coming and going in those days. Now, a great difficulty presented itself to a monk thus bound to even an abridged office when journeying to and fro, or to a secular priest of slender means reciting it privately. The various tomes used in choir-lectionaries, antiphonaries, etc.-were by no means portable for the one, and were often quite too expensive for the resources of the other. The former required something portable, the latter something cheap. Moreover, every priest was supposed to know the Psalter by heart. Usage had so familiarised them with the antiphons and versicles that a word was sufficient to suggest the entire text. The circumstances in each case might easily justify a considerable abridgment of the lessons. By excluding the unnecessary, then, a small volume, at very moderate cost, might be made to contain sufficient for the private recitation of the office. Accordingly, as early as the eleventh century, we find mention of various breviaria seu epitomata fully answering to these demands.

The abridgment in such an office, it may be seen, was chiefly attained by curtailing the lessons. It was not long till the monks in chcir adopted the new and tempting method. The Friars Minors obtained the sanction of Gregory IX. for using a breviary compiled on similar lines as regarded the lectionary. Nicholas III., in turn, adopted this Franciscan breviary in the Curia, and formally prohibited the use of any other. This took place about the year 1280. The grand old Roman office was at length abolished even at Rome itself. The tomes which had so long stood on the monastic legile, witnesses of a better time, were now ruthlessly expelled by Papal decree, and the beggarly makeshift of the Friars Minors was placed in their stead. This latter was to hold possession for nearly three hundred years.

The new office of the Roman Court, as it is called, differed little in its main outlines from that which we find in Breviaries of to-day. But it marked a great fall from the grand simplicity of the ancient Roman office. The ferial was gradually supplanted by the introduction of sanctoral feasts; and the office of the day was overburthened by the

almost daily recital of the office of the Blessed Virgin, or of the Dead, by the Suffragia of the Saints, or by Penitential Psalms. Rubrics were much complicated, the volumes were without indexes or pagination. The result of all this was to render the recitation of the hours tedious and irksome. It is questionable whether in the event the indolent could congratulate themselves on the change from the venerable Roman office.

It was impossible that Christendom could rest satisfied with this new and inferior product. The need of extensive improvement was seen even from the first, and various. attempts were doubtless made to remedy the more glaring defects. A misguided effort for reform afterwards issued in the ill-starred Breviary of the Holy Cross. The Popes of the sixteenth century would restore this part of the liturgy to something of its ancient splendour. Paul IV. and Pius IV. put energetic hands to the work. The Fathers of the Council of Trent for a time took up the task, which was in turn handed back by the Council to the Roman Pontiff. In 1568, Pius V. issued the reformed edition preceded by the Bull with which we are all familiar. The good Pope, highly satisfied with the work, wished it to be forever fixed and immutable. Like another St. John, he wrote these words, which we read in his Bull: Statuentes [nos] Breviarium ipsum nullo umquam tempore vel totum vel ex parte mutandum vel ei aliquid addendum vel omnino detrahendum esse.' Yet we know that both Clement VIII., and Urban VIII., revised the book afresh, adding and subtracting as seemed fit. Nor did they attain finality in the matter. For the last half dozen years of his brilliant pontificate Benedict XIV. devoted his best energies towards the self-same work of reform. It was talked of under Pius VI. and Pius IX. It was amongst the Agenda of the Vatican Council. Finally, Leo XIII., of happy and glorious memory, appointed a commission of five, which is still, I believe, engaged at Rome upon the revision of the Lessons.

J. HASSAN, C,C,

6

REASON'S REAL DATA IN REGARD TO DIVINE EXISTENCE AND THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS

TH

HESE 'real data' of reason, regarded as reflection's principles for thought's processus to its term, I have said I hold to be 'objective judgments' at once synthetic' and 'a priori: synthetic as having predicates not contained in their subjects; yet to be called a priori' as affirming self-evidently essential truths and, on that account, to be taken as the dialectic principles of thought's self-evidence for its supreme conclusion-the existence of the Essential One, the Real-Ideal whereto as to its term every spirit aspires.' See the repor of my paper read at the Fribourg meeting of the 'International Scientific Congress of Catholics,' and in part translated in the I. E. RECORD for March, 1898.

