by a soporific principle contained in the opium. The modern | Comte's series or hierarchy is arranged as follows:-(1) physiologist knows that he cannot account for it at all. Mathematics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics) He can simply observe, analyze, and experiment upon the (2) Astronomy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology phenomena attending the action of the drug, and classify it (6) Sociology. Each of the members of this series is one with other agents analogous in character."-(Dr. Bridges.) degree more special than the member before it, and deThe first and greatest aim of the Positive Philosophy is pends upon the facts of all the members preceding it, and to advance the study of society into the third of the three cannot be fully understood without them. It follows that stages, to remove social phenomena from the sphere of the crowning science of the hierarchy, dealing with the theological and metaphysical conceptions, and to introduce phenomena of human society, will remain longest under among them the same scientific observation of their laws the influence of theological dogmas and abstract figments, which has given us physics, chemistry, physiology. Social and will be the last to pass into the positive stage. You physics will consist of the conditions and relations of the cannot discover the relations of the facts of human society facts of society, and will have two departments,-one, stat- without reference to the conditions of animal life; you ical, containing the laws of order; the other dynamical, cannot understand the conditions of animal life without containing the laws of progress. While men's minds were the laws of chemistry; and so with the rest. in the theological state, political events, for example, were explained by the will of the gods, and political authority based on divine right. In the metaphysical state of mind, then, to retain our instance, political authority was based on the sovereignty of the people, and social facts were explained by the figment of a falling away from a state of nature. When the positive method has been finally extended to society, as it has been to chemistry and physiology, these social facts will be resolved, as their ultimate analysis, into relations with one another, and instead of seeking causes in the old sense of the word, men will only examine the conditions of social existence. When that stage has been reached, not merely the greater part, but the whole, of our knowledge will be impressed with one character, the character, namely, of positivity or scientificalness; and all our conceptions in every part of knowledge will be thoroughly homogeneous. The gains of such a change are enormous. The new philosophical unity will now in its turn regenerate all the elements that went to its own formation. The mind will pursue knowledge without the wasteful jar and friction of conflicting methods and mutually hostile conceptions; education will be regenerated; and society will reorganize itself on the only possible solid base-a homogeneous philosophy.

Classification of

The Positive Philosophy has another object besides the demonstration of the necessity and propriety of a science of society. This object is sciences. to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk, is to give to science the ensemble or spirit of generality hitherto confined to philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigor and solidity of science. Comte's special object is a study of social physics, a science that before his advent was still to be formed; his second object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive sciences already formed, so that we may know both what system of inquiry to follow in our new science, and also where the new science will stand in relation to other knowledge.

concern.

The first step in this direction is to arrange scientific method and positive knowledge in order, and this brings us to another cardinal element in the Comtist system, the classification of the sciences. In the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between speculative and practical knowledge. With the latter we have no Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract and concrete. The former is concerned with the laws that regulate phenomena in all conceivable cases; the latter is concerned with the application of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or beings; abstract science to events. The former is particular or descriptive; the latter is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract science, but zoology is concrete. Chémistry is abstract, mineralogy is concrete. It is the method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that the Positive Philosophy has to reorganize in a great whole.

Comte's principle of classification is that the dependence and order of scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as has been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the phenomena and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them. The more particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and more general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science will begin with those attributes of objects which are most general, and pass on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater complexity. Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the sciences that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it is itself constituted. VOL. VI-248

This arrangement of the sciences, and the The double Law of the Three States, are together explan- key of atory of the course of human thought and Positive knowledge. They are thus the double key of Phil Comte's systematization of the philosophy of osophy. all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his analysis of social evolution, which is the base of sociology. Each science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these partial philosophies produces the gen eral Positive Philosophy. "Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success; not one had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organized would naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the scientific method to all inquiries, but no one had seen how this was to be effected.... The Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy, not as a collection of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is the organization of existing elements. Its very principle implies the absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved; while incorporating their results it extended their methods. .. What tradition brought was the results; what Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of the Positive Philosophy. That he had every right to such a title is demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and the philosophy which co-ordinated the truths and methods of these sciences into a doctrine."-(G. H. Lewes.)

tion.

