food-supply; or may lie dormant for even lengthened periods of time. Hence it follows, first of all, that a thorough and complete separation should be effected between the sick and the healthy-a separation which, as Simon writes, "so far as the nature of the disease requires, must regard not only the personal presence of the sick, but equally all the various ways, direct and indirect, by which infective matters from that presence may pass into operation on others." Everyone suffering from a contagious or infectious disease should be regarded, to use the words of Cameron, of Glasgow, "as a hot-bed swarming with living organisms which cause and spread the disease. So long as these are confined within the body of the individual, the publicselfishly speaking-need not trouble itself, but when the organism begins to be eliminated from the body, when its spores in millions and hundreds of millions are sent forth by the skin or intestines, then the danger to the community begins." The liberty of one man ends where that of another begins; and therefore, as each case of infectious disease is a public danger, the public, through the proper sanitary authority, should be warned of its danger; so that all due care should be taken against the spreading of infection. Hence, individuals suffering, or recovering, from any such disease, should not be allowed to mix with others, but should be sent to hospital or Convalescent establishments, if they cannot be taken care of at home; and above all, public conveyances, dairies, laundries, lodging-houses, and schools should be looked to, so that they be not means of disseminating disease. In an epidemic the greatest personal, domestic, and general cleanliness should be observed; sewers, cesspools, and the like should particularly be attended to; over-crowding should be avoided; free and thorough ventilation should be secured; and the general health should be maintained by the avoidance of fatigue, privation and excesses. This much sanitation requires, and will not be satisfied with less. If this were done, if the requirements of health were always carefully regarded, then should a different tale be told by the the death-register: which even yet shows that a fifth of all the deaths which take place annually in these countries is due to preventible diseases, for as Pasteur wrote, "it is in the power of man to banish parasitic diseases from the surface of the globe, if, as I am convinced, the doctrine of spontaneous generation is a chimera." MICHAEL F. Cox. WE BROWNSON'S WORKS.1 E have received a copy of the works of the late Dr. Brownson collected and arranged by his son, H. F. Brownson, and such a collection deserves special notice at our hands. Brownson was before the English-speaking world as a publicist for fifty years. During twenty years of that he was groping his way honestly and earnestly to the light; during the remaining thirty years, when his mind was illumined by faith and his soul at rest in the conviction of truth, he did brilliant service to the cause of Catholicity both in America and in these islands. He undoubtedly fell into errors, but, as he himself truly observes, the Church is tolerant of many strange opinions in philosophy and politics. She leaves her children a large realm for free discussion in all things in which "freedom is compatible with the end for which she has been instituted. Her wish. is not to rear a race of slaves but of free and loyal worshippers of God." We are inclined, therefore, to give Brownson all credit for his great services to the Church, and to look with much forbearance on what we consider to be unsound,although not quite heterodox, philosophical principles. Few men travelled over a wider domain-philosophy, politics, ethics, and religion-he discusses them all with a courageous and inquiring, yet withal, a reverent spirit. He was a docile son of the Church, and bowed to her authority; but in the free and ample realm of speculation, he soared aloft on strong and fearless pinions, generally in the sun-light of truth, but sometimes in the mists of error. In the beginning of his career Brownson was in philosophy an eclectic, and in religion a naturalist. It was the result of the principle of private judgment in both cases; for naturalism is a logical outcome of Protestantism, and eclecticism only means that each philosopher should select for himself what he thinks right, and reject what he thinks wrong, in every system. This right of judging for oneself, which implies the right of judging and condemning every body else, was very flattering, and, therefore, very acceptable to a young and able man just let loose from his university studies. The works of Orestes A. Brownson, collected and arranged by Henry F. Brownson. Detroit: Thorndike Nourse. 1882-3. But eclecticism could not satisfy an inquiring mind. He knew too much not to know that his own authority was but a poor foundation for a religious or philosophical system; and he saw so many errors in the other self-constituted teachers of mankind that he soon perceived the necessity of aid and light from above to strengthen and illumine the gloom and weakness of human nature. As he himself emphatically expressed it, "A man cannot lift himself by his own waistbands; " neither can any one else on the same level do it for him. The light and the help must be from the very nature of things-desursum —from above. The man who accepts this principle honestly must, of logical necessity, become a Catholic; and so Brownson, following the kindly light' that led another and a greater mind to the Church, placed himself under the guidance of the late Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, and soon found that light and peace in the City on the Mountain, which he had for so many years vainly sought elsewhere. Although a neophyte in Catholic theology, Brownson, by the advice of Bishop Fitzpatrick, still continued to write articles on philosophy and religion in his Review; for it was felt that what came from him would have much greater weight with non-Catholics than anything spoken or written by those who were born in