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THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE JACQUES MARITAIN

^7 ^HE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE

GEOFFREY BLES: THE CENTENARY PRESS TWO MANCHESTER SQUARE, LONDON TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND REVISED AND AUGMENTED FRENCH EDITION BY BERNARD WALL AND MARGOT R. ADAMSON

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

In the original M. Maritain makes considerable use of the close kin- dred which exists between the actual forms ofcertain French words and that of Scholastic Latin. This involves considerable difficulties in trans- lation into a tongue not so closely related. At times, rather than risk a misunderstanding of a who naturally lays great stress on verbal exactitude, I have followed this angle of the sense rather than smoothness m the English. can never make easy reading, and Gavin Douglas' plea is as pertinent to-day as in his time:

For there be Latin wordis many one That in our tongue FIRST PUBLISHED 1037 tf ganand translation snane Les than we mynis thar sentence and 5 gravity ; And yet scant weill exponit...

For ohjectum and subjectum also •4 He war expect culdfind me termis two

$ In particular I would draw the reader's attention to the opposition be- tween rational and real being, corresponding £ to that between ens rationis and ens reale; and that, in general, £ it is in this sense that the word rational should primarily be understood. In the original the main text, which is here | integrally translated, is H Mowed by nine Appendices: these, owing to their great length and highly technical character, have here been omitted. I have given a brief summary of their content. No new matter is introduced in them, and in the main they consist of critical and technical discussions of points treated in the text, with long quotations in support and enlargement of individual stages in the argument.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY Behnard "Wall ROBERT MACLEHOSB AND COMPANY LTD. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS GLASGOW

214556 CONTENTS

F&GR Preface -----_____ ix

Introduction. The Grandeur and Misery of - i

PART ONE THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SHAFTER

I. Philosophy and Experimental Science - - - - 27

II. Critical Realism ------86

HI. Our Knowledge of the Sensible World - - - 165

IV. Metaphysical Knowledge ------24.8

PART TWO THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

V. Mystical Experience and Philosophy - - - - 305

VI. Concerning Augustinian Wisdom - - - 3 58

VII. Saint , the Practician of the Con- templative Life ------382

Conclusion. Todo y Nada - 43i

A Summary of the Appendices 473 PREFACE

title of this book Tm sufficiently declares its design. The disparate and the confused are alike alien to the nature of the mind. 'No one', says Tauler, 'knows better the true meaning of distinction than they who have entered into unity,' and in the same way no one can be aware ofthe real meaning unity of without an equal grasp of the sense of distinction. Thus every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, particularly in relation to the , complex riches of knowledge and the mind, must distinguish in order to unite. And it is exactly towards such a discernment of the vari- ous degrees of knowledge, their organisation and internal -

tion, that reflective and critical philosophy is primarily directed.

Idealist usually choose some particular class of sciences as a generic type of the universe ofknowledge and construct in relation to this type their entire . Not only does this entail the sys- tematic neglect of vast regions of apprehension, but it tends also to re- duce the diversity of the life of the spirit to a noetic monism, which is certainly more sterile, if less pardonable, than the ontological monism of the first philosophers. (For, after all, the mind, they claim, does know

itself, and what excuse can idealism offer if it despises the very structure ofthought itself?)

In revenge many realists seem disposed to pay for their possession of things by an abandonment of the problems proper to the mind, and we see to-day a new 'cultural' dogmatism identifying with dialectic

materialism the anti-idealism which it professes. I hope to show here that Thomist realism, while saving by a truly critical method the values of the knowledge of things, allows of an in- timate exploration of the universe of reflection, and the establishment, if I may say so, of a metaphysical topology: thus 'the philosophy of be-

ing is at the same time and par excellence a 'philosophy of the spirit'. More even than the physical universe and corporeal organisms, the x PREFACE PREFACE xi dimensions, a structure, and in- spirit possesses—though immaterially— Contemporary idealism, In this book I have endeavoured to indicate the reasons for this move- ternal hierarchy, ofcausality and values. which proper structure in ment and these transitions and the main phases through which they ends by refusing to acknowledge any nature or the pass. pure movement or a pure liberty, spirit, in order to make of it either a entirety on one single level in reality only achieves flattening it out in its It is obvious, therefore, why this book must explore very varied universe, a world of infinite of intellection, as if in a two-dimensional fields of enquiry. After a form of general introduction, thinking that the whose theme is platitude. Nevertheless we have justification for four at once the grandeur and the misery of metaphysics, the first problems dimensions of which St. Paul speaks—quae sit latitudo, et hngitudo, et to be dealt with are those which concern the experimental sciences and 1 sphere or hypersphere sublimits, et profundum —concern not only the the degrees of knowledge which they represent. At this point, before organisation of the contemplation of the saints, but generally the whole going further, it becomes necessary to turn to knowledge as such, and to and fundamental structure of the things of the spirit, in the natural or establish (chapter ii) the principles of a philosophy of the intelligence; supernatural orders. so we enter into the dominion of that critical metaphysic, on whose Taken from the noetic angle which I have chosen, we may say that foundation the whole body of the book is based. The two following length symbolises for us the way in which the formal light which chapters have as their subject the philosophy of nature considered par- characterises a type ofknowledge falls on things and determines in them ticularly in its relations with the sciences, notably with , and a certain line of intelligibility; breadth corresponds to the ceaselessly metaphysical knowledge, particularly with regard to its noetic struc- growing sum of objects thus known; height to the difference of level ture and its relations with negative theology. With knowledge by faith created among the various forms of knowledge by the degrees of in- and the 'super-analogy' which is proper to it, we pass on to the degrees immateriality in the object, from which follow, for telligibility and of supra-rational knowledge, whose highest form is mystical experi- the its typical and original manner of procedure; as to each object, ence. Chapter v is consecrated to these problems, while chapters vi us those more hidden diversities fourth dimension, depth, it presents to and vii deal with two eminent cases ofwhat has just been described as in its liberty, diversifies which depend on the way in which the spirit, 'the depth' of the things of the spirit: the question of the nature of reality according still more its objects and its manner of conforming to Augustinian wisdom and the distinctive features and proper perspec- and practical to their final ends. The difference between speculative tive of the 'practically practical' science of contemplation as it is found but it is not philosophy is the simplest example of this diversification, in St. John of the Cross. The last chapter forms the conclusion to the the only one. whole book and deals with that doctrine of All and Nothing set out by the elan But it is not only the structure, it is the movement also and the Mystical Doctor, and with the supreme degree both of knowledge admirable law of the spirit which need to be brought to light, and that and ofwisdom which is accessible to man in this life. which, ofdissatisfaction with the very security ofacquired certitudes by It is by design that I have endeavoured to cover so wide a field ofpro- starting from the experience of the senses, the mind enlarges, raises, blems and sketched the outline of a synthesis which starts with the ex-

transforms itself from stage to stage, absorbing itself in contradictory perience of the physicist and ends with that ofthe contemplative, whose that and yet united spheres of knowledge, while testifying to the fact philosophic stability is guaranteed by the rational certitudes of meta-

1 tlie striving of an immaterial life for its perfection is a striving to- physics and critical philosophy. Only in this way is it possible to exhibit an the zones of wards an infinite amplitude, that is to say, in the last resort, towards the organic diversity and the essential compatibility of great in quest of object, an infinite reality which it must needs in some manner possess. knowledge traversed by the mind in this movement a tiny fragment and J£pli.iii, 18. being, to which each one of us can only contribute PREFACE Xll PREFACE xiii that at the risk of misunderstanding the activities of his comrades tained from the theologians just as he applies that obtained from the bio- other tasks equally fragmentary, but which are absorbed in reconciled in logists or the physicists. die whole in the thought of the philosopher, almost the unity of despite Where the unbelieving reader is unable to accept the of the themselves, like brothers ignorant of their fraternity. From this point of principles ofsolution which I have assumed, he will at least comprehend view one could say also that the particular work to which metaphysics the methodological reasons which rendered necessary such recourse, is called in the world of to-day is to put an end to that form of and can judge incom- from outside the logical structure of the whole which is patibility of temper which the of the classical period roused presented to him. Many of the parts of that whole-all in fact which are between science and wisdom. concerned with the degrees ofrational knowledge-rely on reason alone- Certainly some will reproach me with the fact that I have not and the doctrines of science, re- notably those concerning the physico- throughout in the realm of pure philosophy and in the mathematxcal knowledge mained latter ofnature, the philosophy ofnature, the divine consideration certitudes names and the rational chapters have taken into which in themselves knowledge ofGod, which are there put forward, if they do not constitute the belong to another order. I shall not endeavour to clear myselffrom such highest part of the edifice are nevertheless central to it, as the doctrine a criticism, for I am in fact convinced that when the philosopher takes ofcritical realism is its foundation. I may add that this book as his subject the study of anything which bears on the existential con- was not conceived as a didactic treatise, but much more as a meditation ditions of man and his activity as a free personality—and that is exacdy on certain themes which are linked up by a continuous movement. This what is involved in a study of the degrees of knowledge which are in is why certain themes ofmajor importance in themselves, such as themselves above philosophy and imply by their essence a personal rela- . mathematical and theological knowledge, have not been made the objects of tion between the knowing subject and its final end—he can only pro- special chapters, without, for all that, the omission of any consideration ceed scientifically as long as he respects the integrity of his subject and, or characterisation of them. They would both demand a more special study, alien therefore, those realities of a supernatural order which are in fact im- to the philosophic design which is here pursued. Particularly in relation to the plied in it. I have already endeavoured to make this clear in an essay on foundations ofmathema- tics much more preliminary work is still the notion of .1 No philosophical pretensions can required, in my opinion, be- fore thomist philosophy can propound a systematic interpretation abrogate the fact that man as we know him is not in a state of pure in which all the critical problems offered by modern developments nature, but of a nature at once fallen and redeemed. The first obligation in the mathematic sciences find a solution. I have nevertheless attempted for a philosopher is to recognise what is; and ifin some cases he can only (chapters i, iii, iv) to make clear in this connection a number of points do so by adhering by faith to the First Truth, which although reasonable which seem to me particularly important, and which already indicate in is nevertheless due to a grace which transcends reason, he is still a - a fairly clear manner in what spirit, in my opinion, a philosophy of sopher (though not purely a philosopher) when he makes use of this mathematics should be elaborated. adherence in the discernment and scrutiny of the essential characteristics

and underlying reasons of what is before his eyes. Thus, although he Those who consent to read the following pages closely will perhaps borrows from a higher light which hejoins to that ofhis reason, he pro- perceive that while rigorously keeping to the formal line of St. ceeds always in accord with his proper mode, not as a theologian but as Thomas' metaphysic, and rejecting any form of accommodation or a philosopher, analysing the given subject in order to penetrate to its diminution designed to make acceptable to the irrationally ontological principles, integrating in his investigations information ob- prejudiced, I have on many points attempted to clear the ground 1 De laphilosophie chritiennt 1933. As I have this little book, and shown in an appendix to restrict to some extent the frontiers of the thomist synthesis. The moral philosophy adequately understood is by necessity subordinate to theology. xiv PREFACE PREFACE inconvenience of these forms ofwork, where many indications and many xy I choice among the distractions ask to be taken up and pursued, is that they need, elements of the real, it is an unlimited alluring in \ openness to them all. order to bring forth their full fruit, a spirit of collaboration and philo-

j The truth is that Thomism is a universal sophical continuity in the reader on which it is generally vain to reckon, work. One is not a thomist i because one has chosen it in the emporium of Be that as it may, such work is in the spiritual tradition of Thomism, a systems as one among several others, as one may tentatively choose a pair of doctrine which is essentially progressive and apt in the assimilation of shoes at a boot- maker's until one sees another brand more suited to fresh material—does it not proffer a singular proof of its irrepressible one's feet. On those lines it would be more stimulating to fabricate one's vitality in having resisted for centuries that pedagogy industriously own system, made to one's own measure. One is a thomist because charged with the desire to force it into some ready-made framework? one has aban- doned the attempt to find in a system fabricated by one individual, Matchless in its coherence, closely knit in all its parts as it is, Thom- that individual who is called Ego, philosophical truth, and because one ism is nevertheless not what we call 'a system'. When one says that it is intends to seek for the truth—albeit by oneself and by one's distinguished from all other philosophical doctrines by its universalism, own reason—learning from every form ofhuman thought, so that nothing this must not be taken as a simple differentiation of extent, but rather that is may be neglected. Aristode and St. Thomas only hold for us as one ofnature. The word system evokes the idea of a mechanical con- their privileged positions because, in their supreme susceptibility to nection or of a more or less spatial assemblage of component parts, and the lessons of the real, we find in them principles and a scale of values consequendy a choice which, if not arbitrary, is at least personal, as it thanks to which, with no risk of eclecticism or confusion, the whole is in all artificial constructions. A system unfolds or progresses from effort ofuniversal thought may be saved. piece to piece, starting from its initial elements. the other hand, it is On can those How philosophers for whom the category of the out-of- the essential demand of Thomism that all construction and mechanism date is a metaphysical criterion, for whom thought must necessarily should be rigorously subordinated to the activity and vital immanent grow old and be forgotten, understand that ifwe consult the ancients it movement of intellection: it is not a system, an arte/actum, it is a spiri- is to recover a freshness of observation which to-day is lost? None of tual organism. Its internal links are the vital connections by which each the treasures of experience, none ofthe advantages and graces of the lat- part lives life by the of the whole. The principal parts are not the initial ter age of thought, can replace the rightful grace of its youth, that vir- ones, rather those which are dominant or central, each of which is al- ginity ofobservation, that intuitive uprush of the intelligence as yet un- ready virtually the whole.1 Thought does personal not there make a wearied by the spiced novelties ofthe real. 1 Sudi for example are the tria priiicipia on which Reginald the Dominican wrote in Distinguishing between the per se and the per accidens, thomists believe the seventeenth century a remarkable book (which is unfinished): ens est transcendens; that the progress of solus philosophy advances not only in the heart ofthe doc- Deus est ; absohta specificantur a se, rehtiva ah alio. These three principles trine which they hold for contain all Thomism: but all Thomism is necessary to comprehend them. Thus Regi- surely based, but also, as though by accident, nald's book, with its inevitable didactic dissections, is itself in relation to the doctrine through the proliferations ofall those unstable systems, whose uncertain that it expounds like an anatomical plate beside a living body. Doubtless it is the same structure allows them to fling themselves more rapidly (and perish in in the so a certain measure with every great philosophical doctrine: none are exclusively and doing) by nature on the novel aspects oftruthwhich the march oftimebrings to light. a system, an artefactum; thought in itself tends to the vital and the organic. But in all ofthem the price Nevertheless, such an advance can only paid for unity and coherence is that the aspect ofa 'system' by nature be at most a becom- prevails over that of 'living organism'. in ing, a What I should hold as most remarkable movement or a potentiality, incapable of being grasped in its en- Thomism and should call its particular privilege is that, while being sovereignly close- tirety at any moment of its progress, since there is no it knit and a whole, moment when with it on the contrary the character of a living organism prevails is not out hunting among opposed over its systematic aspect. It so formulations and contrary systems, follows from this that in no other case is the difference deep or so sensible between drawn by that the doctrine itselfand its didactic exposition. modicum of truth which they all contain. xvi PREFACE PREFACE xyii Is philosophy only this, and can it only know this state of virtuality? formal and less philosophic than the expression ens mobile- this in If it so happens that there exists among men a doctrinal organism effect 'liberates at one stroke the plulosophy of nature from the enterprises founded on the vital assurance of true principles, this will, after of greater Parmenides and Melissa'. or less delay, incorporate into itself, progressively realise in itself, this Finally, in order to avoid a possible misunderstanding of die subject virtual philosophy, which will become by the same act and just to that of chapters 1 and ni, it is perhaps not unuscful to emphasise that in the extent capable of being grasped, demonstrated, livingly formed and or- course of die allusions there made to the new physics, I have adhered to ganically activated. It is in this way, in my opinion, that Thomism is des- die standpoint of those critical and philosophic problems which are the tined in the course ofits own progress to actualise the progress ofphilo- object ofthis book. Ifwe were considering them from the point of sophy. view of the history of science and were endeavouring to characterise nth from June, 1932. that angle the evolution of the contemporary theories ofphysics, with- out doubt it would have been necessary to emphasise the name ofPlanck and die physics of the Quanta, POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION radier than that ofEinstein and the theory ofRelativity. ;