We may interrupt our short exposition here Criticism & to remark that Comte's classification of the on Comte's sciences has been subjected to a vigorous crit classificaicism by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Spencer's two chief points are these:-(1) He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing specialty. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence; no true filiation exists; no science develops itself in isolation; no one is independent, either logically or historically. M. Littré, by far the most eminent of the scientific followers of Comte, concedes a certain force to Mr. Spencer's objections, and makes certain secondary modifications in the hierarchy in consequence, while still cherishing his faith in the Comtist theory of the sciences. Mr. Mill, while admitting the objections as good, if Comte's arrangement pretended to be the only one possible, still holds that arrangement as tenable for the purpose with which it was devised. Mr. Lewes asserts against Mr. Spencer that the arrangement in a series is necessary, on grounds similar to those which require that the various truths constituting a science should be systematically co-ordinated, although in nature the phenomena are intermingled.

The first three volumes of the Positive Philosophy contain an exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that precede sociology in the hierarchy. Their value has usually been placed very low by the special followers of the sciences concerned; they say that the knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too confidently taken for final. The Comtist replies that the task is philosophic, and is not to be judged by the minute accuracies of science. In these three volumes Comte took the sciences roughly as he found them. His eminence as a man of science must be measured by his only original work in that department,-the construction, namely, of the new science of society. This work is accomplished in the last three volumes of the Positive Philosophy, and the

Priest of 11umanity; and, second, The Subjective Synthesis (1856), which is the first and only volume of a work upon mathematics announced at the end of the Positive Philosophy. The system for which the Positive Philosophy is alleged to have been the scientific preparation contains a Polity and a Religion; a complete arrangement of life in all its aspects, giving a wider sphere to Intellect, Energy, and Feeling than could be found in any of the previous organic types, Greek, Roman, or Catholic-feudal. Comte's immense superiority over such præ-Revolutionary utopians as the Abbé Saint Pierre, no less than over the group of post-revolutionary utopians, is especially visible in his firm grasp of the cardinal truth that the improvement of the social organism can only be effected by a moral development, and never by any changes in mere political mechanism, or any violences in the way of an artificial redistribution of wealth. A moral transformation must precede any real advance. The aim, both in public and private life, is to secure to the utmost possible extent the victory of the social feeling over self-love, or Altruism over Egoism. This is the key to the regeneraThe key to tion of social existence, as it is the key to that generation. unity of individual life which makes all our energies converge freely and without wasteful friction towards a common end. What are the instruments for securing the preponderance of Altruism? Clearly they must work from the strongest element in human nature, and this element is Feeling or the Heart. Under the Catholic system the supremacy of Feeling was abused, and the Intellect was made its slave. Then followed a revolt of Intellect against Sentiment. The business of the new system will be to bring back the Intellect into a condition not of slavery, but of willing ministry to the Feelings. The subornation never was, and never will be, effected The Religion of except by means of a religion, and a religion, Humanity. to be final, must include a harmonious synthesis of all our conceptions of the external order of the universe. The characteristic basis of a religion is the existence of a Power without us, so superior to ourselves as to command the complete submission of our whole life. This basis is to be found in the Positive stage, in Humanity, past, present, and to come, conceived as the Great Being.

social re

ligion, which is at bottom hardly more than sympathy under a more imposing name. However that may be, the whole battle-into which we shall not enter-as to the legitimateness of Comtism as a religion turns upon this erection of Humanity into a Being. The various hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to capital, &c., are merely propositions measurable by considerations of utility and a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals are of the highest interest, and many of them are actually available; but there does not seem to be one of them of an available kind, which could not equally well be approached from other sides, and even incorporated in some radically antagonistic system. Adoption, for example, as a practice for improving the happiness of families and the welfare of society, is capable of being weighed, and can in truth only be weighed, by utilitarian considerations, and has been commended by men to whom the Comtist religion is naught. The singularity of Comte's construction, and the test by which it must be tried, is the transfer of the worship and discipline of Catholicism to a system in which "the conception of God is superseded" by the abstract idea of Humanity, conceived as a kind of Personality.

And, when all is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to settle what is for the good of Humanity, and we can only do that in the old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out the right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advantages and disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is nothing in the Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the balance on the same side. The Comtists are no better off than other utilitarians in judging policy, events, conduct.

