THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.

PRIOR to the twelfth hegira all the good and evil in the world had been attributed to four causes, Material (good), Formal (good), Efficient (bad), Final (very bad), first formulated by the great Stagirite. ???en ???thre came a new man, who said that there were not enough, and added a fifth, the Lost Cause (worst of all). This man was St. Behoene, a celebrated physicist (who flourished in the time of Abelard and Heloise), canonized on account of his broad charity for all who held opinions different from his own. His bones now rest quietly in the little Monastery of Beck, a place still famous for the piety and erudition of the occupants.

A departure from the Stagirite once allowed, there was no end of change and emendation. The next innovator was Politico, an Italian. This philosopher was an Animist, that is to say, he was full of life. He first introduced the name of the Regulative Faculty. By Anaxagoras, the same thing was called ???, Reason. But aside from being a vague and ambiguous term, Politico, the acutest of his contemporaries, saw that calling this Faculty Reason involved a contradiction of ter???, since Reason could scarcely ever be said to have any influence over its action. Hence he appropriately dubbed it the Regulative Faculty.

In the course of time, the Regulative Faculty was subdivided into the Discursive, Elaborative, and Comparative. What was the special function of all these, and who invented the nomenclature, is not clearly known. About the Discursive only is there no doubt. The originator was Paleontologus. This man, as his name denotes, was a Greek. He came to England, and adopted it as his paternal land, but could never master the language. There was one word which offered a special difficulty. He could never pronounce Niagara, like other people, but called it to the last Ni-a-ga-ra. However, he is best known as the inventor and representative of the Discursive Faculty, and used often to verify the verses,

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

There is a rapture on the lonely shore," -

on Chelsea Beach, for example.

Putting together the Stagirite, the Saint, and Politico, we arrive at the following process and result. The Material Cause is the stuff of which the paper is made, and the Formal Cause is the paper-mill. So far we have kept in the region of pure optimism. "And now here comes" the trouble. The Efficient Cause is the one who makes out the examination-paper, and the Final Cause is the intention in his mind, a priori, to condition the examined, while the condition itself is the Lost Cause, but does not take effect until it receives the stamp of the Regulative Faculty.

If this exposition of a most difficult subject brings condolence to any against whom all these causes have worked, the 'writer will feel amply rewarded.