The text of this second edition is practically a reproduction In fact we have a right to of that of think that if Einstein has overpassed and the first. Certain additions and modifications have powerfully renewed Newtonian been made in the and classical physics, he has neverthe- notes. Certain bibliographic references in the notes to less remained, like Lorenz and Poincare\ books which have on the same path ofprogress,1 appeared since so that the relativist the publication of the first edition are indicated by an is, in regard to the ] development of asterisk. physics, less radical and less essentially an innovation than the discovery by Planck of radiation by quanta. It is in its abandonment of the mac- regard With to the theory of judgment (cp. ii), I roscopic point of view and its infra, chap, entry into the world of the Quantum would not wish to fail to draw attention dieory of the atom to Mgr. Sentroul's Kant . that the new physics has most decidedly broken et Aristote (, Mean, 1913, a new, revised and augmented edition away from the physics and mechanics of the ancient world. Hence the of his thesis of 1905 on L'Objet de la metaphysique exceptional historical importance selon Kant et Aristote), of the theories of Louis de Broglie, which righdy insists (pp. 61-73, 291-306) on the fact that a true judg- Schrodinger and Heisenberg. ment is an identification in the mind But here we are only considering which responds to an identity in the new physics in regard to the the thing, or 'the conformity of noetic structure of the an identification with an identity'. The physico-mathematical knowledge of nature, and same ideas die relations are put forward in an article and distinctions which it is on 'La Verite et le progres de necessary to mark between it savoir' {Revue neo-scholastique de phihsophie, May-Aug., ^The theory of Relativity 1911). constitutes, in short, the apotheosis of the old macro- scopic With regard to physics, while, on the other hand, the my definition of the philosophy of nature, I Quantum dieory has arisen from the study of the - should corpuscular and atomic world.' (Louis de Broglie, mention that, in his litde book subjecto philo- 'Rclativite et Quanta' De naturalis Revue Ae m£taphysiq

j and the philosophy of nature. Moreover it is necessary to attach parti- j importance to the physics of Relativity, because they bring into cular j question notions which, since they play a fundamental part in the philo. j sophy of nature, such as those of space and of time, are, by that very ' fact, particularly subject to and in particular danger of any confusion be- tween the two mental disciplines. ist May, 1934. INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS One might have thought that, in epochs of speculative incompetence, metaphysics would at least shine out by its modesty. But the same period which ignores its grandeur, ignores alike its misery. Its grandeur is that it is wisdom: its misery, that it is human. It is true that it utters the name of God. But it does not know His name. For we cannot describe God like a tree or a conic section Truly Thou a hidden God, Thou the true God of Israel! So Jacob asked in the morning of the angel: 'Tell me, what is thy name? And he received the answer: Why askest thou my name?'* 'It is impossible to utter this truly wonderful name, which is above every other name in this age and "' in all the ages to come.'2 Whether they be neo-Kantians or neo-positivists, idealists, Bergso- nians, logistics, pragmatists or neo-Spinozists, or neo-mysricists, one ancient sin works in the roots of all modem —the old error of . Under varied forms, with more or less , they all criticise knowledge by concepts for not being a supra-sensible in- tuition of the uniquely existent, like the scientia intuitive of Spinoza or the theosophical visions of a Boehme or a Swedenborg which Kant— with so much regret—denounced as illusory. They cannot forgive it for the fact that it does not, like the senses, know an immediate contact with existence: but only with essences and possibilities, and only attains actual existence by falling back upon the senses. They fundamentally mis- conceive the value of the abstract, that immateriality more enduring than all outward things, for all that it is impalpable and unimaginable,

1 Gen. xxxii, 20.

2Pscudo-Dionysus, De Divinis Nomlnibus, i, 6 (St. Thomas, lesson • - 3. Cp St Paul Eph.i.21). r

1 M.D.K. !; '

INTRODUCTION 2 THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS which the spirit secb for at the heart of things. What is the cause of 3 commands us to fly with our arms.' No, I ask this incurable nominalism? Because with a for the real they lack you to fly with wings \ But we have no wings! detached from the matter in Arms? Atrophied wings, the sense of being. Being as such, which it which is quite an- other matter. They would spring again necessities, its if you only had a is incorporated, being with its pure objective laws which little courage \ ifyou understood that the earth is not the only foothold its constraints which do not bind, its invisible evidences, is and that the air" do not weigh, j is not a void. a word. for them—only . j To invoke against a philosopher a mere factual impossibility speculate about geometry in space if one does not see a parti- How can one j cular historical condition of the intelligence, to say, 'what you offer the figure in space? How is it possible to dissertate on metaphysics if one us is j possibly the truth, but our mental structure has become such that does not see the in the intelligible? This difficult feat of mental we can no longer think in the terms of your truth, for our minds "have gymnastics is undoubtedly necessary for the poet; it is no less so for the j 1 changed like our bodies" 'is no argument at all. It is nevertheless the best metaphysician. Li both cases nothing can be attempted without a cer- j that can be opposed to the present rebirth of metaphysics. It is only too tain original talent. A Jesuit friend of mine asserts that man, since j true that eternal metaphysic does not fit in with the modern mind, or his intellectual Adam's fall, has become so inapt in intelligence that the j • more exactly that the latter does not fit in with the former. Three cen- perception of being ought to be regarded like a mystical gift super- turies ofmathematical have so bent the modern mind to a naturally accorded to certain privileged persons. This of course is truly a j single interest in the , invention of engines for the control ofphenomena pious exaggeration. Nevertheless it remains the fact that this intuition is j —a conceptual network, which procures for the mind a certain practi- its for us an awakening from dreams, a sudden step out of sleep and I cal domination over and a deceptive understanding of nature, where fashions. mom- \ dreaming milky way. For man can sleep in many Each thought is not resolved in being but in the sensible itself. Thus progress- ing he wakes from animal sleep; from human sleep when the intelH-j ing, not by adding fresh to those already acquired, but by the gencc strips off its bonds (and from divine sleep at the touch of God). substitution of engines new for engines grown out of date; manipula- is grace of the The birthright of the metaphysician as of the poet a ting things without understanding them; gaining over the real, pettily, - natural order. The one, who throws his heart into things like an arrow patiently, conquests which are always partial, always provisional; ac- or a lighted match, sees by divination—in the very stuff of the sensible, quiring a secret relish for the matter which it seeks to trap, the modern inseparable from it—the flash of the spiritual light which shines for him mind has developed this in lower order ofscientific demiurgy, a form of with the glance of God. The other, turning away from the sensible, multiple and marvellously specialised sensitiveness, and admirable hunt- that ing sees by science, in the intelligible detached from perishing things, instincts. But, at the same time, it has become miserably enfeebled \ same spiritual light held captive in some idea. Abstraction, which is and defenceless in regard to the proper objects of the intellect which it death for the one, is the breath of the other's nostrils; imagination, the has basely renounced, and has become incapable of appreciating the discontinuous, the unverifiable, other's universe of rational by winch he perishes, are the evidence otherwise than as a system of well-oiled life. Both living by the the cogs. Hence it rays which fall from the creative Night, must necessarily be opposed to all metaphysics—the old one feeds on a linked intelligibility God in positivist multiform as the reflection of game—or take up with some pseudo-metaphysic—the new the world, the other deter- form of on a like intelligibility only divested and positivism—one of those metaphysical counterfeits where the mined the each experimental by very being of things. They play see-saw together, method, in its grossest form, as with the pragmatists and rising to heaven are the pluralists, by turns. The spectators mock at this game; they or more subtly, as in Bergsonian intuition, or more sitting on the solid earth. 'Ramon Fernandez, ^'Intelligence et M. Maritain', Nouvelle revue jremcaise 1st June, 'You are like a dabbler in black magic,' it has been said to me, 'who 1925. ! '

