Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Garrigou-Lagrange: On Angels

Angelic nature, knowledge, will, merit and demerit from Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange 

Chapter 23: Angelic Nature And Knowledge

1. Nature Of Angels

St. Thomas [596] teaches clearly that the angels are creatures purely spiritual, subsistent forms without any matter. Scotus says they are composed of form and incorporeal matter, without quantity, because, being creatures, they must have an element of potentiality. The Thomistic reply runs thus: This potential element is first the angelic essence, really distinct, as in all creatures, from existence. Secondly, the real distinction between person and existence, between quod est and existence. Thirdly, real distinction of substance from faculties, and of faculties from acts. All these distinctions are explicitly formulated by St. Thomas himself. [597].

From their pure spirituality St. Thomas concludes that there cannot be two angels of the same species, because the only principle by which a substantial form can be individualized is matter, matter capable of this quantity rather than any other. Thus, to illustrate, two drops of water, perfectly similar, are by their matter and quantity two distinct individuals. But angels have no matter. [598].

Scotus, on the contrary, since he admits a certain kind of matter in the angels, maintains also that there can be many angels of one and the same species. Suarez, in his eclecticism, admits this conclusion of Scotus, although he sides with St. Thomas in maintaining that the angels are purely spiritual and immaterial beings. Thomists reply: if the angels are purely spiritual, you can find in them no principle of individuation, no principle capable of multiplying within one and the same species.

Form unreceived in matter, they say with St. Thomas, is simply unique. Whiteness, for example, if conceived as unreceived in this or that white thing, would be one and unique. If you deny this, then you simultaneously deny the principle which demonstrates the unicity of God, the principle, namely, which St. Thomas thus formulates: [599] Existence unreceived is necessarily subsistent and unique.

2. Angelic Knowledge

There are three orders of knowledge: human, angelic, divine. The object of knowledge in general is intelligible reality. The proper object of human intelligence is the intelligible being of sense objects, because the human intellect has as its proportioned object the lowest order of intelligible reality, the shadowy reality of the sense world. By opposition, then, the proper object of angelic intelligence is the intelligible reality of spiritual creatures. Hence, the proper intelligible object of each particular angel is that angel's own essence, just as God's proper intelligible object is His own divine essence. [600].

This position granted, let us see its consequences. The human idea, by which man knows, is an abstract and universal idea, drawn forth, by the intellect agent, from particular sense objects. But the angelic idea, not being drawn from external sense objects, is a natural endowment of the angelic intellect, infused into it by God at the moment of creation. Hence the angelic idea is at once universal and concrete. The angel's infused idea of the lion, say, represents not only the nature of the lion, but all individual lions that either actually exist or have in the past been objects of the angel's intellect. Angelic ideas are thus participations in God's own creative ideas. Infused ideas, then, which Plato and Descartes falsely ascribed to men, are, on the contrary, an angelic characteristic.

Thus these angelic ideas, at once universal and concrete, represent whole regions of intelligible reality, and each angel has his own distinctive suprasensible panorama. The higher the angel, the stronger is his intelligence and the fewer are his ideas, since they are more rich and universal. Thus, with ever fewer ideas, the higher angels command immense regions of reality, which the lower angels cannot attain with such eminent simplicity. [601] A human parallel is the sage, who, in a few simple principles, grasps an entire branch of knowledge. The stronger is the created intellect, to say it briefly, the more it approaches the preeminent simplicity of the divine intellect.

A further consequence. The nature of his ideas, at once universal and concrete, make the angel's knowledge intuitive, not in any way successive and discursive. He sees at a glance the particular in the universal, the conclusion in the principle, the means in the end. [602].

For the same reason his act of judging does not proceed by comparing and separating different ideas. [603] By his purely intuitive apprehension of the essence of a thing, he sees at once all characteristics of that essence, for example, he simultaneously sees all man's human and created characteristics, for instance, that man's essence is not man's existence, then man's existence is necessarily given and preserved by divine causality. [604].

Why this immense distance between angel and man? Because, seeing intuitively, the angel sees without medium, as in clearest midday, an immensely higher object, sees the intelligible world of spirits, whereas man's intellect, the most feeble of all intellects, having as object the lowest order of intelligibility, must be satisfied with twilight glances into the faint mirror of the sense world.

A further consequence is that the angel's intuitive vision is also infallible. But while he can make no mistake in his natural knowledge, he can deceive himself in the supernatural order, on the question, for example, whether this or that individual man is in the state of grace. Likewise he may deceive himself in forecasting the contingent future, above all in attempting to know the future free acts of men, or the immanent secrets of man's heart, secrets which are in no way necessarily linked with the nature of our soul or with external physical realities. The secrets of the heart are not fragments of the material world, they do not result from the interplay of physical forces. [605].

Contrary to this view, Scotus holds that the angel, though he has no sense faculties, can still receive ideas from sense objects. This view arises from his failure to distinguish intellects specifically by their proper and proportioned object. Thus he goes on to say that, had God so willed, the unmediated vision of the divine essence would be natural to both angels and men. Thus the distinction between uncreated intelligence and created intelligence is, for Scotus, a distinction not necessary, but contingent. A fortiori, then, he denies any necessary distinction between the proper object of the human intellect and that of the angelic intellect.

Scotus further denies that the ideas by which higher angels know are less numerous and more universal than those of lower angels. Perfection of knowledge, he says, derives less from the universality of ideas than from their clearness and brightness. Here Thomists distinguish. In the empiric order, yes, clearness does not depend on the universality of ideas. But in the order of perfection, in the order of higher principles, themselves concatenated with the supreme principle—in this order doctrinal clearness most certainly depends on the universality of its ideas.

Scotus holds also that the angel can know discursively, can engage in reasoning, a view which notably depreciates the perfection of the pure spirit. On the other hand, he holds that the angel can know, naturally and with certitude, the secrets of man's heart, though God, he adds, refuses this knowledge to the demons.

Suarez, again eclectically, admits with St. Thomas that the angelic ideas are innate, but holds, with Scotus, that the angel can use reasoning, and can be mistaken regarding the characteristics of the object he knows.
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Chapter 24: The Angelic Will

St. Thomas seeks to understand the angelic will by the object to which that will is specifically proportioned. Scotus insists rather on the subjective activity of that will.

Studying the object of the angelic will, St. Thomas concludes that certain acts of that will, though voluntary and spontaneous, are nevertheless not free, but necessary, by reason of an object in which the angelic intelligence sees no imperfection, but perfect happiness. As regards angelic freedom of will, he holds that angelic choice, like human choice, is always determined by the last practical act of judgment, but that the act of choice by accepting that judgment makes it to be the last. Scotus, on the contrary, holds that freedom belongs essentially to all voluntary acts, and that free choice is not always determined by the last practical act of judgment. On this point Suarez follows Scotus. Against them Thomists invoke the following principle: "If nothing can be willed unless it be foreknown as good, then nothing can be here and now preferred unless it be here and now foreknown as better." [606] In other words, there can be no will movement, however free, without intellectual guidance, otherwise we confound liberty with haphazard, with impulse, which acts necessarily and without reflection. Here lies the source of the chief doctrinal divergences concerning the angelic will.

St. Thomas teaches that the objects which the angel loves, not freely, but necessarily, at least necessarily as regards specification, are, first, his own happiness, second, himself, third, God as author of his nature, the reason being that in these objects he can find nothing repulsive. [607] Hence it is more probable that the angel cannot, at least not directly and immediately, sin against the natural law, which he sees intuitively as written into his own essence. [608] Yet the demons, in sinning directly against the supernatural law, sin indirectly against the natural law which prescribes that we obey God in everything He may command.

Further. If the angel sins, his sin is necessarily mortal, because, seeing end and means with one and the same intuitive glance, he cannot be disordered venially, i. e.: in regard to means, without previous mortal disorder in regard to his last end.

Again, the sin of the angel is irrevocable, and hence irremissible. In other words, since the angel chooses with perfect knowledge after consideration, not abstract, discursive, successive, but intuitive and simultaneous, of all that is involved in his choice, he can no longer see any reason for reversal of his choice. Hence arises the demon's fixed obstinacy in evil. Nothing was unforeseen in his choice. If we were to say to him: "You did not foresee this," he would answer, "Surely I foresaw it." With fullest knowledge he refused obedience, and refuses it forever in unending pride. Similarly the choice of the good angel is irrevocable and participates in the immutability of God's free act of choice. [609] St. Thomas cites approvingly the common expression: Before choice the free will of the angel is flexible, but not after choice. [610].

Scotus admits none of these doctrines. No act of the angelic will is necessary, not even the angel's natural love of his life or of the author of life. The will can sin even when there is no error or lack of consideration in the intellect, because free choice is not always conformed to the last practical judgment. The first sin of the demon is not of itself irrevocable and irremissible. The demons, he says, committed many mortal sins, before they became obstinate in evil, and could have repented after each of those sins. And their obstinacy itself he explains extrinsically, as due to God's decree that, after a certain number of mortal sins, He would no longer give them the grace of conversion. On these points Suarez follows Scotus, since he too holds that free choice is not always conformed to the last practical judgment. But he does not explain how free choice can arise without intellectual direction. Thomists repeat: Nothing can be willed unless here and now foreknown as better.

Contrast shows clearly that St. Thomas has a higher conception of the specific distinction between angelic intelligence and human intelligence than have Scotus and Suarez. Faculties, habits, and acts are proportionally specified by their formal objects. To this principle, repeatedly invoked in the Summa, Thomism insistently returns.

This treatise on the pure spirit, on intuitive knowledge, lies on a very high level. Its conclusions on the angelic will are faithful to the principle: nothing willed unless foreknown as good. From the speculative point of view this treatise is a masterpiece, a proof of the intellectual superiority of the Angelic Doctor, an immense step forward from the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. Scotus and Suarez did not maintain this elevation, did not see the sublimity, intellectual and voluntary, of the pure spirit as contrasted with the lowly intellect and will of man.
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Chapter 25: Angelic Merit And Demerit

St. Thomas holds that all the angels were elevated to the state of grace before the moment of their trial, because without sanctifying grace they could not merit supernatural happiness. With this doctrine Scotus and Suarez agree. They also agree in saying that most probably all angels received this gift at the moment of their creation. All three teachers, following St. Augustine, [611] hold that the revelation had the obscurity of faith. [612] The three agree also in saying that after their trial the good angels were immovably confirmed in grace and received the beatific vision, while the wicked angels became obstinate in evil. But, notwithstanding this agreement, there remain three problems concerning the state of the angels before and during their trial. On these problems St. Thomas again differs widely from Scotus and Suarez.

1. Natural Happiness

St. Thomas holds that at the very moment of their creation the angels received all their natural perfection of spirit and their natural happiness, because their innate knowledge proceeds instantaneously, without succession, from faculty to act. Hence, at the very moment of creation, they have perfect intuition of their own nature, and in that nature as mirror they know God as author of that nature, on which their own natural law is inscribed. Simultaneously also in that same moment they know all other angels, and have instantaneous use of their own infused ideas.

Here Scotus and Suarez do not follow St. Thomas. They deny, first, that angels had natural beatitude from the moment of creation. They hold, secondly, that the angels could, from that first moment, sin against the natural law directly and immediately. In reply, Thomists simply insist that pure spirits must from their first moment of creation, know their own selves perfectly as pure spirits, and hence know their own nature as mirror of the Author of that nature, and consequently must love that Author as the source of their own natural life, which they necessarily desire to preserve.

2. Instantaneous Choice

At the very moment of creation, so St. Thomas, the angels could not sin, but neither could they fully merit, because their very first act must be specially inspired by God, without their own self-initiated interior deliberation. But at the second instant came either full merit or full demerit. The good angel after the first act of charity, by which he merited supernatural beatitude, was at once among the blessed. [613] Just as immediately the demons were repudiated.

Hence, with St. Thomas, we must distinguish three instants in the life of the angel: first, that of creation; second, that of merit or demerit; third, that of supernatural beatitude [614] or of reprobation. We must note, however, that an angelic instant, which is the measure of one angelic thought, may correspond to a more or less long period of our time, according to the more or less deep absorption of the angel in one thought. An analogy, in illustration, is that of the contemplative who may rest for hours in one and the same truth.

The reason for the instantaneousness of the divine sanction after the first angelic act, fully meritorious or fully demeritorious, has been given above. Angelic knowledge is not abstract and discursive like ours, but purely intuitive and simultaneous. The angel does not pass successively, as we do, from one angle of thought to another. He sees at once, simultaneously, all the advantages and disadvantages. Hence his judgment once made is irrevocable. There is nothing he has not already considered.

What kind of sin was that of the demons? Pride, says St. Thomas. [615] They chose as supreme purpose that which they could obtain by their natural powers, and hence turned away from supernatural beatitude, which can be reached only by the grace of God. Thus, instead of humility and obedience, they chose pride and disobedience, the sin of naturalism.
Scotus and Suarez, as we have seen, since they hold that the angelic knowledge is discursive and successive, maintain likewise that the angel's practical judgment and act of choice are revocable, but that after many mortal sins, God no longer gives them the grace of conversion.

3. Source Of Angelic Merit

St. Thomas holds that the essential grace and glory of the angels does not depend on the merits of Christ, because "the Word was made flesh for men and for our salvation." Christ merited as Redeemer. Now the essential grace of the angels was not a redemptive grace. [616] And their essential glory, he says elsewhere, [617] was given them by Christ, not as Redeemer, but as the Word of God. Yet the Word incarnate did merit graces for the angels, graces not essential but accidental, to enable them to cooperate in the salvation of men.
Scotus again differs. Since the Word, he says, also in the actual plan of Providence, would have become man even if man had not sinned, we should hold that Christ merited for the angels also their essential grace and glory. And Suarez holds that Adam's sin was the occasion and condition, not of the Incarnation, but of the Redemption. Even if man had not sinned, he says, the Word would still perhaps have become incarnate, but would not have suffered. Hence, he concludes, Christ merited for the good angels their essential grace and glory, and is therefore their Savior.

Thomists reply that Christ is the Savior only as Redeemer. But for the angels He is not Redeemer. Further, they reflect, if the angels owed to Christ their essential glory, the beatific vision, they would, like the just of the Old Testament, have had to wait for that vision until Christ rose from the dead.

Let us summarize this Thomistic treatise on the angels. The main point of difference from Scotus and Suarez lies in the specific difference between angelic intelligence and human intelligence, a difference that depends on their respective formal object, his own essence for the angel, for the man the essence of the sense world known by abstraction. Hence angelic knowledge is completely intuitive. From this position derive all further conclusions of St. Thomas, on angelic knowledge, will, merit, and demerit. This Thomistic [618] conception of pure spirit is much higher than that of Scotus and Suarez. This treatise also throws much light on the following treatise where St. Thomas, in studying the nature of man, dwells on the quasi-angelic state of the separated soul.

A last remark. St. Thomas, as he proceeds, corrects the grave errors of the Latin Averroists, who looked upon all immaterial substances as eternal and immutable, as having a knowledge eternally complete, as depending on God, not for creation, but only for preservation. [619].
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ENDNOTES

596. 596 Ia, q. 50, a. 1, 2.
597. Ia, q 54, a. 1, 2, 3.
598. Ia, q. 50. a. 4.
599. Ipsum esse irreceptum est subsistens et unicum. Ia, q. 7, a1; q. 11, a. 3.
600. Ia, q. 12, a. 4.
601. Ia, q. 55, a. 3.
602. Ia, q. 58, a. 3.
603. Componendo et dividendo.
604. Ia, q. 58, a. 4.
605. Ia, q. 57, a. 3, 4, 5.
606. Nihil volitum nisi praecognitum ut conveniens, et nihil praevolitum nisi praecognitum ut convenientius hic et nunc.
607. Ia, q. 60, a. 5.
608. Ia, q. 63, a. 1, ad 3;De malo, q. 16, a. 3.
609. Ia, q. 62, a. 4, 5; q. 63, a. 5, 6. 
610. Ia, q. 64, a. 2.
611. De civ. Dei, XII, 9. Cf. Ia, q. 62, a. 3.
612. Ia, q. 64, a. 1, ad 4.
613. Angelus post primum actum caritatis quo beatitudinem (supernaturalem) meruit, statim beatus fuit. Ia, q. 62, a. 5.
614. This instant is already the one unique instant of eternity.
615. Ia, q. 63, a. 3616 Cf. De ver..: q. 29, a. 7, ad 5.
617. IIIa, q. 59, a. 6.
618. See Cajetan, Banez, John of St. Thomas, the Carmelites of Salamanca, Gonet, and Billuart.
619. Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averoisme latin au XIIIe siecle, and ed.: Louvain, 1908-610. Introd. and chap. 6; also Denifle, Chartularium univ. parisien.: I, 543.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Pope Leo XIII: Prayer to St. Michael

O GLORIOUS ARCHANGEL ST. MICHAEL, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.

Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist Thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan, who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold, this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. This wicked dragon pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men, of his depraved mind, corrupt heart, spirit of lying, impiety, blasphemy, his pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.

These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the Spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.

Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate Thee as their protector and patron; in Thee Holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to Thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, do Thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.  

V. Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered hostile powers. 
R. The Lion of the tribe of Juda has conquered, the root of David. 
V. Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord. 
R. As we have hoped in Thee. 
V. O Lord, hear my prayer. 
R. And let my cry come unto Thee.


Let us pray

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy name, and we suppliantly implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin Immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel St. Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and ruin of souls. Amen.


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Short Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.


Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio, cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium. Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. Ámen.

Michael the Archangel by Guido Reni.
Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome, 1636.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Garrigou-Lagrange: Reality

Recommended reading: 
Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality is a veritable tour de force of Thomistic thought.

Book description: "Dominican Garrigou-Lagrange was one of the most prominent Thomistic neo-Scholastic theologians of the early and mid-twentieth century. This volume is his attempt to summarize a philosophical and theological worldview by interpreting the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and his successors: Reality is seen in light of the central doctrines of the Trinity, of Creation, and of the Incarnation of the Son as Jesus Christ, in Whom humankind is drawn into the intimacy of the inner life of the Triune God. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange argues on behalf of 24 Thomistic Theses, which he presents as a lens through which to view salvation, the Sacraments, the Mother of the Redeemer, and the spiritual life whereby the divine image is restored in the soul. This work is of interest to any who wish to enhance their understanding of the Catholic theological tradition through an acquaintance with this major and often controversial figure." (Ex Fontibus Co.)

Amazon

"Pythagoras was unlike his predecessors"

“When asked what he professed himself to be, Pythagoras was unlike his predecessors and would lay no claim to be a wise man, for to him that appeared presumptuous; he professed to be a philosopher, that is a lover of wisdom.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary, I Metaphysics, lect. 3.

The School of Athens (detail: Pythagoras), by Raffaelo Sanzio (Raphael).
Fresco, 1509; Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican.

"Philosophy arises from awe"

“Because philosophy arises from awe a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary, I Metaphysics, lect. 3.

Old Philosopher with a Book, by Pietro Bellotti.
Oil on canvas, 1670-74; private collection.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Maurice De Wulf: Neo-Scolasticism

From The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911)

NEO-SCHOLASTICISM is the development of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is not merely the resuscitation of a philosophy long since defunct, but rather a restatement in our own day of the philosophia perennis which, elaborated by the Greeks and brought t perfection by the great medieval teachers, has never ceased to exist even in modern times. It has some times been called neo-Thomism partly because St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century gave to Scholasticism among the Latins its final form, partly because the idea has gained ground that only Thomism can infuse vitality into twentieth century scholasticism. But Thomism is too narrow a term; the system itself is too large and comprehensive to be expressed by the name of any single exponent. This article will deal with the elements which neo-Scholasticism takes over from the past; the modifications which adapt it to the present; the welcome accorded it by contemporary thought and the outlook for its future; its leading representatives and centres.


Traditional elements
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Neo-Scholasticism seeks to restore the fundamental organic doctrines embodied in the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. It claims that philosophy does not vary with each passing phase of history; that the truth of seven hundred years ago is still true today, and that if the great medieval thinkers —Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus—succeeded in constructing a sound philosophical system on the data supplied by the Greeks, especially by Aristotle, it must be possible, in our own day, to gather from the speculation of the Middle Ages the soul of truth which it contains. These essential conceptions may be summarized as follows:

(1) God, pure actuality and absolute perfection, is substantially distinct from every finite thing: he alone can create and preserve all beings other than Himself. His infinite knowledge includes all that has been, is, or shall be, and likewise all that is possible.

(2) As to our knowledge of the material world: whatever exists is itself, an incommunicable, individual substance. To the core of self-sustaining reality, in the oak-tree for instance, other realities (accidents) are added — size, form, roughness, and so on. All oak-trees are alike, indeed are identical in respect of certain constituent elements. Considering this likeness and even identity, our human intelligence groups them into one species and again, in view of their common characteristics, it ranges various species under one genus. Such is the Aristotelean solution of the problem of universals. Each substance is in its nature fixed and determined; and nothing is farther from the spirit of Scholasticism than a theory of evolution which would regard even the essences of things as products of change.

But this statism requires as its complement a moderate dynamism, and this is supplied by the central concepts of act and potency. Whatsoever changes is, just for that reason, limited. The oak-tree passes through a process of growth, of becoming: whatever is actually in it now was potentially in it from the beginning. Its vital functions go on unceasingly (accidental change); but the tree itself will die, and out of its decayed trunk other substances will come forth (substantial change). The theory of matter and form is simply an interpretation of the substantial changes which bodies undergo. The union of matter and form constitutes the essence of concrete being, and this essence is endowed with existence. Throughout all change and becoming there runs a rhythm of finality; the activities of the countless substances of the universe converge towards an end which is known to God; finality, in a word, involves optimism.

(3) Man, a compound of body (matter) and of soul (form), puts forth activities of a higher order —knowledge and volition. Through his senses he perceives concrete objects, e.g. this oak; through his intellect he knows the abstract and universal (the oak). All our intellectual activity rests on sensory function; but through the active intellect (intellectus agens) an abstract representation of the sensible object is provided for the intellectus possibilis. Hence the characteristic of the idea, its non-materiality, and on this is based the principal argument for the spirituality and immortality of the soul. Here, too, is the foundation of logic and of the theory of knowledge, the justification of our judgments and syllogisms.

Upon knowledge follows the appetitive process, sensory or intellectual according to the sort of knowledge. The will (appetitus intellectualis) in certain conditions is free, and thanks to this liberty man is the master of his destiny. Like all other beings, we have an end to attain and we are morally obliged, though not compelled, to attain it.

Natural happiness would result from the full development of our powers of knowing and loving. We should find and possess God in this world since the corporeal world is the proper object of our intelligence. But above nature is the order of grace and our supernatural happiness will consist in the direct intuition of God, the beatific vision. Here philosophy ends and theology begins.

Adaptation to modern needs

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The neo-Scholastic programme includes, in the next place, the adaptation of medieval principles anddoctrines to our present intellectual needs. Complete immobility is no less incompatible with progress than out-and-out relativism. Vita in motu. To make Scholasticism rigid and stationary would be fatal to it. The doctrines revived by the new movement are like an inherited fortune; to refuse it would be folly, but to manage it without regard to actual conditions would be worse. With Dr. Ehrhard one may say: "Aquinas should be our beacon, not our boundary" ("Der Katholicismus und das zwanzigste Jahrh. im Lichte der Kirchlichen Entwicklung der Neuzeit", Stuttgart, 1902, 252). We have now to pass in review the various factors in the situation and to see in what respect the new Scholasticism differs from the old and how far it adapts itself to our age.

Elimination of false or useless notions

Neo-Scholasticism rejects the theories of physics, celestial and terrestrial, which the Middle Ages grafted on the principles, otherwise sound enough, of cosmology and metaphysics; e.g. the perfection and superiority of astral substance, the "incorruptibility" of the heavenly bodies, their external connexion with "motor spirits", the influence of the stars on the generation of earthly beings, the four "simple" bodies, etc. It further rejects those philosophical theories which are disproved by the results of investigation; e.g. the diffusion of sensible "species" throughout a medium and their introduction into the organs of sense. Even the Scholastic ideas that have been retained are not all of equal importance; criticism and personal conviction may retrench or modify them considerably, without injury to fundamental principles.

Study of the history of philosophy

The medieval scholars cultivated the history of philosophy solely with a view to its utility, i.e. as a means of gathering the deposit of truth contained in the writings of the ancients and, especially, for the purpose of refuting error and thus emphasizing the value of their own doctrine. Modern students, on the contrary, regard every human fact and achievement as in itself significant, and accordingly they treat the history of philosophy in a spirit that is more disinterested. With this new attitude, neo-Scholasticism is in full sympathy; it does its share in the work of historical reconstruction by employing critical methods; it does not attempt to condense the opinions of others into a syllogism and refute them with a phrase, nor does it commend the practice of putting whole systems into a paragraph or two in order to annihilate them with epithet or invective. Neo-Scholasticism, however, does not confine its interest to ancient and medieval philosophy; its chief concern is with present-day systems. It takes issue with them and offsets their theories of the world by a synthesis of its own. It is only by keeping in touch with actual living thought that it can claim a place in the twentieth century and command the attention of its opponents. And it has everything to gain from a discussion in which it encounters Positivism, Kantism, and other forms or tendencies of modern speculation.

Cultivation of the sciences


The need of a philosophy based on science is recognized today by every school. Neo-Scholasticism simply follows the example of the Aristotelean and medieval philosophy in taking the data of research as the groundwork of its speculation. That there are profound differences between the Middle Ages and modern times from the scientific point of view, is obvious. One has only to consider the multiplication of the sciences in special lines, the autonomy which science as a whole has acquired, and the clear demarcation established between popular views of nature and their scientific interpretation. But it is equally plain that neo-Scholasticism must follow up each avenue of investigation, since it undertakes, as Aristotle and Aquinas did, to provide a synthetic explanation of phenomena by referring them to their ultimate causes and determining their place in the universal order of things; and this undertaking, if the synthesis is to be deep and comprehensive, presupposes a knowledge of the details furnished by each science. It is not possible to explain the world of phenomena while neglecting the phenomena that make up the world. "All that exists, as contemplated by the human mind, forms one large system or complex fact. . . . Like a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and travels slowly, over the awful volume which lies open for its inspection. . . . These various partial views or abstractions . . . are called sciences . . . they proceed on the principle of a division of labour. . . . And further the comprehension of the bearings of one science on another, and the use of each to each, and the location of them all, with one another, this belongs, I conceive, to a sort of science distinct from all of them, and in some sense, a science of sciences, which is my own conception of what is meant by philosophy" (Newman, "Idea of a University", Discourse III, iii, iv, 44 sqq.).

There is, of course, the pedagogical problem; how shall philosophy maintain its control over the ever-widening field of the various sciences? In reply, we may cite the words of Cardinal Mercier, a prominent leader in the neo-Scholastic movement: "As a matter of fact", he declares, "the difficulty is a serious one, and one may say in general terms, that it is not going to be solved by any one man. As the domain of fact and observation grows larger and larger, individual effort becomes less competent to survey and master it all: hence the necessity of co-operative effort to supply what is lacking in the work of isolated investigators; hence too the need of union between the synthetic mind and the analytic, in order to secure, by daily contact and joint action, the harmonious development of philosophy and science". ("La philosophie néo-scholastique" in "Revue néo-scholastique", 1894, 17).

Innovations in doctrinal matters

Once it turned its attention to modern fashions of thought, neo-Scholasticism found itself face to face with problems of which medieval philosophy had not the slightest suspicion or at any rate did not furnish a solution. It had to bear the brunt of conflict between its own principles and those of the systems in vogue, especially of Positivism and Criticism. And it had to take up, from its own point of view, the questions which are favourite topics of discussion in the schools of our time. How far then, one may ask, has neo-Scholasticism been affected by modern thought? First of all, as to metaphysics: in the Middle Ages its claim to validity met with no challenge, whereas, in the twentieth century, its very possibility is at stake and, to defend it against the concerted attack of Hume and Kant and Comte, the true significance of such concepts as being, substance, absolute, cause, potency, and act must be explained and upheld. It is further needful to show that, in a very real sense, God is not unknowable; to rebut the charges preferred by Herbert Spencer against the traditional proofs of God's existence; to deal with the materials furnished by ethnography and the history of religions; and to study the various forms which monism and immanentism nowadays assume.

Cosmology can well afford to insist on the traditional theory of matter and form, provided it pay due attention to the findings of physics, chemistry, crystallography, and mineralogy, and meet the objections of atomism and dynamism, theories which, in the opinion of scientific authority, are less satisfactory as explanations of natural phenomena than the hylomorphism (q.v.) of the Scholastics. The theory also of qualities, once the subject of ridicule, is nowadays endorsed by some of the most prominent scientists. In psychology especially the progressive spirit of neo-Scholasticism makes itself felt. The theory of the substantial union of body and soul, as an interpretation of biological, psychical, and psycho-physiological facts, is far more serviceable than the extreme spiritualism of Descartes on the one hand and the Positivism of modern thinkers on the other. As Wundt admits, the results of investigation in physiological psychology do not square either with materialism or with dualism whether of the Platonic or of the Cartesian type; it is only Aristotelean animism, which brings psychology into connexion with biology, that can offer a satisfactory metaphysical interpretation of experimental psychology. So vigorous indeed has been the growth of psychology that each of its offshoots is developing in its own way: such is the case with criteriology, æsthetics, didactics, pedagogy, and the numerous ramifications of applied psychology. Along these various lines, unknown to medieval philosophy, neo-Scholasticism is working energetically and successfully. Its criteriology is altogether new: the older Scholasticism handled the problem of certitude from the deductive point of view; God could not have misshaped the faculties with which He endowed the mind in order that it might attain to knowledge. Neo-Scholasticism, on the other hand, proceeds by analysis and introspection it states the problem in the terms which, since Kant's day, are the only admissible terms, but as against the Kantian criticism it finds the solution in a rational dogmatism. Its æsthetics holds a middle course between the extreme subjectivism of many modern thinkers who would reduce the beautiful to a mere impression, and the no less extreme objectivism which the Greeks of old maintained. It is equally at home in the field of experimental psychology which investigates the correlation between conscious phenomena and their physiological accompaniments; in fact, its theory of the substantial union of body and soul implies as its corollary a "bodily resonance" corresponding to each psychical process.

The laws and principles which the modern science of education has drawn from experience find their adequate explanation in neo-Scholastic doctrine; thus, the intuitive method, so largely accepted at present as an essential element in education, is based on the Scholastic theory that nothing enters the intellect save through the avenue of sense. In the study of ethical problems, neo-Scholasticism holds fast to the vital teachings that prevailed in the thirteenth century, but at the same time it takes into account the historical and sociological data which explain the varying application of principles in successive ages. In view of contemporary systems which, on a purely experimental basis, attempt to set aside all moral imperatives and ideas of value, it is necessary to insist on the older concepts of good and evil, of finality and obligation — a need which is easily supplied by neo-Scholastic ethics. As to logic, the most perfect part of Aristotle's great constructive work and therefore that which has been least modified in the course of time. Its positions still call for defence against the objections of writers like Mill, who regard the syllogism as a "solemn farce". Accordingly, with due consideration for modern modes of thinking, neo-Scholasticism adapts the teaching of the Middle Ages to actual conditions. Even as regards the relations between philosophy and religion, there are important changes to note. For the medieval mind in the Western world, philosophy and theology were identical until about the twelfth century. In the thirteenth the line of demarcation was clearly drawn, but philosophy was still treated as the preliminary training for theology. This is no longer the case; neo-Scholasticism assigns to philosophy a value of its own as a rational explanation of the world, on a par in this respect with Positivism and other systems; and it welcomes all who are bent on honest research, whether their aim be purely philosophical or apologetic.

Parallel with these modifications are those which affect the pedagogical phase of the movement. The methods of teaching philosophy in the thirteenth century were too closely dependent on the culture of that age; hence they have been replaced by modern procedures, curricula, and means of propagation. It would be ill-advised to wrap neo-Scholastic doctrine in medieval envelopes, e.g. to write books on the plan of the theological "Summae" or the "Quodlibetal Questions" that were current in the thirteenth century. Without at all lessening its force, syllogistic demonstration gains in attractiveness when its essential characteristics are retained and clothed about with modern forms of presentation. In this connexion, the use of living languages as a means of exposition has obvious advantages and finds favour with many of those who are best qualified to judge.

