In regard to the literary policy of the Church to-day as expressed in the Index, the opinion of the Jesuit Father Hilgers is of interest. In reply to the enquiry, “What is the Index?” Hilgers presents (in the treatise before referred to) the following statement, the text of which I have somewhat condensed: “The Index of prohibited books does not contain or undertake to present the entire regulation or body of the enactments of the Church concerning the supervision of literature and the specification of prohibited books. This body of Church law is to be found in the general Decrees or Regulations (_Decreta Generalia_) of the Constitution, known as the _Officiorum ac munerum_. It is of course to be understood that the editions of the Index are controlled by the general prohibitions (that is to say, by the prohibitions which, in place of specifying individual works, express a general literary policy) and also by what may be called the law of nature.... It is not safe for a believer to say, ‘as this book is not found in the Index, I am at liberty to read it.’ It should be understood that the book in question or any similar work may fall under the prohibition of the general rule or may under the law of nature be classed as pernicious. It is undoubtedly the case that many books which are pernicious for faith or for morals are not to be found in the Index. It would of course be a physical impossibility to include in any current lists all of the books of bad character or of bad influence which each year are being brought before the public. The Index is to be considered as itself a portion of the general Church prohibitions. It is not even to be admitted that the most dangerous or pernicious have with certainty found their way into Indexes, either the earlier or those that are now in force. The books which are undeniably bad should so reveal themselves to the conscience of the believer and are in any case clearly indicated by the law of the Church. This is the answer to the criticism that has more than once been made that the Congregation of the Index has concerned itself with the trivial or petty things, leaving without consideration books which are of most serious moment, for instance works belonging to the emphatically bad group. Examples of such are--in literature: those of Carl Gutzkow and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer; in natural science, those of Haeckel and of Krause (Carus-sterne); in philosophy, the writings of Feuerbach and Büchner; in theology, the works of F. C. Baur and of Bruno Bauer, etc. Against names like these, the caution of specific condemnation in the Index ought not to be required by any intelligent reader. There are to-day so-called philosophers whose representative works can be recognised as dangerous by the reason of each intelligent person, and these works it has therefore not been thought necessary to place in the Index. The very fact that the total number of books appearing in the Index is so