INTRODUCTION | 4 THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS

integral action of the Blondelians with their f the religiously, as ifi. tlie attempt what says, phenomenal, the lying flood of the brutally empiric if mystically, invades the domain ofpure to experience everything intellec- not that what is is not and that there is more j in the effect than in the It contemplates its tion. I" cause? conclusions as it ascends from the visible to All this is true. The current of the modern mind runs against us. Oh ' the invisible, it suspends them in a realm ofintelligible causation, which intellect •well, hills are there for the climbing! The has not changed, it is implicit in this world and which nevertheless transcends it, in no wise has only drifted into habits. Habits can be corrected. They have become contradictory to the system of sensible sequences studied by experi- second nature, you say? Nevertheless, the first nature is always there; mental science, but which remains stricdy different: the movement of and the syllogism will endure as long as mankind. my pen over the paper-my hand-the imagination and internal sense It is less difficult for the philosopher than for the artist to be in dis- -the will-the intellect-and the First Cause, without whose morion agreement with his period. There is little parallel between the two cases. nothing created could act; such a series is in no way opposed to, though The one pours his spirit into a creative work, the other ponders on the it in no way assists, the determination of vasomotor modifications or real with the understanding mind. It is in the first case by depending the associations ofimages which on axe in play while I write. Metaphysict] the intellect of his time and pressing it to the limit, in the concentration demands a certain purification of the intellect; it also presupposes a cer- of all his languor and all his fire, that the artist has a chance of tain purification of the will, and the strength to devote oneself to what] reshaping the whole serves — mass. But for the philosopher the first question no object, to useless Truth. is to grip hold of the object first of all, to cling on to it, lost to Nothing nevertheless is more necessary to man than this useless thing./ everything else, with such tenacity that a break is What we need b not at last affected in truths which will serve us, but a truth which we the opposing mass, making possible a new alignment of forces and a may serve. For this is the food of the mind, and the mind is the best part new orientation. of ourselves. Unuseful metaphysics brings order—not the so-called law It is equally true that metaphysics brings and order of a policeman, no harvest to the yield of , but the order which springs from eternity— experimental science. It can boast of no discoveries into the speculative and no inventions and practical intelligence. It gives his equilibrium in the world of phenomena. Its heuristic value, andhis motion back to as the phrase goes, is man, which are, as we know, to gravitate towards entirely nil. Nothing can be expected of it from that point of view. the stars with his head while hooked on to the earth by his two legs. It One does not do manual work in heaven. reveals to him the hierarchy of authentic values through all the extent Here exactly is its greatness: have we not of being. It gives a known it for a thousand centre to his ethics. It maintains in the uni- years? Metaphysics is useless, as old verse of knowledge, said, it serves no purpose making clear the natural limits, the and for it is above all servitude; useless because supra-utile, subordination of the good in itself various sciences: and this is far more important for and by itself. For, let it be understood, if human beings it could serve the science of than the most luxuriant proliferation of the mathematics phenomena, could ] yield for its harvest, it would be vanity ofphenomena: for by that very what is the use of gaining the world and losing right' fact, in wishing !" to go beyond that science while not reason? We are in itself surpassing so weakly that the limpid dispensed by a sane it. Every metaphysic, be it that of Descartes, of metaphysic Spinoza or of Kant, may perhaps be less favourable to experimental discovery which measures itself, not against than the mystery of being, but the the dreams or the only by sharpness of a spirit submerged in the sensible; it state of positive science at any given moment, is radically be that the false in prin- Jiay natural sciences prefer to fish in troubled waters. Per- ciple. True metaphysics, in its own way ap We and aware of its own limita- have &° the right to , hold ourselves sufficiendy burdened with tions, can also say: f my kingdom is not the benefits of this world. It holds to its ofthe dispersion. axioms in despite of the world, which strives to hide diem for Metaphysics from it: places us in the world of the eternal and the absolute, INTRODUCTION 6 THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS 7 us pass from the spectacle of things to the knowledge of mates reason- What metaphysician, not achieve. to speak of the ancient Brahmins, has and more clear than the certitudes of more sure in itself mathematics keenly than Plotinus felt more this burning desire for the supreme unity? though less easily grasped—to the science of the invisible world of the the of Plotinus is not this But supreme act, rather is it the vanish- discovered in their created reflections. divine perfections point of metaphysics, ing and metaphysics alone does not suffice to pro- is an end, a fruit, a Metaphysics is not a means, it true and delectable good fortune cure it. The which Plotinus knew four times during the good, the knowledge of a free man, the most free and most natively six years that Porphyry lived with him suggests a brief contact with an royal knowledge, the entry into die large leisure of that great activity, intellectual light in its nature of greater force, the spasm of a human speculation, where the intelligence alone can breathe, on the mountain- in contact a mind with pure spirit. Ifwe believe Porphyry when he says :op ofcausation. that his master was born in the thirteenth year of the reign of Severus, / For all that it is still not even die roughest sketch of the joy of our that he heard Ammonius at Alexandria, that he came to Rome when he rightful home. This wisdom is won by the mediods of science: and was forty, that he died in the Campagna, and when he describes to us therein is great travail and vexation of spirit. For the ancient maledic- his state ofhealth and way oflife, his kindness to the orphans committed tion, maledicta terra in opere tuo, weighs more tragically on our reason to his care, his way of teaching, of composing, of pronouncing Greek, than on our hands. Forward! Unless by some blessed chance of that his handwriting, etc., why do we not believe him when he says that the Fortune on whom the pagans were not to wrong meditate, the explora- philosopher was inspired by a daemon who lived with him, and which tion of the supremely intelligible promises most all lot of a of useless showed itself, in a sensible form, at his death? 'At that moment a ser- labour, and the terrible sadness of the vision of gashed and mutilated pent passed under the bed in which he was lying and glided into a hole truths. 1 in the wall; and Plotinus gave up his soul in death.' What would be as- The gods are jealous of metaphysical wisdom—that heritage of doc- tonishing would be ifthe metaphysical eros, there where Christ does not trines to which we are alone able to attain without too great an inter- dwell, did not call forth some form of collusion with superhuman in- mingling of error is itself constandy misunderstood—man's grasp on it tellectual natures, rectores hujus mundi. is ever precarious—and how could it be otherwise? Is there a more But let us return to our theme. I said that metaphysics suffered not splendid paradox than this of a divine science won by human means, a only from the common necessity of abstraction and discourse: it suffers free exercise of liberty, such as is also proper to spirits, culled by a nature 'in from an infirmity proper to itself. It is a natural theology, whose every sense enslaved'? object par excellence is the Cause of all causes. The Principle of every- r- Metaphysical wisdom possesses thing the most pure degree of abstraction that is, this is what it would know. And how can it fail to desire / because it is at the farthest remove from the senses; it opens out onto the that this knowledge should be perfect and complete, the absolute and I immaterial, on a world of realities which exist and can only exist in Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, ii, 25. Later (chap, x), Porphyry tells us how an Egyp- Vseparation from matter. tian But our means of ascension mark also our priest who had come to Rome proposed to make visible to Plotinus the spirit who limits. dwelt within Of necessity and him, and evoked this daemon, who turned out to be a god. 'It was not by its nature, abstraction, the condition of all possible*, he human science, continues, 'to interrogate this daemon or hold him for any long time vis- involves, with its multiplicity of partial and comple- ible to the sight, because one of his friends, a witness of this scene to whom the birds mentary views, its slow elaboration of had been concepts, all the complications confided and who was holding them in his hands, stifled them from jealousy and the immense machinery, or perhaps terror. which are so much heavier than the air, of Thus Plotinus was assisted by one of the most godlike daemons: constantly the wmged apparatus he directed thither the glance of his spirit. This was the cause ofhis of discourse. Metaphysics con- wishes purely to Writing his treatise, On the Daemon in whom we have received participation, where he template, to overpass reason and enter into pure intellection, aspires to endeavours to give the reasons for the differences among the beings who come to the the unity of a simple . It approaches it like an asymptote, and cannot assistance ofman.' INTRODUCTION 8 THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS 9 fulfilling knowledge whereby it may know him in his essence, in that and be the sorcerer never so adept he cannot escape the which makes the substance of his actual life? If the desire to horns of this see the dilemma. First Cause is natural to man—while all the while 'conditional* and This then is the misery of metaphysics (and also its greatness) 'ineffectual', for this desire precisely lacks in us any natural proportion It rouses the desire for the supreme union, spiritual possession consum- with its object—it is specially natural to the metaphysician, who cannot mated in the very order of reality, and not only in idea. And it cannot if he is worthy of the name, fail to feel the sharpness of its sting. But satisfy it. metaphysics can only enable us to know God by analogy, not by what It is another wisdom that we preach, to the Jews a scandal and to the He is in Himself, in the community of the transcendental perfections Greeks madness. Exceeding all human effort, the gift of deifying grace which are found—in infinitely different ways at once in — Him and and the free largess of the uncreated Wisdom, it has its origin in the in things: a true, a certain, an absolute knowledge, in- the highest delight sane love of that Wisdom for each one of us, its end in the the unity of the of reason, and one which it is worth the pain of being a man to spirit with Him. One alone gives us access thither, Jesus the crucified, know, but which remains infinitely far from being vision, and which the Mediator raised between heaven and earth. When, only alike crucified accentuates the burden of the mystery. Per speculum in aenigmate. upon a gibbet, with his hands and his feet cut off, they asked al Hallaj We understand only too well how the most perfect fruit of the 'What is ?' he replied, 'You see here its lowest degree.' 'And intellectual life leaves man still unsatisfied. its highest?' 'Thou canst not come thither: yet to-morrow thou shalt In fact, stated in the most general terms, the intellectual life does not see what cometh. For it is to the divine mystery, where it is, that I bear suffice for us. It demands a complement. Knowledge brings to souls witness, our and that remains hidden from thee.'* Mystical wisdom is not all forms and all good things, but stripped of their proper existence and beatitude, the perfect spiritual possession of divine reduced reality; but it is its to the condition of objects of thought. Present, as though beginning. It is an entrance here below into the incomprehensible light, grafted in us, but in a mode of being which is essentially incomplete, a taste, a touch, a sweetness of God which will not pass away, for what they cry out to be completed, they engender in us a driving force, the the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost began in faith they will desire continue in to reunite them with their rightful and real existence, to possess the wisdom of beatitude. them not in idea, but in reality. The love thus roused projects the soul We cannot pardon those who deny or who corrupt this; gone astray towards a union which will be real, which the intellect alone, except in inexcusable metaphysical presumption, since they know the divine in the extreme case of the vision ofGod/ is incapable transcendence ofprocuring. Our and yet will not adore it. intellectual life is thus fated-unless by some inhuman deviation-to The doctrines which certain tad Westerners offer us as the wisdom of the by avowing its indigence, and one day pour "itself out in desire. It is East— am not I referring to oriental thought itself, whose exegesis de- the problem of Faust. Ifhuman wisdom does not upset into heaven and mands a multitude of distinctions the and the finest discrimination—in love of God, it will relapse on Marguerite. Mystical possession of toe x most holy God in eternal Loufe Massignon, Al charity, or physical possession of the poor Hatty martyr mystique de I'Islam, exicuti a Bagdad, k z6 man, Pans, flesh in the m: 1922. cite the case of al fleetingness of time, one 1 Hallaj here because, in so far we may risk conjec- or die other must be the end turing the secret ofhearts, everything leads one to think that this great Moslem mys- beC CS G°d 'tonally* tic, who was condemned Jk) ««*". « *•* for teaching the union oflove with God, and who witnessed ttit^ r to K the last * * k a ™ l rem), point to his desire to fkce itTi 1 tl' T t ^^ *** (»"'" ™/«* followJesus, was possessed of both grace and the infused G gifts (that ihMf™n^\y actuating the intellect L he belonged to 'the soul' of T^mlhctt "T fA i the Church) and so was able to be raised to *** ,nd authentic mystical ^ *« " *** "to*** intelligence contemplation. This is the view supe^Sed^ematurahsedfr?J??by the ¥t reached by the R.P. Mardchal, in hght of glory is as like the hand whereby the review of M. blessed layholdon Massignon's admirable book (]. Marechal, Recitercltes de science re- %™^May-Aug., I923).C . p infra, chap, v, p. . 10 INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS u themselves arrogant and facile, present a radical negation of the wisdom in abomination, have held and whose crying falsity, combined with so Claiming to reach the height of contemplation by of the saints. much zeal, is for the rest of us a subject of astonishment and sorrow.* It the perfection of the soul apart metaphysics alone, seeking for from * not byfaith, Baruzi, that this is 'just man' of yours lives. This Ueopath' charity, whose mystery is to them impenetrable, substituting for super- suffering from God, is not but from the sickness ofthe Sorbonne. natural faith and the revelation of God by the Incarnate Word— The contemplation of the saints is not in line with metaphysics, it is ennaravit—a. self-styled unigenitus Film, qui est in sinu Patris, ipse secret in line with religion. This supreme wisdom does not depend on the tradition inherited from unknown masters of knowledge, they lie: for effort of the intellect in quest of the perfection of knowledge, but on that add to his stature, can enter by his they say to man he can own , the gift of the whole man in quest of a perfect rectitude with regard to esoteric hyper- power into the superhuman. Their is his End. It has nothing to do with that 'stultification which Pascal nothing but a specious and pernicious mirage. It reduces reason to iDom. Phil. Chevalier, Vie spirituelk, May and 1925, R. Gamgou-Lagrange ibid death. absurdity and the soul to the second July-Aug., 1925; and the little book of Roland Dalbiez, SaintJean ie la Croix aprh Baruzi. * There is another way in which vain philosophy can be the foe ofwis- M. In the second edition ofhis bookJean Baruzi dom: not by subjecting the wisdom of die saints to metaphysics, but has had the merit ofsuppressing some passages shocking and the preface indicates that he is more appreciative to-day of the in more or less confusing them, and, in the worst cases, cleverly con- scale and difficulty ofthe problems on which he touches. Nevertheless, at the bottom founding it with a metaphysic which is corrupt to the core. It is in this his thought has in no way developed. Does he not still say (p. 674) that 'when the mystic has attained a certain way that an attentive and penetrating mind, after fifteen years of fer- noetic purity, he separates himself from what Leon Brunschvieg, with profound observation ... calls "naturalistic vent research and all the effort of the most minute and impassioned eru- psychism" and adopts instead "intellectualist idealism" '? Misunderstanding the very essence ofthe mysticism dition, has been led to a tragic disfiguration hero of the very mystical of St. John of the Cross, it is not surprising that he likens it (by certain superficial ana- logies taken for whose inward drama he had desired to retrace. Alas ! a philo- basic ones, to the As though pp. 676-7) mysticism of Plotinus (which in itself is sufficiently distant from what sopher, assisted by even the most exhaustive historical information or M. Leon Brunschvieg calls 'intellectualist idealism'), and that he should hold that, independent of any question ofinfluence, John ofthe Cross the most intuitive of Bergsonian sympathies, could penetrate to the unites with neo- 'by the most intimate movement ofhis thought' (p. 677). heart of the life of a saint, relive by himself the soul of St. of the In the preface to John the second edition, he defends himself against ever having had any intention of 'transposing Cross! Here all the false keys ofphilosophy break, for the simple reason from the mystical to the metaphysical plane', or ofrepresent- ing John of the Cross as absorbed in a God opposed to the living that there is no keyhole; the only entry here is through the wall. What- God of Christianity'. I myselfhave never criticised his intentions; but his philosophy and the interpretations ever my friendship for you, my dear Baruzi, I attempt- must own that in which it inevitably suggests. ing to illuminate St. of the Cross in Ifhe has loyally John with a Leibnitzian glow, underlined that 'this divine birth takes place in the heart of Chris- uamty wrenching (p. 6j6), the whole his from his contemplation what for him was the life of his life of book has been conceived on the theme that it is contingently (with regard to the very mysticism of St. John of the Cross) that this is so: —infused grace and the I work of God in his soul—in making of him in point offact this experience know not what is christian, but by a combination, a synthesis between lame giant of the metaphysics ofthe future, still held by what is essentially mystical and what is essentially christian. The soul is nevertheless 'extrinsic' superstitions, without limits but living above all to procure for himself, by a and God himself is boundless. But the naked soul, the God without mode, process of here combines for the soul detachment in which the spirit of man does all the work, a touched by mystical grace, with the God in three Persons of theological Christianity This synthesis is accomplished in him, more more and more delicate intellectual suc- comprehension of God, and vmgly than perhaps in any other catholic mystic, because to an intense love ofa God ceeding so well in this that he leads us 'in some manner beyond Chris- w o is Father,^ Son and Holy Spirit isjoined the pure adhesion to the essential Divinity, tianity',1 you have e Deity", drawn an image of the saintwhich he himself would and, although the term does not figure in his language—to the One* IP- <574-j. The ^ean Baruzi, Saint italics are mine). Cp. infra, chap, viii, 464-9. Jean de la Croix et h probleme ie Yexpirknce mystique, second pp. c is a dangerous temptation for a edition, p. 230. philosopher, when retracing and rethinking the s °ry ofanother mind, to believe that it is his office to lead that mind to the full truth INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS 13 presence is a sign that pride has already the proud (its themselves: it is to do the will of recommended to abide in Another and contribute to the longer dreams of knowing. This 1 knows so well that it no Goodness. They do not seek for their fallen) but it good of soul. They lose it, theyhave ofknowledge. presupposes the renunciation in entering into the highestknowledge it no more. If mystery of divine sonship, in becom- contemplate in order to know, but to love. And The saints do not ing somewhat of God himselfthey gain a transcendent personality, an in- die love of Him that they the sake of loving but for and a liberty which nothing they love not for dependence in this world can touch, it is are in love with God that they aspire to that love. It is because they by forgetting all this so that not they but their Beloved lives in them. desires, loving themselves only for his 2 union with God which love As for the antinomies which the new mystics' discover in tradi- 1 exult in their own intelligence or nature and so sake. Their aim is not to tional mysticism—because they have made for themselves an artificial

