their apparent deficiency is their common failure to agree with the detailed facts of history. All the while the need of valid theory grows daily greater. The very progress in historical research during the last twenty-five years has rendered specialization a necessity both for teachers and students; only a few years within a restricted area can be effectively portrayed by any one man, and without some general theory to be our guiding star we must lose our way and cannot reach a fit estimate even of the narrow time and place which are the special object of our study. We must have first a framework into which our portion may be fitted, a totality of which it may be reckoned a part.

"But who will provide a guiding principle in harmony with history and statistics? Who can find order among materials so complicated and obscure? Who can hope to succeed where so many have failed, and to be borne safely through this rugged pass already white with the bones of a thousand theories?

"Perhaps, indeed, it may be asked what is the need after all of any historical theory? Cannot we suffer historians without prejudgment to pursue their narrative in peace and the facts to speak for themselves? But facts themselves are dumb, and a historian is no purveyor of an indiscriminate collection of facts, is no unscientific chronicler, but precisely one whose narrative is the fruit of a process of reasoning. For out of the vast mass of recorded facts, a confused and unintelligible heap, he must select what is pertinent, relevant, important, characteristic. Even as a skilled lawyer extracts from a mass of evidence what is pertinent to the question at issue, so the historian must pass his materials through a series of sieves of increasing fineness before they are ready for history; he must know what special facts are to be searched for, must grasp what is worth remembering, discern amid a crowd of trifles the leading features of the society of which he writes, show order and drift amid the maze of facts, and among those that deserve any mention determine their proper place and relative importance.

"But to do this he must have something previous to his observation, some previously established general propositions, some theoretical anticipations, some criterion to judge what is relevant or irrelevant, what is characteristic or merely exceptional, what is of vital or little importance; and any simple inductive process is triply confused in the case of historical science by the multiplicity of causes, by their complicated interaction, by the frequent loss certain or suspected of many pertinent facts that have dropped from the historical record. And the example of serious historians shows that it is no mere accumulation of facts taken at random nor a blind induction which guides them and leads them to such contra

dictory results, but rather for each historian his own implicit or explicit assumptions, tacit understandings, an impalpable notion of reasonableness, critical feeling, personal conceptions and historical tact, that determine his choice of facts and the issue of his argu

ment.

"A theory therefore is needed beforehand; no gazing at facts will itself provide one. Before we enter the labyrinth we must have a clue and a lamp before we enter the forest of obscurity. Antecedent to any history we need a philosophy of history for the selection, the adjustment, the appreciation, the limitation of manifold material. Unity is before and above all number; the whole must precede the parts, and in order to have possession of truth at all we must have the whole truth,' and if we have not a true view we must make for ourselves a false one, as every day can be seen in the extravagances of undisciplined talent and the narrowness of complacent ignorance. As of knowledge in general, so of historical knowledge in particular, there must be some architectonic science that is the arbiter of the claims and place of the manifold specialists. If history is not to be aimless and unprofitable, we must in some way map out the universe, know the relative disposition of things and see in history a various and complicated drama with interacting parts and grand significance. 'You must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you; and the more you have of it the greater will be the load.' Moreover, to history as to all knowledge applies the principle that nearly every statement may be in a sense true and yet may be perverted and made false because it is not the whole truth; and that what is true under one aspect only is therefore altogether insufficient. The political exhortation to think imperially can be transferred with greater precision and certainty to the scientific field. A high protecting power, a sovereign science maps out the territory of each subordinate science, 'acts as umpire between truth and truth and assigns all to their due order of precedence.' If, then, we are not to confess our failure and idly acquiesce in a barren skepticism, we need an imperial theory of history that shall serve as a fruitful hypothesis, and that the severest test of ascertained fact shall not be able to dissolve."

The author might have added that another very strong argument in favor of a true and standard philosophy of history to which all historians should conform is the necessity of preventing each historian, large and small, important and unimportant, competent and incompetent, from playing the philosopher. Of history it may with special truth be said: there are many chroniclers, but few philosophers. The author before us should not go astray, because he has chosen the master guide, John Henry Newman. In his preface he says:

"Let this preface serve me to make profession of following as my guide and teacher the great master of the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman, who, looking before and after, foresaw the intellectual problems of the future, and whose work, though part was concerned with transient controversies and peculiar opinions of his own time, was mainly concerned with lasting needs and chronic infirmities of our nature-Newman, who by some even now is not yet understood, and for many years in time past was covered by a cloud of misunderstanding, the inevitable penalty of intellectual preëminence.

"To be linked even in some slight way to so great a name is not an unworthy ambition; or to join, however imperfectly, in the task of sifting and sorting his work, leaving aside those portions that the fashions of controversy or the progress of historical study have rendered obsolete, making more accessible those portions that are for all time, and in this particular volume giving to the logic and history of Newman an economic sociological setting."

GESCHICHTE DER PAEPSTE SEIT DEM AUSGANG DES MITTELALTERS. Von Ludwig Pastor. Vol IV., Part I. Herder: Freiburg and St. Louis. Price, $2.85 net.