Appreciation
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By interesting itself in modern questions, interpreting the results of scientific research and setting forth its principles for thorough discussion, neo-Scholasticism has compelled attention: it has to be reckoned with. Among non-Catholics, many leaders of thought have frankly acknowledged that its methods and doctrines deserve to be examined anew. Men like Boutroux admit that Aristotle's system may well serve as an offset to Kantism and evolution (Aristote, Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie, Paris, 1901, 202). Paulsen ("Kant der Philosoph des Protestantismus" in "Kantstudien", 1899) and Eucken ("Thomas von Aquino u.Kant, Ein Kampf zweier Welten", loc. cit., 1901) declare that neo-Thomism is the rival of Kantism and that the conflict between them is the "clash of two worlds". Harnack ("Lehrbuch d. Dogmengesch.", III, 3rd. ed., 327), Seeberg ("Realencyklopädie f. Prot. Theol." 5. v. "Scholastik") and others protest against those who underrate the value of scholastic doctrine.
Among Catholics, neo-Scholasticism gains ground day by day. It is doing away with Ontologism,Traditionalism, the Dualism of Gunther, and the exaggerated Spiritualism of Descartes. It is free from the weaknesses of Pragmatism and Voluntarism, systems in which some thinkers have vainly sought the reconciliation of their philosophy and their faith. Neo-Scholasticism has a character of permanence as truth itself has; but it is destined in its development to keep up with scientific progress. Like everything that lives, it must advance; arrested growth would mean decay.

The leaders and their work
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The neo-Scholastic movement was inaugurated by such writers as Sanseverino (1811-65) and Cornoldi(1822-92) in Italy; Gonzalez (1831-92) in Spain; Kleutgen (1811-83) and Stöckl (1823-95) in Germany; de San (1832-1904), Dupont, and Lepidi in Belgium; Farges and Dormet de Vorges (1910) in France, who with other scholars carried on the work of restoration before the Holy See gave it solemn approval and encouragement. Pius IX, it is true, in various letters, recognized its importance; but it was the encyclical" AEterni Patris" of Leo XIII (4 Aug., 1879) that imparted to neo-Scholasticism its definitive character and quickened its development. This document sets forth the principles by which the movement is to be guided in a progressive spirit, and by which the medieval doctrine is to take on new life in its modern environment. "If," says the pope, "there be anything that the Scholastic doctors treated with excessive subtlety or with insufficient consideration, or that is at variance with well founded teachings of later date, or is otherwise improbable, we by no means intend that it shall be proposed to our age for imitation. . . . We certainly do not blame those learned and energetic men who turn to the profit of philosophy their own assiduous labours and erudition as well as the results of modern investigation; for we are fully aware that all this goes to the advancement of knowledge."

In Italy, the movement was vigorous from the start. The Accademia di San Tommaso, founded in 1874, published, up to 1891, a review entitled "La Scienza Italiana". Numerous works were produced by Zigliara(1833-93), Satolli (1839-1909), Liberatore (1810-92), Barberis (1847-96), Schiffini (1841-1906), deMaria, Talamo, Lorenzelli, Ballerini, Matussi, and others. The Italian writers at first laid special emphasis on the metaphysical features of Scholasticism, without paying sufficient attention to the sciences or to thehistory of philosophy. Recently, however, this situation has undergone a change which promises excellent results.

From Italy the movement spread into the other European countries and found supporters in Germanysuch as Kleutgen, Stöckl, the authors of the "Philosophia Lacensis", published at Maria Laach by theJesuits (Pesch, Hontheim, Cathrein), Gutberlet, Commer, Willmann, Kaufmann, Glossner, Grabmann, andSchneid. These scholars have made valuable contributions to the history of philosophy, especially that of the Middle Ages. Stöckl led the way with his "Geschichte d. Philosophie des Mittelalters" (Mainz, 1864-66). Ehrle and Denifle founded in 1885 the "Archiv für Literatur u. Kirchengesch. d. Mittelalters", and the latter edited the monumental "Chartularium" of the University of Paris. In 1891, Von Hertling andBäumker began the publication of their "Beiträge zur Gesch. d. Phil. des Mittelalters".

Belgium has been particularly favoured. Leo XIII established (1891) at Louvain the "Institut de philosophie" for the special purpose of teaching the doctrine of St. Thomas together with history and thenatural sciences. The Institute was placed in charge of Mgr (now Cardinal) Mercier whose "Cours de philosophie" has been translated into the principal languages of Europe.

In France, besides those already mentioned, Vallet, Gardair, Fonsegrive, and Piat have taken a prominent part in the movement; in Holland (Amsterdam) de Groot; in Switzerland (Freiburg), Mandonnet; in Spain, Orti y Lara, Urráburu, Gómez Izquierdo; in Mexico, Garcia; in Brazil, Santroul; in Hungary, Kiss and Pecsi; in England, Clarke, Maher, John Rickaby, Joseph Rickaby, Boedder (Stonyhurst Series); in the United States Coppens, Poland, Brother Chrysostom, and the professors at the Catholic University (Shanahan, Turner, and Pace).

Neo-Scholasticism has been endorsed by four Catholic Congresses: Paris (1891); Brussels (1895);Freiburg (1897); Munich (1900). A considerable number of reviews have served as its exponents: "Divus Thomas" (1879-1903); "Rivista Italiana di filosofia neo-scolastica" (Florence, since 1909); "Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne" (Paris, since 1830); "Revue néo-scolastique de Philosophie" (Louvain, since 1894); "Revue de Philosophie" (Paris, since 1900);" Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques" (Kain, Belgium, since 1907); "Revue Thomiste" (Paris, since 1893); "Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie" (Paderborn, since 1887); "St. Thomas Blätter" (Ratisbon, since 1888); Bölcseleti-Folyóirat (Budapest, since 1886);" Revista Lulliana" (Barcelona, since 1901); "Cienza Tomista" (Madrid, since 1910). In addition to these, various periodical publications not specially devoted to philosophy have given neo-Scholasticism their cordial support.

—MAURICE DE WULF

Maurice De Wulf: Philosophy

From The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911)

Philosophy.
  • I. Definition of Philosophy.
  • II. Division of Philosophy.
  • III. The Principal Systematic Solutions.
  • IV. Philosophical Methods.
  • V. The Great Historical Currents of Thought.
  • VI. Contemporary Orientations.
  • VII. Is Progress in Philosophy Indefinite, or Is there a Philosophia Perennis?
  • VIII. Philosophy and the Sciences.
  • IX. Philosophy and Religion.
  • X. The Catholic Church and Philosophy.
  • XI. The Teaching of Philosophy.
  • XII. Bibliography
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I. Definition of Philosophy.

According to its etymology, the word "philosophy" (philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means "the love of wisdom". This sense appears again in sapientia, the word used in the Middle Ages to designate philosophy. In the early stages of Greek, as of every other, civilization, the boundary line between philosophy and other departments of human knowledge was not sharply defined, and philosophy was understood to mean "every striving towards knowledge". This sense of the word survives in Herodotus (I, xxx) and Thucydides (II, xl). In the ninth century of our era, Alcuin, employing it in the same sense, says that philosophy is "naturarum inquisitio, rerum humanarum divinarumque cognitio quantum homini possibile est aestimare" — investigation of nature, and such knowledge of things human and Divine as is possible for man (P.L., CI, 952).

In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the aggregate of the human sciences, but "the general science of things in the universe by their ultimate determinations and reasons"; or again, "the intimate knowledge of the causes and reasons of things", the profound knowledge of the universal order. Without here enumerating all the historic definitions of philosophy, some of the most significant may be given. Plato calls it "the acquisition of knowledge", ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d). Aristotle, mightier than his master at compressing ideas, writes: tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta procirc;ta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes — "All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles" (Metaph., I, i) These notions were perpetuated in the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism), with this difference, that the Stoics and Epicureans accentuated the moral bearing of philosophy ("Philosophia studium summae virtutis", says Seneca in "Epist.", lxxxix, 7), and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing (see section V below). The Fathers of the Church and the first philosophers of the Middle Ages seem not to have had a very clear idea of philosophy for reasons which we will develop later on (section IX), but its conception emerges once more in all its purity among the Arabic philosophers at the end of the twelfth century and the masters of Scholasticism in the thirteenth. St. Thomas, adopting the Aristotelean idea, writes: "Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas; sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat" — Wisdom [i.e. philosophy] is the science which considers first and universal causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes" (In Metaph., I, lect. ii).

In general, modern philosophers may be said to have adopted this way of looking at it. Descartes regards philosophy as wisdom: "Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus" — "By the term philosophy we denote the pursuit of wisdom" (Princ. philos., preface); and he understands by it "cognitio veritatis per primas suas causas" — " knowledge of truth by its first causes" (ibid.). For Locke, philosophy is the true knowledge of things; for Berkeley, "the study of wisdom and truth" (Princ.). The many conceptions of philosophy given by Kant reduce it to that of a science of the general principles of knowledge and of the ultimate objects attainable by knowledge — "Wissenschaft von den letzten Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft". For the numerous German philosophers who derive their inspiration from his criticism — Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and the rest — it is the general teaching of science (Wissenschaftslehre). Many contemporary authors regard it as the synthetic theory of the particular sciences: "Philosophy", says Herbert Spencer, "is completely unified knowledge" (First Principles, #37). Ostwald has the same idea. For Wundt, the object of philosophy is "the acquisition of such a general conception of the world and of life as will satisfy the exigencies of the reason and the needs of the heart" — "Gewinnung einer allgemeinen Welt — und Lebensanschauung, welche die Forderungen unserer Vernunft und die Bedurfnisse unseres Gemüths befriedigen soll" (Einleit. in d. Philos., 1901, p. 5). This idea of philosophy as the ultimate science of values (Wert lehre) is emphasized by Windelband, Déring, and others.

The list of conceptions and definitions might be indefinitely prolonged. All of them affirm the eminently synthetic character of philosophy. In the opinion of the present writer, the most exact and comprehensive definition is that of Aristotle. Face to face with nature and with himself, man reflects and endeavours to discover what the world is, and what he is himself. Having made the real the object of studies in detail, each of which constitutes science (see section VIII), he is led to a study of the whole, to inquire into the principles or reasons of the totality of things, a study which supplies the answers to the last Why's. The last Why of all rests upon all that is and all that becomes: it does not apply, as in any one particular science (e.g. chemistry), to this or that process of becoming, or to this or that being (e.g. the combination of two bodies), but to all being and all becoming. All being has within it its constituent principles, which account for its substance (constitutive material and formal causes); all becoming, or change, whether superficial or profound, is brought about by an efficient cause other than its subject; and lastly things and events have their bearings from a finality, or final cause. The harmony of principles, or causes, produces the universal order. And thus philosophy is the profound knowledge of the universal order, in the sense of having for its object the simplest and most general principles, by means of which all other objects of thought are, in the last resort, explained. By these principles, says Aristotle, we know other things, but other things do not suffice to make us know these principles (dia gar tauta kai ek toutôn t'alla gnôrizetai, all' ou tauta dia tôn hupokeimenôn — Metaph., I). The expression universal order should be understood in the widest sense. Man is one part of it: hence the relations of man with the world of sense and with its Author belong to the domain of philosophy. Now man, on the one hand, is the responsible author of these relations, because he is free, but he is obliged by nature itself to reach an aim, which is his moral end. On the other hand, he has the power of reflecting upon the knowledge which he acquires of all things, and this leads him to study the logical structure of science. Thus philosophical knowledge leads to philosophical acquaintance with morality and logic. And hence we have this more comprehensive definition of philosophy: "The profound knowledge of the universal order, of the duties which that order imposes upon man, and of the knowledge which man acquires from reality" — "La connaissance approfondie de l'ordre universel, des devoirs qui en résultent pour l'homme et de la science que l'homme acquiert de la rémite"' (Mercier, "Logique", 1904, p. 23). — The development of these same ideas under another aspect will be found in section VIII of this article.

II. Divisions of Philosophy.

Since the universal order falls within the scope of philosophy (which studies only its first principles, not its reasons in detail), philosophy is led to the consideration of all that is: the world, God (or its cause), and man himself (his nature, origin, operations, moral end, and scientific activities).

It would be out of the question to enumerate here all the methods of dividing philosophy that have been given: we confine ourselves to those which have played a part in history and possess the deepest significance.

A. In Greek Philosophy. — Two historical divisions dominate Greek philosophy: the Platonic and the Aristotelean.

(1) Plato divides philosophy into dialectic, physics, and ethics. This division is not found in Plato's own writings, and it would be impossible to fit his dialogues into the triple frame, but it corresponds to the spirit of the Platonic philosophy. According to Zeller, Xenocrates (314 B.C.) his disciple, and the leading representative of the Old Academy, was the first to adopt this triadic division, which was destined to go down through the ages (Grundriss d. Geschichte d. griechischen Philosophie, 144), and Aristotle follows it in dividing his master's philosophy. Dialectic is the science of objective reality, i.e., of the Idea (idea eidos), so that by Platonic dialectic we must understand metaphysics. Physics is concerned with the manifestations of the Idea, or with the Real, in the sensible universe, to which Plato attributes no real value independent of that of the Idea. Ethics has for its object human acts. Plato deals with logic, but has no system of logic; this was a product of Aristotle's genius.

Plato's classification was taken up by his school (the Academy), but it was not long in yielding to the influence of Aristotle's more complete division and according a place to logic. Following the inspirations of the old Academics, the Stoics divided philosophy into physics (the study of the real), logic (the study of the structure of science) and morals (the study of moral acts). This classification was perpetuated by the neo-Platonists, who transmitted it to the Fathers of the Church, and through them to the Middle Ages.

(2) Aristotle, Plato's illustrious disciple, the most didactic, and at the same time the most synthetic, mind of the Greek worid, drew up a remarkable scheme of the divisions of philosophy. The philosophical sciences are divided into theoretic, practical, and poetic, according as their scope is pure speculative knowledge, or conduct (praxis), or external production (poiêsis). Theoretic philosophy comprises: (a) physics, or the study of corporeal things which are subject to change (achôrista men all' ouk akinêta) (b) mathematics, or the study of extension, i.e., of a corporeal property not subject to change and considered, by abstraction, apart from matter (akinêta men ou chôrista d'isôs, all' hôs en hulê); (c) metaphysics, called theology, or first philosophy, i.e. the study of being in its unchangeable and (whether naturally or by abstraction) incorporeal determinations (chôrista kau akinêt). Practical philosophy comprises ethics, economics, and politics, the second of these three often merging into the last. Poetic philosophy is concerned in general with the external works conceived by human intelligence. To these may conveniently be added logic, the vestibule of philosophy, which Aristotle studied at length, and of which he may be called the creator.

To metaphysics Aristotle rightly accords the place of honour in the grouping of philosophical studies. He calls it "first philosophy". His classification was taken up by the Peripatetic School and was famous throughout antiquity; it was eclipsed by the Platonic classification during the Alexandrine period, but it reappeared during the Middle Ages.

B. In the Middle Ages. — Though the division of philosophy into its branches is not uniform in the first period of the Middle Ages in the West, i.e. down to the end of the twelfth century, the classifications of this period are mostly akin to the Platonic division into logic, ethics, and physics. Aristotle's classification of the theoretic sciences, though made known by Boethius, exerted no influence for the reason that in the early Middle Ages the West knew nothing of Aristotle except his works on logic and some fragments of his speculative philosophy (see section V below). It should be added here that philosophy, reduced at first to dialectic, or logic, and placed as such in the Trivium, was not long in setting itself above the liberal arts.

