Philosophy Not Always Vain.
There are persons who think we err, and make our magazine too heavy by devoting so large a portion of it to quasi-philosophical discussions. All readers, we are aware, are not and need not be interested in such discussions; but there are some who want them, value them, and profit by them. One of our contributors has received the following letter from a distinguished professor in a Southern university, which proves that our heavy articles are read by some, at least, and have served the cause of truth.
October 26, 1867.
To The Author Of The Article On
"The Cartesian Doubt,"
Published In The November Number Of The Catholic World:
Dear Sir:
I beg you to accept the presentation of this copy of a book I published, as you see, in 1860.
I do not offer it with any idea that you will find in it anything new or instructive to you, or with any expectation that you will give it approval or praise. I have become conscious of several of the errors it contains.
I send it to you under the influence of two motives: 1st. To offer you a token of the deep gratitude I feel toward you for the article on "The Cartesian Doubt," and other articles (which I take also to be from your pen) entitled "Problems of the Age," published in The Catholic World; this gratitude being felt for the flood of religious and intellectual light they have shed upon my mind and heart, and for their having convinced me of the truth of many Catholic doctrines I had obscurely perceived, and which, through the clearness and force of your language and arguments, now shine to my eyes with unsullied lustre. Second. I also offer you this token, that you may thereby judge for yourself how far I was behind, and therefore what great advance I must have made toward a clear understanding of the true relation and subordination of philosophy to Catholic doctrine, now that I admit that doctrine as received through your articles, which I have no doubt are approved by the Church.
Hoping, sir, you will kindly receive this expression of my heartfelt thanks, I subscribe myself, affectionately and respectfully, yours.
The professor is mistaken in supposing that the article on The Cartesian Doubt and those on The Problems of the Age, are from the same writer. This, however, is a matter of no consequence; for in both the profoundest principles of philosophy are treated; and both, for the most part, set forth and defend the same philosophical doctrine. We lay before our readers another letter, from a distinguished lawyer, a recent convert to the church, which shows that our philosophical articles are read by eminent men, and with respect, even when their doctrine is not accepted.
December 10, 1867.
To The Editor Of The Catholic World:
Dear Sir: In The Catholic World for December, you say, on page 427, "The school Sir William Hamilton founded … avowedly maintains that philosophy cannot rise above the sensible, and that the supersensible, as well as the superintelligible, must be taken, if at all, on the authority of faith or revelation." Just before this, you also say, "The science neither of language nor of logic can be mastered by one who holds Sir William Hamilton was a philosopher," etc. Again, on page 424, you say, "The tendency of all inductive philosophy, as any one may see in the writings of … Sir William Hamilton and his school, is to restrict all science to the phenomenal, and, therefore, to exclude principles and causes, and consequently laws."
The ideas here advanced are new to my mind, and my object in troubling you with this letter is to request you to refer me to some philosophical work in which they are fully developed. I came into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1865, as I supposed by a process of induction, and by process of induction I am thoroughly convinced that we have higher and better evidence of the truth of the dogmas of the church, than of any scientific fact; indeed, better than we have of any other fact, save that of existence. But I have failed to discover in the writings of Sir William Hamilton (the only one of the writers you mention with whom I am even slightly acquainted) the tendency you describe, and I cannot understand how such a result could be produced by a legitimate inductive philosophy. Sir William Hamilton shows that induction, when applied to Deity, to the infinite or to the absolute, (he ought to have said to any spiritual existence also,) fails to yield even apparent truth, because it yields contradictions. It seems to me that this must be a very near approach to a true catholic philosophy, that is, to a definition of the field in which induction is to operate; and I find it a weapon which silences, if it does not convince, my Protestant friends; for if they admit that their reasoning powers—those faculties which enable them to make the boasted progress in physical science—give no help in explaining the relation which exists between them and their Creator, they then have to deny, with the deist, that any such application exists; or if it does exist, admit that it rests on authority, thus destroying the right of private judgment, a result in either case fatal to Protestant Christianity.
