the faithful gradually back from the relaxed discipline to the paths of that generally observed.

In the Second Plenary Council (1866) the feast of the Immaculate Conception was made of obligation,' as it had been in Oregon (I Concil. Oregon, 1848), where the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul had retained its place with the Monday after Easter and Whit-Sunday, St. John the Baptist, Candlemas, and St. Stephen.

Pope Gregory XVI., in 1837, dispensed all the dioceses then in the United States from the obligation as to Easter Monday and Whitsun-Monday, and in 1840 from that of the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul; and the same Sovereign Pontiff relieved the faithful from the fast on Wednesdays in Advent. (III. Concil. Prov. Balt., pp. 148, 150, 187.)

This was the position of the discipline in this country when the Third Penary Council was convened. The effort to induce the faithful to a more exact observance of holydays of obligation, or at least so far as hearing mass was concerned, had not been successful. A general indifference prevailed. When zealous priests, to give servants and mechanics every opportunity to fulfil the obligation, had Mass celebrated at an early hour, to permit them to attend it before proceeding to their usual work, it was found that almost the only persons to avail themselves of the opportunity would be a few pious old women, while those of the very class for whose benefit the Mass was thus offered were scarcely represented by a few straggling individuals.

The Fathers of the Council renewed their petition to the Holy See, and His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII., on the 31st of December, 1885, transferred the solemnization of Corpus Christi to the Sunday following the feast, and made the holydays of obligation in all parts of the United States to be thenceforward: The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, Christmas Day, the feast of the Circumcision, Ascension Day, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and the feast of All Saints. (III. Conc. Balt. Plen., pp. cvi., 57.)

Thus, for the first time, a uniform discipline prevails throughout the United States; Louisiana and the dioceses formed from it adopted the feasts of the Circumcision and the Immaculate Conception; New Mexico, California, and Oregon, and the rest of the United States, no longer are bound by the obligation to hear Mass and abstain from servile works on the Epiphany, the Annunciation, and Corpus Christi.

Thus gradually the original scheme of the Church has been swept away by increasing tepidity. The feasts of the Apostles are

The holydays as then appointed are given formally in Acta Dioc. Roffensis, p. 26; Constit. Diocc. Boston, 1868, p. 21.

gone, the many feasts of our Lord are reduced to three, of our Lady to two, and of the Saints the one single festival of All Saints remains.

There was a time when the holydays of the Church were the godsends of the poor toilers for bread; a time when the churches. of the living God were lived in by the poor, to whom they were homes, houses of prayer, galleries of art, incentives to devotion. Time, in the sense of the Church, is a respite, a reprieve given to men to save their souls; time, in the sense of the modern world, is a term when the many are to labor to enrich the few; a term so precious that none of it can be spared for the many to save their souls.

The long line of festivals has been suppressed. Who has gained by it? The French Revolution seized and used all the property of the Church and the nobles. The poor were to be raised from their abject misery. By work and toil they were to acquire competence. After a century of trial the working class in France are desperate anarchists, clamoring again for a seizure of property from those who hold it. Spain seized the Church property, and has its discontented thousands; Italy did the same, and drives her people into exile as immigrants to foreign lands. The gospel of work is now rejected by the poor. They have had too much of it. They clamor for fewer hours of work, for more holydays, for higher wages. The time and money they extort by combinations, have no blessing; both are spent in sensual indulgence. Their families. do not gain by them, but saloon-keepers are enriched.

These extorted holydays given by the nineteenth century do nothing to elevate or improve the masses. As a mere matter of political economy, it may be asked whether the old time Catholic worker, who had twenty religious holydays, and spent much of them in ennobling and piety-inspiring shrines, was not happier in himself, more prosperous in his home, a more valuable element in the body politic, than his modern representative?

A

DESCARTES' POSTULATE OF EXISTENCE.

T the very beginning of philosophical reasoning we are met by the impossibility of finding in a single formal expression any statement that does not beg the question of existence. The basis, in order to satisfy even the skeptic, must evidently not only not beg, through its terms, the question involved, but must not, to the mass of mankind, seem to beg it. The difficulty, if not impossibility, of the task dawns at the first glance, even from the preceding brief remark, made without intention of attempting in that connection to define a criterion such as would form a basis for reasoning. For if we say, as above, " evidently," we directly assert that there is such a thing as conclusive evidence. We thereby assume the existence of a fundamental criterion or of fundamental criteria; for the at least assumed existence of such criterion or criteria is necessary to the formal validity of any evidence whatever, and to the establishment of any position however near or

remote.