the bosom of the Church. He certainly dealt very severe blows at Protestantism in America. Rarely attacking it directly, his incidental thrusts were felt to be irresistible. Protestantism, he used to say, is composed of two elements, the negative and positive. In so far as it is positive it holds fast to a portion of the truth, which, however, is in no sense its own, but the inheritance of the Catholic Church. In so far as it is negative, it denies the truth of God on the strength of purely individual opinion, and inasmuch as the individuals are all divided amongst themselves, it follows that Protestantism, as such, in so far as it has anything of its own, is infidel, denies the truth of God, and hence, as history proves, finally resolves itself into Atheism. In his philosophy-and Brownson was before all things a man of philosophic mind-he was an ontologist. It is not easy to ascertain what phase of ontologism Brownson adopted, for he censures Malebranche, openly attacks Gioberti, sneers at the Rosminian ens in genere, and pronounces the Germans to be, as no doubt they are, altogether heterodox ontologists. Yet we think the differ ences, at least in the first three cases, are only accidental, and that the ontologism of Brownson is radically as untenable and as dangerous in its consequences as any of the systems which he reprehends. In his Essay on the Existence of God he asserts" that as a matter of fact every man, in every act of intelligence, in every exercise of the understanding, in every thought, apprehends and asserts that which is God, although he himself may not be distinctly conscious that such is the fact." His whole argument in favour of the existence of God is founded on the fact that the "mind of man has immediate and direct intuition of being," that this being is "real being," and he adds, "it is equally certain that this real being is necessary and eternal being, and therefore God." This is going far enough, it is ontologism pure and simple, the ontologism of Malebranche; but Brownson goes further. He asserts that, the "belief in God is one that, the mind, not furnished with it, could not originate." This opinion, since the Vatican Council and the censure of the Louvain Propositions, in 1866, is one that can no longer be safely held. It must, however, be said that this essay was written in 1852, before the ultimate development of the Traditionalistic Controversy. Brownson accordingly rejects the a posteriori argument for the existence of God as either inconclusive in form or an undue assumption of the thing to be proved. But his reasoning clearly shows that he had need to study more carefully and systematically the Scholastic Logic of which he makes so light. The Scholastics, he says, deny all intuition, that is, direct and immediate cognition, of real and necessary being, and yet they contend that real and necessary being is legitimately inferred from the cognition of contingent existences. They must hold then, he contends, that the conclusion contains more than the premises, which is against the second rule of the Syllogism. It is very manifest from this statement that Brownson confounds the matter of a proposition, with its form, and because the second rule of Syllogisms imperatively requires that no term shall have (ratione forma) greater extension in the conclusion than in the premises; therefore, the existence of infinite being cannot be inferred in the conclusion from the existence of contingent being which is asserted in the 1 Vol. i., page 257. Vol. i., page 268. 4" The Schools of Philosophy," page 284. premises!! But, urges Brownson, the truth of the conclusion is, according to the Scholastics themselves, contained in the truth of the premises; and, therefore, he who has intuition of the premises-that is, of contingent being, has therein also intuition of the conclusion-that is, of the existence of God. Is there no difference, then, between what is contained formally or explicitly, and what is contained virtually in the premises? Do the boys beginning their Euclid who "intue" the axioms of the First Book, "intue" also, by the very fact, the pons asinorum and the 47th proposition? If they did, it would be for them a great blessing, for it would save them much labour and, sometimes, many stripes. Yet the truth of the 47th is virtually contained in the truth of the axioms, but it needs a long chain of demonstration to educe the scientific cognition of the former from the intuitive truth of the latter. In like manner, from the principle of contradiction and the existence of contingent beings we can, by a process of reasoning, educe the existence of God; but it does not, therefore, follow that he who has intuition of the two former truths hath therein direct and immediate intuition of the latter. Brownson may have meant well, but greatly erred on these points, as also when he thought it necessary "to teach our Scholastic Psychologists-St. Thomas and the rest—that to their demonstrative method (of proving the existence of God) they must add tradition or history, and prove to the heterodox that true philosophy can be found only where the primitive tradition and the unity and integrity of language have been infallibly preserved, therefore only in the Catholic Society or Church." In so far as this proposition implies that the knowledge of one God cannot be obtained with certainty from created things, by the light of reason, it is now contrary to the defined doctrine of the Catholic Church. And in so far as it implies that this knowledge is not scientia obtainable by a posteriori reasoning from the existence and wonderful order of the created universe, without any need of primitive tradition, such statement is at least erroneous and no longer tenable by Catholics. For although the Council used the word cognosci, the medium of knowledge is declared to be per ea quæ facta sunt, and elsewhere e rebus creatis, which can 766 "Si quis dixerit Deum unum et verum Creatorem et Dominum nostrum, per ea quæ facta sunt, naturali rationis humanæ lumine certo cognosci non posse: anathema sit." Can. II., No. 1, Concil. Vat. |