I don't think I am mistaken about what Sir William Hamilton teaches, for I have his works before me; but it is very possible that I do not comprehend the tendency of it; and I may be entirely wrong in regarding him as a philosopher second to but few since Aristotle. I am not seeking controversy, but information; and if you can refer me to a book, not too large for a hard-working lawyer to read, which will clearly define what is regarded in the Catholic Church as the philosophy or rationale of religion, you will confer a favor which will be long remembered.
Very respectfully.
The old controversy with heresy has lost its former importance, for heresy in our time gives way to downright infidelity, or total religious indifference, and the intelligent Catholic, who understands his age, is more disposed to recognize and cherish the fragments of Christian truth still retained by the sects respectively, than to point out and refute their heresies. He would be careful not to break the bruised reed or to quench the smoking flax. In these times all who are not against our Lord are for him. The field of controversy has changed. The non-Catholic world is either slowly retracing its steps toward the church, or rushing headlong into rationalism, naturalism, humanitarianism, pantheism, atheism. The modern atheists are a far more numerous class than is commonly supposed. Virtually all naturalists, humanitarians, and pantheists are atheists, and the God admitted by the rationalists is not the living God, an ever-present Creator and upholder of the universe, but an abstraction, a vague generalization, or a God so bound hand and foot by the so-called laws of nature, as to be powerless, and incapable of a single free movement, or an efficient act.
These several classes of unbelievers pretend to base their denial of divine revelation, the supernatural, the Christian religion, the freedom, and even the very being of God, on science and philosophy; and it is only on scientific and philosophical ground that we can meet, and logically refute them. No doubt their objections are sophistical, unscientific, and unphilosophical, yet we can show that fact only by means of true science and sound philosophy. We say nothing here of what grace may do; for it works by a method of its own, and by inspiring the will and enlightening the understanding, it enables one, by a single bound, to rise from the lowest deep of infidelity to the sublimest height of faith—to a faith that penetrates within the veil—lays hold of the unseen and the eternal, and conquers the world. We speak now only of the human means of meeting and overcoming the objections of unbelievers to our most holy faith. We can meet and overcome them, and produce what theologians call fides humana, only by opposing the true philosophy to their false philosophy—genuine science to their pretended science, real logic to their shallow sophistries.
Is this a work that Catholics can prudently neglect? We think not. Every age has its own special work to perform, its own special enemies to combat, and there is neither wisdom nor utility, nor true courage in turning our backs upon the enemies that assail us, and dealing forth vigorous blows against enemies long since vanquished, and now dead, and ready to be buried. We must face the evil of to-day, the enemy that is actually in front of us, and with the arms that promise to be effective against him. This is not only wisdom, but a necessity, if we would defend the treasure committed to us. Error is constantly changing its forms, and we must attack it under the form it assumes here and now. To-day it apes the form of science and philosophy. It will avail us nothing to denounce philosophy as vain, or science as unreal or valueless. We must accept both, and oppose to the unreal or false the real and the true. We must meet and beat the enemy on his own ground, and with his own weapons. As the enemy chooses to attack us on the ground of science, reason, philosophy, we must meet him on that ground, and show that on that ground, as on every other, Catholicity is invincible, and able to command the victory.
All the great theologians of the church have been great philosophers; St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventura, Suarez, Bossuet, Fénélon, to name no others: and all the glorious ages of the church have been marked by profound and vigorous philosophical and theological studies, as the fourth, the twelfth, the thirteenth, and seventeenth centuries. If the decline of faith marks a decline of science and philosophy, so also does the decline of science and philosophy mark usually a decline of faith. The revival of faith in our century has followed or been accompanied by a revival of the strong masculine philosophy of the fathers and the mediaeval doctors. In proportion as men cast aside the frivolezza of the eighteenth century, engage in serious studies, and learn to think, and think deeply and earnestly, faith revives, and men who as yet are not believers look with reverence and awe on the grandeur and beauty of the Catholic Church, over which time and place have no influence, exempt from human vicissitudes, and on which the storms and tempests of the ages beat in vain. All serious and thinking men turn toward her, and she only is able to give free and full scope to thought, and to satisfy its demands.
