of the Angelic Doctor of the middle ages, can be gathered by the careful student all the principles necessary for the modern logician. Every Catholic teacher of Logic follows of necessity closely in their steps, and finds in them the solution of every difficulty, and the treatment-at least the incidental treatment-of almost every question that Logic can propose.

In the traditional treatment of Thomistic thought agrarian matters have been given little, if any, formal consideration in separate studies. Hence it is to be expected that some, confronted with the title of this dissertation, will be inclined to ask whether the Angelic Doctor gave any thought to agrarian problems, and whether he worked out an agrarian. philosophy. While such questions will undoubtedly .be asked, it is hoped to demonstrate here that there is equal, or stronger, reason to ask the same questions 'with ' the underlying assumption turned about. There is more reason, to assume that. Aquinas concerned himself with agrarian matters than - that he did not. These matters are the philosopher's concern, whose task it is, -according to Aristotle, to order things. More particularly it is the duty of the social philosopher to further good order within the economic and social relations of men. . The land is fundamental. If people are not well ordered in their use of it, it will be of little avail to try to order them in other economic and social matters. The great social philosophers, both before and after Aquinas, have realized this and accordingly have given much attention to the problem in their political economies. For Aristotle there was a close connection between natural wealthgetting from the land and the "good life". The Physiocrats in France and Adam Smith in England gave careful and lengthy consideration to agrarian problems in their political economies. This is to mention only a few. Did then St. Thomas, who lived in an age when the larger part of the economic and social life of the people was carried on in immediate relation to the land and its institutions, fail to include in his comprehensive philosophy the principles by which people might be well ordered in their relation to each other, in matters pertaining to the land? The presumption would seem to be that St. Thomas did treat these matters, and we should therefore have much reason to be surprised if we should find that he had nothing important to say, either directly or by implication, on the rural life. But this reasonable presumption, if it existed, has not been 'acted upon. Of the great number of studies on St. Thomas none has been found that purports to examine his system for the principles of a sound agrarian economic philosophy. This gives the hope that the present study is not only justified but seemingly overdue. The whole method of this study has aimed to bring to bear upon the pressing socio-economic problems of today, not practices from Medieval times, but rather principles from Aquinas' philosophy. The carrying over of the former would represent retrogression; the application of the latter can bring true progress. With this in mind an historical background is included in this study and against this background is exposed the 'Thomistic teaching from a critical examination of pertinent texts. The principles thus discovered are analyzed and applied to the contemporary situation, account being taken of the change in conditions and the causes responsible for it. A careful analysis of these causes is made in order to separate those that have arisen due to a natural progress in the technique of securing material human needs from those that are due to the injection of a false philosophy, whether in good faith or in bad faith, into agrarian life. When this has been done it is more evident that Aquinas' sound agrarian principles are important for the good order of his entire philosophical system and the good order of his times, and that they have, as well, a contribution to make today.

This book is only partially new. It is an expansion of Logic and Epistemology, which was first printed in 1930 and has since been reprinted or revised almost each year. The expansion consists in the addition of an Introduction to Philosophy and of Ontology. It had been my original intention to add both parts but other more urgent work stood in the way until now. As in the preface to the former work, I wish to stress a few considerations that have guided me in the composition of this. Some are more general, others are applicable to one or the other of the branches of philosophy here offered. 1. Brevity, plain and direct presentation, close-knit reasoning and logical coherence--these are the aims which have been kept in view throughout. 2. The scholastic system and method were chosen for presentation. Some 30 years of teaching philosophy and theology have convinced me of its pedagogical worth. There is no other philosophical system that can rival the scholastic in common sense and definiteness. There is no other philosophical method that even approaches the scholastic in sound reasoning and logical force. To the beginner, who is not yet capable of grappling with superficial systems and subtle methods, such a philosophy is indispensable. 3. The Introduction to Philosophy differs considerably from those current today. It is not a summary of philosophical problems, which the beginner cannot digest and which may engender in him a spirit of skepticism. For a like reason I have not given an outline of the history of philosophy with the same problems arranged by periods. Instead, I confined myself to a few important data on the principal philosophers of past ages, and I tried to sketch the intellectual equipment with which the student is supposed to begin philosophy. 4. In Logic, the simple syllogism has been made the unifying theme as well as the ultimate aim. On the other hand, the sentence or proposition has been made the starting point of all explanations; the reason for this is the well known axiom that all truths are expressed by us in sentence form. 5. Nor-let it be said even more emphatically-is Epistemology a branch of psychology. Epistemology investigates the final cause of our cognitive faculties, psychology the other three causes (formal, material, efficient). Again, the four causes are present in all cognition, but Epistemology restricts itself to the purpose of cognition. 6. In Ontology, it has been my endeavor to eliminate the Latin flavor and to substitute for it readable and plain English. Special attention has been given to the bibliography and the alphabetical index. The former lists practically all English Catholic books on the subject, including both earliest and latest publications. The latter has been made very detailed so as to insure the utmost of usefulness.