idea of it, vitiated by solemn modern prejudices about the life of the supposedly unable to come. History reminds the nature, to which in itself it is of its spirit—I freely grant that indeed they characterise a great deal of philo- God, and that it is not in our power to philosopher than there is no other God than equal risk of imposing on the hero of sophical pseudo-mysticism. (And the neo-mystics themselves will have re-engender the creative Ideas. There is also an gods. In Baruzi's eyes the most authentic difficulty in escaping from them!) one's imagination obedience to one's own some Brought into contact with tends to a pure knowledge, which by infinitely surpassing, spiritual flight of St. John authentic mystical life they lose all their significance. This is no 'crea- mental condition and every per- by an incessant auto-destruction of knowing, every tive will' in search of the direct exaltation of pure adventure and indeed by entering into the depth an ceptible datum, makes us transcend our nature not proper mode, but onlyliy infinite surpassing, no 'magic will' seeking the exaltation of itself in of supernatural realities mystically attainable in their own non-knowledge entering into a mode (without modes) of knowledge, into a realm of mastery of the world and achieved possession. Here love (our philoso- experience and comprehension, and where we can know higher than our manner of phers always forget it and yet it is key of it all), here charity makes use philosophy, 'Being' better the same realities as are the objects of metaphysics and of knowledge—which it itself, under the action of the Spirit of God, universe' 'the divine One' (p. 675). (On (p. 448), 'things' (p. 584), 'the (pp. 585, 685), ecstasy' and 'cosmic discovery'.) Baruzi makes savourous and present to adhere more utterly to the Beloved. p. 630 and p. 645 it is a question of 'cosmic — which severs 'mystical faith* from 'dogmatic faith* (p. 448, cp. pp. 510-II, 600-1, 659), Here the soul seeks neither self-exaltation nor abolition; it seeks to be directly contradictory to the thought and the experience ofJohn of the Cross; and if is united with Him who first loved it. For here God is not a word but a he does not ignore the part played by love in his mysticism, he singularly reduces its reality, a that Reality, rather a Super-reality, which exists from the begin- role and does not show its bearing; his exposition invincibly gives the impression de- ning, before us, love in this form of mysticism, as in neo-Platonism, is a sort of metaphysical nisus without us: not humanly, not angelically, but only ofa transcendent stined to make us 'enter into a new world' (p. 61 1), simply the means divinely comprehensible, and who makes us divine for that end; a 'noetic'; whereby he exhibits a complete misunderstanding of the most central and Super-spirit whose seizure does not limit but makes illimitable the the most personal stuff of St. John of the Cross, his sovereign and vital certitude of finite spirit, Thou living God, our Creator. One question, John Brown, primacy oflove. Some lines ofJean Baruzi (Final Note to the second edition, p. 727) obliged me to before you begin any discussion of mysticism: your Mr. Peter Mor- the pro- give these precise details. IfI have criticised him sharply it is because in my eyes hange, is he created? blems upon which he touches, and which for him also are ofcapital importance, do not The contemplation of the saints does not proceed from the spirit of belong to the regions of pure erudition, but involve essential truths; and also the es- J teem with which, despite all makes me Cp. my charges, I regard Baruzi's great endeavour, St. , Sum. theol, ii-ii, 26, 3 ad. 3: 'Hoc quod aliquis velit frui deplore that so much human labour makes him run the risk of concealing from him- Deo, pertinet ad amorem, quo Deus amatur amore concupiscentiae; magis autem selfthe amamus message of the very saint he intended to honour. Deum amore amicitiae, quam amore concupiscentiae; quia majus est in, sc 1 bonum Dei, fruendo ipso; et ideo simplici- Thcn the love of self secundum rationem proprii boni does not disappear, but its act quam bonum, quod participare possumus ter homo magis also Cajetan, In II-II, gives place to that of the love ofcharity propter Deum et in diligit Deum ex rharitate, quam seipsum.' Cp. where a man loves himself T 7,5. . Deo (Sum. tlxoL, ii-ii, 19, 6; 19, 8 ad. 2; 19, 10), and which, in fulfilling and raising it ! up, contains in itselfthe natural than Cp. love which each bears to his own being and, more Henri Lefebvre, 'Positions d'attaque et de defense du nouveau mystidsme*, to his own being, to (i. Philosophies, God 60, 5; ii-ii, 25, 4). March 1925. INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS H 15 impossible to respond to the questions knowledge, all images and all ideas, because infinitely man,„. but from infused grace. (It is transcending all recourse to the terms and notions of and everything that any creature is ever capable of thinking. ..hich torment our epoch without Vere tu es absconditus, Deus Israel Sahator. is, I say, indeed our perfect fruition, Deus It attains to God as the sacred science.) This contemplation hidden God and the Spirit. It is by its essence as God the Saviour, this secret wisdom which is the richer but in so far as we are born of Water the more it is certainly from the core of our hidden, which secretly purifies the soul in secret. supernatural, a work which emanates bo While remaining 1 but in the degree to which wholly under the control of theology, totally depending ing and our natural powers of activity, our on it for its are passive in the conditions and its foundations on human soil, for the substance and our natural activities themselves hands multitudinous grafts notions and conceptual signs by which divine Truth is ofAlmighty God and are by him and by the gifts which he into manifest to our as such intelligence; without any abandonment of revealed them raised above themselves towards a divine object, absolute- dogmas (on the 1 supremely personal, contrary!) knowing better than by concepts the very things ly inaccessible by the sole powers of nature. A a which the free and active work, a life which springs up for eternity, but which is a least in the communicable enunciations At by which human language translates because, supernatural not only in its for us a non-action and a death, mystical experience—i.e. in what is not, properly speaking, the mystical experience it- it emanates from our self, but rather the theology with object, but by the very mode of its procedure, which it is impregnated (see infra, chap, vii)— mystical experience is controllable by theology. The theologian thus judges spirit as moved by God alone and belongs to that operating grace whose the con- templative not as a contemplative, but in so far as the contemplative descends into the whole initiative is with God. And because faith is the root and founda- field ofconceptual expression and rational communication. In the same way an astro- tion of all supernatural life, the latter is inconceivable apart from faith, nomerjudges a philosopher's utterances about astronomy. But in itself mystical 'outside which there is no immediate and proportionate means' of con- wisdom is above theological wisdom, and it is the man of the spirit who, not ofcourse in the order ofdoctrine, but in that of experience templation.2 and of life, judges the speculative theologian. Spiritualisjudical omnia, et a nemine judicatur (I Cor. divine love, Finally, the contemplation of the saints exists not onlyfor ii,i5). but but also by it. It presupposes not only the theological virtue of Faith, As forjudging in fact the secret and incommunicable substance of the mystical ex- perience itself and the also theological Charity, and the infused gifts of Intelligence and Wis- discernment of spirits, that is not the aflair of the speculative theologian, but of the men of the spirit themselves, and ofthe theologian in die degree dom, which do not exist in a soul devoid of charity. The same God at- to which he is himself a spiritual and possessed of the practical sciences (see chap, vii) tained by faith in concealment and as if at a distance, since for the intel- ofthe mystical way /Such indeed', writes John of St. Thomas, 'is the apostolic law: Believe not every lect there is always distance where there is not sight, love attains im- spirit, but test the spirits to know ifthey are ofGod (I John, iv). And again: Despise not prophesyings, hut prove all things and that mediately by itself and in himself, uniting our hearts to the very thing holdfast which is good, (I Thes. v). . . This examination . should normally be made in common with others. that is faith; enracinated in hidden from and it is the divine things thus 'This is not to say that the gift of the Holy Ghost should be submitted to the virtue us by charity, it is God become ours charity, mystical wisdom, 01 prudence, by that or is inferior to it, or receives its determination from it, for those who judge of under the motion and the actual direction of the Holy Ghost, experi- these revelations or these truths should not act according to the laws ofhuman prudence, but according to the laws of faith to which the gifts of the Holy Ghost are ences by and in love as given to us within us, and affectively knows, 'in submissive, or according to the gifts themselves, which may be found more excellently virtue of an incomprehensible union,' 3 in a night above all distinct in some than in others. If, nevertheless, human or theological reasons are employed in °ie 1 examination of these things, they are considered in a secondary degree and only Those philosophers who, apropos ofthe doctrine of 'obediential potency', speak of as they minister to the supernatural addition have either never they have better explication of what concerns faith or the instinct ofthe read the thomist theologians or, if Holy read them, have Spirit. not understood them. Cp. of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q- "> John M ™ wnv in the examination mystical things it is only neces- disp. 14, a. 2. (Vives, vol. ii.) of spiritual and not iry to have recourse to scholastic theologians, but also to spiritual men possessed of *Cp. St. John ofthe Cross. Ascent ofMount Carmel, ii, 8. See infra, chap, vii, p. 4°4- wysneal prudence, who know the spiritual ways and know how to discern spirits. *Pseudc-Dionysus, Divine (John of St. * Names, vii, 3. Thomas, The Gifts ofthe Holy Ghost, French trans, by R. Maritain, v, 22.) J

INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF l6 METAPHYSICS 17 of dogma communicate to our human intellects, synonyms, since they signify, in the way conceptual formulas in which they are divided up every sign which can surpass all distinct notions, be ex- and shared among creatures, the perfections how can it not which pre-exist in God love to that very reality which pressed, to cling in the experience of is in a state of sovereign simplicity. God is subsistent Goodness as He is Here we are at the antipodes of Plotinus. Here subsistent Truth and subsistent Being the first object of faith? itself, but the Idea of Good- the intelligible, intellectual elevation above of rising ness, ofTruth and of Being, if it subsisted in is no question of an a pure state, would not be ofdialectic regulations to the aboli- bymetaphysics with its careful ladder God. natural—of natural intellection in a super-in- follows from this that the tion—which is still itself It names and concepts which properly be-

This is a question ofa loving self-elevation k to God keep all their intelligible telligibility ofangelic ecstasies. long value and significance in being self-renunciation and renunciation of all other applied to him: what they signify is completely above the created, of in God, with all that it charity, in the trans-luminous night constitutes for our intelligence things in order to be borne on by ('formally' is the phrase of the philo- sovereign supernatural knowledge sophers); in saying that is of faith, under divine direction, to a God good we intrinsically qualify the divine transform us into God. of the boundlessly supernatural, where love will nature, and we know that it contains all that goodness necessarily im- 1 this love.' plies. But in that perfection For, 'indeed, indeed we have only been created for in pure act—which is God Himself— into mystical contemplation. there is infinitely more than our No, metaphysics is not the doorway concept or our name can conceive. It is grace and truth have been in a mode which infinitely overflows That door is the humanity ofChrist, by which our manner of conceiving that it

enters in exists in God ('eminently' given unto us. 'I am the door,' he has said himself, 'if any man is the philosophical phrase). In knowing that and he shall find pas- God is good we yet remain ignorant by me he shall be saved, and he shall go in and out of the divine Goodness, for it is

the . good as nothing else is ture.' Entering through him the soul mounts and penetrates into good, true as nothing else is true; he is like nothing obscure and naked contemplation of the pure Godhead, and descends that we can know. 'Thus', says St. Thomas, 'the word wise, again in the contemplation of the divine Humanity. And here, as there, when it is applied to a man, describes and encloses in some manner the thing signified: the soul finds pasture, and feeds upon its God. but not when it is applied to God; then the signifying

In every sign, concept or name, there are two things to consider: the word remains uninclusive and uncircumscribing, and he exceeds the significance 1 object itself which is made known and the manner in which it is made of the name'. All knowledge known. In all the signs used by our intelligence in order to know God, of God by ideas or concepts, whether acquired, as in be- metaphysics and the manner of significance is both deficient and unworthy of God, speculative theology, or infused, as in prophecy—all

to purely intellectual ing proportionate, not to God, but to what is not God, in the degree knowledge of God this side of the beatific vision, though which the perfections which pre-exist in a pure state in God exist also in it may be absolutely true, absolutely certain, and may consti- tute an things. In the same imperfect manner in which created things show authentic and supremely desirable form of knowing, remains irremediably forth God from whom they proceed, our ideas, which attain first of all deficient, disproportionate by its very mode of grasping and signifying and directly created things, make God known to us. The perfection the object signified and known. It is exist in clear that ifit can't be which they signify, and which can—in' a transcendental order— given to us to know God, not yet sicuti est, them by his essence and in an uncreated as in a created state, has essentially to be signified by sight, but at least in the very transcendence of his deity, santf making use as it exists under limited, imperfect and created conditions. In the of a manner of knowing appropriate to the object one known, such knowledge way, all the names by which we name God, while all signifying cannot be obtained purely intellectually. not To transcend all and the same unutterably one and simple reality, are nevertheless ways of conceiving while remaining on the plane of a i-Sum. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle (second redaction), str. 28. theol, i, 13, 5. B M.D.K, INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS 19 is a contradiction in and thus of the concept, terms. The phenomenological the intelligence, cathedrals. sciences have freed metaphysics from by love. Love alone, I mean supernatural love, Process beyond must be the necessity of explaining the stuff of sensible nature and from many here on earth can only overleap all transition. The mind pursued by the optimism can effect this illusions of the Greeks. We can certainly con- where the Spirit of God, making renunciation-of-knowing, gratulate ourselves on this purification modes in a of metaphysics. There are less effects produced in the of charity and the affec- for rejoicing in the observation use of the connaturality grounds of this fact that, in the practi- love the experience union, gives to the soul by of the dons by the divine cal order of of things, in the very degree to which or may approach. 'Thus, deli- no notion either can material work is demanded of the exacdy that which heavier intelligence, it has divided it- world and the intellectual alike, the soul en- vered from the sensible self from the life which it has outside time. The earth has no longer and, renouncing obscurity of a holy ignorance all an angelic mover, man drives ters into the mysterious need of it forward with the strength ofhis seen nor seized; itself in Him who can neither be Spirit is the gifts of science, loses own arms. gone up into heaven. object, belonging neither to itself nor to wholly given to this sovereign Man, for all that, is flesh and spirit, not bound together, but unitedin the most noble part of itself and by others; united to the unknown by one substance. If human things cease to be shaped in human fashion, all science; finally, drawing from this reason of its renouncement of either seeking their shape in the energies of matter or in the exigencies comprehension which the understanding could disincarnate , absolute ignorance a of a it implies for man a terrifying metaphysical! \y 1 never have won.' dismemberment. We may well believe that the shape of this world \ ^ the modern epoch is set under the sign of will pass away on the day this It seems that the whole of when tension will have reached such a 1

progressive dislocation of tie ' the disunity of the flesh and the spirit, a point that it breaks our hearts in pieces. passage ofhumanity under the human form. It is only too clear that the As to the things of the spirit, their 'liberation' runs the risk of being progressive mater- dominion of Money and Technics" is marked by a an illusion—a much worse state than servitude. The constraints im- the other hand, ialisation of the intellect and the general world alike. On plied by the service of men were good for them; though burdensome, activities dispense more they the spirit, with which our social and discursive endowed them with their natural weight. What is this supposed the fortunes of and more, can itself claim to be dispensed from directing 'angel-transformation' of art and knowledge? Is it not more than pos- deliverance—at sible \ the organic functions of human life, and enjoy a sort of that all tliis 'purity' will end by losing itself in frenetic brutality? delivered paint- It can only least, virtually. 's phrase, 'Photography has discover itself, only truly be, in the fold of the Holy Spirit. the There ing' can be applied all round. Printing has freed the plastic from where the Body is the eagles will gather. If the Christianity the of pedagogic functions which were incumbent on them in the age of yesterday is in defeat, the Church of Christ continues advanc- ing; litde by litde she also is delivered, freed from the care of the dries

Pseudo-Dionysus, Mystical Tlieology, chap, i, 3. which reject her, from the temporal providence which she exercised preoccupied *In technical the way to a life less according themselves inventions ought to open to her , for the healing of our wounds. Stripped, dis- spiri- by the material, but by the fault ofman they tend rather to the oppression ofthe possessed, when she flies into our- the wilderness she will take along with tual. Does this mean that we ought to renounce technical discoveries or else give her all assert that remains in this world, selves up to vain regrets? That has never been my opinion. But reason must W not only of faith and charity, but despotic, of philosophy, human regulative power. And if it can, without having recourse to purely and virtue, which then will be fairer than ever may W and as such inhuman, solutions, that materialisation of which I have spoken before. surmounted, curve ofnee* at least for a time. I am in no way claiming to plot out the The powerful pou" interest of the present crisis arises from the fact that it sity for events, but merely endeavouring to disengage, in regard to the actual is presort more universal in time where we are, the significant tendencies of the curve followed up to die than any other, and lays each one of us under the obligation and pointing out the fact of a that human liberty can change it. decisive choice. We have come to the parting of the ! .

INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR 20 AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS has ways. The West by its prevarications, because it abused divine glissade, the truly new is already grace its with us, that secret invincible umP which it should have made fruitful for God, and let fall the gifts having of the divine sap in the veins of the Mystical Body, which endures and to maintain the order of charity, finds that it has lost also grow old, the blessed failed that of does not awakening of souls under the sW f reason, which is everywhere corrupted, and which no longer and the Holy suffices Our Lady Spirit. O Wisdom stretching from one hori anything. The malady of has brought about a to the for discord zon ofthe world other, who bringest together in one the farthest between nature and the shape ofreason. Nowadays it is becoming very extremes O Promise bringing to ! these times ofour misery who difficult to human. must take our stand either remain We above rea- fills our hearts withjoy! Unfaithful as they have been to their vocation against it. But the son and so for it, or below reason and theological vir- turning from the Church of their baptism, everywhere blaspheming tues and the supernatural gifts are the only things which are of Christ in above rea- the name giving the name of 'christian civilisation* to that son. every side the humanists as from is its On —among new the partizans of which only corpse, the Church loves the nations without need of dialectic materialism (as the followers yesterday from of Barres)—we them, who have such need of her. It is for their good that the Church hear the cry: spiritual ideals, spiritual tilings! But, gendemen, what making use of the only culture in which human reason has almost spirit are you invoking? If it is not the Holy Spirit, you achieved success, has tried might just as for so long to impose a divine form on earth well invoke the spirit ofwood alcohol or the spirit ly matter and to ofwine. All this self- rouse and so maintain in perfection, in the gende order styled spirituality, all these super-rational claims, if they are of grace, human life not rooted and that of the reason. If European culture is in in charity, only lead in the end to animalism. Hatred danger, she will save of reason wil the essentials and know well how to raise up to never be anything but Christ an that the insurrection of the tribe against specific can be saved ofother cultures. She harkens stirring in the differentiation. Dreaming heart of history is the exact opposite of contemplation. If another world, which no doubt will persecute her as purity consists the old in a perfect abandonment to life according to the senses one has done (is it not her mission to suffer persecution?) but and the mechanism of the senses, there is more of it in a brute beast than in which she will discover the possibilities ofnew action in a saint. Understood in the sense that Europe would be nothing without the The world, that Faith and world for which Christ would not pray, has made that its raison d'itre has been and remains to give the Faith to its choice in advance. To deliver himself from theforma rationis, to flee far from God, in an impossible metaphysical suicide from the cruel and But in the absolute sense, no. Europe is not the faith and the faith is not saving order of the Europe; eternal Law, is the vow which twists the flesh of the Europe isnotthe Church andthe Church is notEurope. Rome old man, as it was that ofthe -the eldest son of the morning when he fell like »W capital of the Latin world, but of the world. Urbs caput orbis. lightning from heaven. To express this absolutely, as fully as is pos- m rSal beCaUSe She h " bom of God ha all the sible for a being who, nationsll c t !? > ™* for the greater part of his time, does not know of the world are at home: the arms of Her Master extended on what he is doing, needs a form ofheroism. (The Devil also has his mar- CX Cd °Ver *" raCCS and Nation*. She does not tyrs.) It is an honour bLT'l ? ? ^ without future, rendered to one more than dead. . °f d ^^> *>« the Blood of Christ and As for the mass of mrllt ^^ super- mankind, to judge by the ordinary conditions of A marveUous - e of her catholicity seems in human nature, one might well Preml ? P*W believe, that they were riding for the C PrCSent ofwhick *« Progressive develop- same fall, but with neither mllTT ^ will nor courage, anaesthetised by the ideal. SKmary COuntties of a native priesthood and episcopate That fall is so terribly easy aiav n k T ^yprhapsberegardedasmeforerurmingsign. But is it always an error to judge only i according to nature. Grace °n b°rderS there, 9 *** °f histoi and now strkken our and has surprises in folliel A^f** y ™& store for us. While the continues ow East is old world - as sick as the West. But here as there, we shall see INTRODUCTION THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF METAPHYSICS adherence strikes root an to what is hath it entered into the heart ofman to everywhere where a living faith neither conceive the things which the wisdom of the the uncreated Truth and saints, the Lord hath prepared for them that love him." truly above reason, to (though certainly not without effort) the restora- 'Hearing these things Adrian leapt into the midst bringing in its train of them, crying- reason itself, implicit in the very conditions of "Count me also among those who confess the faith tion of the order of with these saints I 1 Gospel and philosophy, mysticism and meta- am a christian.'" supernatural life. Thus the also and human life are in concert. It is not to a European, physics, the divine iBoninus Mombritius, Sanctuanum seu vitae sanctorum, new edition by the monks the great project of Brahmanandav, but to a Bengali that we owe of Soksmes, Paris, 1910. the foundation in Bengal of continued by his disciple Animananda: a members, religious mendicants contemplative congregation, whose all over India an Indian exemplifi- resembling Hindu sannyasis, will carry ignoring the Vedantas, will cation of catholic sanctity who, without 1 of St. Thomas. I delight in base their intellectual life on the doctrines Thomism, the gift to the entire this homage to the virtue of Thomism. continent world of mediaeval Christianity, belongs neither to one nor to like truth. one century; it is universal like the Church and expectation of those who I for one can never despise the distress and But the real feel that all is lost and who wait for the things to come. or the Parousia? question is: which do they in reality expect—Antichrist We—we look for the resurrection of the dead and life of the world to come. We know what we await and that it surpasses all intelligence. know- There is a difference between not knowing what one expects and ing that what one expects cannot be conceived. 'Adrian, yet a pagan, asked the martyrs, "What reward do you hope for?"

' "Our lips", they replied, "cannot say it nor men's ears hear."

' "You know nothing of it then? Neither from the law nor from the prophets? Nor from any other scripture?"

' "The prophets themselves could not conceive it as it needs to be un- derstood: for they were but men who worshipped God and what they had received from the Holy Spirit they uttered again in words. But of that glory it is written: eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard,

a Chinese MicheI Ledrus, S.J. L'Apostokt bengali, Louvain, 1924. la China an entirely ft. catholic congregation, the Little Brothers of St. John Baptist, was founded by Lebbe in 1928. Generally, those who know China best think that the best of its ancient 8 spiritual heritage in these days can find only in Catholicism any chance of escapi" from the elementary materialism which the young are imbibing from the "West. PART ONE THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Chapter I. Philosophy and Experimental Science

Chapter II. Critical Realism

Chapter IE. Our Knowledge ofthe Sensible World Chapter IV. Metaphysical Knowledge

Chapters II to IV concern Speculative Philosophy, i.e. the philosophy of Nature and Metaphysics according to the principles ofcritical realism. CHAPTER I

PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE

I. OBJECT OF THIS CHAPTES In his important book, De V explication dans Us sciences, Emile Meyerson declares that 'genuine science, the only science that we may know, con- forms in no way and in none of its forms to the positivist scheme of things'.* i havc not undertake flere ^ ^^^ f showing ^ ^ system ofcritical intellectualism or critical realism,* while preserving in philosophy itself and metaphysics their essential forms as sciences, cor- responds much more exactly to that vast logical universe which the modern developments of science have revealed: such work would de- mand a whole treatise. I wish only to draw out in summary fashion from the philosophical point of view the rudiments of such a scheme, such at least as it appears to me to be in the light ofthe history ofscience. I will not endeavour to conceal the lacunae in such a sketch: it is indeed subject to many revisions and additions. Such as it is however and des- pite its insufficiency, I trust that it will enable the reader to appreciate, taken in relation to his own experience, the value of a doctrine which the inertia ofmany ofits parrizans and the negligence ofmodern scien- tific criticism have caused to be misunderstood for too long. This chapter is devoted to the relations between experimental science and philosophy; in other words, to a consideration first of all of the experimental stage of knowledge (or that which is particularised according to the various sciences and phenomena of nature) in relation

Emile Meyerson. De I 'explication ions ks sciences, Piris, loar. CSC ,P $ccm ^e . " b«t description for a philosophy for which no simplifying label C UatC " ^ ' ^cause it has for object a vantage point where empiricism and ideal- ismm, reahsmv and nominalism are alike surpassed and reconciled. On the notion oferic- """alwnieeiiifacb^u.

27 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 28 PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE knowledge is at once univcrsaliscd to the higher stages, where and uni- it is the high position occupied to the three following chapters, latter, by the experimental, fied. It is like an introduction where an the positive natural sciences, the sciences general conception the of phenomena as people attempt is made to envisage the of philosophical like to call them, which attracts to itself the notion of realism, a standpoint which will imply what science is; knowledge in critical at once a whereas for the ancients, it was the eminent dignity ofmetaphysics deeper treatment of these problems and a wider synthesis. which, orientated this notion. It is therefore very necessary examination to guard against any Reserving for the next chapter an of the bases of the tendency to apply the anstotelian-thomist conception of science as thomist noetic, its principles and metaphysical substructure are here such and without precautions, to the whole vast mass of noetic material taken as hypothetically admitted; i.e. the assumption of the existence of which our contemporaries habitually call by that name. To do so things apart from the mind and the possibility of die mind's awareness may lead to the worst misunderstandings. However, both for the ancients and of things and of its power to construct, by its own rightful activity ris- the moderns—in this they are in accord—the clearest, the most ing from the senses, a true knowledge, in conformity with reality. Those achieved type ofscience, the one most perfecdy adapted to our understanding *- readers for whom these propositions remain in doubt can in any case ac- is furnished by mathematics; and it is possible to hold that, on condition cept them as provisionary postulates, and will recollect that they are not I do not say of being corrected and adapted, but rather of being suffi- in doubt for science itself; it is realist by nature. If the experimental ciendy penetrated and clarified, the critical intellectualist or critical sciences do not therefore constitute an ontology of nature, at least, in realist theory ofscience, whose principles were laid down by the meta- the observation of so well-informed a philosopher as the one quoted physicians of antiquity and the middle ages, can alone enable us to see above, a background of ontological values is in fact invincibly pre- our way clearly through those epistemological problems which in these requisite to them. days have become a veritable chaos.

How then can we define science in general according to its idc type? OF SCIENCE IN GENERAL We can say that science is a form of knowledge perfect in £ mode; more precisely, a What idea can wc form of science in general, taken as of the fore- form of knowledge where, constrained b> evidence, the mind assigns to most limit envisaged by the mind when it b aware of striving towards things their reasons of being, the mind being only satisfied what men call knowledge? 1 The idea which Aristotle and die ancients when it has attained not only to a thing, to a given datum, but when it had of it is very different from that of the moderns, because, for the grounds this datum in being and intelligibility. Cognitio certaper camas, said the ancients, knowledge by demonstration Hz is clear that these personal limits can only be culled, by reflective abstraction, from (in other words, mediately evident) the various sciences which have been already built up among men. Nevertheless and explicative knowledge. We see it is not merely a question ofa simple reached by that spontaneous residuary mean (a statistical 'totality') realism postulated in fact by the sciences themselves, it is because I am ahtractio totalis or ideal the abstraction of a logical generality, but of a pure type (an presupposing that critical reflection (which I treat in the next chapter) can take cog- 'formality') reached by abstraaioformaUs or tie abstraction of the formal constituents. nisance ofthe validity of knowledge in general and, in consequence, of the less general (See infra, p. 45-7). The various existing this pure and less indeterminate sciences such as they arc. from which validity ofthe various sciences. type is disengaged, are fir from presenting an adequate realisation ofit. "-That mathematics constitutes in itself the type ofscience perfectly It is to a succedaneum to most adapted to of this abstractio fcrmalis (a conception which is lacking «« Juman intellect (it has its infant prodigies), is exactly true in regard most modern • to classical philosophers) that E. Husscrl has recourse he applies himdf when madiematics; it is not (cp. exact of a mathematics where the axiomatic has entirely Mutations canisienns, - ' *> ex- pp. 7 lr) t0 'lj vc by meclj ative ^tiGc effort wd | ited intuition. It is as true that grasp the the axiomatic method, precious as it may be, 'cannot intention* of science, implic« I which b fact is only possible by more or less e m "?* nor J^tify itself reflection on solely by its own existence. ... It is impossible, with- the really existing W- ™T , sciences. the cartesian method | On other hand, the removing its profound significance and its inward life, to isolate an abstract science iUMerl °bLgC k™ t0 from ' Provisionally characterise as invalid the sciences ucn as mathematics— Zi. l l from its intuitive origins*. (F. Gonseth, Fondements des which he derives his very of Let idea ofscience. Ifon the contrary the perspective tMWmatiftes, I hold to Paris, 1926.) ,

30 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE at once that it is a knowledge so based that it is necessarily true, that it it is J wood of which made, or the laws of its 1 manufacture)—an object cannot not be true or in conformity with that which is. For it would not which does not exist in separation from the thing (unless for our minds) perfect in its mode, an irrefragable knowledge be a knowledge if it could nevertheless is 1 and which not confounded with it. Science bears directrix false. This is true for the pure type of the sciences, 2 be found however itself on the abstract, on and in ideal constancies and supra-momentary\ hypothetical it may be for their developments and the very large mea- determinations, what can be called the intelligible objects which our \ f sure of the probable and the conjectural with which they back their mind seeks in the real and to disengage from ' it. They are there, they J certitudes and which they propound nevertheless with rigour. J exist, but not in the state of abstraction and universality which they But if this knowledge is necessarily true must not the object f which it hold in the mind—on the contrary, under concrete and singular con- assumes also be necessary? How can a variable and contingent object ditions. nature exists in Human each one ofus. But it is only in the mind I rise to a stable knowledge which cannot be found give false? In the that it is a universal nature, common to all men. In each one of us it/ same way a thing could not be explained, would not have given up its is the nature ofPaul or the nature ofJohn, etc

reasons to us, ifthe reasons posited for its being should prove to be other- It should be observed that scientific law always only expresses (more wise. This is the problem which from the very beginning has faced or less direcdy, more or less distorted) the properties or the exigencies philosophical j reflection, and which led to the construction of his of a certain ontological indivisible which in itself does not fall under the I world of divine Ideas. We must not try to escape by some half-hearted ken of the senses (is not observable) and which remains for the natural j reply which would obscure the primary exigencies of scientific know- sciences an x (which is nevertheless indispensable) and which is none I ledge. Let us agree from the start—we shall sec in a moment how this other than what philosophy designates by the 3 name of nature or essence. 1 assertion must be understood and delimited that there is a science J — only Itis distinguished from it by a rational distinction.

