the questions it has asked than on the day when those questions first took an articulate form on the lips of the Ionic philosophers. Nature, the phenomenal or sense-stirring world, has opened her secrets liberally to the ardour of science. Beyond nature-if there be a beyond-all is veiled as thickly as from all time to the aspiring mind. All the elaborate structures of thought by which the mind was promised an ascent into trans-mundane regions have crumbled away. Philosophic agnosticism is the order of the day.

Now, when we ask ourselves the problems with which philosophy commenced its investigations we can quickly come to a conclusion as to whether it is progressive or not. Philosophy sprang from a dissatisfaction with or a want of confidence in religious tradition. Religion purports to have received a message for humanity from the trans-mundane regions to which it is ever turning. The receiving of the message has been put back by each nation into the mists of antiquity, and the majority of the race have ever indolently acquiesced in the assurances of their priests that their tradition was an authentic embodiment of that message. There came a time, however, when men began to question its authenticity and the authority of its preachers, and to make an independent study of the enigma of human life. From the very beginning, as we have seen, these independent speculations were widely at variance with religious teaching. Probably, if religious legends had not already distracted humanity with their fairy tales, the idea of a trans-mundane and spiritual region would never have entered seriously into any philosophical system. As it was, the philosopher was face to face with a universal belief in an immaterial world, and he directed his speculations accordingly. His main object was to transcend the material, whether in his own mind or in the universe at large, and pronounce in favour of monism or dualism. Philosophy has utterly failed in that enterprise. It has made no progress whatever towards the solution of its central problems; what is truth, thought, or consciousness? What is the origin and the purpose of existence, or if there be an origin and a purpose to discover, is the great scheme of things a purely material fabric or purely spiritual, or a combination of the two?

This failure of philosophy to substantiate any of the older dogmatisms, or to invent a new and more permanent one, is bound

to have a profound effect upon religious belief at the present stage of the world. The self-consciousness and critical spirit which were the mark of the cultured few in ancient Greece is now being shared by an infinitely wider circle. Not only the conditions of modern life tend to develop the mind and break its servility to tradition, but there has been so much destruction of traditional notions during the last century that everything venerable (i.e., everything constructed in an ignorant past) has fallen under suspicion. The extension of education and the prolific output of literature have tended to accentuate this critical and inquiring frame of mind. There is less inclination to bow down blindly before traditional legends, either in religion, ethics, or economics. Men are beginning to ask the credentials of their teachers, and to demand proof of the authenticity of their heaven-sent messages. Moreover, the analysis to which their sacred books have been subjected during the last 100 years has proved far from favourable. The supernatural element in them has been gradually watered down, until it has practically disappeared from the Old Testament.

In such circumstances religion naturally turns to philosophy for an independent confirmation of its fundamental assertions-the existence of God and the immateriality of the human soul. It is the popular belief that the Church of Rome loftily disdains such rationalising proceedings, and takes its stand, opposed to reason, on the ground of authority. That is an entire misrepresentation of the Roman position. It is the non-Roman churches who seek to dispense with the aid of philosophy, who patronise the charlatanry of spiritism, who speak of faith as being a higher power and a safer guide than reason, and who would rise to the solution of a rational problem on "extra-rational" considerations. About the middle of the century there arose a school of Roman theologians in France and Belgium who were known as the Traditionalists. They taught that reason was powerless to grapple with these higher problems, and that the solution was to be sought in religious tradition alone. That would seem to the majority of English readers to be an ideal interpretation of the Church's teaching. In point of fact it was suppressed by the Roman authorities with the greatest severity, and pursued to its last and faintest trace.

The truth is that the Church of Rome has always recognised, in theory, the rights of reason in this direction. Indeed, the official teaching of the Church expressly and emphatically lays down that such theses as the existence and personality of God must be established by philosophy alone, without reference to faith or authority. It is the only rational and justifiable course. The churches that suppress the questioning of their adherents by vague declarations of the superiority of faith, or trust to the narcotic influence of a sensual ritualism, have but an ephemeral influence. The common sense of humanity is gradually realising that much has been imposed upon it in the name of tradition, and that it must examine the credentials of its spiritual guides. When that frame of mind has been fully developed and has asserted itself, we shall see the effect of the failure of philosophy to erect a system that would work harmoniously with religious teaching.

