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.