We do not, of course, fall into the absurdity of seeking to convert faith into philosophy, nor to substitute philosophy, for faith. Philosophy, strictly taken, is the rational element of faith, or, more strictly still, the preamble to faith. It does not give us supernatural faith, which is the gift of God; it only removes the intellectual prohibentia or obstacles to faith, and establishes those rational or scientific truths or principles which faith or revelation presupposes, which precede faith, and without which faith could have no rational basis or connection with science. All faith in the last analysis is belief and trust in the veracity of God, or the affirmation, Deus est verax, and presupposes that God is. We cannot talk of faith till we have proved from reason with certitude the existence of God. The immortality of the soul brought to light through the Gospel is not the simple existence of the soul in a future life, but the immortal life of the blest in glory, rendered possible and actual through the incarnation, and to which man by his natural powers neither does nor can attain. This immortality presupposes what is commonly meant by the immortality of the soul, an immortality common to the beatified and the reprobate. The immortality or continued existence of the soul is a rational truth, and was held by the heathen in all ages, and must be capable of being proved with certainty by reason prior to faith. Faith reveals to us a state of future rewards and punishments. But rewards and punishments presuppose free agency, or the liberty of man, which is a truth of reason, and to be proved from reason alone. Hence the Holy See required the traditionalists, who seemed disposed to build science on faith, or to found faith on scepticism, to subscribe a declaration that the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man are provable with certainty from reason alone prior to faith. These are philosophical truths, and the philosophy that denies them or declares itself unable to prove them is no philosophy at all. It is because these great truths are provable by natural reason that we are morally bound to believe the revelation of God when duly accredited to us as his revelation, and that refusal to believe it when so accredited is a sin.
It is easy to see, therefore, that Christian faith not only leaves a wide field to reason or philosophy, but makes large demands on philosophy, requires of natural reason the very utmost it can do; for the highest victory of reason is precisely in proving with certainty these three great scientific or philosophical truths just named. How little do they understand of our religion, who pretend that it dwarfs the intellect, gives no scope to reason, and appeals only to the external senses and the ignorance and credulity of the people! These considerations show that reason, science, or philosophy has a great and important part in relation to Catholic faith, and must have; for all the theologians agree that grace supposes nature, gratia supponit naturam. It is to the rational soul that God speaks.
Now, it is an undeniable fact, that what passes for philosophy with non-Catholics either denies those great truths which are prior to faith, or fails to prove them with certainty. With what effect, then, can we meet the errors of the age or of our country, and advance the cause of Catholic faith with those who reject it, without entering even deeply into scientific and philosophical discussions? To restore faith, we must restore reason and philosophy, which is its expression; for reason is, at present, more seriously assailed than faith. The controversy to-day is not, as it was a hundred and fifty years ago, between catholicity and heresy, but between catholicity and infidelity, between the church and those who deny all religion deserving the name; and this controversy is precisely in the field of philosophy. In denying the church and rejecting the Christian mysteries, the movement party of the age have lost reason, while professing to rely on it and to be guided by it. They have fallen below reason, and must be brought up to it, and be made to respect it. The so-called advanced party of humanity, the march-of-intellect or the progress-of-the-species party, deny not the faith only, but, in act, reason too. The party has no tolerable appreciation of the powers and capacities of natural reason; and the moment we can get its members to reason, to understand what reason can do, and is called upon to do, controversy is over. We have got their face turned toward the truth, and themselves making their way toward the church. Hence the great work immediately at hand is the defence of reason.