The particularities of the worship, its minute The worand truly ingenious re-adaptations of sacraship and ments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to discipline. the invocation of a new Trinity, need not detain us. They are said, though it is not easy to believe, to have been elaborated by way of Utopia. If so, no Utopia has ever yet been presented in a style so little calculated to stir the imagination, to warm the feelings, to soothe the insurgency of the reason. It is a mistake to present a great The Great "A deeper study of the great universal order re-body of hypotheses-if Comte meant them for hypotheses Being. veals to us at length the ruling power within it of -in the most dogmatic and peremptory form to which the true Great Being, whose destiny it is to bring language can lend itself. And there is no more extrathat order continually to perfection by constantly conforming to ordinary thing in the history of opinion than the perverits laws, and which thus best represents to us that system as a sity with which Comte has succeeded in clothing a philwhole. This undeniable Providence, the supreme dispenser of osophic doctrine, so intrinsically conciliatory as his, in a our destinies, becomes in the natural course the common centre shape that excites so little sympathy and gives so much of our affections, our thoughts, and our actions. Although this provocation. An enemy defined Comtism as Catholicism Great Being evidently exceeds the utmost strength of any, even minus Christianity, to which an able champion retorted by of any collective, human force, its necessary constitution and Hitherto Comte's its peculiar function endow it with the truest sympathy towards calling it Catholicism plus Science. all its servants. The least amongst us can and ought con- Utopia has pleased the followers of the Catholic, just as stantly to aspire to maintain and even to improve this Being. little as those of the scientific, spirit. This natural object of all our activity, both public and private, determines the true general character of the rest of our existence, whether in feeling or in thought; which must be devoted to love, and to know, in order rightly to serve, our Providence, by a wise use of all the means which it furnishes to us. Reciprocally this continued service, while strengthening our true unity, renders us at once both happier and better."

Remarks on the Religion.

The exaltation of Humanity into the throne occupied by the Supreme Being under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's construction easy enough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse, act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian propositions, with an artificial Great Being inserted at the top to keep them in their place. The Comtist system is utilitarianism crowned by a fantastic decoration. Translated into the plainest English, the position is as follows: "Society can only be regenerated by the greater subordination of politics to morals, by the moralization of capital, by the renovation of the family, by a higher conception of marriage, and so on. These ends can only be reached by a heartier develop ment of the sympathetic instincts. The sympathetic instincts can only be developed by the Religion of Humanity." Looking at the problem in this way, even a moralist who does not expect theology to be the instrument of social revival, might still ask whether the sympathetic instincts will not necessarily be already developed to their highest point, before people will be persuaded to accept the re

The priesthood.

The elaborate and minute systematization of life, proper to the Religion of Humanity, is to be directed by a priesthood. The priests are to possess neither wealth nor material power; they are not to command, but to counsel; their authority is to rest on persuasion, not on force. When religion has become positive, and society industrial, then the influence of the church upon the state becomes really free and independent, which was not the case in the Middle Age. The power of the priesthood rests upon special knowledge of man and na ture; but to this intellectual eminence must also be added moral power and a certain greatness of character, without which force of intellect and completeness of attainment will not receive the confidence they ought to inspire. The functions of the priesthood are of this kind:-To exercise a systematic direction over education; to hold a consultative influence over all the important acts of actual life, public and private; to arbitrate in cases of practical conflict; to preach sermons recalling those principles of generality and universal harmony which our special activities dispose us to ignore; to order the due classification of society; to perform the various ceremonies appointed by the founder of the religion. The authority of the priesthood is to rest wholly on voluntary adhesion, and there is to be perfect freedom of speech and discussion; though, by the way, we cannot forget Comte's detestable congratulations to the Czar Nicholas on the "wise vigilance" with which he kept watch over the importation of Western books.

Women.

From bts earliest manhood Comte had been | flowers, his left hand feebly grasping a hunting spear, his powerfully impressed by the necessity of ele- right an inverted torch. Ben Jonson introduces Comus, vating the condition of women. (See remarkable passage in his masque entitled Pleasure reconciled to Virtue (1619), in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-7.) His friendship with as the portly jovial patron of good cheer, "First_father of Madame de Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the sauce and deviser of jelly." In the Comus, sive Phagesiporeconstructed society women are to play a highly important sia Cimmeria; Somnium (1608, and at Oxford, 1634), a part. They are to be carefully excluded from public action, moral allegory by a Dutch author, Hendrik van der Putbut they are to do many more important things than things ten, or Erycius Puteanus, the conception is more nearly political. To fit them for their functions, they are to be akin to Milton's, and Comus is a being whose enticements raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly are more disguised and delicate than those of Jonson's educated. The family, which is so important an element deity. But Milton's Comus is a creation of his own. His of the Comtist scheme of things, exists to carry the in- story is one fluence of woman over man to the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the activity of man. "Superior in power of affection, more able to keep both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordiBorn from the loves of Bacchus and Circe, he is "much nation to feeling, women are formed as the natural inter-like his father, but his mother more"-a sorcerer, like her, mediaries between Humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral Providence, maintain ing through them the direct and constant cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men from its influence. . . . Besides the uniform influence of

