Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/144

 u

TTbaghs, Casimir, b. at Berg lez-Fauquemont, 26 Nov., 1800; d. at Louvain, 15 Feb., 1875, was for a quarter of a century the chief protagonist of the On- tologico-Traditionalist School of Louvain. In 1830, while professor of philosophy at the lower seminary of Rolduc, he was called to Louvain, which under his in- fluence became a centre of Ontologism. In 1846 he undertook the editorship of the "Revue cathoUque", the official organ of Ontologism, in conjunction with Arnold Tits, who had taught with him at Rolduc and joined him at Louvain in 1840, and Lonay, professor at Rolduc. La Foret, Claessens, the Abbe Bouquil- lon, Pere Bernard Van Loo, and others foDowed the doctrines of Ubaghs. But opponents soon appeared. The "Journal historique et httcraire", founded by Kersten, kept up an incessant controversy with the "Revue catholique". Kersten was joined by Gilson, dean of Bouillon, Lupus, and others. From 1858 to 1861 the controversy raged. It was at its height when a decision of the Roman Congregation (21 Sept., 1864) censured in Ubaghs's works, after a long and prudent deliberation, a series of propositions relating to Ontologism. Already in 184.3 the Congregation of the Index had taken note of five propositions and or- dered M. Ubaghs to correct them and expunge them from his teaching, but he misunderstood the import of this first decision. When his career was ended in 1864 he had the mortification of witnessing the ruin of a teaching to which he had devoted forty years of his life. From 1864 until his death he lived in retirement.

The theories of Ubaghs are contained in a vast col- lection of treatises on which he expended the best years of his life. Editions followed one another as the range of his teaching widened. The funda- mental thesis of Traditionalism is clearlj- affirmed by Ubaghs, the acquisition of metaphysical and moral truths is inexjjhcable without a primitive Divine teaching and its oral transmission. Social teaching is a natural law, a condition so necessary that without a miracle man could not save through it attain the explicit knowledge of truths of a metaphysical and a moral order. Teaching and language are not merely a psychological medium which favours the acquisition of these truths; its action is determinant. Hence the primordial act of man is an act of faith; the authority of others becomes the basis of certitude. The question arises: Is our adhesion to the fundamental truths of the speculative and moral order blind; and, is the ex- istence of God, which is one of them, impossible of rational demonstration? Ubaghs did not go as far as this; his Traditionalism was mitigated, a semi-Tra- ditionalism; once teaching has awakened ideas in us and transmitted the maxims (ordo acquisilionis) rea- son is able and apt to comprehend them. Though powerless to discover them it is regarded as being capable of demonstrating them once they have been made known to it. One of his favourite comparisons admirably states the problem: ".As the word 'view' chiefly expresses four things, the faculty of seeing, the act of seeing, the object seen, e. g. a landscape, and the drawing an artist makes of this object, so we give the name idea, which is derived from the former, chiefly to four different things: the faculty of knowing rationally, the act of rational knowledge, the object of this knowledge, the intelli'itiial copy or formula which we make of this object in conceiving it" (Psy- chologic ", 5th ed., 1S57, 11-42). Now, the objective idea, or object-idea (third accq)lation), in other words.

the intelligible which we contemplate, and contact with which produces within us the intellectual formula (notion), is "something Divine" or rather it is God himself. This is the core of Ontologism. The intelUgence contemplates God directly and beholds in Him the truths or "objective ideas" of which our knowledge is a weak reflexion. Assuredly, if Ubaghs is right, skepticism is definitively overcome. Like- wise if teaching plays in the physical life the part he assigns to it, the same is true of every doctrine which asserts the original independence of reason and which Ubaghs calls Rationalism. But this so-called tri- umph was purchased at the cost of many errors. It is, to say the least, strange that on the one hand Ontologistic Traditionalism is based on a distrust of reason and on the other hand it endows reason with unjustifiable prerogatives. Surely it is an incredible audacity to set man face to face with the Divine es- sence and to attribute to his weak mind the immedi- ate perception of the eternal and immutable verities.

Ubaghs's principal works are: "Logics' seu philoso- phiiB rationalis elementa" (6 editions, 1834-60); "Ontologia? sive metaph. generalis specimen" (5 edi- tions, 1835-63); "Theodicse seu theologize naturalis" (4 editions); "Anthropologicae philosoph. elementa" (1848); "Precis de logique ^lementaire" (5 editions); "Precis d'anthropol. psychologique " (5 editions); "Du realisme en theologie et en philosophic" (1856) ; "Essai d'ideologie ontologique" (1860); numerous articles in the Louvain "Revue catholique".

On the Traditionalist Ontologism of Louvain see De Wclf. Histoiie de la philosophic en Belgique (Louvain and Paris. 1910). 299 sqq. For the life of Ubaghs see Jacobs in Annuaire de VUniversiU de Louvain (1876), 417 sqq.

M. De \^■ULF.

Ubaldus, S.\iNT, confessor. Bishop of Gubbio, b. of noble parents at Gubbio, LTmbria, Italy, towards the beginning of the twelfth centurj-; d. there, Whitsun- tide, 1168. Whilst still very young, having lost his father, he was educated by the prior of the cathedral church of his native city, where he also became a canon regular. Wishing to ser\e God with more reg- ularity he passed to the Monasterj' of St. Secondo in the same city, where he remained for some years. Recalled by his bishop, he returned to the cathedral mona.sterj', where he was made prior. Having heard that at Vienna Blessed Peter de Honestis some years before had established a \evy fer\-ent community of canons regular, to whom he had given special statutes which hail been apjiroved by Paschal II, I'baldus went there, remaining with his brother canons for three months, to learn the details and the practice of their rides, wishing to introduce them among his own canons of Gubbio. This he did at his return. Serving God in great regularitj', poverty (for all his rich patrimony he had gi\-en to the poor and to the restoration of monasteries), humility, mortification, meekness, and fervour, the fame of his holiness spread in the coun- try', and several bishoprics were offered to him, but he refused them all. However, the episcopal See of Gubbio boi-iiming vacant, he was sent, with some clerics, by the jiopulation to ask for a new bishop from Honorius II who, having consecrated him, sent him back to Gubbio. To his people he became a perfect pattern of all Christian virtues, and a ])owerful jircv tector in all their spiritual and teniiMir:il needs. He died full of merits, after a long and ])aiiifvd illness of two years. Numerous miracles were wrought by him

114