Those Catholics who have not been in a position to learn, or who have no call, in the way of duty, to study the wants and tendencies of the age, may not be aware of any necessity for this defence of reason, and therefore, for the philosophical essays, which, from time to time, we publish, and may well think that we fill with them a space that could be better filled with matter less heavy and more attractive to the bulk of readers. But those who, from their position or vocation, are obliged to study and comprehend the age, whose duty it is to master the literature and science of the non-Catholic world, and who are in habits of daily intercourse with fair-minded and liberal non-Catholics, feel the need of such essays, both for themselves and for those who hold our religion to be illogical, unintellectual, unphilosophical, and hostile to science. The age is earnest, terribly in earnest in the pursuit of material gain, and even in the cultivation of the material or inductive sciences; but, in spiritual matters, in the higher philosophy which is the preamble to faith, it is sadly deficient, and even indifferent; and this defect and this indifference must be overcome. We could not effect our purpose in publishing this magazine, or discharge our duty to our countrymen, if we did not do our best to overcome them; to stimulate those we are able to influence to devote themselves with greater earnestness to the study of the highest and gravest problems of reason now up for solution. Our readers know well that our aim is not simply to amuse or to render ourselves popular. We do not believe it necessary to piety to put on a long face, to speak with a nasal twang, or to go about with the head bowed down like a bulrush. We delight to see the flowers bloom and to hear the birds sing; we love art and all the amenities of social life; but, with all this, we publish our magazine with a serious and earnest purpose. Ernst ist das Leben. We aim to serve the cause of faith, morals, intellectual culture, freedom, and civilization; to do what in us lies, God helping us, to restore our countrymen to faith in Christianity, and to Christianity in its unity and integrity; and to make them work with intelligence and zeal for the high destiny to which God, in his providence, is calling our beloved country.
The two letters we publish, among many other evidences that reach us, prove to us that we do not err in devoting a large space to the discussion of the highest and most difficult philosophical questions of the day. These letters are from men of education, culture, and the first order of intellect and intelligence. The first, which the author of the article on The Cartesian Doubt has kindly placed at our disposal, proves that our so-called heavy articles have cleared up the mind, at least, of one soul, and enabled him to see and admit the Catholic truth. The second letter proves equally the part that philosophy plays in bringing men of a high order of intellect to the faith, even when the particular system of philosophy followed is not precisely that which we ourselves defend. His letter shows that its writer takes an interest in philosophy, and believes in its utility. This is enough to justify us in our course.
The writer of this letter appears to be a little startled at our censure of the inductive philosophy, and especially of Sir William Hamilton. We cannot call that eminent and erudite Scottish professor a philosopher, for we understand by philosophy the science of principles and causes. All real principles are ontological, and Sir William Hamilton denies that ontology is or can be any object of human science. The only things pertaining to philosophy he admits are logic and psychology. But how can there be psychology without ontology? a soul without being? or science of the soul without science of being, that is, without ontology? The soul is not self-existent, has not its being in itself, but in God; "for in him we live, and move, and are," or have our being. How, then, construct a real science of the soul, or psychology, without science of being, and of the relation of the soul to real and necessary being, that is, of the divine creative act? Logic is both a science and art. Men may, no doubt, practise the art without a scientific knowledge of its principles; but, to understand logic as a science, he must understand its principles, and these are ontological. No man fully comprehends logic as a science till he has seen its type and origin in the tripersonality of God, and recognized its principle in the divine creative act. Sir William Hamilton, then, by excluding ontology, excludes from our science principles and causes, and leaves both logic and psychology without any scientific basis.
The writer says, "Sir William Hamilton shows that induction, when applied to deity, to the infinite, or to the absolute, (he ought to have said to any spiritual existence also,) fails to yield even apparent truth, because it yields contradictions." We say the same, and therefore, while we admit inductive sciences, we do not admit inductive science or philosophy. Principles are given à priori, not obtained, as Kant has amply proved, by induction from the facts of experience, because without them no experience is possible. We agree with the writer, not that this "is a near approach to a true Catholic philosophy," but, "to a definition of the field in which induction is to operate." Induction is restricted to the analysis and classification of facts, which fall or may fall under sensible observation, or experiment, and therefore the inductive sciences are empirical, not apodictic. This is what we said, when we said, "The tendency of all inductive philosophy, as any one may see in the writings of Sir William Hamilton, is to restrict all science to the phenomenal, and therefore to exclude principles and causes, and therefore laws."
