Whoever sailed with Brownson on that voyage which ended on the shores of Catholic truth, had explored the deep seas and sounded the shoal waters of all human reason; and young Hecker had been Brownson's friend and sympathizer since the years of his own earliest mental activity.
Pantheism, subjectivism, idealism, and all the other systems were tried, and when at last he was convinced that _Life is Real_ it was only after such an agony as must attend the imminent danger of fatal shipwreck.
He had, meantime, given a fair trial to philanthropy.

Theoretically and practically, Isaac Hecker loved humanity; to make men happy was his ever-renewed endeavor; was, in truth, the condition on which his own happiness depended.

For years this view of his life-task alternated with his search for exact answers to the questions his soul asked about man's destiny hereafter; or, one might rather say, social questions and philosophical ones borrowed strength from each other to assail him till his heart throbbed and his brain whirled with the agony of the conflict.
In a series of articles in _The Catholic World_ published in 1887, and before referred to, Father Hecker called Dr.Brownson's road to the Church the philosophical road.

Finding that doctrines which his philosophical mind perceived to answer the deepest questions of the soul were taught only in one society, and there taught with authority, he argued validly that that society could lay claim to the right to teach.

From the doctrine to the teacher, from the truth to the external authority that teaches it, is an inference of sound reason.