ng Protestants, and offers solutions verifiable by inspection
of every-day Catholicity and by evidences right at hand. Catholicity
is the true religion, because it alone unites men to God in the
fulness of union, supernatural and integral in inner and outer
life--a union demanded by the most resistless cravings of human
nature: such is the thesis. There can be little doubt that prior to
this book there was nothing like its argument current in English
literature; a short and extremely instructive account by Frederick
Lucas of his conversion from Quakerism is the only exception known to
us, and that but partially resembles it, is quite brief, and has long
since gone out of print.

The _Aspirations of Nature_ deals with intellectual difficulties in
the same manner as the _Questions of the Soul_ does with the moral
ones. The greatest possible emphasis is laid upon the two-fold truth
that man's intellectual nature is infallible in its rightful domain,
and that that domain is too narrow for its own activity. The validity
of human reason as far as it goes, and its failure to go far enough
for man's intellectual needs, are the two theses of the book. They
are well and thoroughly proved; and no one can deny the urgent need
of discussing them: the dignity of human nature and the necessity of
revelation. Like Father Hecker's first book, the _Aspirations of
Nature_ is good for all non-Catholics, because in proving the dignity
of man's reason Protestants are brought face to face with their
fundamental error of total depravity; enough for their case surely.
If they take refuge in the mitigations of modern Protestant beliefs,
they nearly always go to the extreme of asserting the entire
sufficiency of the human intellect, and are here met by the argument
for the necessity of revelation.

An extremely valuable collection of the confessions of heathen and
infidel philosophers as to the insufficiency of reason is found in
this book, as well as a full set of quotations from Protestant
representative authorities on the subject of total depravity. Over
against these the Catholic doctrine of reason and revelation is
brought out clearly. The study of the book would be a valuable
preparation for the exposition of the claims of the Catholic Church
to be the religion of humanity, natural and regenerate--the
intellectual religion.

As might be expected from one who had such an aversion for Calvinism,
the view of human nature taken by the autho