of the necessary, or that the contingent as such cannot be the object of ! I do not ignore the fact that the idea ofabstraction and ofabstract natures is repug- science. Science bears directly and in itselfon a necessary object. nant to the avowed or unavowed nominalism of many of our contemporaries. Are they, for all that, aware of the curious The difficulty is at once apparent. The object of science is necessary. spectacle which they present when, denouncing the vanity and worn-out ofsuch a notion, they But the real, the concrete course themselves talk of 'science', 'the of things, allows of contingence; this nund, method", 'mathematical reasoning*, all those objects of thought which it is table need not be here to-day, I myself who write need not be here at oddly difficult not to recognise as abstract natures? They are in pursuit ofa phantom, this moment. Does science for the critical intellectualism then not bear on the real? No, it does not ofan Aristotle or a St. Thomas never, as they imagine, made bear scientific abstraction consist in fitting an individual direcdy on the real in the raw, on the real taken in its concrete and object into a logical pigron- hole or a hypostasied generalisation ofits characteristics, singular but in disengaging from it the existence. (In this sense, M. Goblot is right insisting the in on reality which can be thought and made consistent for the mind, the complex intelli- difference between reality gibility and truth.) But no more docs it bear on a pla- ofwhich it is the carrier. This latter is what the scholastics called abstmth for- tonic world wafu(seein/rfl,p.46). separated from things. It is indispensable to distinguish the From this abstractio thing fonnalis the scientific mind can in no escape. with which science is occupied (this table for example) and die way Whatever be brellcctual Pro«durc, even if it only postulates the equation of pheno- precise object (die 'formal object') A °i on which it is based and from which it mena and the fixing of their empirico-mathematical connections, and renounces any derives its stability (e.g. the geometrical con- search for the essence, principles of this table abstraction is always present, and it is it which allows the estab- sidered in lishment of rules of terms of its form, or die psychico-chcmical properties of die measurement and the calculus by which phenomena are adapted to a mathemanc formulation, and it is by it that that empiric specification ofphenomena lscn a iTaken in itself, its systematic B eea, which is itself attachments being abstracted, the notion proposed by a substitute for the essence and presupposes its existence, E. Husserl of scientific truth 'conceived as a body of predicated founded or mC

what (t essence, we see that the being to which it belongs cannot be . . . different from ^andofconcretercahtyisnottheworldofpurcintelhgiblenecessities.\ aux dij- ese essences is' (Sophie Germain, Considerations glnhales sur Vitat its sciences tl Jes lettres or natures arc certainly contained in existing reality, for to firentes ipoques ie hur culture, 'CEuvrcs philos.', Paris, 1 878). , »*** they (or their succedanea) are drawn the by our minds, . part, says that 'logic and mathematics compel us to admit a form of realism in but not in P re state. and ot Every existing thing scholastic sense of the word, that is, to admit that there b a world of: universal* has its nature or essence, but the/ ot truths which do not bear direcdy on this or that particular existence. This world given ptf" " "^cntood in regard to every universal? must exist, although it cannot exist in the same sense in which the Action AnTTT "f?"7?y law established by f C dJadofl ofJolidi oculars exist' [V'importance ie la hgistifie, de et Mor., 1911). ° * h he" !>» been established purely in- Rev. Met. de May towlvfcfil?!.before , Y «y being attached to a physical theory ofheat. f

OF RATIONAL 34 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE position of things is not implied by their nature, and fadstential events the engineer calculated the because resistances badly, or in themselves are not the materials^ occur among them which derived from these were bad because the contractor cheated the state: it is fated that h natures and which no one nature essentially implies. Existent reality of the natures ofiron and of stone, one day the bridge will collapse^Tut is thus composed of nature and the adventitious', that is why there is a the miscalculations of the engineer or the lack of honesty in the coif meaning in time and its duration constitutes (irreversible) history— or tractor, or that a prudent inspector might not have given orders forTts" history implies these two elements; a world of pure natures does not repair, or that such and such a pedestrian should be crossing at the time, platonic archetypes have no history, and mo- change with a world ment of the accident, all these things are entirely independent of would lack any orientation, a anv of pure chance thermo-dynamk natural necessity and belong to the contingent. These contingencies of equilibrium has no history. the singular escape the grasp ofscience. These necessities ofthe universal are the proper object ofits grasp.1 NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCE Thus the universality of the object of knowledge is the condition of. therefore, that the true notion of abstraction and We see, of the uni- its necessity, in itself the condition of perfect knowledge or science versal gives us the explanation for which we sought. If we do not dis- as knowledge can Exacdy only be ofwhat is by necessity, there can only J tinguish between the individual thing and the universal essence we can be knowledge ofthe universal.2 ** not comprehend how the event can be contingent while the law recog- This is the meaning in the teaching of Aristotle, following Plato nised by science is necessary, how things flow and change while the that there can only be science, absolutely speaking, ofincorruptible and object of science is in itself immutable and enduring. It is so because sempiternal things, but he corrected Plato by adding that these in- contingencc depends on the singular as such (and in fact, in the visible corruptible and sempiternal things (incorruptible and sempiternal in so world, on matter, the principle of individualisation) while science is *k can be predicted with certainty that half the children bom ttKfey will live be- are yond the age n yean; based, not on the singular as such, but on universal natures which of yet this does not tell you what age youne X will reach. The cchpsc of realised in the singular and which the mind draws from the singular by ]999 is as certain as the life-scale of an insuranJ Jmpaly; S^tatl atom is going to make is as uncertain as my life or abstraction. yours '(A S EAW™ n kt\ to* WorU.) It £ seems as thought as J^X^^o^Z Science deals with things, but with things, thanks to abstraction, odat mechanics, part—whether this is clearly perceived or blindly grasped—of the uni- which will be in question later on, but simply of the mulrimZZ versal natures which are realised in things and the necessities proper to eule could be regarded as an illustration ) ofaristotelian ideas on the those natures. And this—and not the flux of the singular—constitutes link between the 1 its object. Contingencc is rightly concerned with singular events and it eum at removes of '"**&* ncccssid versal °7 « ***** » wX^which experimental science t is only 'according neces- is w to the reasons of universal natures' that the not able to decipher. sities recognised by science apply to singular things. This is why the aV0i tO "fcafcnonJmg; ^ ° "* * «* that there is no £*ES^ t iu. necessary laws of science do not essentially affect every singular event in the course ofnature. being A workman has cut this stone into a cube, 13 the individual as such. r ^) I will even admit, with John of St! a cube it must but it lijomas thee necessarily have the geometric properties ofa cube; C X, S tc„ceofarightfu]f (indirect) concept ofthe singular. might have been cut otherwise. constructed Can l This bridge has been faultily h b '^P t0 hlve **»« of the individual-hut « . ^ » not «* Z*t V J ,m ttlt W incommunicability v • *>? Y. in itself). Character-reading, Hlaproprie ad singulark pertinent quae contingenter eveniunt; quae autem per seinsuntvti &Mw'Z mcCof m laments, etc., arc repugnant, attain tf F sciences ofthe individual, which, to attribuuntur tingularibus secundum univenalium rattones.' Thomas, In Pen' the Jw (St. * WOmd " widl a nc™ork ofsub-specific universal hermeneias, book i, chap, addition notions and in ix, lect. 1 3 , sect. 6.) emnlpray an art or experience where the ratio particulans plays an essentialpart. 6 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 3 PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE negatively) arc those universal far as they arc essences or natures which law expresses nothing but the ordination of the cause, taken abstractly outside the nund in singular and perishable things, and that only exist so nature, its in its universal to effect—and that this ordination always re- possible to have 'by accident' a science of corruptible things: in it is so mains the same, even if the position of the cause in actual existence trutlis science to singulars is apply the universal of and the in- far as we contingent, or if, in the flux of particular events, another cause presents 'leaving so to speak its proper sphere, returns, by the minis- telligence, an obstacle to the realisation ofits effects. to those corruptible things where the universal try of the senses, finds suppose that no (intelligent) If we free agent exists in the 1 universe realised' . 'Although sensible things', says St. Thomas, 'are cor- itself then obviously any, event happening here on earth {e.g. the fact that this existences, they have ruptible, taken in their individual nevertheless a sguirrel is climbing on this tree at this moment or that 2 the lightning eternity when taken universally.' certain strikes at any one moment on any one mountain) was infallibly predeter- demonstration and knowledge ofsensible things And so, since the can mined by the concatenation ofall the factors of the given universe from aspect of their universal natures, not of their indivi- only be under the beginning. But there is otdy the necessity defacto, not dejure. Not only knowledge and demonstration bear only duality, it follows that this in- could this concatenation of factors have been other in the beginning, accident* the corruptible, and in themselves on what directly and 'by on but, still more, none of the innumerable encounters between different of the immutability and necessity of the is 'sempiternal'. The condition causal successions which have been produced in the course of the evolu- object ofknowledge is its universality. tion of the world up to the production of this event had its full and The whole of this doctrine is admirably condensed by St. Thomas: sufficient reason in the essential structure of the universe, nor in any necessary reasons of contin- The intellect may know the universal and particular essence; the secondary causes productive of this event in gent things. This is why, if wc consider the universal reasons of objects themselves might (even if they might not in relation to all the multi- of knowing, all science is of the necessary', even though, talcing things tude of precedent and concomitant positions of fact, supposing that their material aspect, and 'considering those things with which the these in themselves in were not disturbed) have been prevented from for example science is occupied, certain sciences'—such as mathematics producing it, without the violation of any rational necessity. It is in 'have necessities as their subject-matter, and others' physics, for itself a contingent event1 (and — in consequence the supposition of a 3 example—'contingent things.' free agent intervening to modify or prevent it implies not the least impossibility).

These remarks show in A DIGRESSION ON 'NATURAL DETERMINISM' what sense it is possible to speak of natural determinism. This expression is legitimate if it is understood as meaning that the error pseudo-scientific mechanism pre- 1 Thus we sec of that every cause in nature is necessarily determined, its not, or by essence, to supposes and includes the error ofnominalism. If the universal does an effect {which can in fact be lacking if the cause is not posited or other either direcdy or indirccdy, stand for an essence or nature, but only fa causes intervene), and that such necessary determinations are the object a collection of individual cases, it is impossible any longer to compre- die *aences of nature-or, rather, their basic foundation (for the of singu- hend how scientific law can be of necessity and the succession more they free diemsclves from ontology the in their texture the more lar events contingent .What the mechanists fail to understand is that ^ey also become remote from causality in die philosophical sense of e word).* iCajetan, In Anal. Post., book i, chap. viii. But it is erroneous and a pure fit of stupidity to say that quim- CnCC *'Etsi cnira ista sensibilia corruptibilia sint in particulari, in univcrsalia tamen Presu PPoscs 'the universal determinism of nature', if what dam sempitemitatem habent.' (St. Thomas, In Anal. Post., book i, chap, viii, lect. 16) On this question sec my Philosophic Bergsonienne, second edition. % Sum. ilieol., i, 86, J. 'See infra, chap, iii, pp. x 82-6. RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL 38 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE

events which take place in nature are elementary exposition, and most of all from a remarkable is meant is that all rendered ignorance of 1 nature herself is posited philosophical tradition. inevitable and necessary the moment and that object of science, which Abstraction, as has often been pointed out, by the such a universal necessity is the should there- very fact that it happenings in the world, transfers us from the plane ofsensible and material existence fore deal with all individual whereas on the to the plane the objects of thought, introduces us into the order contrary, taken as such, it is exactly those things which by nature evade of of intelligible things are, being or of what but it does not immediately attain its grasp. to any- Fichte, for thing except the most general and poorest aspect of intelligible It is curious to observe how a man like example, -was led being, fire represents e.g. the idea of to us only something, some determined to construct his 'theory of science* and the immense and fragile fabric being, which produces certain sensible effects, such as burning and shining of his metaphysic of liberty, in no small degree by the desire for an for examples. Abstraction shows us intelligible aspects which are certainly escape from this 'universal determinism', when a more rigorous crit- contained in things, but the discovery, even in the imperfect way which ique of it would have sufficed to show him that it was only a trouble- to man, and only by grace is native of the properties manifest to it, some idea and only presented a pseudo-problem. One could make the of the very essence of things, e.g. the signs which denote their same melancholy comment on the philosophy of Renouvier and, more rightful in- telligible being and which give the reason of their other properties, generally, on the greater part ofthe modern systems which have sprung is only arrived at—if it is arrived at !—by hard work; I would add from Kantianism. that in a whole immense domain, that of the inductive sciences, we do not The aristoteHan-thomist conception, on the contrary, by showing arrive at it and must rest content with succedanea and working how in the course of singular events contingence is reconciled with equivalents. 2 the necessity ofthe laws recognised by science, enables us to see how it is 1 Tliosc philosophers whom I have in mind, if possible to integrate into nature the liberty which is proper to spirits, they must talk about St Thomas with- out having read him (and read him -with the scrupulous accuracy and thirst for infor- which as such do not make part of the sensible and corporeal world, mation which they ask of others and which they might also well ask of themselves), nevertheless have in that world their field ofaction. but which only need, to disabuse themselves on this point, to divert their haughtiness by a quick study ofthe very clear pages which have been written on this subject by L. Noel (Notes i'epistimobgie thomiste, p. 142) and byJ. deTonque"dec (La Critique de la connaissance, ANOTHER DIGRESSION. HOW DO WE ATTAIN TO ESSENCES? pp. 42, 138, also Immanence, Appendix i). See also A. Forrest, La Structure tnitaphysique k concretselon saint Thomas d'Aquin, chap, iii, pp. 72-97; and infra, chap, iv, pp. 248-255. I have Let finish off one digression in order to begin another. 2 me I should like to quote here a remarkable passage by M. Gaston Rabeau (SJaliti et that in my eyes the spoken of natures and essences. Does this imply tektivitl, Paris, 1927, p. 203), apropos of M. Leon Brunschvieg's book, L'Expi- at the rience humaine primary intellectual operation, abstraction, allows us to penetrate et la causaliti physique. 'The analysis of causality, of facts and sequences which is science is seeking, That it , gives us an idea of the interpretation of the real which in no first shot to the essence of things by its intrinsic constitution? way coincides with that rarefied at Kantianism which has no fixed categories and where penetrate \ sufficient to form an idea of fire, or better, of ignition, to the functions ofjudgment are indefinitely variable. At bottom, what M. Brunschvieg chemistry would be makes clear is once the ontological secret of combustion? That that the essence (by which I mean laws, theories etc.,) is not attained in one stroke, that 'without tears', with a vengeance! experience suggests truths rather than imposes them, that the proce- j v dure of thought several does not isolate the object ofknowledge, and that it is necessary from A similar reproach forms the basis of the criticism directed by time to time to return by a reflective act to the procedure employed to render them serious o contemporary philosophers against what one of the more capable of use for more complex tasks. All this is incontestably true and presents no enoug difficulty humiliating it is only them has christened pre-cartesian thought'. It is ; opposed to the phantasmagoria of a world ofready-made essences eady fla existing in the even to have need to reply. For the charge comes in part from the _ mind, to the simple-mindedness of a philosopher who could imagine that son1 he carries in his head the divine plan of the world. Elsewhere, in his of a decadent , in part from a superficial reading of :

THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE ' 4o PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE achieve the possession of an intimate knowledge of the Wc real in where things arc studied, not from the particular THE SCIENCES OP EXPLANATION (lN THE FULL SENSE philosophy, point of OF THE WORD) AND the point THE SCIENCES OF view of their specific diversity, but from of view of the trans- AFFIRMATION

ccndcntal being which saturates them. But if it is a question of said that science as such, particu- I have and therefore all science, bears, by its larising specific essences? In so far as physical realities arc concerned, 1 it direct movement, on natures or universal essences seen as'such in these is only with regard to ourselves and to human things that wc can arrive natures. Here a distinction is necessary intelligible at quidditativc definitions and reach an knowledge ofnature There are sciences which deal with these essences as known, not cer- rest the corporeal in a specific degree. For all the of world and for all tainly exhaustively, for wc know nothing wholly,' but at least as known 3 'things below us wc cannot arrive at the perception of intelligible con- or manifest (externally these arc the ): deductive sciences, mathematics stituents in themselves and must have recourse to a knowledge induc- and philosophy; though they are deductive assuredly for very different tively constructed from sensible effects alone, which docs not give us reasons: for in mathematical science the mind lays hold on the consti- ^essences, but simply their exterior signs. tuent elements of entities and constructs and reconstructs in its own One thing is too often forgotten. If there is a mctaphysic which ap- right what it has drawn from sensible data or built upon them, treating pears to be Je jure {if not ie facto) incapable of recognising the proper what in the real (when they are entia realia) are the accidents or proper- procedure of the inductive sciences and which manifests an unheard-of tics of bodies as ifthey were subsistent beings and as ifthe notions which dogmatism and intemperate ambition in the field of the knowledge of it holds of them were free ofany experimental origin; whereas, on the possession ofan exhaus- other hand, in philosophical the corporeal universe, to the point ofclaiming knowledge, the mind lays hold of sub- laid stantial essences, not in tive knowledge of the essence of matter which is presumably so themselves, but by their rightful accidentals, and only advances deductively bare before our minds, it is the mctaphysic of Descartes and of Male- by a constant revitalisation by experience , branche, that metaphysic from which, more or less camouflaged with (the *analytico-synthetic method). contempo- These sciences arc rightly cxpcrimcntalism, the inevitably mechanistic ideal of most sciences of explication, Sio'ti eW, the propter quid est, in the rary thinkers is derived: it is not the critical realism elaborated by terminology of the ancients; they reveal the in- telligible necessities ancients. immanent in the object; they make known effects

it is by principles or reasons So, having come to the closure of our second parenthesis, of being, by causes, taking the word in the full taken and general sense of the possible to define, as it should be done, the position I have already older world. It is possible, it is true, that, when

up. 'In distinction to that rational movement by which it returns to the singular. 'ForThomisn, if wc could know essences exhaustively {adequate ut Stint L'Atmlytique trantcenAcnlde, M. Brunschvicg poind out. as a concrete clement whii in se) there would be as many specifically different sciences as there were essences obstructs the deduction of the categories, that irreversible continuance which is the so known. Thus our science itself, by the simple fact that it embraces a multitude different matter of real causality: he signalises the constants which arc susceptible of serving u of natures under one light and in the same ii degree ofabstraction, attests that the points ofreference in various systems; he speaks of that irreducible something which real remains un&thom- "' P " j0l 1 fSt Thonuj intelligible ° - » Cun- Phii ". P- ». I. Reiser, book i, the very ground of experience. In short, he shows us the fact, with the V > H- q- 27. PP-P8 19 and5 824: 'Ex facts, hoc tonim ex co tandem provenit, quia nostrae scieutiae nature which constitutes it, and the mind, which, in seeking to assimilate the im- Pf

'Sec info chap. i V| . , pp 24 g.j , ^j isl $ RATIONAL 42 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 43 with a realty of such a height that its essence can only confronted be ever existed it would still remain triangle had true that the sum of the analogy (as is the case of metaphysics before God), they known by have euclidian triangle is equal to two angles of a right-angles. In this sense a knowledge of the simple certainty to confine themselves to of the fact said that these sciences proffer us eternal it may be truths. 1 have, so to speak, (supra-empiric ), but then they come out on the fur- the sciences The other sciences, of affirmation, tend towards such tber side of explanation, and the fact remains that in themselves they truths, but do not achieve rising above existence in time, precisely seek to discover the essence ofall tilings. because they do not attain to intelligible natures except in the signs and arc also the sciences which bear on essences as concealed, which There substitutes which constitute their field ofexperience, and that in a man- never in themselves reveal the intelligible necessities immanent in can ner essentially dependent on existential conditions, in such a way that sciences which (at least in the degree to which their object, inductive the truths enunciated by them not only affirm the necessary link be- is not the case with they remain purely inductive, which modem phy- tween the predicate and the subject, but also presuppose the existence as and deceived themselves sics or 'experimental' science, Mill Bacon of this subject: the necessity which they bring to light not being seen believing) can only be held to be sciences of empiric Ams- greatly by in itself, remains absorbed in existence in time—and thereby, if I may MATlON (a particular case of knowledge in the line of fact, on eon*, say so, saturated with contingence.

quia est) and which remain on this side of explication in the rightful Briefly, we can say that science in general deals with the necessities sense of the word. They enable us to know 'causes* or reasons of being immanent in natures, with the universal essences realised in individuals by their effects, not in themselves, but by the signs which are our sub- in the concrete and sensible world. The distinction has been drawn

stitutes for them- Wc know that heat expands metals, that ruminants between the explicatory or deductive sciences, which attain to these have cloven hoofs, and so blindly by hold on some necessity whose natures by discovery (constructively in mathematics, and from without

reason we do not sec—a well-founded experimental constant being to what is within in the case ofphilosophy), and the affirmative or induc-

the sign of some necessity, and in itself the sign of some essential tive sciences, which only attain these natures as signs and substitutes,

connection. An inductively established law is thus much more than blindly so to say. These latter have assuredly a certain explicative value,

a simple general fact, it includes, without revealing, the essence; it is without which they would not be sciences, but which consists in indi- the practical equivalent of the essence or the cause which itself remains cating the necessities of tilings by way of sensible experiments, not by hidden. assigning their intelligible reasons.

The former sciences, the sciences of explication, set before the mind The distinction between these two categories of sciences is absolute: intelligible objects detached from the concrete existence which clothes they are mutually irreducible.

them here on earth, essences delivered from existence in time. If no It is clear that the sciences of the second category, the affirmative, in-

>J ij> ductive sciences, ^Thc stvt an sit or quia est (knowledge by die record or the perspective of fact) being less perfectly sciences, by failing to achieve the j"i» no way limited to knowledge ofan inductive type, for (in opposition to the sort full expression of die type of a perfect science, arc not in themselves self- reason est or propter quid est, which is knowledge in the record ofor the perspective of sufficient; they reach out nature towards the sciences of the first cate- the by of being) this expression includes all knowledge which docs not arrive at grasping way gory, the sciences ofexplication in the full sense ofthe word, the deduc- essence itself in the totality of its intelligible constituents. For example it is in this very tive that in a discipline of a deductive type like metaphysics the tdrt quia eit plays a sciences. Tliey are indeed by necessity subject to their attraction. In important part, since all knowledge earth comes from ofGod which we have here on virtue of their very nature as sciences they inevitably tend to rationalise this form ofknowing. themselves, to art to become more perfectly explanatory, in other words, As to the nominally inductive sciences, they belong, in the degree to which they w' approximate subject inductive, to the stire quia est, and constitute die particular type of this form of kn° to a deductive type, and in that degree to become to ledge in the domain ofnatural knowledge. the regulation of a discipline properly belonging to such a type, THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 44 PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE either philosophical or mathematical. It is an important fact which mains impregnated with all the signs produced we by matter, abstraction must never allow ourselves to forget. consisting only in the removal of all those contingent and strictly Let us now endeavour to enter further into the domain of the individual particulars which are ignored by science. sciences The mind thus in order to discover their essential divisions and their hierarchy. considers bodies in their mobile and sensitive reality, clothed with their For this it is necessary to consider the various degrees of experimentally verifiable properties. Such an intelligibility object cannot exist with- of the objects ofknowledge. If it is remembered that what out matter and the qualities which are bound up with philosophers it, nor can it be call (die existent non-being of Plato) is in the last conceived without it. This is the great matter analysis noth- dominion of what the ancients the ontological relative called Physical the knowledge of sensory nature. ing other than source of unintelHgibility (or, in It is the first degree of modern terms, irrationality), which affects the very substance ofnatural abstraction. mind can also things and signifies so to speak the distance which separates them from But the consider objects abstracted and purified from matter in so far as it is the general the intelligibility in pure act proper to uncreated Being, we shall at ground of the sensible properties, active or passive, once understand the fundamental thesis put forward so powerfully by whether of bodies. In this case it considers only one property which it detaches St. Thomas: intelligibility goes with non-materiality. It is therefore by from bodies—what remains when all the sensible is removed—quantity, the diverse modes or degrees in which the objects ofthought discovered number and extension taken as such: ar object ofthought which cannot exist without in things by the operations of the intellect are freed from matter that it sensible matter, but whicl can be conceived without it, e.g. nothing becomes possible to establish the essential divisions of science. (It is sensible or experimenta. enters into the definition of an ellipse only on these essential divisions that I shall concentrate, without con- or a square-root. This is the great 'kingdom of Mathematica: the sequendy making any claim to enter into the detail of their subdivision knowledge of quantity as such, in its lK more detailed discussion of the notion of and classification; more, I shall only consider the speculative, leaving quantity and the proper object of mathematics follows on a later page (cp. chap, iii, pp. 173-6 and chap, iv, on one side the moral p. 250). It sciences, which, being concerned with the practi- should be noted, however, at once, that in making quantity as such, or ideal quantity, cal order and proceeding, the object in a 'composite* manner, to the point of the in general mathematics, I in no way intend the exclusion from the domain of mathematics ofall concrete determinations of an action, belong to an entirely different qualitative determination; On the contrary; ifit is a question of the qualities or formal determinations division ofepistemology.) included in the notion ofthe entities under consider- ation, or those of 'irrationals' which are at the origin of their construction, e.g. those primary specifications which n. THE THREE DEGREES OF ABSTRACTION serve to define the structure of a continuum or which in the last analysis spring from a given fact (as is the case for the three-dimensional nature of space in Here our clue is provided by the doctrine of the three degrees of ab- classical geometry), it is obvious that no science of quantity is possible without qualities. Analysis situs, the theory straction or the three degrees in which things proffer to the mind the pos- ofabstract spaces, those properties oforder which are at the bottom of topological notions, witness to the marked importance of sibility of finding in them a ob- more or less abstract and immaterial this qualitative element as essentially affecting the domain of mathematics. But this ject, i.e. in regard to the «s a question way in which that intelligibility is itself derived of the qualities proper to quantity as such, not of the qualities which from refer to the nature premises to conclusions, or, in the last analysis, by the particular or radical principle of the activity of bodies, which are reducible to the sensible order mode ofdefinition.1 (physical qualities). On the other hand The mind it will be noted that for the scholastics the science of content and can consider objects only abstracted and purified from science ofnumbers, while both belonging, generically, to the second order of ab- matter in so far as it is the in straction, both foundation for the diversity of individuals present nevertheless in this very order a —specific—difference or level of space, in ^materiality: the as much as it is the principle of individualisation; in dus case latter is of higher abstraction and immateriality than the former the object, in the very degree to which it is to mind, re- present the s, book "[ ii, p. 16). Modern mathematics, while endeavouring to overcome this x Cp. St. John of Thomas, Curs. Phil., ii, erence and Log. P. q. 27, a. I accumulating thereby the most fruitful discoveries, can in the end only »

DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 46 THE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE and measurement. This is the second rightful relations of order degree forms of abstraction: abstractio totalis, are two in other words, the ab- of abstraction. or extraction of the universal whole, straction by which we derive objects /Finally, the mind can consider abstract from wliich matter has Peter and Paul, 'animal' from 'man* from man, etc., so progressing by been entirely eliminated, where nothing remains of things but the be- and larger universak This form of larger abstraction, whereby the with which they arc saturated, being as such and its laws: objects above all simply animal ing of mind rises knowledge of the singular perceived which not only can be conceived without matter, but which hie et nunc, and which thought can by the sense commences in reality with the most without it, which may never have existed in material form indeterminate notions, is at even exist at general and the bottom of all human ways or which may equally exist in is all all, such as God and pure spirits, material ofknowing; it common to the sciences, all science advancing from such as substance, quality, act and potency, greater determination, and immaterial things, this order towards seeking, so to say, to bind is the great kingdom of Metaphysical in the notion proper beauty, goodness, etc. This the up its object to it, not as obscured by a more or knowledge of what is beyond sensible nature, or of Being as being. less common or floating one. But there is a second form of abstraction, the abstraction tThis is the third degree ofabstraction. abstractio formalis, or extraction of the intelligible type, It must here be pointed out, on the authority of Cajetan and John of by which we separate the formal reasons and essence of an object of to the contingent and St. Thomas, that these three degrees of abstraction apply form of knowledge from material data. It is by the degrees ofthis 1 abstraction called by the scholastics, abstractio formalis. Actually there abstractio formalis that speculative sciences differ from one another, the objects of the higher science presenting the form or enhance and underline its significance. For if geometry and arithmetic have become regulative type for co-extensive, we arc nevertheless justified in thinking that the numeric content in it- the objects of the inferior. Doubtless the objects of metaphysics are selfpresupposes the primary and irreducible notion ofextension, and that the irrational more universal than those of physics, but it is not in that form, as number, thanks to which 'the body of numbers' acquires 'the same plenitude or the more general notions on the same plane, that the metaphysician con- same continuity as the straight line* (Dedckind), is in reality an arithmetical symbol of siders them. It is as forms or intelligible an arbitrarily chosen point on a straight line, an indivisible common to the two seg- types on a higher plane, asuT

