Modern scholastics will know how to take to heart and profit by the lessons of the seventeenth and eighteenth century controversies; they will avoid the mistakes of their predecessors; they will keep in close contact with the special sciences subsidiary to philosophy and with the views and teachings of modern and contemporary thinkers.[39]
An overweening confidence in the power of the special sciences to solve ultimate questions, or at least to tell us all that can be known for certain about these problems, a confidence based on the astonishing progress of those sciences in modern times, is the source of yet another prejudice against metaphysics. It is a prejudice of the half-educated mind, of the camp-followers of science, not of its leaders. These latter are keenly conscious that the solution of ultimate questions lies entirely beyond the methods of the special sciences. Not that even the most eminent scientists do not indulge in speculations about ultimate problems—as they have a perfect right to do. But though they may be themselves quite aware that such speculations are distinctly metaphysical, there are multitudes who seem to think that a theory ceases to be metaphysical and becomes scientific provided only it is broached by a scientific expert as distinct from a metaphysician.[40] But all sincere thinkers will recognize that no ultimate question about the totality of human experience can be solved by any science which explores merely a portion of this experience. Nay, the more rapid and extensive is the progress of the various special sciences, the more imperative and insistent becomes the need to collect and collate their separate findings, to interrogate them one and all as to whether and how far these findings fit in with the facts and conditions of human life and existence, to determine what light and aid they contribute to the solution of the great and ever recurring questions of the whence? and whither? and why? of man and the universe. One who is a sincere scientist as well as an earnest philosopher has written à propos of this necessity in the following terms:—
The farther science has pushed back the limits of the discernible universe, the more insistently do we feel the demand within us for some satisfactory explanation of the whole. The old, eternal problems rise up before us and clamour loudly and ever more loudly for some newer and better solution. The solution offered by a bygone age was soothing at least, if it was not final. In the present age, however, the problems reappear with [pg 028] an acuteness that is almost painful: the deep secret of our own human nature, the questions of our origin and destiny, the intermeddling of blind necessity and chance and pain in the strange, tangled drama of our existence, the foibles and oddities of the human soul, and all the mystifying problems of social relations: are not these all so many enigmas which torment and trouble us whithersoever we turn? And all seem to circle around the one essential question: Has human nature a real meaning and value, or is it so utterly amiss that truth and peace will never be its portion?[41]
A final difficulty against philosophical research is suggested by the thought that if the philosopher has to take cognizance of all the conclusions of all the special sciences his task is an impossible one, inasmuch as nowadays at all events it would take a lifetime to become proficient in a few of these sciences not to speak of all of them.
There is no question, however, of becoming proficient in them; the philosopher need not be a specialist in any positive science; his acquaintance with the contents of these sciences need extend no farther than such established conclusions and such current though unverified hypotheses as have an immediate bearing on ultimate or philosophical problems.
Moreover, while it would be injurious both to philosophy and to science, as is proved by the history of both alike, to separate synthetic from analytic speculation by a divorce between philosophy and science; while it would be unwise to ignore the conclusions of the special sciences and to base philosophical research exclusively on the data of the plain man's common and unanalysed experience, it must be remembered on the other hand that the most fundamental truths of speculative and practical philosophy, the truths that are most important for the right and proper orientation of human life, can be established and defended independently of the special researches of the positive sciences. The human mind had not to await the discovery of radium in order to prove the existence of God. Such supreme truths as the existence of God, the immortality of the human soul, the freedom of the human will, the existence of a moral law, the distinction between right and wrong, etc., have been always in possession of the human race. It has been, moreover, confirmed in its possession of them by Divine Revelation. And it has not needed either the rise or the progress of modern science to defend them. These fundamental rational truths constitute a philosophia perennis: [pg 029] a fund of truth which is, like all truth, immutable, though our human insight into it may develop in depth and clearness.
But while this is so it is none the less true that philosophy, to be progressive in its own order, must take account of every new fact and conclusion brought to light in every department of scientific—and historical, and artistic, and literary, and every other sort of—research. And this for the simple reason that every such accession, whether of fact or of theory, is an enlargement of human experience; as such it clamours on the one hand for philosophical interpretation, for explanation in the light of what we know already about the ultimate grounds and causes of things, for admission into our world-outlook, for adjustment and co-ordination with the previous contents of the latter; while, on the other hand, by its very appearance on the horizon of human experience it may enrich or illumine, rectify or otherwise influence, this outlook or some aspect of it.[42]
If, then, philosophy has to take account of advances in every other department of human research, it is clear that its mastery at the present day is a more laborious task than ever it was in the past. In order to get an intelligent grasp of its principles in their applications to the problems raised by the progress of the sciences, to newly discovered facts and newly propounded hypotheses, the student must be familiar with these facts and hypotheses; and all the more so because through the medium of a sensational newspaper press that has more regard for novelty than truth, these facts and hypotheses are no sooner brought to light by scientists than what are often garbled and distorted versions of them are circulated among the masses.[43]
Similarly, in order that a sound system of speculative and [pg 030] practical philosophy be expounded, developed, and defended at the present time, a system that will embrace and co-ordinate the achieved results of modern scientific research, a system that will offer the most satisfactory solutions of old difficulties in new forms and give the most reasonable and reliable answers to the ever recurring questionings of man concerning his own nature and destiny—it is clear that the insufficiency of individual effort must be supplemented by the co-operation of numbers. It is the absence of fulness, completeness, adequacy, in most modern systems of philosophy, their fragmentary character, the unequal development of their parts, that accounts very largely for the despairing attitude of the many who nowadays despise and turn away from philosophical speculation. Add to this the uncertain voice with which these philosophies speak in consequence of their advocates ignoring the implications of the most stupendous fact in human experience,—the Christian Revelation. But there is one philosophy which is free from these defects, a philosophy which is in complete harmony with Revealed Truth, and which forms with the latter the only true Philosophy of Life; and that one philosophy is the system which, assimilating the wisdom of Plato, Aristotle and all the other greatest thinkers of the world, has been traditionally expounded in the Christian schools—the Scholastic system of philosophy. It has been elaborated by no one man, and is the original fruit of no one mind. Unlike the philosophies of Kant or Hegel or Spencer or James or Comte or Bergson, it is not a “one-man” philosophy. It cannot boast of the novelty or originality of the many eccentric and ephemeral “systems” which have succeeded one another so rapidly in recent times in the world of intellectual fashion; but it has ever possessed the enduring novelty of the truth, which is ever ancient and ever new. Now although this philosophy may have been mastered in its broad outlines and applications by specially gifted individuals in past ages, its progressive exposition and development, and its application to the vastly extended and ever-growing domains of experience that are being constantly explored by the special sciences, can never be the work of any individual: it can be accomplished only by the earnest co-operation of Christian philosophers in every part of the civilized world.[44]
In carrying on this work we have not to build from the beginning. “It has sometimes been remarked,” as Newman observes,[45] “when men have boasted of the knowledge of modern times, that no wonder we see more than the ancients because we are mounted upon their shoulders.” Yes; the intellectual toilers of to-day are heirs to the intellectual wealth of their ancestors. We have tradition: not to despise but to use, critically, judiciously, reverently, if we are to use it profitably. Thomas Davis has somewhere said that they who demolish the past do not build up for the future. And we have the Christian Revelation, as a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths[46] in all those rational investigations which form the appointed task of the philosopher. Hence,