The Arab philosophers of the twelfth century (Avicenna, Averroes) accepted the Aristotelean classification, and when their works — particularly their translations of Aristotle's great original treatises — penetrated into the West, the Aristotelean division definitively took its place there. Its coming is heralded by Gundissalinus (see section XII), one of the Toletan translators of Aristotle, and author of a treatise, "De divisione philosophiae", which was imitated by Michael Scott and Robert Kilwardby. St. Thomas did no more than adopt it and give it a precise scientific form. Later on we shall see that, conformably with the medieval notion of sapientia, to each part of philosophy corresponds the preliminary study of a group of special sciences. The general scheme of the division of philosophy in the thirteenth century, with St. Thomas's commentary on it, is as follows:

There are as many parts of philosophy as there are distinct domains in the order submitted to the philosopher's reflection. Now there is an order which the intelligence does not form but only considers; such is the order realized in nature. Another order, the practical, is formed either by the acts of our intelligence or by the acts of our will, or by the application of those acts to external things in the arts: e.g., the division of practical philosophy into logic, moral philosophy, and aesthetics, or the philosophy of the arts ("Ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet considerare ordinem rerum quem ratio humana considerat sed non facit; ita quod sub naturali philosophia comprehendamus et metaphysicam. Ordo autem quem ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad rationalem philosophiam, cujus est considerare ordinem partium orationis ad invicem et ordinem principiorum ad invicem et ad conclusiones. Ordo autem actionum voluntariarum pertinet ad considerationem moralis philosophiae. Ordo autem quem ratio considerando facit in rebus exterioribus per rationem humanam pertinet ad artes mechanicas." To natural philosophy pertains the consideration of the order of things which human reason considers but does not create — just as we include metaphysics also under natural philosophy. But the order which reason creates of its own act by consideration pertains to rational philosophy, the office of which is to consider the order of the parts of speech with reference to one another and the order of the principles with reference to one another and to the conclusions. The order of voluntary actions pertains to the consideration of moral philosophy, while the order which the reason creates in external things through the human reason pertains to the mechanical arts. — In "X Ethic. ad Nic.", I, lect. i). The philosophy of nature, or speculative philosophy, is divided into metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, according to the three stages traversed by the intelligence in its effort to attain a synthetic comprehension of the universal order, by abstracting from movement (physics), intelligible quantity (mathematics), being (metaphysics) (In lib. Boeth. de Trinitate, Q. v., a. 1). In this classification it is to be noted that, man being one element of the world of sense, psychology ranks as a part of physics.

C. In Modern Philosophy. — The Scholastic classification may be said, generally speaking, to have lasted, with some exceptions, until the seventeenth century. Beginning with Descartes, we find a multitude of classifications arising, differing in the principles which inspire them. Kant, for instance, distinguishes metaphysics, moral philosophy, religion, and anthropology. The most widely accepted scheme, that which still governs the division of the branches of philosophy in teaching, is due to Wolff (1679-1755), a disciple of Leibniz, who has been called the educator of Germany in the eighteenth century. This scheme is as follows:
  • (1) Logic.
  • (2) Speculative Philosophy.
    • Ontology, or General Metaphysics.
    • Special Metaphysics.
      • Theodicy (the study of God).
      • Cosmology (the study of the World).
      • Psychology (the study of Man).
  • (3) Practical Philosophy.
    • Ethics
    • Politics
    • Economics
Wolff broke the ties binding the particular sciences to philosophy, and placed them by themselves; in his view philosophy must remain purely rational. It is easy to see that the members of Wolff's scheme are found in the Aristotelean classification, wherein theodicy is a chapter of metaphysics and psychology a chapter of physics. It may even be said that the Greek classification is better than Wolff's in regard to speculative philosophy, where the ancients were guided by the formal object of the study — i.e. by the degree of abstraction to which the whole universe is subjected, while the moderns always look at the material object — i.e., the three categories of being, which it is possible to study, God, the world of sense, and man.

D. In Contemporary Philosophy. — The impulse received by philosophy during the last half-century gave rise to new philosophical sciences, in the sense that various branches have been detached from the main stems. In psychology this phenomenon has been remarkable: criteriology, or epistemology (the study of the certitude of knowledge) has developed into a special study. Other branches which have formed themselves into new psychological sciences are: physiological psychology or the study of the physiological concomitant of psychic activities; didactics, or the science of teaching; pedagogy, or the science of education; collective psychology and the psychology of people (Volkerpsychologie), studying the psychic phenomena observable in human groups as such, and in the different races. An important section of logic (called also noetic, or canonic) is tending to sever itself from the main body, viz., methodology, which studies the special logical formation of various sciences. On moral philosophy, in the wide sense, have been grafted the philosophy of law, the philosophy of society, or social philosophy (which is much the same as sociology), and the philosophies of religion and of history.

III. The Principal Systematic Solutions.

From what has been said above it is evident that philosophy is beset by a great number of questions It would not be possible here to enumerate all those questions, much less to detail the divers solutions which have been given to them. The solution of a philosophic question is called a philosophic doctrine or theory. A philosophic system (from sunistêmi, put together) is a complete and organized group of solutions. It is not an incoherent assemblage or an encyclopedic amalgamation of such solutions; it is dominated by an organic unity. Only those philosophic systems which are constructed conformably with the exigencies of organic unity are really powerful: such are the systems of the Upanishads, of Aristotle, of neo-Platonism, of Scholasticism, of Leibniz, Kant and Hume. So that one or several theories do not constitute a system; but some theories, i.e. answers to a philosophic question, are important enough to determine the solution of other important problems of a system. The scope of this section is to indicate some of these theories.

A. Monism, or Pantheism, and Pluralism, Individualism, or Theism. — Are there many beings distinct in their reality, with one Supreme Being, God at the summit of the hierarchy; or is there but one reality (monas, hence monism), one All-God (pan-theos) of whom each individual is but a member or fragment (Substantialistic Pantheism), or else a force, or energy (Dynamic Pantheism)? Here we have an important question of metaphysics the solution of which reacts upon all other domains of philosophy. The system of Aristotle, of the Scholastics, and of Leibniz are Pluralistic and Theistic; the Indian, neo-Platonic, and Hegelian are Monistic. Monism is a fascinating explanation of the real, but it only postpones the difficulties which it imagines itself to be solving (e.g. the difficulty of the interaction of things), to say nothing of the objection, from the human point of view, that it runs counter to our most deep-rooted sentiments.

B. Objectivism and Subjectivism. — Does being, whether one or many, possess its own life, independent of our mind, so that to be known by us is only accident to being, as in the objective system of metaphysics (e.g. Aristotle, the Scholastics, Spinoza)? Or is being no other reality than the mental and subjective presence which it acquires in our representation of it as in the Subjective system (e.g. Hume)? It is in this sense that the "Revue de métaphysique et de morale" (see bibliography) uses the term metaphysics in its title. Subjectivism cannot explain the passivity of our mental representations, which we do not draw out of ourselves, and which therefore oblige us to infer the reality of a non-ego.

C. Substantialism and Phenomenism. — Is all reality a flux of phenomena (Heraclitus, Berkeley, Hume, Taine), or does the manifestation appear upon a basis, or substance, which manifests itself, and does the phenomenon demand a noumenon (the Scholastics)? Without an underlying substance, which we only know through the medium of the phenomenon, certain realities, as walking, talking, are inexplicable, and such facts as memory become absurd.

D. Mechanism and Dynamism (Pure and Modified). — Natural bodies are considered by some to be aggregations of homogeneous particles of matter (atoms) receiving a movement which is extrinsic to them, so that these bodies differ only in the number and arrangement of their atoms (the Atomism, or Mechanism, of Democritus, Descartes, and Hobbes). Others reduce them to specific, unextended, immaterial forces, of which extension is only the superficial manifestation (Leibniz). Between the two is Modified Dynamism (Aristotle), which distinguishes in bodies an immanent specific principle (form) and an indeterminate element (matter) which is the source of limitation and extension. This theory accounts for the specific characters of the entities in question as well as for the reality of their extension in space.

E. Materialism, Agnosticism, and Spiritualism. — That everything real is material, that whatever might be immaterial would be unreal, such is the cardinal doctrine of Materialism (the Stoics, Hobbes, De Lamettrie). Contemporary Materialism is less outspoken: it is inspired by a Positivist ideology (seesection VI), and asserts that, if anything supra-material exists, it is unknowable (Agnosticism, from a and gnôsis, knowledge. Spencer, Huxley). Spiritualism teaches that incorporeal, or immaterial, beings exist or that they are possible (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz). Some have even asserted that only spirits exist: Berkeley, Fichte, and Hegel are exaggerated Spiritualists. The truth is that there are bodies and spirits; among the latter we are acquainted (though less well than with bodies) with the nature of our soul, which is revealed by the nature of our immaterial acts, and with the nature of God, the infinite intelligence, whose existence is demontrated by the very existence of finite things. Side by side with these solutions relating to the problems of the real, there is another group of solutions, not less influential in the orientation of a system, and relating to psychical problems or those of the human ego.

F. Sensualism and Rationalism, or Spiritualism. — These are the opposite poles of the ideogenetic question, the question of the origin of our knowledge. For Sensualism the only source of human knowledge is sensation: everything reduces to transformed sensations. This theory, long ago put forward in Greek philosophy (Stoicism, Epicureanism), was developed to the full by the English Sensualists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) and the English Associationists (Brown, Hartley, Priestley); its modern form is Positivism (John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Spencer, Comte, Taine, Littré etc.). Were this theory true, it would follow that we can know only what falls under our senses, and therefore cannot pronounce upon the existence or non-existence, the reality or unreality, of the super-sensible. Positivism is more logical than Materialism. In the New World, the term Agnosticism has been very happily employed to indicate this attitude of reserve towards the super-sensible. Rationalism (from ratio, reason), or Spiritualism, establishes the existence in us of concepts higher than sensations, i.e. of abstract and general concepts (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin etc.). Ideologic Spiritualism has won the adherence of humanity's greatest thinkers. Upon the spirituality, or immateriality, of our higher mental operations is based the proof of the spirituality of the principle from which they proceed and, hence, of the immortality of the soul.

G. Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Criticism. — So many answers have been given to the question whether man can attain truth, and what is the foundation of certitude, that we will not attempt to enumerate them all. Scepticism declares reason incapable of arriving at the truth. and holds certitude to be a purely subjective affair (Sextus Empiricus, AEnesidemus). Dogmatism asserts that man can attain to truth, and that, in measure to be further determined, our cognitions are certain. The motive of certitude is, for the Traditionalists, a Divine revelation, for the Scotch School (Reid) it is an inclination of nature to affirm the principles of common sense; it is an irrational, but social, necessity of admitting certain principles for practical dogmatism (Balfour in his "Foundations of Belief" speaks of "non-rational impulse", while Mallock holds that "certitude is found to be the child, not of reason but of custom" and Brunetière writes about "the bankruptcy of science and the need of belief"); it is an affective sentiment, a necessity of wishing that certain things may be verities (Voluntarism; Kant's Moral Dogmatism), or the fact of living certain verities (contemporary Pragmatism and Humanism William James, Schiller). But for others — and this is the theory which we accept — the motive of certitude is the very evidence of the connexion which appears between the predicate and the subject of a proposition, an evidence which the mind perceives, but which it does not create (Moderate Dogmatism). Lastly for Criticism, which is the Kantian solution of the problem of knowledge, evidence is created by the mind by means of the structural functions with which every human intellect is furnished (the categories of the understanding). In conformity with these functions we connect the impressions of the senses and construct the world. Knowledge, therefore, is valid only for the world as represented to the mind. Kantian Criticism ends in excessive Idealism, which is also called Subjectivism. or Phenomenalism, and according to which the mind draws all its representations out of itself, both the sensory impressions and the categories which connect them: the world becomes a mental poem, the object is created by the subject as representation (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).

H. Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism are various answers to the question of the real objectivity of our predications, or of the relation of fidelity existing between our general representations and the external world (see NOMINALISM,REALISM, CONCEPTUALISM).

I. Determinism and Indeterminism. — Has every phenomenon or fact its adequate cause in an antecedent phenomenon or fact (Cosmic Determinism)? And, in respect to acts of the will, are they likewise determined in all their constituent elements (Moral Determinism, Stoicism, Spinoza)? If so, then liberty disappears, and with it human responsibility, merit and demerit. Or, on the contrary, is there a category of volitions which are not necessitated, and which depend upon the discretionary power of the will to act or not to act and in acting to follow freely chosen direction? Does liberty exist? Most Spiritualists of all schools have adopted a libertarian philosophy, holding that liberty alone gives the moral life an acceptable meaning; by various arguments they have confirmed the testimony of conscience and the data of common consent. In physical nature causation and determinism rule; in the moral life, liberty. Others, by no means numerous, have even pretended to discover cases of indeterminism in physical nature (the so-called Contingentist theories, e.g. Boutroux).

J. Utilitarianism and the Morality of Obligation. — What constitutes the foundation of morality in our actions? Pleasure or utility say some, personal or egoistic pleasure (Egoism — Hobbes, Bentham, and "the arithmetic of pleasure"); or again, in the pleasure and utility of all (Altruism — John Stuart Mill). Others hold that morality consists in the performance of duty for duty's sake, the observance of law because it is law, independently of personal profit (the Formalism of the Stoics and of Kant). According to another doctrine, which in our opinion is more correct, utility, or personal advantage, is not incompatible with duty, but the source of the obligation to act is in the last analysis, as the very exigencies of our nature tell us, the ordinance of God.

IV. Philosophical Methods.

Method (meth' hodos) means a path taken to reach some objective point. By philosophical method is understood the path leading to philosophy, which, again, may mean either the process employed in the construction of a philosophy (constructive method, method of invention), or the way of teaching philosophy (method of teaching, didactic method). We will deal here with the former of these two senses; the latter will be treated in section XI. Three methods can be, and have been, applied to the construction of philosophy.

A. Experimental (Empiric, or Analytic) Method. — The method of aIl Empiric philosophers is to observe facts, accumulate them, and coordinate them. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, the empirical method refuses to rise beyond observed and observable fact; it abstains from investigating anything that is absolute. It is found among the Materialists, ancient and modern, and is most unreservedly applied in contemporary Positivism. Comte opposes the "positive mode of thinking", based solely upon observation, to the theological and metaphysical modes. For Mill, Huxley, Bain, Spencer, there is not one philosophical proposition but is the product, pure and simple, of experience: what we take for a general idea is an aggregate of sensations; a judgment is the union of two sensations; a syllogism, the passage from particular to particular (Mill, "A System of Logic, Rational and Inductive", ed. Lubbock, 1892; Bain, "Logic", New York, 1874). Mathematical propositions, fundamental axioms such as a = a, the principle of contradiction, the principle of causality are only "generalizations from facts of experience" (Mill, op. cit., vii, #5). According to this author, what we believe to be superior to experience in the enunciation of scientific laws is derived from our subjective incapacity to conceive its contradictory; according to Spencer, this inconceivability of the negation is developed by heredity.

Applied in an exaggerated and exclusive fashion, the experimental method mutilates facts, since it is powerless to ascend to the causes and the laws which govern facts. It suppresses the character of objective necessity which is inherent in scientific judgments, and reduces them to collective formulae of facts observed in the past. It forbids our asserting, e.g., that the men who will be born after us will be subject to death, seeing that all certitude rests on experience, and that by mere observation we cannot reach the unchangeable nature of things. The empirical method, left to its own resources, checks the upward movement of the mind towards the causes or object of the phenomena which confront it.

B. Deductive, or Synthetic a Priori, Method. — At the opposite pole to the preceding, the deductive method starts from very general principles, from higher causes, to descend (Lat. deducere, to lead down) to more and more complex relations and to facts. The dream of the Deductionist is to take as the point of departure an intuition of the Absolute, of the Supreme Reality — for the Theists, God; for the Monists, the Universal Being — and to draw from this intuition the synthetic knowledge of all that depends upon it in the universe, in conformity with the metaphysical scale of the real. Plato is the father of deductive philosophy: he starts from the world of Ideas, and from the Idea of the Sovereign Good, and he would know the reality of the world of sense only in the Ideas of which it is the reflection. St. Augustine, too, finds his satisfaction in studying the universe, and the least of the beings which compose it, only in a synthetic contemplation of God, the exemplary, creative, and final cause of all things. So, too, the Middle Ages attached great importance to the deductive method. "I propose", writes Boethius, "to build science by means of concepts and maxims, as is done in mathematics." Anselm of Canterbury draws from the idea of God, not only the proof of the real existence of an infinite being, but also a group of theorems on His attributes and His relations with the world. Two centuries before Anselm, Scotus Eriugena, the father of anti-Scholasticism, is the completest type of the Deductionist: his metaphysics is one long description of the Divine Odyssey, inspired by the neo-Platonic, monistic conception of the descent of the One in its successive generations. And, on the very threshold of the thirteenth century, Alain de Lille would apply to philosophy a mathematical methodology. In the thirteenth century Raymond Lully believed that he had found the secret of "the Great Art" (ars magna), a sort of syllogism-machine, built of general tabulations of ideas, the combination of which would give the solution of any question whatsoever. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are Deductionists: they would construct philosophy after the manner of geometry (more geometrico), linking the most special and complicated theorems to some very simple axioms. The same tendency appears among the Ontologists and the post-Kantian Pantheists in Germany (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), who base their philosophy upon an intuition of the Absolute Being.