The long-awaited fourth volume of "Pastor's History of the Popes" has finally made its appearance; or, to speak more accurately, has begun to appear. We have the first half of it, covering the reign of Leo X., probably the most disastrous in the history of the Papacy. Personally the tenth Leo had little influence upon the course of events and possibly less appreciation of their importance. His official name was a quaint misnomer; he was anything but a lion. Like Charles I. of England or Louis XVI. of France, he was amiable and mild in character at a time when these qualities spelt weakness. Pastor regrets that at so critical a period a Hildebrand was not seated in the Chair of St. Peter. It may be questioned if even a Hildebrand could have stemmed the rising tide of irreligion which was sweeping over Europe; but at least he would have made a strong and determined effort to do so. Leo and his nephew, Clement VII., were content with the maintenance of a passive attitude and incurred the censure of being more solicitous for the advancement of Medicean interests than for the defense of the cause of Christ. It cannot surprise us that Dr. Pastor, after his exhaustive study of Julius II., should feel scant enthusiasm in tracing the story of Leo X., who completely lacked the great qualities

of his predecessor. He draws attention to the fact that it was Julius rather than Leo who was the true protector, instigator and Maecenas of art and artists, and that for centuries Leo X. has been credited with undue importance in the field that has been considered Leonine by excellence. His incompetence and extravagance in matters of finance made it utterly impossible for him to carry out any of the gigantic plans originated by Julius II. His chief merit in the opinion of Dr. Pastor is the tenacity with which he defended Raphael against that immortal artist's rivals and maligners.

One-sixth of the present volume (or about one hundred pages) is occupied with the story of the rise and condemnation of Lutheranism. Although the learned author has little new to say on a subject worn threadbare, what he says is well said, and it would be difficult. to find the painful topic treated so well elsewhere. What chiefly distinguishes Dr. Pastor's account from most others is that he views the scene from the standpoint of Rome and gives a clear and consistent narrative of the course and progress of the ecclesiastical trial of the heresiarch. During Leo's reign Lutheranism remained the theological heresy with which it began; it had not yet developed into a political revolution.

We have to admire the judiciousness of the author's perspective. Six hundred pages were quite sufficient for his purpose of presenting a full and impartial statement of the occurrences during a reign of eight years. It is annoying to have to follow the Pontiff in his petty intrigues of Italian politics or on his periodical hunting trips, at a time when so many vast interests were at stake, but the historian's duty is to narrate facts, not create them. Now that the last trace of a French Concordat has disappeared, it is interesting to study once more the details of the first of them, that which was concluded by Leo X. and Francis I. at Bologna. The Pontiff has been fiercely criticized for his generosity in handing over nearly all the rights of the French Church to the crown; but how few reflect that, had he acted otherwise, France might have been lost to the Church as well as England or Germany. In point of character, or lack of character, there was little to choose between Francis I. and Henry VIII. Francis failed to carry out his repeated threats of secession, mainly because, through the terms of the Concordat of Bologna, he was virtually head of the French Church. He could not hope to gain by seceding from the unity of Christendom.

The most notable ecclesiastical event in Leo's Pontificate was the Fifth Lateran Council, convened by Julius II. and brought to a close by Leo in the very opening year of the Lutheran Reformation. Many salutary decrees were enacted, but the sad condition of affairs impeded their effective execution.

Dr. Pastor's closing sentence is severe, but hard to gainsay: "Although in many points the last word concerning the Medici Pope has not yet been spoken, yet in the present state of research we are compelled to admit that his Pontificate, so extravagantly lauded by humanists and poets and illumined by the rays of Raphael's art, through an unlimited devotion to worldly tendencies and to new and dazzling forms of culture, as well as through the subordinate place allotted to spiritual interests, was disastrous to the Papal Chair." This is a severe verdict to pass upon a man whose countenance wore a perennial smile and who was equally loath to inflict or suffer pain.

THE LIFE OF COUNT MOORE.

Compiled from materials supplied by his family by Albert Barry, C. S. S. R. 8vo.+xiii., pp. 301. M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., Dublin.

"So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." "Woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh."

In these two passages our Divine Lord teaches us the importance and necessity of good example. Hence the zeal of the Church at all times in placing before her children the lives of her saints. And hence the zeal of the world in holding up before men for their imitation the lives of sinners. Not in the guise of sinners-the world is too shrewd for that, but in the disguise of saints. To be convinced of this we need but glance at the novel and play of the day, or cast our eye over the list of popular biographies. The men and women who figure in fiction and the drama at the present time have not only not attained the Christian standard of perfection, but they do not even strive for it; in many instances they ignore it, and sometimes openly sneer at it and attack it.

We have indeed in the field of biography, the lives of statesmen, financiers, manufacturers, discoverers, inventors, but very few lives of Christian gentlemen. How seldom do we read of a man who is successful in business or politics, and who is noted for humility, purity and charity. How rarely do we meet a wealthy man who is poor in spirit and who is filled with the spirit of mortification. We find these virtues in canonized saints and in religious who devote their whole lives to God's service, but they are so rare outside of these two classes that we have ceased to look for them. And yet there are uncanonized saints and unvowed servants of God in the world-men and women who keep before their eyes the texts at the beginning of this notice.