The writer says, "I came into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1865, as I supposed by a process of induction," etc., and very legitimately too, we doubt not. We by no means exclude inductive reasoning in its place. We do not depreciate the inductive sciences, but we hold with Bacon that, while the inductive method is the true method of studying the facts of the external world, or of constructing the physical sciences, it is inapplicable in the study of philosophy or metaphysics. Philosophy has been well-nigh banished from the English-speaking world by neglecting the admonition of Bacon, and attempting to construct philosophy by the inductive method very properly adopted in the construction of the physical sciences, thus reducing the philosopher to a simple physicist, and philosophy simply to one of the physical sciences, instead of recognizing her as their queen, the scientia scientiarum. The difference between our friend and us is not that we differ from him with regard to induction or the inductive sciences, but that we hold that there is a science above them, which controls them, gives them their law, and renders them possible, and which is not obtainable by induction. This science, which corresponds to the sophia or sapientia of the ancients, and which Aristotle held to be not empirical, and the science of first principles, is what we call, and the only science that we call, philosophy. What our friend understands by inductive philosophy lies below what we call philosophy, and begins where our philosophy ends.
In proving the miracles as historical facts, or the historical identity of the church in all ages, and her commission to teach all men and nations all things whatever our Lord has commanded or revealed to her, we follow the inductive process, and must do so, for no other is possible. But it must be observed that the inductive process would have even here no scientific value without the science of the principles, what we call the preamble to faith, namely, the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and human liberty. Without this science, the induction would conclude nothing, and our friend as well as we holds that this science is not attainable by any inductive process. It must also be observed that the inductions we draw from the historical facts in the case do not give us divine faith, but simply a human faith, or rational belief in the Catholic Church, as we have already explained. The Catholic believer is more certain of the truth of what the church teaches than he is of any historical fact; but this higher certainty is not the result of induction, for induction can give no certainty greater than we have of the facts from which it proceeds. The greater certainty is the result of the donum fidei, or the supernatural gift of faith, by which the soul is born again or initiated into the order of regeneration, and begins its return to God as its final cause. The soul is thus really joined by grace to Jesus Christ, who is the real head of every man in the order of regeneration, and lives his life, as really as, in the order of generation, we live the life of Adam our progenitor. This certainty or firm persuasion, which St. Paul tells us "is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," rerum substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium, which is of grace, must not be confounded with the fides humana, or certainty which is the product of induction. This latter certainty, which results from the motives of credibility fairly considered, and fully comprehended, and which, after all, leaves us outside the door of the church, is as great as any historical or inductive certainty can be, but it can be no greater.
The writer says he has failed to discover in the writings of Sir William Hamilton the tendency we describe, and that he cannot understand how such a result could be produced by the inductive philosophy; but he himself acknowledges that Sir William shows that induction, applied to the infinite or the absolute, fails to yield even apparent truth, and says he should have added, "or to any spiritual existence." This, with the proposed addendum, excludes from the inductive philosophy all but finite and material or sensible existences, as we asserted. Sir William maintains expressly that the infinite, the absolute, the unconditional cannot even be thought, because, if thought, it would be bounded and conditioned by our thought—an absurd reason, for it supposes that our thought affects the object we think! We think things because they are, not they are because we think them. The object conditions the thought, not the thought the object. Sir William's reason proves not that the object thought is not infinite, absolute, unconditioned, but simply that our thought on its subjective side is finite, or, in other words, that we are not infinite, and cannot think an infinite thought or perform an infinite act—no very novel assertion.