The deductive philosophers generally profess to disdain the sciences of observation. Their great fault is the compromising of fact, bending it to a preconceived explanation or theory assumed a priori, whereas the observation of the fact ought to precede the assignment of its cause or of its adequate reason. This defect in the deductive method appears glaringly in a youthful work of Leibniz's, "Specimen demonstrationum politicarum pro rege Polonorum eligendo", published anonymously in 1669, where he demonstrates hy geometrical methods (more geometrico), in sixty propositions, that the Count Palatine of Neuburg ought to be elected to the Polish Throne.

C. Analytico-Synthetic Method. — This combination of analysis and synthesis, of observation and deduction, is the only method appropriate to philosophy. Indeed, since it undertakes to furnish a general explanation of the universal order (see section I), philosophy ought to begin with complex effects, facts known by observation, before attempting to include them in one comprehensive explanation of the universe. This is manifest in psychology, where we begin with a careful examination of activities, notably of the phenomena of sense, of intelligence, and of appetite; in cosmology, where we observe the series of changes, superficial and profound, of bodies; in moral philosophy, which sets out from the observation of moral facts; in theodicy, where we interrogate religious beliefs and feelings; even in metaphysics, the starting-point of which is really existing being. But observation and analysis once completed, the work of synthesis begins. We must pass onward to a synthetic psychology that shall enable us to comprehend the destinies of man's vital principle; to a cosmology that shall explain the constitution of bodies, their changes, and the stability of the laws which govern them; to a synthetic moral philosophy establishing the end of man and the ultimate ground of duty; to a theodicy and deductive metaphysics that shall examine the attributes of God and the fundamental conceptions of all being. As a whole and in each of its divisions, philosophy applies the analytic-synthetic method. Its ideal would be to give an account of the universe and of man by a synthetic knowledge of God, upon whom all reality depends. This panoramic view — the eagle's view of things — has allured all the great geniuses. St. Thomas expresses himself admirably on this synthetic knowledge of the universe and its first cause. The analytico-synthetic process is the method, not only of philosophy, but of every science, for it is the natural law of thought, the proper function of which is unified and orderly knowledge. "Sapientis est ordinare." Aristotle, St. Thomas, Pascal, Newton, Pasteur, thus understood the method of the sciences. Men like Helmholtz and Wundt adopted synthetic views after doing analytical work. Even the Positivists are metaphysicians, though they do not know it or wish it. Does not Herbert Spencer call his philosophy synthetic? and does he not, by reasoning, pass beyond that domain of the "observable" within which he professes to confine himself?

V. The Great Historical Currents.

Among the many peoples who have covered the globe philosophic culture appears in two groups: the Semitic and the Indo-European, to which may be added the Egyptians and the Chinese. In the Semitic group (Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramaeans, Chaldeans) the Arabs are the most important; nevertheless, their part becomes insignificant when compared with the intellectual life of the Indo-Europeans. Among the latter, philosophic life appears successively in various ethnic divisions, and the succession forms the great periods into which the history of philosophy is divided; first, among the people of India (since 15OO B.C.); then among the Greeks and the Romans (sixth century B.C. to sixth century of our era); again, much later, among the peoples of Central and Northern Europe.

A. Indian Philosophy. — The philosophy of India is recorded principally in the sacred books of the Veda, for it has always been closely united with religion. Its numerous poetic and religious productions carry within themselves a chronology which enables us to assign them to three periods. (1) The Period of the Hymns of the Rig Veda (1500-1000 B.C.). This is the most ancient monument of Indo-Germanic civilization; in it may be seen the progressive appearance of the fundamental theory that a single Being exists under a thousand forms in the multiplied phenomena of the universe (Monism). (2) The Period of the Brahmans (l000-500 B.C.). This is the age of Brahminical civilization. The theory of the one Being remains, but little by little the concrete and anthropomorphic ideas of the one Being are replaced by the doctrine that the basis of all things is in oneself (âtman). Psychological Monism appears in its entirety in the Upanishads: the absolute and adequate identity of the Ego — which is the constitutive basis of our individuality (âtman) — and of all things, with Brahman, the eternal being exalted above time, space, number, and change, the generating principle of all things in which all things are finally reabsorbed — such the fundamental theme to be found in the Upanishad under a thousand variations of form. To arrive at the âtman, we must not stop at empirical reality which is multiple and cognizable; we must pierce this husk, penetrate to the unknowable and ineffable superessence, and identify ourselves with it in an unconscious unity. (3) The Post-Vedic or Sanskrit, Period (since 500 B.C.). From the germs of theories contained in the Upanishad a series of systems spring up, orthodox or heterodox. Of the orthodox systems, Vedanta is the most interesting; in it we find the principles of the Upanishads developed in an integral philosophy which comprise metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, and ethics (transmigration, metempsychosis). Among the systems not in harmony with the Vedic dogmas, the most celebrated is Buddhism, a kind of Pessimism which teaches liberation from pain in a state of unconscious repose, or an extinction of personality (Nirvâna). Buddhism spread in China, where it lives side by side with the doctrines of Lao Tse and that of Confucius. It is evident that even the systems which are not in harmony with the Veda are permeated with religious ideas.

B. Greek Philosophy. — This philosophy, which occupied six centuries before, and six after, Christ, may be divided into four periods, corresponding with the succession of the principal lines of research (1) From Thales of Miletus to Socrates (seventh to fifth centuries B.C. — preoccupied with cosmology) (2) Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (fifth to fourth centuries B.C. — psychology); (3) From the death of Aristotle to the rise of neo-Platonism (end of the fourth century B.C. to third century after Christ — moral philosophy); (4) neo-Platonic School (from the third century after Christ, or, including the systems of the forerunners of neo-Platonism, from the first century after Christ, to the end of Greek philosophy in the seventh century-mysticism).

(1) The pre-Socratic philosophers either seek for the stable basis of things — which is water, for Thales of Miletus; air, for Anaximenes of Miletus; air endowed with intelligence, for Diogenes of Apollonia; number, for Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.); abstract and immovable being, for the Eleatics — or they study that which changes: while Parmenides and the Eleatics assert that everything is, and nothing changes or becomes. Heraclitus (about 535-475) holds that everything becomes, and nothing is unchangeable. Democritus (fifth century) reduces all beings to groups of atoms in motion, and this movement, according to Anaxagoras, has for its cause an intelligent being. (2) The Period of Apogee: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. When the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias) had demonstrated the insufficiency of these cosmologies, Socrates (470-399) brought philosophical investigation to bear on man himself, studying man chiefly from the moral point of view. From the presence in us of abstract ideas Plato (427-347) deduced the existence of a world of supersensible realities or ideas, of which the visible world is but a pale reflection. These ideas, which the soul in an earlier life contemplated, are now, because of its union with the body, but faintly perceived. Aristotle (384-322), on the contrary, shows that the real dwells in the objects of sense. The theory of act and potentiality, of form and matter, is a new solution of the relations between the permanent and the changing. His psychology, founded upon the principle of the unity of man and the substantial union of soul and body, is a creation of genius. And as much may be said of his logic. (3) The Moral Period. After Aristotle (end of the fourth Century B.C.) four schools are in evidence: Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Aristotelean. The Stoics (Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus), like the Epicureans, make speculation subordinate to the quest of happiness, and the two schools, in spite of their divergencies, both consider happiness to be ataraxia or absence of sorrow and preoccupation. The teachings of both on nature (Dynamistic Monism with the Stoics, and Pluralistic Mechanism with the Epicureans) are only a prologue to their moral philosophy. After the latter half of the second century B.C. we perceive reciprocal infiltrations between the various schools. This issues in Eclecticism. Seneca (first century B.C.) and Cicero (106-43 B.C.) are attached to Eclecticism with a Stoic basis; two great commentators of Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes (first century B.C.) and Alexander of Aphrodisia about 200), affect a Peripatetic Eclecticism. Parallel with Eclecticism runs a current of Scepticism (AEnesidemus, end of first century B.C., and Sextus Empiricus, second century A.D.). (4) The Mystical Period. In the first century B.C. Alexandria had become the capital of Greek intellectual life. Mystical and theurgic tendencies, born of a longing for the ideal and the beyond, began to appear in a current of Greek philosophy which originated in a restoration of Pythagorism and its alliance with Platonism (Plutarch of Chieronea, first century B.C.; Apuleius of Madaura; Numenius, about 16O and others), and still more in the Graeco-Judaic philosophy of Philo the Jew (30 B.C. to A.D. 50). But the dominance of these tendencies is more apparent in neo-Platonism. The most brilliant thinker of the neo-Platonic series is Plotinus (A.D. 20-70). In his "Enneads" he traces the paths which lead the soul to the One, and establishes, in keeping with his mysticism, an emanationist metaphysical system. Porphyry of Tyre (232-304), a disciple of Plotinus, popularizes his teaching, emphasizes its religious bearing, and makes Aristotle's "Organon" the introduction to neo-Platonic philosophy. Later on, neo-Platonism, emphasizing its religious features, placed itself, with Jamblichus, at the service of the pagan pantheon which growing Christianity was ruining on all sides, or again, as with Themistius at Constantinople (fourth century), Proclus and Simplicius at Athens (fifth century), and Ammonius at Alexandria, it took an Encyclopedic turn. With Ammonius and John Philoponus (sixth century) the neo-Platonic School of Alexandria developed in the direction of Christianity.

C. Patristic Philosophy. — In the closing years of the second century and, still more, in the third century, the philosophy of the Fathers of the Church was developed. It was born in a civilization dominated by Greek ideas, chiefly neo-Platonic, and on this side its mode of thought is still the ancient. Still, if some, like St. Augustine, attach the greatest value to the neo-Platonic teachings, it must not be forgotten that the Monist or Pantheistic and Emanationist ideas, which have been accentuated by the successors of Plotinus, are carefully replaced by the theory of creation and the substantial distinction of beings; in this respect a new spirit animates Patristic philosophy. It was developed, too, as an auxiliary of the dogmatic system which the Fathers were to establish. In the third century the great representatives of the Christian School of Alexandria are Clement of Alexandria and Origen. After them Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, and, above all, St. Augustine (354-430) appear. St. Augustine gathers up the intellectual treasures of the ancient world, and is one of the principal intermediaries for their transmission to the modern world. In its definitive form Augustinism is a fusion of intellectualism and mysticism, with a study of God as the centre of interest. In the fifth century, pseudo-Dionysius perpetuates many a neo-Platonic doctrine adapted to Christianity, and his writings exercise a powerful influence in the Middle Ages.

D. Medieval Philosophy. — The philosophy of the Middle Ages developed simultaneously in the West, at Byzantium, and in divers Eastern centres; but the Western philosophy is the most important. It built itself up with great effort on the ruins of barbarism: until the twelfth century, nothing was known of Aristotle, except some treatises on logic, or of Plato, except a few dialogues. Gradually, problems arose, and, foremost, in importance, the question of universals in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries (see NOMINALISM). St. Anselm (1O33-1109) made a first attempt at systematizing Scholastic philosophy, and developed a theodicy. But as early as the ninth century an anti-Scholastic philosophy had arisen with Eriugena who revived the neo-Platonic Monism. In the twelfth century Scholasticism formulated new anti-Realist doctrines with Adelard of Bath, Gauthier de Mortagne, and, above all, Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée, whilst extreme Realism took shape in the schools of Chartres. John of Salisbury and Alain de Lille, in the twelfth century, are the co-ordinating minds that indicate the maturity of Scholastic thought. The latter of these waged a campaign against the Pantheism of David of Dinant and the Epicureanism of the Albigenses — the two most important forms of anti-Scholastic philosophy. At Byzantium, Greek philosophy held its ground throughout the Middle Ages, and kept apart from the movement of Western ideas. The same is true of the Syrians and Arabs. But at the end of the twelfth century the Arabic and Byzantine movement entered into relation with Western thought, and effected, to the profit of the latter, the brilliant philosophical revival of the thirteenth century. This was due, in the first place, to the creation of the University of Paris; next, to the foundation of the Dominican and Franciscan orders; lastly, to the introduction of Arabic and Latin translations of Aristotle and the ancient authors. At the same period the works of Avicenna and Averroes became known at Paris. A pleiad of brilliant names fills the thirteenth century — Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, Bl. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and Duns Scotus — bring Scholastic synthesis to perfection. They all wage war on Latin Averroism and anti-Scholasticism, defended in the schools of Paris by Siger of Brabant. Roger Bacon, Lully, and a group of neo-Platonists occupy a place apart in this century, which is completely filled by remarkable figures. In the fourteenth century Scholastic philosophy betrays the first symptoms of decadence. In place of individualities we have schools, the chief being the Thomist, the Scotist, and the Terminist School of William of Occam, which soon attracted numerous partisans. With John of Jandun, Averroism perpetuates its most audacious propositions; Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa formulate philosophies which are symptomatic of the approaching revolution. The Renaissance was a troublous period for philosophy. Ancient systems were revived: the Dialectic of the Humanistic philologists (Laurentius Valla, Vivés), Platonism, Aristoteleanism, Stoicism. Telesius, Campanella, and Giordano Bruno follow a naturalistic philosophy. Natural and social law are renewed with Thomas More and Grotius. All these philosophies were leagued together against Scholasticism, and very often against Catholicism. On the other hand, the Scholastic philosophers grew weaker and weaker, and, excepting for the brilliant Spanish Scholasticism of the sixteenth century (Bañez, Suarez, Vasquez, and so on), it may be said that ignorance of the fundamental doctrine became general. In the seventeenth century there was no one to support Scholasticism: it fell, not for lack of ideas, but for lack of defenders.

E. Modern Philosophy. — The philosophies of the Renaissance are mainly negative: modern philosophy is, first and foremost, constructive. The latter is emancipated from all dogma; many of its syntheses are powerful; the definitive formation of the various nationalities and the diversity of languages favour the tendency to individualism. The two great initiators of modern philosophy are Descartes and Francis Bacon. The former inaugurates a spiritualistic philosophy based on the data of consciousness, and his influence may be traced in Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Bacon heads a line of Empiricists, who regarded sensation as the only source of knowledge. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a Sensualist philosophy grew up in England, based on Baconian Empiricism, and soon to develop in the direction of Subjectivism. Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and David Hume mark the stages of this logical evolution. Simultaneously an Associationist psychology appeared also inspired by Sensualism, and, before long, it formed a special field of research. Brown, David Hartley, and Priestley developed the theory of association of ideas in various directions. At the outset Sensualism encountered vigorous opposition, even in England, from the Mystics and Platonists of the Cambridge School (Samuel Parker and, especially, Ralph Cudworth). The reaction was still more lively in the Scotch School, founded and chiefly represented by Thomas Reid, to which Adam Ferguson, Oswald, and Dugald Stewart belonged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which had great influence over Eclectic Spiritualism, chiefly in America and France. Hobbes's "selfish" system was developed into a morality by Bentham, a partisan of Egoistic Utilitarianism, and by Adam Smith, a defender of Altruism, but provoked a reaction among the advocates of the moral sentiment theory (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Samuel Clarke). In England, also, Theism or Deism was chiefly developed, instituting a criticism of all positive religion, which it sought to supplant with a philosophical religion. English Sensualism spread in France during the eighteenth century: its influence is traceable in de Condillac, de la Mettrie, and the Encyclopedists; Voltaire popularized it in France and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau it made its way among the masses, undermining their Christianity and preparing the Revolution of 1759. In Germany, the philosophy of the eighteenth century is, directly or indirectly, connected with Leibniz — the School of Wolff, the Aesthetic School (Baumgarten), the philosophy of sentiment. But all the German philosophers of the eighteenth century were eclipsed by the great figure of Kant.