The existence of such a criterion or of such criteria was, therefore, begged here in a statement intended solely to introduce the discussion of the question of the possibility of defining in set terms the humanly fundamental fact-existence. It is unavoidable, however, that in the approach to this or any other subject, the question of the existence of such criteria should be begged. Otherwise, we could not reach consideration of any subject at all. It is an unavoidable case of repov porepov. But, having once reached a ὕστερον πρότερον. subject, not fundamental, through a preliminary artifice which has placed us face to face with it, the artifice is not either retained or discarded; it simply lapses, perforce of its having no immediately intimate relation to the subject. Otherwise, if, for example, we demanded formal ratiocinative evidence of existence, the conduct of life would be impossible. For the daily needs of life we must assume existence as proved; not as provable, but as a certainty beyond all formal proof.

That we reach the entrance to many truths through fictions of our own creation and fashioning, it is hardly worth while to pause long in order to demonstrate. John Stuart Mill, in opposition to Whewell, has contended that the definitions and the axioms of geometry are derived, not from intuitions, but from experience; both being, for the purpose for which they are designed, ideally

1

amplified through divestment of non-essentials. A line, for example, which, mathematically, is said to have length without breadth or thickness, is nothing but the line of our experience, having length, breadth, and thickness; but, by a fiction, to the truth of which we formally assent, for the sake of reaching a basis for the discovery of mathematical truth, it is mentally, although not conceivably, divested of characteristics non-essential to the purpose in view. Mill's demonstration regarding axioms, although properly long and elaborate, would be lengthy here, and therefore must be passed by without illustration, which, without the demonstration, would not be comprehensible. Perhaps the most correct statement would be that these conceptions are given in intuition, mediately through experience. It may well be questioned whether they are purely intuitive or purely experiential. To affirm of them that they are mixed in their derivation is, however, merely to say that they are given in a teaching of experience appreciable through the constitution of the mind. Being at once apprehended, they give the impression of being purely intuitive, when, probably, experience is a necessary factor to their determination. Certain it is that not until emergence from the child characteristics of mind, a variable point of time in human development, is there appreciation of what is regarded as their axiomatic truth; which would seem to substantiate the view here expressed.

That there are fundamental criteria upon which the validity of reasoning must rest, is the conviction of the mass of mankind. They find themselves, and see all men, conducting themselves as if in assured possession of criteria for forming judgments. It follows that whatever men may use for the ordinary needs of life must, in reference to their constitution, be based on fundamental criteria that collectively embrace the whole of life. Moreover, it is the conviction of the great majority of that portion of mankind which philosophizes, that there are various criteria, resolvable into one fundamental criterion; that whoever says one criterion, says God. Among these criteria is the generally admitted principle of contradiction, which affirms that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. There are other principles, but it would lead us far, and entirely away from our purpose, to enter upon discussion of them here. The demonstration to be here made relates solely to the assertion that fundamental criteria are formally inexpressible without begging the question; in proof whereof it will be shown that the question of existence itself cannot, without begging it, be formally stated. If it, itself, cannot, without begging the question, be formally stated, it cannot form

1 Chapter V. of J. S. Mill's Logic, Eighth Edition. Harper & Brother, New York City.

other than an assumed basis for the establishment of any question within the confines of existence as at present generally and practically believed to exist.

Even with regard to the principle of contradiction, which to the mass of mankind seems indisputable, the skeptic might not be at a loss for a reply. He might say that the formulation of the principle begs the question of our own existence; for we have not proved that we exist, as the mere unaided, unreasoning sense of existence tells us that we exist. This being true, it would be easy for him to proceed a step further, and say that, if we cannot prove that even we ourselves exist, we cannot know it, and therefore cannot be justified in asserting that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. What shall we think? Only that, as pure negation is the easiest wisdom in the trifles of life, it cannot fail to be the most impregnable in what concerns the very essence of life. But, how should we answer the skeptic? There is no answer derivable from the expression of a single ratiocinative principle. That is what we are about to essay to prove. We are forced, according to our conviction, to admit that the affirmation of any principle of existence begs the question of existence; that no formal expression relating to it can be devised without begging the question of existence. Therefore, if this be true, the most fundamental of all human postulates, whether expressed or implied, begs existence; as, without begging the question of existence, we cannot define it, we cannot base upon it any criterion without equally begging the question. This is not, as already intimated, to assert that existence is necessarily indefinable. Millions of human beings now living, and many more millions who have passed away, have mentally defined it, and have lived in the certainty of its correct definition. Wherein, then, lies the impossibility of defining it in the set terms of a single expression? It lies in the fact that it is, in the intellectual order, beyond any set terms of speech. Speech, even in its highest range, is the medium of the commonplace, compared with thought to be expressed that is the middle. term between God and man. Even the human mind, incomparably superior in conception to its power of expression by speech, is only the portal through which we penetrate to, but not into, the temple wherein is enshrined the mystery of mysteries.

The subject before us, at present, concerns strictly the possibility of making any formal proposition regarding existence that does not either beg, or seem to the mass of mankind to beg, the question involved. We might assume, hypothetically, that a proposition might be framed which does not beg the question, and yet, which would seem to mankind generally to beg it. In that case, the fact of the proposition not begging the question would depend