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.