With Kant (1724-1804) modern philosophy enters its second period and takes a critical orientation. Kant bases his theory of knowledge, his moral and aesthetic system, and his judgments of finality on the structure of the mind. In the first half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy is replete with great names connected with Kantianism — after it had been put through a Monistic evolution, however — Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have been called the triumvirate of Pantheism; then again, Schopenhauer, while Herbart returned to individualism. French philosophy in the nineteenth century is at first dominated by an eclectic Spiritualistic movement with which the names of Maine de Biran and, especially, Victor Cousin are associated. Cousin had disciples in America (C. Henry), and in France he gained favour with those whom the excesses of the Revolution had alarmed. In the first half of the nineteenth century French Catholics approved the Traditionalism inaugurated by de Bonald and de Lamennais, while another group took refuge in Ontologism. In the same period Auguste Comte founded Positivism, to which Littré and Taine adhered, though it rose to its greatest height in the English-speaking countries. In fact, England may be said to have been the second fatherland of Positivism; John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer expanded its doctrines, combined them with Associationism and emphasized it criteriological aspect, or attempted (Spencer) to construct a vast synthesis of human sciences. The Associationist philosophy at this time was confronted by the Scotch philosophy which, in Hamilton, combined the teachings of Reid and of Kant and found an American champion in Noah Porter. Mansel spread the doctrines of Hamilton. Associationism regained favour with Thomas Brown and James Mill, but was soon enveloped in the large conception of Positivism, the dominant philosophy in England. Lastly, in Italy, Hegel was for a long time the leader of nineteenth-century philosophical thought (Vera and d'Ercole), whilst Gioberti, the ontologist and Rosmini occupy a distinct position. More recently, Positivism has gained numerous adherents in Italy. In the middle of the century, a large Krausist School existed in Spain, represented chiefly by Sanz del Rio (d. 1869) and N. Salmeron. Balmes (181O-48), the author of "Fundamental Philosophy" is an original thinker whose doctrines have many points of contact with Scholasticism.

VI. Contemporary Orientations.

A. Favourite Problems. — Leaving aside social questions, the study of which belongs to philosophy in only some of their aspects, it may be said that in the philosophic interest of the present day psychological questions hold the first place, and that chief among them is the problem of certitude. Kant, indeed, is so important a factor in the destinies of contemporary philosophy not only because he is the initiator of critical formalism, but still more because he obliges his successors to deal with the preliminary and fundamental question of the limits of knowledge. On the other hand the experimental investigation of mental processed has become the object of a new study, psycho-physiology, in which men of science co-operate with philosophers, and which meets with increasing success. This study figures in the programme of most modern universities. Originating at Leipzig (the School of Wundt) and Würzburg, it has quickly become naturalized in Europe and America. In America, "The Psychological Review" has devoted many articles to this branch of philosophy. Psychological studies are the chosen field of the American (Ladd, William James, Hall).

The great success of psychology has emphasized the subjective character of aesthetics, in which hardly anyone now recognizes the objective and metaphysical element. The solutions in vogue are the Kantian, which represents the aesthetic judgment as formed in accordance with the subjective, structural function of the mind, or other psychologic solutions which reduce the beautiful to a psychic impression (the "sympathy", or Einfühlung, of Lipps; the "concrete intuition" of Benedetto Croce). These explanations are insufficient, as they neglect the objective aspect of the beautiful — those elements which, on the part of the object, are the cause of the aesthetic impression and enjoyment. It may be said that the neo-Scholastic philosophy alone takes into account the objective aesthetic factor.

The absorbing influence of psychology also manifests itself to the detriment of other branches of philosophy; first of all, to the detriment of metaphysics, which our contemporaries have unjustly ostracized — unjustly, since, if the existence or possibility of a thing-in-itself is considered of importance, it behooves us to inquire under what aspects of reality it reveals itself. This ostracism of metaphysics, moreover, is largely due to misconception and to a wrong understanding of the theories of substance, of faculties, of causes etc., which belong to the traditional metaphysics. Then again, the invasion of psychology is manifest in logic: side by side with the ancient logic or dialectic, a mathematical or symbolic logic has developed (Peano, Russell, Peirce, Mitchell, and others) and, more recently, a genetic logic which would study, not the fixed laws of thought, but the changing process of mental life and its genesis (Baldwin).
We have seen above (section II, D) how the increasing cultivation of psychology has produced other scientific ramifications which find favour with the learned world. Moral philosophy, long neglected, enjoys a renewed vogue notably in America, where ethnography is devoted to its service (see, e.g., the publications of the Smithsonian Institution). "The International Journal of Ethics" is a review especially devoted to this line of work. In some quarters, where the atmosphere is Positivist, there is a desire to get rid of the old morality, with its notions of value and of duty, and to replace it with a collection of empiric rules subject to evolution (Sidgwick, Huxley, Leslie Stephen, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl).

As to the history of philosophy, not only are very extended special studies devoted to it, but more and more room is given it in the study of every philosophic question. Among the causes of this exaggerated vogue are the impulse given by the Schools of Cousin and of Hegel, the progress of historical studies in general, the confusion arising from the clash of rival doctrines, and the distrust engendered by that confusion. Remarkable works have been produced by Deussen, on Indian and Oriental philosophy; by Zeller, on Greek antiquity; by Denifle, Hauréau, Bäumker, and Mandonnet, on the Middle Ages; by Windelband, Kuno Fischer, Boutroux and Höffding, on the modern period; and the list might easily be considerably prolonged.

B. The Opposing Systems. — The rival systems of philosophy of the present time may be reduced to various groups: Positivism, neo-Kantianism, Monism, neo-Scholasticism. Contemporary philosophy lives in an atmosphere of Phenomenism, since Positivism and neo-Kantianism are at one on this important doctrine: that science and certitude are possible only within the limits of the world of phenomena, which is the immediate object of experience. Positivism, insisting on the exclusive rights of sensory experience, and Kantian criticism, reasoning from the structure of our cognitive faculties, hold that knowledge extends only as far as appearances; that beyond this is the absolute, the dark depths, the existence of which there is less and less disposition to deny, but which no human mind can fathom. On the contrary, this element of the absolute forms an integral constituent in neo-Scholasticism revived, with sobriety and moderation, the fundamental notions of Aristotelean and Medieval metaphysics, and has succeeded in vindicating them against attack and objection.

(1) Positivism, under various forms, is defended in England by the followers of Spencer, by Huxley, Lewes, Tyndall, F. Harrison, Congreve, Beesby, J. Bridges, Grant Allen (James Martineau is a reactionary against Positivism); by Balfour, who at the same time propounds a characteristic theory of belief, and falls back on Fideism. From England Positivism passed over to America, where it soon dethroned the Scottish doctrines (Carus). De Roberty, in Russia, and Ribot, in France, are among its most distinguished disciples. In Italy it is found in the writings of Ferrari, Ardigo, and Morselli; in Germany, in those of Laas, Riehl, Guyau, and Durkheim. Less brutal than Materialism, the radical vice of Positivism is its identification of the knowable with the sensible. It seeks in vain to reduce general ideas to collective images, and to deny the abstract and universal character of the mind's concepts. It vainly denies the super-experiential value of the first logical principles in which the scientific life of the mind is rooted; nor will it ever succeed in showing that the certitude of such a judgment as 2 + 2 = 4 increases with our repeated addition of numbers of oxen or of coins. In morals, where it would reduce precepts and judgments to sociological data formed in the collective conscience and varying with the period and the environment, Positivism stumbles against the judgments of value, and the supersensible ideas of obligation, moral good, and law, recorded in every human conscience and unvarying in their essential data.

(2) Kantianism had been forgotten in Germany for some thirty years (1830-60); Vogt, Büchner, and Molesehott had won for Materialism an ephemeral vogue; but Materialism was swept away by a strong Kantian reaction. This reversion towards Kant (Rückkehr zu Kant) begins to be traceable in 1860 (notably as a result of Lange's "History of Materialism"), and the influence of Kantian doctrines may be said to permeate the whole contemporary German philosophy (Otto Liebmann, von Hartmann, Paulsen, Rehmke, Dilthey, Natorp, Fueken, the Immanentists, and the Empirico-criticists). French neo-Criticism, represented by Renouvier, was connected chiefly with Kant's second "Critique" and introduced a specific Voluntarism. Vacherot, Secrétan, Lachelier, Boutroux, Fouillée, and Bergson are all more or less under tribute to Kantianism. Ravaisson proclaims himself a follower of Maine de Biran. Kantianism has taken its place in the state programme of education and Paul Janet, who, with F. Bouillier and Caro, was among the last legatees of Cousin's Spiritualism, appears, in his "Testament philosophique", affecting a Monism with a Kantian inspiration. All those who, with Kant and the Positivists, proclaim the "bankruptcy of science" look for the basis of our certitude in an imperative demand of the will. This Voluntarism, also called Pragmatism (William James), and, quite recently, Humanism (Schiller at Oxford), is inadequate to the establishment of the theoretic moral and social sciences upon an unshakable base: sooner or later, reflection will ask what this need of living and of willing is worth, and then the intelligence will return to its position as the supreme arbiter of certitude.

From Germany and France Kantianism has spread everywhere. In England it has called into activity the Critical Idealism associated with T. H. Green and Bradley. Hodgson, on the contrary, returns to Realism. S. Laurie may be placed between Green and Martineau. Emerson, Harris, Everett, and Royce spread Idealistic Criticism in America; Shadworth Hodgson, on the other hand, and Adamson tend to return to Realism, whilst James Ward emphasizes the function of the will.

(3) Monism. — With a great many Kantians, a stratum of Monistic ideas is superimposed on Criticism, the thing in itself being considered numerically one. The same tendencies are observable among Positivist Evolutionists like Clifford and Romanes, or G. T. Ladd.

(4) Neo-Scholasticism, the revival of which dates from the last third of the nineteenth century (Liberatore, Taparelli, Cornoldi, and others), and which received a powerful impulse under Leo XIII, is tending more and more to become the philosophy of Catholics. It replaces Ontologism, Traditionalism, Gunther's Dualism, and Cartesian Spiritualism, which had manifestly become insufficient. Its syntheses, renewed and completed, can be set up in opposition to Positivism and Kantianism, and even its adversaries no longer dream of denying the worth of its doctrines. The bearings of neo-Scholasticism have been treated elsewhere (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).

VII. Is Progress in Philosophy Indefinite, or Is There a Philosophia Perennis?

Considering the historic succession of systems and the evolution of doctrines from the remotest ages of India down to our own times, and standing face to face with the progress achieved by contemporary scientific philosophy, must we not infer the indefinite progress of philosophic thought? Many have allowed themselves to be led away by this ideal dream. Historic Idealism (Karl Marx) regards philosophy as a product fatally engendered by pre-existing causes in our physical and social environment. Auguste Comte's "law of the three states", Herbert Spencer's evolutionism Hegel's "indefinite becoming of the soul", sweep philosophy along in an ascending current toward an ideal perfection, the realization of which no one can foresee. For all these thinkers, philosophy is variable and relative: therein lies their serious error. Indefinite progress, condemned by history in many fields, is untenable in the history of philosophy. Such a notion is evidently refuted by the appearance of thinkers like Aristotle and Plato three centuries before Christ, for these men, who for ages have dominated, and still dominate, human thought, would be anachronisms, since they would be inferior to the thinkers of our own time. And no one would venture to assert this. History shows, indeed, that there are adaptations of a synthesis to its environment, and that every age has its own aspirations and its special way of looking at problems and their solutions; but it also presents unmistakable evidence of incessant new beginnings, of rhythmic oscillations from one pole of thought to the other. If Kant found an original formula of Subjectivism and the reine Innerlichkeit, it would be a mistake to think that Kant had no intellectual ancestors: he had them in the earliest historic ages of philosophy: M. Deussen has found in the Vedic hymn of the Upanishads the distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, and writes, on the theory of Mâyâ, "Kants Grunddogma, so alt wie die Philosophie" ("Die Philos. des Upanishad's", Leipzig, 1899, p. 204).

It is false to say that all truth is relative to a given time and latitude, and that philosophy is the product of economic conditions in a ceaseless course of evolution, as historical Materialism holds. Side by side with these things, which are subject to change and belong to one particular condition of the life of mankind, there is a soul of truth circulating in every system, a mere fragment of that complete and unchangeable truth which haunts the human mind in its most disinterested investigations. Amid the oscillations of historic systems there is room for a philosophia perennis — as it were a purest atmosphere of truth, enveloping the ages, its clearness somehow felt in spite of cloud and mist. "The truth Pythagoras sought after, and Plato, and Aristotle, is the same that Augustine and Aquinas pursued. So far as it is developed in history, truth is the daughter of time; so far as it bears within itself a content independent of time, and therefore of history, it is the daughter of eternity" [Willmann, "Gesch. d Idealismus", II (Brunswick, 1896), 55O; cf. Commer "Die immerwahrende Philosophie" (Vienna, 1899)]. This does not mean that essential and permanent verities do not adapt themselves to the intellectual life of each epoch. Absolute immobility in philosophy, no less than absolute relativity, is contrary to nature and to history. It leads to decadence and death. It is in this sense that we must interpret the adage: Vita in motu.

VIII. Philosophy and the Sciences.

Aristotle of old laid the foundation of a philosophy supported by observation and experience. We need only glance through the list of his works to see that astronomy, mineralogy, physics and chemistry, biology, zoology, furnished him with examples and bases for his theories on the constitution, of the heavenly and terrestrial bodies, the nature of the vital principle, etc. Besides, the whole Aristotelean classification of the branches of philosophy (see section II) is inspired by the same idea of making philosophy — general science — rest upon the particular sciences. The early Middle Ages, with a rudimentary scientific culture, regarded all its learning, built up on the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), as preparation for philosophy. In the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism came under Aristotelean influences, it incorporated the sciences in the programme of philosophy itself. This may be seen in regulation issued by the Faculty of Arts of Paris 19 March, 1255, "De libris qui legendi essent" This order prescribes the study of commentaries or various scientific treatises of Aristotle, notably those on the first book of the "Meteorologica", on the treatises on Heaven and Earth, Generation, the Senses and Sensations, Sleeping and Waking, Memory, Plants, and Animals. Here are amply sufficient means for the magistri to familiarize the "artists" with astronomy, botany, physiology, and zoology to say nothing of Aristotle's "Physics", which was also prescribed as a classical text, and which afforded opportunities for numerous observations in chemistry and physics as then understood. Grammar and rhetoric served as preliminary studies to logic, Bible history, social science, and politics were introductory to moral philosophy. Such men as Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon expressed their views on the necessity of linking the sciences with philosophy and preached it by example. So that both antiquity and the Middle Ages knew and appreciated scientific philosophy.

In the seventeenth century the question of the relation between the two enters upon a new phase: from this period modern science takes shape and begins that triumphal march which it is destined to continue through the twentieth century, and of which the human mind is justly proud. Modern scientific knowledge differs from that of antiquity and the Middle Ages in three important respects: the multiplication of sciences; their independent value; the divergence between common knowledge and scientific knowledge. In the Middle Ages astronomy was closely akin to astrology, chemistry to alchemy, physics to divination; modern science has severely excluded all these fantastic connexions. Considered now from one side and again from another, the physical world has revealed continually new aspects, and each specific point of view has become the focus of a new study. On the other hand, by defining their respective limits, the sciences have acquired autonomy; useful in the Middle Ages only as a preparation for rational physics and for metaphysics, they are nowadays of value for themselves, and no longer play the part of handmaids to philosophy. Indeed, the progress achieved within itself by each particular science brings one more revolution in knowledge. So long as instruments of observation were imperfect, and inductive methods restricted, it was practically impossible to rise above an elementary knowledge. People knew, in the Middle Ages, that Wine, when left exposed to the air, became vinegar; but what do facts like this amount to in comparison with the complex formulae of modern chemistry? Hence it was that an Albertus Magnus or a Roger Bacon could flatter himself, in those days, with having acquired all the science of his time, a claim which would now only provoke a smile. In every department progress has drawn the line sharply between popular and scientific knowledge; the former is ordinarily the starting-point of the latter, but the conclusions and teachings involved in the sciences are unintelligible to those who lack the requisite preparation.

