origin and prospects of the movement, and especially into its probable effects upon the religious and social destinies of the Empire. He makes it plain by a few sensible observations, that the silly anticipations in which certain Protestant journals had begun to triumph, anticipations of the christianizing or rather protestantizing tendencies of the insurgents and their leader, the adventurer, Tien-te, are utterly without foundation. He shows that, although in the proclamations they have paraded as a watchword the unity of God, and the abominations of idolatry, and have partially dressed up their fanatical manifestos in the phraseology of a sort of bastard biblicism, yet there is not a shred of Christian faith in their entire system of politico-religious belief. The semi-Christian notions which it embodies (but which are overlaid with the grossest superstition and blasphemy), Père Huc, with great appearance of probability, attributes, not to the diffusion of the Bible in later years by the agents of Protestantism, but partly to the Mussulman element which has been largely discernible in the movement, partly to the Christian books which have been compiled by the Catholic missionaries, and have been for centuries in circulation among the Chinese population, and of the general familiarity of the Chinese with which his own narrative supplies frequent and most convincing evidence.

As to the probable results of the insurrection he does not venture upon a decided prediction. But he is far from sanguine of any notable direct and immediate benefit to Christianity. On the contrary, he is rather disposed to look gloomily upon the future peace of the Church in China, no matter what may be the issue of the present contest. The Christians, he shrewdly observes, who have not taken any side in this contest, can hardly hope for favour with either of the parties in the event of its proving the victor. From the insurgents they have already experienced the most cruel persecution; probably enough stimulated by resentment at their holding back from the struggle, notwithstanding the appeal to their religious sympathies (evidently intended as such), contained in the first proclamations of the insurgent chief. With the present government, on the contrary, already sufficiently jealous, this very appeal of the insurgents will be an occasion of further jealousy and hostility against the Christians; nor is it by any means unlikely that their first success against

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the rebels, may, especially in the remoter provinces, be inaugurated in the blood of the unhappy and defenceless Christians of the interior.

Nevertheless, even in the terrible contingency which he is thus forced to contemplate, as the result of the success of either of the two contending parties, Père Huc is not without his consolation. The great obstacle to the progress of Christianity in his opinion is the withering spirit of scepticism, indifference, and materialism with which the whole mind of China is infected. Hardly any possible new political combination can arise from which some improvement in this particular upon the existing stagnation of all religious feeling, and all ennobling or elevating sentiment, may not be anticipated. And it is through this intellectual inclination, and this alone, that he looks to the first great advance of Christian principles in China.

ART. VII.-Descartes on Method. Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox; London Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 1852.

THIS

HIS is an ably-executed translation of Descartes' Discourse on Method. It affords us an opportunity of offering some remarks on a subject which has recently excited a good deal of interest among students of philosophy, and which to Catholic philosophers, especially, must be of the last importance.

The independence and supremacy of individual reason in philosophical matters forms a leading, we may say, indeed, the fundamental tenet of Descartes' system. It cannot be doubted that his speculations tended more than those of any man who had preceded, or who has followed him to effect a divorce between theology and metaphysical science, and a complete exclusion of the authority of the Church from the domain of philosophy. For bringing about this separation, it has long been fashionable to extol Descartes, and, among the enemies of religion

particularly, this is represented as the grandest achievement of his genius, the triumph of his life. The soundness, however, of a theory which, even in philosophical matters, makes individual reason altogether independent and supreme-competent of itself to direct man in the most arduous pursuit of knowledge, and to preserve him from error amid speculations as practically important to him as they are sublime and abstruse in themselves, has often been questioned; and, in our own time especially, a general conviction seems to prevail that it is at least extremely dangerous to attempt a solution of those problems on which Descartes so loved to speculate, without keeping our eyes steadily fixed upon the light of revealed truth, and our ears open to the teaching of the Church. It is worth while to examine the grounds of this conviction, and see to what extent the danger apprehended actually exists.

Whatever may be our opinion as to the wisdom or folly evinced in what are called philosophical pursuits, it is certain that they will always continue to engage attention, and to exercise an influence upon religion and social life. According to the peculiar turn of our mind, we may feel disposed to laugh at such pursuits, or we may have a predilection for them. One man will hold that they have not been too magnificently extolled by Cicero or Seneca; another that they are not too keenly ridiculed in Hudibras. But, at all events, no matter what may be our estimate of them, they will still be carried on. They are as old as thought itself; through all recorded time they have occupied the greatest intellects in the most polished nations, and unto the end men will not cease to inquire concerning the nature and attributes of the Almighty,concerning the nature and destiny of the soul,-concerning good and evil-what is right and what is wrong.