...

every woman on every man, to attach him to Humanity, such is the importance and the difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three types, the mother, the wife, and the daughter; each having several modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with contemporaries,-obedience, union, and protection, as well as the three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past, the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic instincts, -veneration, attachment, and benevolence."

How the positive method of observation and Conclusion. verification of real facts has landed us in this,

and much else of the same kind, is extremely hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopedic system, that touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at least one biological speculation of astounding audacity, that could be examined in nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough to show that after performing a great and real service to thought, Comte almost sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the invention of a system that, as such, and independently of detached suggestions, is markedly retrograde. But the world has strong self-protecting qualities. It will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in

another.

The English reader is specially well placed for satisfying such curiosity as he may have about Comte's philosophy. Miss Martineau condensed the six volumes of the Philosophie Positive into two volumes of excellent English (1853); Comte himself gave them a place in the Positivist Library. The Catechism was translated by Dr. Congreve in 1858. The Politique Positive has been reproduced in English (Longmans, 1875-7) by the conscientious labor of Comte's London followers. This translation is accompanied by a careful running analysis and explanatory summary of contents, which make the work more readily intelligible than the original. For criticisms, the reader may be referred to Mr. Mill's Auguste Comte and Positivism; Dr. Bridges's reply to Mr. Mill, The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrines (1866); Mr. Herbert Spencer's essay on the Genesis of Science, and pamphlet on The Classification of the Sciences; Professor Huxley's "Scientific Aspects of Positivism," in his Lay Sermons; Dr. Congreve's Essays Political, Social, and Religious (1874); Mr. Fiske's Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874); Mr. Lewes's History of Philosophy, vol. ii. (J. MO.)

COMUS (from κuos, revel, or a company of revellers) was, in the later mythology of the Greeks, the god of festive mirth. In classic mythology the personification does not exist; but Comus appears in the Eikóves, or Descriptions of Pictures, of Philostratus, a writer of the 3d century A.D., as a winged youth, slumbering in a standing attitude, nis legs crossed, his countenance flushed with wine, his nead-which is sunk upon his breast-crowned with dewy

"Which never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower."

who gives to travellers a magic draught that changes their human face into the "brutal form of some wild beast," and, hiding from them their own foul disfigurement, makes them forget all the pure ties of life, "to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty."

CONCA, SEBASTIANO (1676-1764), a painter of the Florentine school, was born at Gaeta, and studied at Naples under Francesco Solimena. In 1706, along with his brother Giovanni, who acted as his assistant, he settled at Rome, where for several years he worked in chalk only, to im prove his drawing. He was patronized by the Cardinal Ottoboni, who introduced him to Clement XI.; and a Jeremiah painted in the church of St. John Lateran, was rewarded by the Pope with knighthood and by the cardinal His fame grew quickly, and by and by he received the patronage of most of the crowned heads of Europe. He painted on till near the day of his death, and left behind him an immense number of pictures, mostly of a brilliant and showy kind, which are distributed among the churches of Italy. Of these the Probatica, or Pool of Siloam, in the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala at Siena, is considered the finest.

with a diamond cross.

level of the sea.