Do not, then, these profound modifications in the condition of the sciences entail modifications in the relations which, until the seventeenth century, had been accepted as existing between the sciences and philosophy? Must not the separation of philosophy and science widen out to a complete divorce? Many have thought so, both scientists and philosophers, and it was for this that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so many savants and philosophers turned their backs on one another. For the former, philosophy has become useless; the particular sciences, they say, multiplying and becoming perfect, must exhaust the whole field of the knowable, and a time will come when philosophy shall be no more. For the philosophers, philosophy has no need of the immeasurable mass of scientific notions which have been acquired, many of which possess only a precarious and provisional value. Wolff, who pronounced the divorce of science from philosophy, did most to accredit this view, and he has been followed by certain Catholic philosophers who held that scientific study may be excluded from philosophic culture.

What shall we say on this question? That the reasons which formerly existed for keeping touch with science are a thousand times more imperative in our day. If the profound synthetic view of things which justifies the existence of philosophy presupposes analytical researches, the multiplication and perfection of those researches is certainly reason for neglecting them. The horizon of detailed knowledge widens incessantly; research of every kind is busy exploring the departments of the universe which it has mapped out. And philosophy, whose mission is to explain the order of the universe by general and ultimate reasons applicable, not only to a group of facts, but to the whole body of known phenomena, cannot be indifferent to the matter which it has to explain. Philosophy is like a tower whence we obtain the panorama of a great city — its plan, its monuments, its great arteries, with the form and location of each — things which a visitor cannot discern while he goes through the streets and lanes, or visits libraries, churches, palaces, and museums, one after another. If the city grows and develops, there is all the more reason, if we would know it as a whole, why we should hesitate to ascend the tower and study from that height the plan upon which its new quarters have been laid out.

It is, happily, evident that contemporary philosophy is inclined to be first and foremost a scientific philosophy; it has found its way back from its wanderings of yore. This is noticeable in philosophers of the most opposite tendencies. There would be no end to the list if we had to enumerate every case where this orientation of ideas has been adopted. "This union", says Boutroux, speaking of the sciences and philosophy, "is in truth the classic tradition of philosophy. But there had been established a psychology and a metaphysics which aspired to set themselves up beyond the sciences, by mere reflection of the mind upon itself. Nowadays all philosophers are agreed to make scientific data their starting-point" (Address at the International Congress of Philosophy in 1900; Revue de Métaph. et de Morale, 1900, p. 697). Boutroux and many others spoke similarly at the International Congress of Bologna (April, 1911). Wundt introduces this union into the very definition of philosophy, which, he says, is "the general science whose function it is to unite ia a system free of all contradictions the knowledge acquired through the particular sciences, and to reduce to their principles the general methods of science and the conditions of knowledge supposed by them" ("Einleitung in die Philosophie", Leipzig, 1901, p. 19). And R. Eucken says: "The farther back the limits of the observable world recede, the more conscious are we of the lack of an adequately comprehensive explanation" — " Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Philos. u. Lebensanschanung" (Leipzig, 1903), p. 157]. This same thought inspired Leo XIII when he placed the parallel and harmonious teaching of philosophy and of the sciences on the programme of the Institute of Philosophy created by him in the University of Louvain (see NEO-SCHOLASTICISM).

On their side, the scientists have been coming to the same conclusions ever since they rose to a synthetic view of that matter which is the object of their study. So it was with Pasteur, so with Newton. Ostwald, professor of chemistry at Leipzig, has undertaken to publish the "Annalen der Naturphilosophie", a review devoted to the cultivation of the territory which is common to philosophy and the sciences A great many men of science, too, are engaged in philosophy without knowing it: in their constant discussions of "Mechanism", "Evolutionism", "Transformism", they are using terms which imply a philosophical theory of matter.

If philosophy is the explanation as a whole of that world which the particular sciences investigate in detail, it follows that the latter find their culmination in the former, and that as the sciences are so will philosophy be. It is true that objections are put forward against this way of uniting philosophy and the sciences. Common observation, it is said, is enough support for philosophy. This is a mistake: philosophy cannot ignore whole departments of knowledge which are inaccessible to ordinary experience biology, for example, has shed a new light on the philosophic study of man. Others again adduce the extent and the growth of the sciences to show that scientific philosophy must ever remain an unattainable ideal; the practical solution of this difficulty concerns the teaching of philosophy (see section XI).

IX. Philosophy and Religion.

Religion presents to man, with authority, the solution of man's problems which also concern philosophy. Such are the questions of the nature of God, of His relation with the visible world, of man's origin and destiny Now religion, which precedes philosophy in the social life, naturally obliges it to take into consideration the points of religious doctrine. Hence the close connexion of philosophy with religion in the early stages of civilization, a fact strikingly apparent in Indian philosophy, which, not only at its beginning but throughout its development, was intimately bound up with the doctrine of the sacred books (see above). The Greeks, at least during the most important periods of their history, were much less subject to the influences of pagan religions; in fact, they combined with extreme scrupulosity in what concerned ceremonial usage a wide liberty in regard to dogma. Greek thought soon took its independent flight Socrates ridicules the gods in whom the common people believed; Plato does not banish religious ideas from his philosophy; but Aristotle keeps them entirely apart, his God is the Actus purus, with a meaning exclusively philosophic, the prime mover of the universal mechanism. The Stoics point out that all things obey an irresistible fatality and that the wise man fears no gods. And if Epicurus teaches cosmic determinism and denies all finality, it is only to conclude that man can lay aside all fear of divine intervention in mundane affairs. The question takes a new aspect when the influences of the Oriental and Jewish religions are brought to bear on Greek philosophy by neo-Pythagorism, the Jewish theology (end of the first century), and, above all, neo-Platonism (third century B.C.). A yearning for religion was stirring in the world, and philosophy became enamoured of every religious doctrine Plotinus (third century after Christ), who must always remain the most perfect type of the neo-Platonic mentality, makes philosophy identical with religion, assigning as its highest aim the union of the soul with God by mystical ways. This mystical need of the supernatural issues in the most bizarre lucubrations from Plotinus's successors, e.g. Jamblicus (d. about A.D. 330), who, on a foundation of neo-Platonism, erected an international pantheon for all the divinities whose names are known.

It has often been remarked that Christianity, with its monotheistic dogma and its serene, purifying morality, came in the fulness of time and appeased the inward unrest with which souls were afflicted at the end of the Roman world. Though Christ did not make Himself the head of a philosophical school, the religion which He founded supplies solutions for a group of problems which philosophy solves by other methods (e.g. the immortality of the soul). The first Christian philosophers the Fathers of the Church, were imbued with Greek ideas and took over from the circumambient neo-Platonism the commingling of philosophy and religion. With them philosophy is incidental and secondary, employed only to meet polemic needs, and to support dogma; their philosophy is religious. In this Clement of Alexandria and Origen are one with St. Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The early Middle Ages continued the same traditions, and the first philosophers may be said to have received neo-Platonic influences through the channel of the Fathers. John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), the most remarkable mind of this first period, writes that "true religion is true philosophy and, conversely, true philosophy is true religion" (De div. praed., I, I). But as the era advances a process of dissociation sets in, to end in the complete separation between the two sciences of Scholastic theology or the study of dogma, based fundamentally on Holy Scripture, and Scholastic philosophy, based on purely rational investigation. To understand the successive stages of this differentiation, which was not completed until the middle of the thirteenth century, we must draw attention to certain historical facts of capital importance.

(1) The origin of several philosophical problems, in the early Middle Ages, must be sought within the domain of theology, in the sense that the philosophical discussions arose in reference to theological questions. The discussion, e.g. of transubstantiation (Berengarius of Tours), raised the problem of substance and of change, or becoming. (2) Theology being regarded as a superior and sacred science, the whole pedagogic and didactic organization of the period tended to confirm this superiority (see section XI). (3) The enthusiasm for dialectics, which reached its maximum in the eleventh century, brought into fashion certain purely verbal methods of reasoning bordering on the sophistical. Anselm of Besata (Anselmus Peripateticus) is the type of this kind of reasoner. Now the dialecticians, in discussing theological subjects, claimed absolute validity for their methods, and they ended in such heresies as Gottschalk's on predestination, Berengarius's on transubstantiation, and Roscelin's Tritheism. Berengarius's motto was: "Per omnia ad dialecticam confugere". There followed an excessive reaction on the part of timorous theologians, practical men before all things, who charged dialectics with the sins of the dialecticians. This antagonistic movement coincided with an attempt to reform religious life. At the head of the group was Peter Damian (1007-72), the adversary of the liberal arts; he was the author of the saying that philosophy is the handmaid of theology. From this saying it has been concluded that the Middle Ages in general put philosophy under tutelage, whereas the maxim was current only among a narrow circle of reactionary theologians. Side by side with Peter Damian in Italy, were Manegold of Lautenbach and Othloh of St. Emmeram, in Germany.

(4) At the same time a new tendency becomes discernible in the eleventh century, in Lanfranc, William of Hirschau, Rodulfus Ardens, and particularly St. Anselm of Canterbury; the theologian calls in the aid of philosophy to demonstrate certain dogmas or to show their rational side. St. Anselm, in an Augustinian spirit, attempted this justification of dogma, without perhaps invariably applying to the demonstrative value of his arguments the requisite limitations. In the thirteenth century these efforts resulted in a new theological method, the dialectic.

(5) While these disputes as to the relations of philosophy and theology went on, many philosophical questions were nevertheless treated on their own account, as we have seen above (universals, St. Anselm's theodicy, Abelard's philosophy, etc.).

(6) The dialectic method, developed fully in the twelfth century, just when Scholastic theology received a powerful impetus, is a theological, not a philosophical, method. The principal method in theology is the interpretation of Scripture and of authority; the dialectic method is secondary and consists in first establishing a dogma and then showing its reasonableness, confirming the argument from authority by the argument from reason. It is a process of apologetics. From the twelfth century onward, these two theological methods are fairly distinguished by the words auctoritates, rationes. Scholastic theology, condensed in the "summae" and "books of sentences", is henceforward regarded as distinct from philosophy. The attitude of theologians towards philosophy is threefold: one group, the least influential, still opposes its introduction into theology, and carries on the reactionary traditions of the preceding period (e.g. Gauthier de Saint-Victor); another accepts philosophy, but takes a utilitarian view of it, regarding it merely as a prop of dogma (Peter Lombard); a third group, the most influential, since it includes the three theological schools of St. Victor, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, grants to philosophy, in addition to this apologetic role, an independent value which entitles it to be cultivated and studied for its own sake. The members of this group are at once both theologians and philosophers.

(7) At the opening of the thirteenth century one section of Augustinian theologians continued to emphasize the utilitarian and apologetic office of philosophy. But St. Thomas Aquinas created new Scholastic traditions, and wrote a chapter on scientific methodology in which the distinctness and in dependence of the two sciences is thoroughly established. Duns Scotus, again, and the Terminists exaggerated this independence. Latin Averroism, which had a brilliant but ephemeral vogue in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, accepted whole and entire in philosophy Averroistic Peripateticism, and, to safeguard Catholic orthodoxy, took refuge behind the sophism that what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and conversely — wherein they were more reserved than Averroes and the Arab philosophers, who regarded religion as something inferior, good enough for the masses, and who did not trouble themselves about Moslem orthodoxy. Lully, going to extremes, maintained that all dogma is susceptible of demonstration, and that philosophy and theology coalesce. Taken as a whole, the Middle Ages, profoundly religious, constantly sought to reconcile its philosophy with the Catholic Faith. This bond the Renaissance philosophy severed. In the Reformation period a group of publicists, in view of the prevailing strife, formed projects of reconciliation among the numerous religious bodies. They convinced themselves that all religions possess a common fund of essential truths relating to God, and that their content is identical, in spite of divergent dogmas. Besides, Theism, being only a form of Naturism applied to religion, suited the independent ways of the Renaissance. As in building up natural law, human nature was taken into consideration, so reason was interrogated to discover religious ideas. And hence the wide acceptance of Theism, not among Protestants only, but generally among minds that had been carried away with the Renaissance movement (Erasmus, Coornheert).

For this tolerance or religious indifferentism modern philosophy in more than one instance substituted a disdain of positive religions. The English Theism or Deism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries criticizes all positive religion and, in the name of an innate religious sense, builds up a natural religion which is reducible to a collection of theses on the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The initiator of this movement was Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); J. Toland (1670-1722), Tindal (1656-1733), and Lord Bolingbroke took part in it. This criticizing movement inaugurated in England was taken up in France, where it combined with an outright hatred of Catholicism. Pierre Bayle (1646-17O6) propounded the thesis that all religion is anti-rational and absurd, and that a state composed of Atheists is possible. Voltaire wished to substitute for Catholicism an incoherent mass of doctrines about God. The religious philosophy of the eighteenth century in France led to Atheism and paved the way for the Revolution. In justice to contemporary philosophy it must be credited with teaching the amplest tolerance towards the various religions; and in its programme of research it has included religious psychology, or the study of the religious sentiment.

For Catholic philosophy the relations between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, were fixed, in a chapter of scientific methodology, by the great Scholastic thinkers of the thirteenth century. Its principles, which still retain their vitality, are as follows: (a) Distinctness of the two sciences. — The independence of philosophy in regard to theology, as in regard to any other science whatsoever, is only an interpretation of this undeniable principle of scientific progress, as applicable in the twentieth century as it was in the thirteenth, that a rightly constituted science derives its formal object, its principles, and its constructive method from its own resources, and that, this being so, it cannot borrow from any other science without compromising its own right to exist. (b) Negative, not positive, material, not formal, subordination of philosophy in regard to theology. — This means that, while the two sciences keep their formal independence (the independence of the principles by which their investigations are guided), there are certain matters where philosophy cannot contradict the solutions afforded by theology. The Scholastics of the Middle Ages justified this subordination, being profoundly convinced that Catholic dogma contains the infallible word of God, the expression of truth. Once a proposition, e.g. that two and two make four, has been accepted as certain, logic forbids any other science to form any conclusion subversive of that proposition. The material mutual subordination of the sciences is one of those laws out of which logic makes the indispensable guarantee of the unity of knowledge. "The truth duly demonstrated by one science serves as a beacon in another science." The certainty of a theory in chemistry imposes its acceptance on physics, and the physicist who should go contrary to it would be out of his course. Similarly, the philosopher cannot contradict the certain data of theology, any more than he can contradict the certain conclusions of the individual sciences. To deny this would be to deny the conformity of truth with truth, to contest the principle of contradiction, to surrender to a relativism which is destructive of all certitude. "It being supposed that nothing but what is true is included in this science (sc. theology) . . . it being supposed that whatever is true by the decision and authority of this science can nowise be false by the decision of right reason: these things, I say, being supposed, as it is manifest from them that the authority of this science and reason alike rest upon truth, and one verity cannot be contrary to another, it must be said absolutely that reason can in no way be contrary to the authority of this Scripture, nay, all right reason is in accord with it" (Henry of Ghent, "Summa Theologica", X, iii, n.4).

But when is a theory certain? This is a question of fact, and error is easy. In proportion as the principle is simple and absolute, so are its applications complex and variable. It is not for philosophy to establish the certitude of theological data, any more than to fix the conclusions of chemistry or of physiology. The certainty of those data and those conclusions must proceed from another source. "The preconceived idea is entertained that a Catholic savant is a soldier in the service of his religious faith, and that, in his hands, science is but a weapon to defend his Credo. In the eyes of a great many people, the Catholic savant seems to be always under the menace of excommunication, or entangled in dogmas which hamper him, and compelled, for the sake of loyalty to his Faith, to renounce the disinterested love of science and its free cultivation" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supér. de philos.", 1891, p. 9). Nothing could be more untrue.

X. The Catholic Church and Philosophy.

The principles which govern the doctrinal relations of philosophy and theology have moved the Catholic Church to intervene on various occasions in the history of philosophy. As to the Church's right and duty to intervene for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of theological dogma and the deposit of faith, there is no need of discussion in this place. It is interesting, however, to note the attitude taken by the Church towards philosophy throughout the ages, and particularly in the Middle Ages, when a civilization saturated with Christianity had established extremely intimate relations between theology and philosophy.