Can such inquiries be safely conducted so as not to result in error, if we altogether put aside revealed truth, never looking to it or appealing to it for suggestion or correction, or help of any kind? Is the natural light of reason alone sufficient to guide us in the solution of such momentous questions without being aided by a single ray from any higher or more resplendent source. It is alleged as the chief glory of Descartes to have proclaimed that it is sufficient, and that philosophy can and ought to be utterly independent of revelation. Hence, those who hate.

the authority of the Church delight to talk of him as a great deliverer, who was the first to succeed in breaking the theological fetters which had so long hung upon the intellect, and in awakening reason to a consciousness of its inherent strength and dignity. His countryman Cousin has exhausted eulogy in magnifying him as the "father of modern philosophy," "the emancipator who established modern freedom of thought," the leader who guided Europe from out of the house of bondage, &c. Though the disregard for revealed truth and the authority of the Church, which is a characteristic of modern speculation, may be and undoubtedly is traceable to the writings of Descartes, it would be singularly unjust to suppose that Descartes himself was not always careful to consult the Church, and submit to her direction. In the first place, he was scrupulously cautious that no theory which he propounded as a philosopher, should prejudice his faith as a Catholic. No one could have more emphatically expressed his conviction that the dogmatic teaching of the Church should be received with simple, childlike, unquestioning deference. In controversies connected with revealed doctrine, he admitted that authority was, indeed, supreme; and that there was no appeal from its infallible decisions. In all questions of this kind, he acknowledged but one judge, one witness, one sovereign mistress, one sole arbiter and rule of truth, namely, the Catholic Church. But, again, even in reference to philosophical matters, the whole life of this illustrious man (whatever may be said of the tendency of his theories) was a noble touching example of the respect due to authority, and of the influence which it is entitled to exercise over the most transcendent intellect. One of the wonderful thinkers of our own day has condescended to pity Descartes for the marked inconsistency between his principles and practice in this respect. He accuses him of timidity, vacillation, an inglorious shrinking from consequences, and so on; because, forsooth, after having written the Discourse on Method, and the Meditations,-after having sounded the silver trumpet of revolt from authority, and proclaimed the all-sufficiency and independence of reason, he himself still continued to look up trustfully to the Church, as a child to its mother, again and again professing his readiness to submit all to her revision. "Nihil affirmo, sed hæc omnia Ecclesiæ Catholicæ auctoritate submitto." Nor can it

be disputed, that in determining the relation between authority and reason in philosophical matters, the example of Descartes was entirely at variance with his principles. As far as he was personally concerned, he was prepared to yield in all things to the Church; his proudest aim was to make his own conclusions square with her doctrine, and to exhibit natural reason, like the sybil, as confirming and illustrating, in its way, some portions of revealed truth. But the tendency of his speculations was widely different. The most signal result of the system which bears his name, was to accomplish a divorce between philosophy and authority. If men now venture, in propounding theories concerning the nature of God, and the destiny of the human soul, to ignore revelation, they allege that it was Descartes who taught them. If they proudly boast that in the solution of such questions it would be weakness to look for any other guide than individual reason, they say that the boast has been warranted by his principles. It was he, they tell us, who, in modern times, severed the ancient alliance between the Church and the schools of philosophy. They had long been united, as by a union of parent and child. Reason seemed conscious of its own waywardness and infirmity, and, accordingly, it ever appealed to the Church for help in its difficulties, for counsel in its doubts. Under the shadow of her wings it took refuge, as if there alone it could be safe from the arrow that fleeth by day, and from the business walking in darkness. But Descartes, we hear, came and effected in philosophical matters a change analogous to that which Luther brought about in reference to revealed truth. One taught that every man may construct for himself a system of faith, independently of the living authority of the Church; the other, that a man may, at least, construct a system of philosophy concerning God, the soul, moral duty, independently of revelation. Before proceeding further, we have one or two words to say on the subject of this parallel (which is a rather favourite one) between the German heresiarch, and the French philosopher.

Whether in the discussion of philosophical questions, even of those which relate to the nature of God, and the force and character of moral obligations, reason does or does not stand in need of authority, is not a matter of faith. Nor could the solution of the question, one way or the other, materially influence the controversy that