J. MCCABE.

SOEUR JEANNE DES ANGES.

THERE is no form of literature so fascinating and so instructive to the student of human nature as auto-biography. The confessions left by Augustine, Bunyan, Cellini, Casanova, Rousseau, can never lose either their interest or their psychological value. Novels become unintelligible, histories need to be re-written, but the intimate record of the soul's experiences is always new.

La Possession de le Mère Jeanne des Anges, Supérieure des Réligieuses Ursulines de Loudun (known in the world as Mlle. de Belcier), cannot be said to stand in the first rank of great autobiographies. Yet it is singularly interesting and instructive. There is perhaps no other document in existence-not even the Life of Saint Theresa-which shows how large and tragic a part in human affairs may be played by hysteria. Since hysteria, in its myriad forms, is just as prevalent in the nineteenth as in the seventeenth century, and plays an equally prominent part in life, it may not be out of place to call the reader's attention to the existence of this auto-biography, discovered a few years ago in the Communal Library at Tours, and admirably edited, under the superintendence of Charcot, by Drs. Legué and Gilles de la Tourette.

Mlle. de Belcier was born in the Chateau of Cozes, in Saintonge, on the 2nd of February, 1602, being the daughter of a great seigneur, Messire Louis Belcier, Baron of Cozes. She was a puny child, ill-developed physically, of bizarre temper, and at the age of ten was sent to be educated at a convent where her aunt was prioress. But here her conduct was so unbearable, and her tastes so ill-regulated, that when she had reached the age of fifteen her aunt sent her home in despair. At home neither good advice nor severe punishment were spared on the rebellious daughter, and growing weary of both at last she resolved to take the veil. The lack of vocation appeared absolute, but no doubt the parents welcomed this caprice as a solution of their difficulties, and sent their

daughter to the Ursulines, who had just established a house at Poitiers. Here the young novice showed somewhat excessive zeal. She was, for instance, attracted to diseased persons, and liked to dress the most repulsive wounds. During her noviciate she lost six of her brothers and sisters, one of them being killed by the English at Rhé, and her parents tried to induce her to return to their desolate home, but in vain, the final vows being pronounced in 1623.

At the same time, however, the religious community in which she lived began to perceive many defects in Jeanne de Belcier's character. She was fantastic, vain, dissembling. But all remonstrances remained without effect; they only served to make Sœur Jeanne think of leaving the convent, and as the convent was poor, and Sœur Jeanne was rich, the sisters endeavoured to reconcile themselves to her caprices. When it was proposed to establish a new Ursuline house at Loudun she succeeded in being nominated one of the eight founders. At Loudun, Soeur Jeanne surprised all her companions; she was submissive, even humble; wholly pre-occupied with the idea of being made superior of the convent. Before long she was successful, and at the age of twenty-five she found herself at the head of a convent of constantly growing importance. Having thus achieved the object of her ambition, she quickly fell into her old habits, threw off all restraint, and gave a free rein to her whims. Her pride and intolerance made the lives of the sisters unbearable, while she spent whole days in the convent parlour enjoying the scandal of the town. No one at Loudun was so well informed as Sœur Jeanne. At that time a priest named Urbain Grandier-the history of whose tragic fate has been recorded in full detail-chiefly occupied the scandal-mongers of Loudun. Proud, handsome, sensual-and giving free rein to his sensuality -he was yet a man of marked intellectual ability, and gifted with persuasive eloquence. Such a especially fascinates and subdues the imagination of women. Jeanne, with her passionate and unwholesome curiosity, could not fail to experience the magic charm of Grandier, and she resolved to find some opportunity of entering into relationship with him.

man

Jeanne herself was not without powers of seduction. She was small, indeed, and her shoulders were deformed-though she