A. The censures of the Church have never fallen upon philosophy as such, but upon theological applications, judged false, which were based upon philosophical reasonings. John Scotus Eriugena, Roscelin, Berengarius, Abelard, Gilbert de la Porrée were condemned because their teachings tended to subvert theological dogmas. Eriugena denied the substantial distinction between God and created things; Roscelin held that there are three Gods; Berengarius, that there is no real transubstantiation in the Eucharist; Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée essentially modified the dogma of the Trinity. The Church, through her councils, condemned their theological errors; with their philosophy as such she does not concern herself. "Nominalism", says Hauréau, "is the old enemy. It is, in fact, the doctrine which, because it best accords with reason, is most remote from axioms of faith. Denounced before council after council, Nominalism was condemned in the person of Abelard as it had been in the person of Roscelin" (Hist. philos. scol., I, 292).

No assertion could be more inaccurate. What the Church has condemned is neither the so-called Nominalism, nor Realism, nor philosophy in general, nor the method of arguing in theology, but certain applications of that method which are judged dangerous, i.e. matters which are not philosophical. In the thirteenth century a host of teachers adopted the philosophical theories of Roscelin and Abelard, and no councils were convoked to condemn them. The same may be said of the condemnation of David of Dinant (thirteenth century), who denied the distinction between God and matter, and of various doctrines condemned in the fourteenth century as tending to the negation of morality. It has been the same in modern times. To mention only the condemnation of Gunther, of Rosmini, and of Ontologism in the nineteenth century, what alarmed the Church was the fact that the theses in question had a theologic: bearing.

B. The Church has never imposed any philosophical system, though she has anathematized many doctrines, or branded them as suspect. — This corresponds with the prohibitive, but not imperative attitude of theology in regard to philosophy. To take one example, faith teaches that the world was created in time; and yet St. Thomas maintains that the concept of eternal creation (ab aeterno) involves no contradiction. He did not think himself obliged to demonstrate creation in time: his teaching would have been heterodox only if, with the Averroists his day, he had maintained the necessary eternity of the world. It may, perhaps, be objected that many Thomistic doctrines were condemned in 1277 by Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris. But it is well to note, and recent works on the subject have abundantly proved this, that Tempier's condemnation, in so far as it applied to Thomas Aquinas, was the issue of intrigues and personal animosity, and that, in canon law, it had no force outside of the Diocese of Paris. Moreover, it was annulled by one of Tempier's successors, Etienne de Borrète, in 1325.

C. The Church has encouraged philosophy. — To say nothing of the fact that all those who applied themselves to science and philosophy in the Middle Ages were churchmen, and that the liberal arts found an asylum in capitular and monastic schools until the twelfth century, it is important to remark that the principal universities of the Middle Ages were pontifical foundations. This was the case with Paris. To be sure, in the first years of the university's aquaintance with the Aristotelean encyclopaedia (late twelfth century) there were prohibitions against reading the "Physics", the "Metaphysics", and the treatise "On the Soul". But these restrictions were of a temporary character and arose out of particular circumstanccs. In 1231, Gregory IX laid upon a commission of three consultors the charge to prepare an amended edition of Aristotle "ne utile per inutile vitietur" (lest what is useful suffer damage through what is useless). The work of expurgatio. was done, in point of fact, by the Albertine-Thomist School, and, beginning from the year 1255, the Faculty of Arts, with the knowledge of the ecclesiastical authority, ordered the teaching of all the books previously prohibited (see Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant et l'averroïsme latin au XIIIe s.", Louvain 1910). It might also be shown how in modern times and in our own day the popes have encouraged philosophic studies. Leo XIII, as is well known, considered the restoration of philosophic Thomism on of the chief tasks of his pontificate.

XI. The Teaching of Philosophy.

The methods of teaching philosophy have varied in various ages. Socrates used to interview his auditors, and hold symposia in the market-place, on the porticoes and in the public gardens. His method was interrogation, he whetted the curiosity of the audience and practised what had become known as Socratic irony and the maieutic art (maieutikê techne), the art of delivering minds of their conceptions. His successor opened schools properly so called, and from the place occupied by these schools several systems took their names (the Stoic School, the Academy, the Lyceum). In the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth century the learned language was Latin. The German discourses of Eckhart are mentioned as merely sporadic examples. From the ninth to the twelfth century teaching was confined to the monastic and cathedral schools. It was the golden age of schools. Masters and students went from one school to another: Lanfranc travelled over Europe; John of Salisbury (twelfth century) heard at Paris all the then famous professors of philosophy; Abelard gathered crowds about his rostrum. Moreover: as the same subjects were taught everywhere, and from the same text-books, scholastic wanderings were attended with few disadvantages. The books took the form of commentaries or monographs. From the time of Abelard a method came into use which met with great success, that of setting forth the pros and cons of a question, which was later perfected by the addition of a solutio. The application of this method was extended in the thirteenth century (e.g. in the "Summa theologica" of St. Thomas). Lastly, philosophy being an educational preparation for theology, the "Queen of the Sciences", philosophical and theological topics were combined in one and the same book, or even in the same lecture.

At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, the University of Paris was organized, and philosophical teaching was concentrated in the Faculty of Arts. Teaching was dominated by two principles: internationalism and freedom. The student was an apprentice-professor: after receiving the various degrees, he obtained from the chancellor of the university a licence to teach (licentia docendi). Many of the courses of this period have been preserved, the abbreviated script of the Middle Ages being virtually a stenographic system. The programme of courses drawn up in 1255 is well known: it comprises the exegesis of all the books of Aristotle. The commentary, or lectio (from legere, to read), is the ordinary form of instruction (whence the German Vorlesungen and the English lecture). There were also disputations, in which questions were treated by means of objections and answers; the exercise took a lively character, each one being invited to contribute his thoughts on the subject. The University of Paris was the model for all the others, notably those of Oxford and Cambridge. These forms of instruction in the universities lasted as long as Aristoteleanism, i.e. until the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century — the siècle des lumières (Erklärung) — philosophy took a popular and encyclopedic form, and was circulated in the literary productions of the period. In the nineteenth century it resumed its didactic attitude in the universities and in the seminaries, where, indeed its teaching had long continued. The advance of philological and historical studies had a great influence on the character of philosophical teaching: critical methods were welcomed, and little by little the professors adopted the practice of specializing in this or that branch of philosophy — a practice which is still in vogue. Without attempting to touch on all the questions involved in modern methods of teaching philosophy, we shall here indicate some of the principal features.

A. The Language of Philosophy. — The earliest of the moderns — as Descartes or Leibniz — used both Latin and the vernacular, but in the nineteenth century (except in ecclesiastical seminaries and in certain academical exercises mainly ceremonial in character) the living languages supplanted Latin; the result has been a gain in clearness of thought and interest and vitality of teaching. Teaching in Latin too often contents itself with formulae: the living language effects a better comprehension of things which must in any case be difficult. Personal experience, writes Fr. Hogan, formerly superior of the Boston Seminary, in his "Clerical Studies" (Philadelphia, 1895-1901), has shown that among students who have learned philosophy, particularly Scholastic, only in Latin, very few have acquired anything more than a mass of formulae, which they hardly understand; though this does not always prevent their adhering to their formulae through thick and thin. Those who continue to write in Latin — as many Catholic philosophers, often of the highest worth, still do — have the sad experience of seeing their books confined to a very narrow circle of readers.

B. Didactic Processes. — Aristotle's advice, followed by the Scholastics, still retains its value and its force: before giving the solution of a problem, expound the reasons for and against. This explains, in particular, the great part played by the history of philosophy or the critical examination of the solutions proposed by the great thinkers. Commentary on a treatise still figures in some special higher courses; but contemporary philosophical teaching is principally divided according to the numerous branches of philosophy (see section II). The introduction of laboratories and practical seminaries (séminaires practiques) in philosophical teaching has been of the greatest advantage. Side by side with libraries and shelves full of periodicals there is room for laboratories and museums, once the necessity of vivifying philosophy by contact with the sciences is admitted (see section VIII). As for the practical seminary, in which a group of students, with the aid of a teacher, investigate to some special problem, it may be applied to any branch of philosophy with remarkable results. The work in common, where each directs his individual efforts towards one general aim, makes each the beneficiary of the researches of all; it accustoms them to handling the instruments of research, facilitates the detection of facts, teaches the pupil how to discover for himself the reasons for what he observes, affords a real experience in the constructive methods of discovery proper to each subject, and very often decides the scientific vocation of those whose efforts have been crowned with a first success.

C. The Order of Philosophical Teaching. — One of the most complex questions is: With what branch ought philosophical teaching to begin, and what order should it follow? In conformity with an immemorial tradition, the beginning is often made with logic. Now logic, the science of science, is difficult to understand and unattractive in the earliest stages of teaching. It is better to begin with the sciences which take the real for their object: psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, and theodicy. Scientific logic will be better understood later on; moral philosophy presupposes psychology; systematic history of philosophy requires a preliminary acquaintance with all the branches of philosophy (see Mercier, "Manuel de philosophie", Introduction, third edition, Louvain, 1911).

Connected with this question of the order of teaching is another: viz. What should be the scientific teaching preliminary to philosophy? Only a course in the sciences specially appropriate to philosophy can meet the manifold exigencies of the problem. The general scientific courses of our modern universities include too much or too little: "too much in the sense that professional teaching must go into numerous technical facts and details with which philosophy has nothing to do; too little, because professional teaching often makes the observation of facts its ultimate aim, whilst, from our standpoint, facts are, and can be, only a means, a starting-point, towards acquiring a knowledge of the most general causes and laws" (Mercier, "Rapport sur les études supérieures de philosophie", Louvain, 1891, p. 25). M. Boutroux, a professor at the Sorbonne, solves the problem of philosophical teaching at the university in the same sense, and, according to him, the flexible and very liberal organization of the faculty of philosophy should include "the whole assemblage of the sciences, whether theoretic, mathematico-physical, or philologico-historical" ("Revue internationale de l'enseignement", Paris, 1901, p. 51O). The programme of courses of the Institute of Philosophy of Louvain is drawn up in conformity with this spirit.
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XII. Bibliography.

GENERAL WORKS. — MERCIER, Cours de philosophie. Logique. Criteriologie générale. Ontologie. Psychologie (Louvain, 1905-10); NYS,Cosmologie (Louvain, 1904); Stonyhurst Philosophical Series: — CLARKE, Logic (London, 1909); JOHN RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge(London, 1901); JOSEPH RICKABY, Moral Philosophy (London, 1910); BOEDDER, Natural Theology (London, 1906); MAHER, Psychology (London, 1909); JOHN RICKABY, General Metaphysics (London, 1909); WALKER, Theories of Knowledge (London, 1910—); ZIGLIARA, Summa philos.(Paris); SCHIFFINI, Principia philos. (Turin); URRABURU, Institut. philosophiae (Valladolid); IDEM, Compend. phil. schol. (Madrid); Philosophia Locensis: — PASCH, Inst. Logicales (Freiburg, 1888); IDEM, Inst. phil. natur. (Freiburg, 1880); IDEM, Inst. psychol. (Freiburg, 1898); HONTHEIM,Inst. theodicaeae; MEYER, Inst. iuris notur.; DOMET DE VORGEs, Abrégé de métaophysique (Paris); FAROES, Etudes phil. (Paris); GUTBERLET,Lehrbuch der Philos. Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Algemeine Metaphys., Naturphilos., Die psychol., Die Theodicee, Ethik u. Naturrecht, Ethik u. Religion (Münster, 1878-85); RABIER, Leçons de phil. (Paris); WINDELBAND with the collaboration of LIEBMANN, WUNDT, LIPPS, BAUSH, LASK, RICKERT, TROELTSCH, and GROOS, Die Philos. im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhund. (Heidelberg); Systematische Philosophie by DILTHEY, RIEHL, WUNDT, OSTWALD, EBBINGHAUS, EUCKEM, PAULSEN, and MUNCH; LIPPS, Des Gesamtwerkers, Die Kultur der Gegenwärt (Leipzig), pt. I, vi; DE WULF, tr. COFFEY, Scholasticism Old and New. An Introduction to Neo-Scholastic Philosophy (Dublin, 1907); KULPE, Einleitung in die Philos. (Leipzig); WUNDT, Einleitung in die Philos. (Leipzig); HARPER, The Metaphysics of the School (London, 1879-84).

DICTIONARIES. — BALDWIN, Dict. of Philosophy and Psychology (London, 1901-05); FRANCE, Dict. des sciences Phil. (Paris, 1876); EISLER,Wörterbuch der Philosoph. Begriffe (Berlin, 1899); Vocabulaire technique et critique de Phil., in course of publication by the Soc. française do philosophie.

COLLECTIONS. — Bibliothèque de l'Institut supérieur de Philosophie; PEILLAUBE, Bibl. de Phil. expérimentale (Paris); RIVIERE, Bibl. de Phil. contemporaine (Paris); Coll. historique des grands Philosophes (Paris); LE BON, Bibl. de Philosophie scientif. (Paris); PIAT, Les grands Philosophes(Paris); Philosophische Bibliothek (Leipzig).

PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS. — Mind, a quarterly review of psychology and Philosophy (London, 1876—); The Philosoph. Rev. (New York, 1892—);Internat. Jour. of Ethics (Philadelphia); Proc. of Aristotelian Society (London, 1888—); Rev. Neo-scholastique de Phil. (Louvain, 1894—); Rev. des sciences phil. et théol. (Paris) Revue Thomiste (Toulouse, 1893—); Annales de Philosophie Chret. (Paris, 1831—); Rev. de Philos. (Paris); Philosophisches Jahrbuch (Fulda); Zeitschr. für Philos. und Philosophische Kritik, formerly Fichte-Utrisische Zeitschr. (Leipzig, 1847—); Kantstudien (Berlin, 1896—);Arch. f. wissehoftliche Philos. und Soziologie (Leipzig, 1877—); Arch. f. systematische Philos. (Berlin, 1896); Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. (Berlin, 1888—);Rev. Phil. de la France et de l'Etranger (Paris, 1876—); Rev. de métaph. et de morale (Paris, 1894—); Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte (Amsterdam, 1907—);Riv. di filosofio neo-scholastico (Florence, 1909—); Rivisto di filosofia (Modena).

DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY. — Methods. — MARIETAN, Le probème de la classification des sciences d'Aristote d S. Thomas (Paris, 1901); WILLMANN, Didaktik (Brunswick, 1903).
GENERAL HISTORY. — UEBERWEG, Hist. of Philosophy, tr. HARRIS (New York, 1875-76); ERDMANN, Hist. of Phil. (London, 1898); WINDELBAND, Hist. of Phil. (New York, 1901); TURNER, Hist. of Phil. (Boston, 1903); WILLMANN, Gesch. des Idealismus (Brunswick, 1908); ZELLER, Die Philos. der Griechen (Berlin), tr. ALLEYNE, RETEHEL, GOODWIN, COSTELLOE, and MUIRHEAD (London); DE WULF, Hist. of Mediaeval Phil. (London, 1909; Paris, Tubingen, and Florence, 1912); WINDELRAND, Gesch. der neueren Philos. (Leipzig, 1872-80), tr. TUFTS (New York, 1901); HOFFDING, Den nyere Filosofis Historie (Copenhagen, 1894), tr. MAYER, A Hist. of Mod. Phil. (London, 1900); FISHER, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (Heidelberg, 1889-1901); STÖCKL, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (Mainz, 1888; tr. in part by FINLAY, Dublin, 1903); WEBER, History of Philosophy, tr. THILLY (New York, 1901).

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. — EUCKEN, Geistige Strömungen der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1901); WINDELBAND, Die Philos. im Beginn d. XX. Jahr., I (Heidelberg); CALDERON, Les courants phil. dans l'Amérique Latine (Heidelberg, 1909); CEULEMANS, Le mouvement phil. en Amérique in Rev. néo-scholast. (Nov., 1909); BAUMANN, Deutsche u. ausserdeutsche Philos. der letzen Jahrzehnte (Gotha, 1903).

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. — HEITZ, Essai hist. sur les rapp. entre la philosophie et la foi de Bérenger de Tours à S. Thomas (Paris, 1909); BRUNHES, La foi chrét. et la pil. au temps de la renaiss. caroling. (Paris, 1903); GRABMANN, Die Gesch. der scholast. methode (Freiburg, 1909).
MAURICE DE WULF

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