CONCAN, or KONCAN, a maritime tract of Western India, situated within the limits of the Presidency of Bombay, and extending from the Portuguese settlement of Goa on the S. to the territory of Daman, belonging to the same nation, on the N. On the E. it is bounded by the Ghats, and on the W. by the Indian Ocean. This tract comprises the two British districts of Tannah and Ratnagiri, and may be estimated at 300 miles in length, with an average breadth of about 40. From the mountains on its eastern frontier, which in one place attain a height of 4700 feet, the surface, marked by a succession of irregular hilly spurs from the Ghats, slopes to the westward, where the mean elevation of the coast is not more than 100 feet above the Several mountain streams, but none of any magnitude, traverse the country in the same direction. One of the most striking characteristics of the climate is the violence of the monsoon rains-the mean annual fall at Mahábleshwar amounting to 239 inches. It is believed that the abundant moisture borne along from the Indian Ocean by this aërial current, becomes arrested and condensed by the mountain barrier of the Gháts, and in this manner accounts for the excessive rains which deluge the Concan. The products of this country are the same as those of Malabar; and the hemp raised is said to be of a stronger quality than that grown above the Gháts. The coast has a straight general outline, but is much broken into small bays and harbors. This, with the uninterrupted view along the shore, and the land and sea breezes, which force vessels steering along the coast to be always within sight of it, rendered this country from time immemorial the seat of piracy; and so formidable had the pirates become in the 18th century, that all ships suffered which did not receive a pass from the chiefs of the pirates. The Great Mogul maintained a fleet for the express purpose of checking them, and they were frequently attacked by the Portuguese. British commerce was protected by occasional expeditions from Bombay, commencing about 1756; but the piratical system was not finally extinguished until 1812.

According to ancient traditions, this country was inhabited by a tribe of savages, till they were conquered by the Hindus, who gave it to a tribe of Brahmans; and it was held by them until it was taken possession of by the Mahometan kings of Bíjapúr. It was conquered in the 17th century by Sivájí, the

tions.

founder of the Mahratta empire. Towards the close of the same | removed by the citizens in order to hasten their deliberacentury Konaji Angria established a kingdom on this coast, extending 120 miles from Tannah to Bankút, together with the inland country as far back as the mountains. The dominion of this prince and his family over a portion of the tract continued till the line became extinct, and the territory lapsed to the paramount power. The remainder of the Concan had been already incorporated with the British dominions since the fall

of the Peshwa in 1818.

CONCEPCION, a city of Chili, the capital of the province of the same name. Founded by Pedro de Valdivia, it was originally situated where the small village of Penco now stands, on the Bay of Talcahuano; but having been first pillaged and destroyed by the Araucanians, and in 1730 levelled to the ground by an earthquake, the town was removed to its present site, 36° 49′ S. lat., 72° 50′ W. long., in a fertile plain on the north side of the Bio-Bio, about five miles from the sea and 270 miles south-west of Santiago. In the year 1835 it was again laid in ruins by an earthquake, which so terrified the inhabitants that for a long time the place remained partly unoccupied. Afterwards, however, the streets were rebuilt, and the area occupied by the town has been greatly extended. The main streets and squares are broad and spacious; the dwellinghouses (mostly of only one floor) are among the best planned and constructed in Chili; and the cathedral, churches, and public buildings are handsome edifices. Powerful flourmills are in the town and neighborhood, as well as immense cellars (bodegas) for the storage of wheat and wine. It is connected by rail with its two ports-Tomé and Talcahuano, and with all the important towns of the interior. Population, 19,200.

This Gregory, in a council held at Lyons in 1274, promulgated a code of law for the conducting of the Papal election, comprised in fifteen rules. And these rules, though modified by subsequent pontiffs in some respects, and supplemented by a vast number of more minute regulations, remain to the present day the foundation and origin of all the law and practice of Papal elections. The text of this code is too lengthy to be given here. It may be read in the original Latin in the Life of Gregory X., by Pagi, as in many other works, the Notes to Platina by Panvinius, &c.;-or in English, slightly abbreviated, in a volume on the Papal conclaves by T. A. Trollope (p. 64). The substance of some of the more important provisions may be given summarily, as follows. Cardinals to go into conclave on the tenth day after the Pope's death, attended by one person only, unless in a case of evident need, when two may be permitted. Cardinals to live in conclave in common without separation between bed and bed by wall, curtain, or veil (modified by subsequent rules to the present practice of a wooden cell for each cardinal). No access to conclave to be permitted. An opening to be left for food to be passed in. No vote shall be given save in conclave. Cardinals who quit the conclave by reason of sickness cannot vote. Those who arrive after the closing of it may enter and vote. Cardinals who may have been censured or excommunicated cannot be excluded from conclave. An election can only be made by a two-thirds majority of those present. Any man, lay or ecclesiastic, not a heretic and not canonically incapacitated, may be elected Pope. No entreaties or promises to be made by one cardinal to another with a view of influencing the vote. All bargains, agreements, undertakings, even though corroborated by an oath having such an object, to be of no validity; and "let him that breaks such be deemed worthy of praise rather than of the blame of perjury."