Exclude from philosophy the infinite, the absolute, the unconditional, you exclude God, and deny that the existence of God can be proved with certainty by reason, prior to faith. If you exclude all spiritual existences, you deny all but material existences, and that the spirituality of the soul is provable with certainty from natural reason. If you exclude God from your philosophy, you exclude the causa causarum, and therefore all finite or second causes. Unable to assert any cause or causes, your philosophy can recognize only, as we said, sensible phenomena; nay, not so much, but simply affections of the sensibility, without any power to refer them to any external object or cause producing them. We think it very easy, therefore, to understand wherefore the inductive philosophy, as gathered from the school of Sir William Hamilton, should, as we said, "tend to restrict all science to the phenomena, and therefore to exclude principles and causes, and consequently laws." Can our friend name anything more that can be an object of knowledge with Sir William Hamilton and his school? Will he say this is all philosophy can give? that is, all that can be known or proved by natural reason? If so, what answer shall we make to Saint Thomas and all Catholic theologians who, with one accord, maintain that the existence of God, universal, necessary, immutable, real, self-existent and most perfect being, is demonstrable by reason? or to the Holy See who has required the traditionalist to subscribe the declaration we have already mentioned, namely, "Ratiocinatio Dei existentiam, animae spiritualitatem, hominis libertatem cum certitudine probare potest"? or to Saint Paul, who says, (Rom. i. 20,) "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power and divinity, are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, per ca quae facta sunt intellecta?
We have dwelt the longer on this point because Sir William Hamilton happens just now to be esteemed by a large class of our countrymen as a great philosopher, and his writings are exerting a bad influence on philosophic thought. He, perhaps, had no contemporary who surpassed him in the literature of philosophy or philosophical erudition; he knew all systems, ancient, mediaeval, and modern, but he lacked the true ingegno filosofico, and though a born critic, he cannot as an original and comprehensive genius be compared even with Dr. Thomas Reid, the founder of the Scottish school. His great merit was in completing the doctrine of perception left imperfect by Reid, by proving that we perceive in 'the sensible order things themselves, not merely their phantasms, and that perceiving and perceiving that we perceive are one and the same thing. So far he asserted real objective knowledge, but knowledge only in the external or sensible order. But he undid all this again by maintaining that we see things under the forms of our own understanding; not as they are in themselves, but as we are intellectually constituted to see them. To an intellect constituted differently from ours they would appear different from what they do to us. This has an ugly squint toward the subjectivism of Immanuel Kant, and brings us back to the apparent or purely phenomenal. This supposes that all our knowledge is only knowledge relatively to us, or in relation to the present constitution of our minds. Hence, there is nothing absolute or apodictic in our science. Things may be in reality very different from what we see them, or from what they appear to us. This renders all our knowledge on its objective side uncertain, and opens the door to universal scepticism. We think we have done no injustice to Sir William Hamilton.
We rank Sir William Hamilton with the Positivists, as we do Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. J. Stuart Mill, because he restricts our science to the sensible and material order, and denies virtually that we can know principles and causes. We do not pretend that he, Mill, or Spencer agrees in all things with Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism; we have no reason to suppose that he sympathized knowingly with Comte's avowed atheism, or with his deification and worship of humanity. But the fundamental principle of positivism, that which excludes ontology from the domain of science, is common to them all; and it is impossible to establish the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, or the liberty of man, or anything else without the aid of ontological principles. Mr. Mansel, the ablest of Sir William Hamilton's disciples, seems well aware of it, and attempts to found science on faith, and faith on—nothing.
We would willingly comply with our friend's request, but we know of no philosophical work in our language such as he wishes us to name. The English-speaking world, since Hobbes and Locke, has had no philosophy, and we are aware of no English treatise on philosophy that has any philosophical value, though some good things may be found in old Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and in Reid and Beattie. We know nothing within a moderate compass in any other modern tongue that would meet the wishes of our friend much better. Balmes's Fundamental Philosophy, translated from the Spanish by H. F. Brownson, with an introduction by his father, Doctor O. A. Brownson, and published by the Sadliers in this city, is the best that occurs to us. Several Latin text-books, used in our colleges, such as Rothenflue's, Fournier's, Branchereau's, and the Lugdunensis, are, though not free from objection, yet good introductions to the study of philosophy. For ourselves, we collect our philosophy from Plato, Aristotle, the fathers and theologians, more especially from the mediaeval doctors of the church, aided by various modern writers, and our own reflections. We follow no one author, but regard St. Augustine and St. Thomas as the two greatest masters of Catholic philosophy that have yet appeared. As philosophy is the science of reason, we depend on the reason common to all men to confirm or to reject such philosophical views as we from time to time put forth.