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ROSMINI

idea of an entity, therefore, as the medium which reveals its excellence, clothes itself with the authority of law; and as all ideas are but determinations of the idea of being, the first of laws and the first principle of obligation is: "Follow the light of reason", or "Recognize being". Besides the testimony of con- sciousness and the consent of mankind, the proofs for free-will, i. e., the power of choice between objective good (duty) and subjective good (pleasure, self-in- terest), are closely bound up with Rosmini's theory of man and the soul. Man is stimulated by sensation and his subjective modifi(ations; at the same time he is illumined by the light of being eternal and absolute whence he can draw strength to overcome the allure- ments of sense and unite himself to the absolute good.

In reference to the third element Rosmini used a distinction which led to sharp controversy. By peccatum (sin) he means the sinful condition of the will in its antagonism to objective good; by culpa (sin as fault), the same condition considered relatively to its cause, free will. Ordinarily, peccatum is also culpa, and every sin is traceable to a free agent. But, in abnormal circumstances, there may be peccatum where there is not, at the moment, culpa. The acts of an acquired sinful habit, when performed without advertence or deliberation, are contrary to law, though at the moment the will is not responsible. They are culp(e and imputable, but to complete the imputability one must link them with the first free wicked acts whence the habit resulted. Original sin is a true sin yet not a culpa, not imputable to the person in whom it is found as to its free cause. The responsible cause is to be sought in the free will of Adam, whose sin was both peccatum and culpa. Rosmini wrote voluminously in defence of the tradi- tional Catholic doctrine of original sin. Conscience he defines as "a speculative judgment on the morality of the practical judgment"; and since morality, he points out, belongs to an order of reflection anterior to the conscience, there may exist in man moral or immoral conditions apart from conscience — a doc- trine which he also applied to original sin and to certain states of virtue and vice. Regarding probabil- ism, he distinguishes, in the question of the doubtful law, what is intrinsically evil from what is evil only on account of some extrinsic cause, for example, pro- hibition by positive law, and lays down the rule: " If there is a doubt respecting the existence of the positive law, and the doubt cannot be resolved, the law is not binding; but if there is a doubt in a matter pertaining to the natural law and relating to an evil inherent in action, the risk of the evil must be avoided." This theory provoked controversy, but Rosmini main- tained that it accorded substantially with the teaching of St. Alphonsus Ligouri.

The science of rational right arises from the protec- tion which the moral law affords to the useful good. The classification of the goods and rights which we possess in our relations with our fellow-men, is based on freedom and property. Freedom is the power, which each one has, to use all his faculties and resources so long as he does not encroach on the rights of others. Property is the union of goods with the human per- sonality by a triple bond, physical, intellectual, and moral. The moral bond guards the other two, for the moral law forbids one man to wrest from another what he has united to himself by affection and intelligence. The subject of right may be either the individual man or man in society. Concerning the three societies necessary for the full development of the human race, Rosmini speculates at length in his "Filosofia del diritto" (Milan, 1841-4.3).

Rosmini applied his philosophical principles to edu- cation in "Delia educazione cristiana" (Milan, 1856) and especially, "Del principio supremo della metod- ica" (Turin, 18.57; tr. by Grey, "The Ruling Prin- ciple of Method Applied to Education", Boston,

1893). His basic idea is that education must follow the natural order of development. The mind of the child must be led from the general to the particular. The natural and necessary order of all human thoughts is expressed in the law: "A thought is that which be- comes the matter, or provides the matter of another thought." The whole sum of thoughts which can occur to the human mind is classified in divers orders of which Rosmini enumerates five. To the first order belong thoughts whose matter is not taken from ante- cedent thoughts; each of the successive orders is characterized by its matter being taken from the order immediately preceding it. The ruling principle of method is: Present to the mind of the child (and this applies to man in general), first, the objects which belong to the first order of cognitions, then those which belong to the second order, and so on, taking care never to lead the child to a cognition of the second order without having ascertained that his mind has grasped those of the first order relative to it, and the same with regard to the cognitions of the third, fourth, and other higher orders. In applying this principle to the different orders, Rosmini explains the cognitions proper to each, the corresponding activities, the in- struction which they require, the moral and religious education which the child should receive. Both in his general theory of adapting education to the needs of the growing mind and in the importance he attached to instinct, feeling, and play, Rosmini anticipated much that is now regarded as fundamental in educa- tion. "The child", he says, "at every age must act." To regulate the different kinds of activity, and to make each kind reasonable, is really to educate. It is in the kindergarten system of Frobel, the contemporary of Rosmini, that these principles are most fully worked out.

The most important of Rosmini's posthumous works, the "Teosofia" (ontology and natural theol- ogy), was published in five volumes (Turin, 1859-64; Intra, 1864-74). In 1876 some Catholic newspapers and periodicals in Italy, interpreting the "Dimittan- tur" decree of 1854, declared that Rosmini's works were open both to criticism and to censure. The Rosininian school on the contrary maintained that, while tli(> dccrco gave no positive approval, it at least guaranteed that the books examined contained noth- ing worthy of censure and could therefore be safely read, and their conclusions accepted by Catholics. This view seemed to be confirmed by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who, in a letter to the "Osserva- tore Romano" (16 June, 1876), reminded the editor of the silence enjoined on both parties and stated that no theological censure could be inflicted. A month later, the "Osservatore Cattolico" of Milan, as ordered by the Prefect of the Congregation of the Index, acknowledged its interpretation to be erro- neous.

After the death of Pius IX, the controversy was renewed. An answer of the Index was given (21 June, 1880) that "dimittantur signifies only this — a work dismissed is not prohibited" — and another (5 Dec, 1881) that a work dismissed is not to be held as free from every error against faith and morals and may be criticized both philosophically and theo- logically without incurring the note of temerity. Both answers were taken by the adversaries of Rosmini's doctrines to justify new censures, while the Rosminian writers contended that these answers in no degree rendered untenable the position they had always occupied. On 14 Dec, 1887, a decree of the Inquisition condemned forty propositions taken from the works of Rosmini. The decree, published 7 March, 1888, lays special stress on the posthumous works which, it says, developed and explained doc- trines contained in germ in the earlier books; but the propositions condemned have no theological nota attached. About one-half of the propositions