In my paper for the last meeting of this Congress, that held at Munich, I said :

I hold these data to be thus judgments such that their truth, naturally presented to (so directly cognised by) every thinking soul as real (hence said to be synthetic), may immediately be recognised as essential or absolutely necessary (hence to be called a priori) seeing that the predicate in each case represents what viewed in general (regardé en général) could not be conceived as caused, and, therefore, could never have commenced and could never cease.

Such judgments, I noted, should be called a priori' even in the received sense of that term for immediately formed judgments, as, in each case, affirming the subject to be so and so by reason of the self-evidently absolute impossibility of the opposite.

Here is the series of them as I then gave it, 'in its entirety, in the ascending order of actuality's perfections :' 1. Something in general exists, actually is, or, is actual ; 2.

Something existing or actual is substantial, or, there is a substance; 3. Something substantial subsists, or there is an individual; 4. An individual acts in the way that is natural thereto, or, there is one naturally acting; 5. An agent in the nature of things lives, or, there is a living being; 6. A living being thinks or there is one thinking; 7. A thinking being loves, or there is some one loving-willing well-acting as being of good-will.

These data I held (in reply to an objector) solely regarded as real should all be called 'synthetic' judgments or propositions or expressions of truth; and solely as reason's data should all be named ' a priori.'

Concluding the paper, I said :

Now, in order to give a concrete, striking, practical, and, as freed from technical terms, universally intelligible, form to what I take to be the root of the question, this is the problem I propose Ought one say (as is held by so many Theists at the present time) in the order of reflection, I posit as principle the existence of God; that is to say, I see, if only in the way of dialectic intuition, or, I believe quite naturally, or, I take for philosophical postulate after the manner of a scientific hypothesis to be subsequently verified by its results-in a word I suppose the existence of a Being existing of absolute necessity; therefore, by way of deduction (through the principal of identity) I infer the absolute necessity of existence in general? Or rather should it not be said: I see the absolute necessity of existence in general; therefore, by way of induction not ideal but real, by way of objective inference, or, it may be said of rational elevation (through the principle of sufficient reason), I infer the existence of One that exists of absolute necessity? In short, ought one to say I see or suppose there is a Being that exists necessarily, thence I infer that existence is necessary? Or rather ought it not be said I see that existence is necessary, thence, I infer there is a Being that exists necessarily (that there exists a Necessary Being)? The same problem may be presented in the same way, with regard to substance, subsistence, natural action, life, intelligence, and good-will's act with all which that as love imports of liberty and of rectitude or law-observance in the universal order. Throughout, it will be seen, the 'root' of the question is touching our mode of rational evidence for the objective necessity of perfection such as we know it, such as we naturally desire it, from self-assured existence to everlasting love. And precisely there I note in conclusion shows what all points to as the philosophical problem of problems, especially

between eastern and western thought, in the great century now opening before us.

Since the publication of these words,' friends at home and abroad have frequently asked me why I let the matter rest there, why I never undertook to discuss it, why I never even gave my own views as to the proper answer to be given to the question-according to myself, most important dialectical question—which I there proposed for discussion? Well, in the first place, I meant to have it discussed at the next meeting of the Congress, which meeting has not as yet taken place. Then, I have discussed it where it is my duty to do so in class. Moreover, my view of the whole was sufficiently evident from the position I had taken up in regard to what I said I considered to be the 'root' of the general question. Finally, and this I now principally wish to accentuate, my view as to the proper solution of the problem I proposed was expressed with sufficient distinctness, though indirectly, towards the conclusion of the paper which I read at the very first meeting of the Congress, its first meeting in Paris. I said :

Those who have to deal with such questions, if only in the way of methodic doubt, at first experience some difficulty in seizing their real import, in even perceiving the possibility of human reason's self-presenting them distinctly in thought. But let us reflect a little; let us suppose, as we may well do, that all human thinking on earth should cease, that even all terrestrial life here should come to an end. Let us for the moment with some scientists admit that the earth, continuing to turn around the sun as it is doing, will infallibly end by rushing into it. Then mind may well ask: That having happened, might there be no more thought, no more life even left anywhere actually being? And what about act itself? At the present time almost all non-Christian philosophers confound movement (or motion) and act ; now, we can easily conceive that all movement should cease; the difficulty is to conceive of its lasting for Well, if movement (or motion) in general should cease, according to those philosophers there would no longer be act :

ever.

'Given at page 219 in the Report: Atken des Funften Internationalen Kongresses Katholischer Gelehrten zu München, and translated in the last number of All Hallows Annual.