Very many popes have sought to enforce and make yet more stringent this last all-important rule, by reiterated fulminations of excommunication ipso facto, in any and every case of its contravention. The most solemn forms of oath that language can devise have been prescribed. The Bulls condemning all simoniacal bargainings have been ordered to be invariably read with every circumstance of solemnity in every conclave before the business of the meeting is entered on. And the result of all these multiplied precautions, precepts, prohibitions, and menaces has been that a study of the history of the Papal conclaves leaves the student with the conviction that no election untainted by simony has ever yet been made, while in a great number of instances the simony practised in the conclave has been of the grossest, most shameless, and most overt kind.

CONCLAVE. The word conclave is used to signify any company of persons gathered together in consultation; its proper meaning is any such gathering of persons locked up together (con, collective pronoun, and clavis, a key); and the technical meaning, which has superseded all other uses of the word, save where some other significance is specially indicated, is the meeting of the members of the Sacred College of Cardinals for the purpose of electing a Pope. The Pope, who is simply the bishop of Rome, was originally chosen by the entire body of the people constituting the church at Rome. Gradually, and by a process of encroachment, the several steps of which are, as might be expected, very obscure, the right of nomination was confined to the clergy, the people still retaining a right of objection, exercised very much in the same manner as the forbidding banns of marriage is now exercised. The grasping tyranny of the clergy combined with the lawless turbulence of the laity, consisting no longer, as originally, of a select body of religious men, but of the entire population, to cause this participation of the laity also to fall into disuse. The next step was to allow the privilege of the | vote only to the chief among the clergy-cardinales-the The form of oath, as practised at the present day, which cardinal clergy, so called as the principal virtues were called the cardinal pronounces in the act of delivering his vote, cardinal virtues (see CARDINAL). During some centuries is as follows: "Testor Christum Dominum, qui me judithe emperor was understood to have a controlling voice in caturus est, me eligere quem secundum Deum judico eligi the election, in such sort that his approbation was necessary debere"-"I call to witness Christ our Lord, who shall for the validity of it. But the practice varied much in this be my judge, that I am electing him who before God respect, according as the emperor was or was not strong, I think ought to be elected." The words seem at first near at hand, or interested in the election. The history of sight to have been chosen and put together with the view this part of the subject is exceedingly obscure; but it is of rendering them as solemn and as binding on the concertain that at least one Pope provided that the consent of science of the elector as possible. Yet a little examination the emperor should be necessary for the election of his of them will show that they are well adapted to afford room successor, and on the other hand that other elections were for a whole host of equivocations. And, in fact, volumes made about the same period without the emperor's parti- of subtle casuistry have been written on the exact sense of cipation. the terms of the cardinal's oath, and on the degree of literalness in which it must be assumed to be binding on the conscience; e.g., it is the opinion of conclave tacticians that an elector may often injure the final chance of success of a candidate by voting for him at those first scrutinies, which are not intended really to result in any election, but are a mere exploring of the ground and trial of strength. Is an elector, then, to injure the chance of the man he deems the fittest to be elected by voting for him at such times? Again, a man may, doubtless often does, conscientiously believe himself to be the fittest man to be elected. Must he invalidate his own election by voting for himself? Or must he vote for some other, whom he does not think the fittest man? It has been asked, may a man vote for a candidate whom he does not think the fittest man, when it is clear that that candidate will be elected? The answer has been in the affirmative, "because

It was not till many years after the right of election had been abusively confined to the cardinals, that the practice of shutting up those dignitaries for the purpose of exercising that right was resorted to. And in the earliest instances the "conclave" seems to have been an involuntary imprisonment imposed on them ab extra. In 1216 the Perugians constrained the nineteen cardinals who elected Honorius III. to enter into conclave the day after the death of Innocent III., who died at Perugia, keeping them imprisoned till the election should be completed. Gregory IX. was similarly elected at Rome in 1227, the cardinals having been shut up against their will by the senators and people of Rome. In 1272 Gregory X. was elected at Viterbo by seventeen cardinals, who had not only been shut up against their will, but from over whose heads the roof of the building in which the conclave was held was