circle in o. ments which continue through it (cp. F. Gonscth, op. cit., p. 46) . That vicious object ofknowledge of a specifically superior nature and intelligibility, the method ordinarily used establishing existence of irrational numbers, de- for the and of which he acquires a rightfully scientific knowledge by means nounced by M. Weyl, only results from the endeavour to establish its existence solely which are absolutely transcendent to those ofthe physicist or the mathe- by means of arithmetic, starring from rational and whole numbers. Either way one is ' matician. obliged to fill back on the distinction between two 'schools' in mathematics and two only: 'the school of enumeration. Arithmetic, and the school of content, Geometry If it is permissible to make use of figurative language/^ne could say (Gonscth, pp. cit.). that the work of the intelligence could be compared to an immaterial, It is important to observe in general that fundamental degrees of abstrac- the three magic: from the flux ofsingular and contingent things apprehended by \ tion, which begin ex parte termini a quo, as the mind abandons such and such material the senses conditions, only define the great primary determinations of speculative knowledge, the first glance of the intelligence evokes the world of cor- within which termini poreal other variations oflevel may be found, which spring ex parte substances and their properties; a second glance evokes another quern, in the degree of degree to which the mind itself is the objeer of a determined universe, the ideal world of extension and number: a third, yet another immateriality (John of St. Thomas, op. cit., log.). One specific form of knowledge. different St. world, the world all the transcenden- e.g. natural philosophy, can consider objects of very differing universality (cp. of being as being and of in- tal perfections Thomas, Comm. in it Sensu el Sensato, lea. l), which remain on the same plane of common to both bodies and spirits, where, as in a mir- telligibility question as long as the modus drfiniendi remains the same for all. But ifit is a ror, we may attain to purely spiritual realities and the principle itself of of another method it i» of establishing specific notions, another mode of definition, all reality/^ J another specific type ofspeculative knowledge wliich is in question. J How then arc entided Cajetan, Comm. in ie Curs. wc to classify those sciences which I just now Ente et Essentia, proccmium, q. 1 John of St. Thomas, ; Voices P/i//.,log.ii,P.q.27,a.i. of affirmation, which do not achieve the discovery of the 48 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND , EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE natures seen by them? It is obvious that they belong to the lowest degree for itself a conceptual vocabulary totally independent of that of those abstraction. They form part of Physica. More, we can of now distin- which, like natural philosophy and sciences metaphysics, determine guish in Physica two classes of sciences, which represent its extreme their definitions with regard to intelligible being. limits: these sciences of affirmation, primarily inductive sciences, which we can call the empiric sciences of sensible nature and a science — of cor- DIAGRAM OF THE SCIENCES

poreal being which is rightly explanatory, the philosophy of sensible assist in the consideration of a To matter at once so complex and nature. so I have drawn out a diagram ofthe abstract points dealt with hitherto. In further definition, we may observe that though all our concepts The following points are particularly noticeable: are resolved in being, which is the first object attained (in confuso) by I. The second degree of abstraction is not only set at a point inter- intellectual apprehension, the concepts of metaphysics are resolved in mediate to the first and the third, as was naturally to be expected, it also being as such, ens ut sic, those of mathematics in that form of being (de-

tached from the real) which is ideal quantity, and those of Physica in

mobile or sensitive being, ens sensibile; but for the philosophy of nature

it is necessary, in the phrase ens sensibile, to put the accent on ens: an ex-

plicatory science, it discovers the nature and the reasons of being of its

' object. And ifit is true that the nature ofsubstances inferior to man is not

accessible to our discovery in its specific diversity, it is necessary to say

that the proper object ofthe philosophy ofnature does not extend to this specific diversity of bodies nor to the multitude of their phenomena,

and is only constituted by transcendental being in so far as it is deter- mined and particularised by the corporeal world of the mobile and the

sensitive. We see by this two things: first, that the philosophy ofnature, despite the essential difFerence of order which divides them, has a cer- tain continuity with metaphysics, and is by this superior to mathe- matics: secondly, that though philosophy certainly gives rise to a de-

ductive science of corporeal being, it is unable to produce a deductive science ofnatural phenomena.

For the empiric science of nature, on the other hand, in the phrase Fig. i. ens sensibile, sensible being, the accent must be put, not on ens, but on figures sensibile. It is the sensible observable on a vertical line to the in itself, in the visible as itself in right. The reason for this is that mathe- matical determinations in concepts, at abstraction is a tiling themselves, that it tends to resolve all its all by itself. Although specifically different, jsica least in the degree to autonomous and Metaphysica which it tends to make itself an have this in common that they only deal with science ofphenomena; then all gcospclinal or a Wl"Ch definitions, e.g. that of a m '* ™ l hchl h s0 far as thc word real d ^ ^ &> verbal blindness, are taken affirmations, 01 0dy in reference to variable sensible f"? aCtUal cxistence b Possible existence outside the « describing m'T something presented by such definitely determined and ob- on thc con ^ry deals with an object which is servable notneT"3nlyT^^" properties. In the same way, empiric science tends to build up rcal> but wIl*h can just D as well be {permissive is the phrase PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL 50 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE 5r

1 imaginary, a rational being in the philosophy of nature of penetrating of the ancients) fictive or as a real being, capable beyond things, means that the three degrees of abstraction in empiric science on the surface and by signs. This capital difference do not arrested the first and the third on the know that, in pursuance of the great law of the attraction form one sequence, and that one hand and We of their inferior by the superior, the empiric sciences of nature the second on the other determine approach to things in opposite the among the were subject to the attraction of natural ways. ancients philosophy and metaphysics. Only being able to constitute themselves as sciences in 2. On the other hand, empiric science, the philosophy of nature, and so by a deductive far as they were informed science, it was from notions metaphysics are found in the same hierarchical line. Although specific- elaborated by natural philosophy and metaphysics that they sought this ally different, the light of the first degree of abstraction is like a partici- 1 informing principle. pation in that of the third —an inferior and divided illumination, yet higher discipline forms a principle 3. Every of regulation for those

*Cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs, flieol, i, P. q. 6, disp. vi, a. 2, n. 20, Mathematica m inferior to it. Metaphysics, since it deals with the supreme reasons of

s'mthona. being, should be the regulative science par excellence, scientia rectrix. But participates in the illumination of the third degree *It is in the degree to which it of mathematics is also a deductive science, a science of the propter quid. It abstraction that I have placed, in this synoptic table, the philosophy of nature on a therefore also tends to regulate the lower ranges of knowledge, if not higher level than mathematics. Yet the first degree of abstraction, from which it ia to usurp the position of metaphysics itself. This is the cause of that fact originates, is inferior in immateriality to the second degree, a point which is also illustrated in my diagram. struggle for supremacy between these two sciences which we can so This enables us to understand how the natural sciences presuppose mathematia often observe in the course oftheir history. ('Scientia quae se habet ex addirione ad aliam, utitur principiis ejus in demonstrando, 4. The grand discovery of modern times, already prepared for by the sicut geometra utitur principUs arithmeticac; magnitudo enim addit posidonera supn numerum; unde punctus dicitur esse unitas posita. Similiter autem corpus naturale addit and ofnumbers may derive from natural philosophy, to such a degree indeed that, ac- materiam sensibilem super magnitudinem mathematicam: et idea non est inconveni- cording to St. Thomas, the 'postulates' of mathematics could be proved by the philo- ens si naturalis in demonstrationibus utatur principiis mathematicis. St. Thomas, h sophy ofnature. 'Sunt enim quaedam propositiones, quae non possunt probari nisi per — mathenuti- lib. i de Coeb et Mundo, lect. 3 'quaecumque impossibilia accidunt circa principia alterius scientiae; et ideo oportet in ilia scientia supponantur, licet probenrur per calia corpora naturalis; et hxc idea, quia corpora, necesse est quod consequantur ad principia alterius scientiae. Sicut a puncto ad punctum rectam lineam ducerc, supponk mathematica dicuntur abstractionem a naturalibus; naturalia autem se habeM pet per geometra et probat naturalis; ostendens quod inter quaelibet duo puncta sit Iinea appositionem ad mathematica: superaddunt enim mathematicis naturam sensibilem el media.' (St. Thomas, In Post. Analyt,, lib. i, cap. 2, lect. 5, n. 7.) Ifthis form ofobserva- quod ea quae sunt de raaonc motum, a quibus mathematica abstrahunt: et sic patet tion is exact it is the rational necessities perceived by the philosopher in his analysis of [ibid., Lb. iii, lect 3). madiematicaHum, salvantur in naturalibus, et non e converso' the continuum detached, by abstraction, from sensible and mobile reality (in other question this point real space (on this From of view the three-dimensional character of words, the axiomatic analysis ofthe continuum in so far as it can be built up by imagin- which ate of 'real* space, see iii, guaranteed the necessities infra, chap, pp. 201-12) is by ative intuition),- which form the basis ofthe postulates ofeuclidian geometry, i.e. which intuition which will al- discovered in the process of construction in mathematical — discover' the euclidian axiomatic in the notion of a continuum intuitively represent- ways 'Naturalis praesuppowt a remain as the particular claim for classical geometry. able (as, from the idealist point of view, O. Hamelin has tried to do in certain remark- mathematico probare demonstrative, ea quae circa dimensiones considerate Et ideo able pages of his Essai), and which justify in the same stroke the non-eudidian geo- pa esse solum tres Ptolemaeus probat dimensiones, pertinet ad mathematicam, sicut metries, and give the mind a complete security as to the compatibility of their axioms, trts hoc, quod impossibilc perpcndiculares plures quam since est conjungi simul lineas these geometries, which continue that of Euclid and are contained in it, can al- super idem aliquant lineani ways, punctum; omnes autem dimensio mensuratur secundum by means of the addition of supplementary dimensions, be translated into euc- one 1 perpendicularem' is introduced, lidian (ibid., lib. i, lect. 2). If the idea of displacement terms—and since the compatibility of the euclidian axioms, the absence of any it at j can say: 'If we take a free solid and fix it three points it is immovable; fix contradiction at latent in their origin, is certified by the constructability of the euclidian wjty two, and every point distant circle; fix it by continuum from the rwo others may describe a by intuition: ah acta ad posse valet consecutio: if the euclidian continuum can one point, and each point at a finite move in a sphere. ( be built distance from this can up in the intuitive imagination and so given fact, it is because its notion con- Poincare'.EKflijKr quelques caraclhes des notions d'espace etde temps.Vmi, I93 1 -) ceals no latent incompatibility. continuum On the other hand we can also comprehend how the philosophy of the DEGREES OF RATIONAL 5 2 THE KNOWLEDGE

Parisian doctors of the fourteenth century and by da PHILOSOPHY Vinci, realised!) AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE Descartes and Galileo, is that of the possibility of a universal science of these sciences from nevertheless remaining physical, since they have their sensible nature informed, not by metaphysics, but by mathematics' end in sensible nature. what \vc might call physko-mathematical science. This prodigious in- Emile Meyerson has forcibly pointed out in opposition to positivism vention though obviously powerless to change the — essential order also to Duhem) that the thirst for of (and 'ontology', for an explanation by the mind such as those we are endeavouring things of to consider here- physical causes, can never remain alien to science. But the encounter of has changed the face of die world, and given rise, as I have tried to point mathematica procedar, magis sunt narurales quam mathematicae.' {In Phys., Jib out elsewhere1 to that terrible misunderstanding which, for j] three hun- lect.3-)

writes elsewhere {Sum. theci, ii-ii, dred years, has created a quarrel between modern science and St. Thomas 9, 2, ad. : the philo- 3 ) 'Quilibet cognoscing habitus formaliter quidem respiat medium per pcrennis. It has rise to quod aliquid cognoscitur; sophia given enormous metaphysical errors, in the materialiter autem id, quod permedium cognoscitur; et quid id quod est formale, potius estideo degree to which it has been believed that it supplied a veracious illae philo- scicntiae quae ex prindpiis mathematicis concludunt circa materiam naturalem, magis sophy of nature. In itself, from an epistemological point ofview, it cum mathematicis connumcrantur, utpote eis was similiores, licet quantum ad materiam conveniant narurali; et magis cum propter hoc dicitur in ii Physic, an admirable discovery to which, nevertheless, we can easily assign a quod sunt magis naturales.' On which Cajetan remarks in his commentary: 'Non place in the system ofsciences. dickurquod sdenriae mediae sunt magis mathematicae quam naturales : cum falsum sit absolute loquendo ; quia It is a sdentia media, of which the typical examples to the ancients simpliciter sunt scientiae narurales, urpote non abstrahentes a materia senribili. Ornnis enim sdentia non abstrahens a materia were geometrical optics and astronomy: an intermediary science, half- sensibili, est naturalis, ut patet vi Metaph. Sed dicitur quod connumerantur magis cum mathematicis, utpote eis similiores.' way between mathematics and empirical natural science, of which the Physico-mathematical srience is thus at onceformally mathematk (by the principles physically real forms the subject-matter in regard to the measurements and media of demonstration which it uses) and more physical than mathematics by the which it allows us to draw from it, but formal object and con- end or the matter by which it verifies its whose propositions. These two characters are in no way incompatible and are affirmed simultaneously ceptual procedure remain mathematical: a science which we may call of the scientiae mediae, by both St. Thomas and Cajetan. It is possible that the fuller explanations here given will satisfy materially physical andformally mathematical} In such sciences the ruling the scruples of Rev. Fr. Pierre Hoenen, who ('Maritain's reden te Amsterdam', in principle of explication (as Duhem has clearly seen) leaves on one side Studien, May 1927) appears to confound my position with that ofDuhem, not observing that for me mathematical-physics principles and physical causes in their proper value of intelligibility— is certainly a sdence of the physically real, but which only knows this by transposing it, not ofthe physically real as suck In any case which does not prevent, as St. Thomas noted apropos of the Second I trust the distinguished professor will find appeasement in 8 making his own Cajetan's condusion Book of the Physics (as Einstein and Mcycrson have very well seen), to the commentary which I have already dted {In II-II, 9, 1 and 2): 'Verum, quia medium utrumquc sapit extremum, et sdenriae istae ex parte formae ex mathe- J Cp. Maritain, matica veniunt J. Reflexions sur Tintelligence, chap, vu et pendent, ex parte vero materiae physica sunt, sermones doctorum pie interpretandi that sunt, si quando alterum extremum nimis *Cp. ihii. chap, vi and text which I have there cited from St. Thomas, notably declinant.* I must admit prinapu that it seems as if Fr. Hocncn had read rather rapidly from In Boet. de Trinit., q. 5, a. 3, ad. 6: 'Quaedam vero sunt media, quae the quotations which he criticises. In Reflexions sur V intelligence mathematica ad rei narurales applicant, ut musica et astrologia, quae tamen magis sunt I nowhere said that mathematical- physics was a affincs logical monstrosity: what I did say was that mathemarids, quia in earum considcratione id quod physiri, est quasi material. afalse notion of this science, which confused quod autem it with natural philosophy, turned it into a logical monstrosity. mathematici, quasi formale.' See also infra, pp. 76-8L la maintaining in his address to the Thomist Congress in Rome (De valore dieoriar- 'He understands in this way the expression, Ta ^vaix^repx rutv [i. «» physicarum, Romae, 1925; cp. also the interesting articles published in the review >i. 2, 194. i. 7, used by Aristode apropos of geometrical optics {perspective), harmony ^regonanum 1925, 1927 and 1928), that physical theories give us a knowledge by and astronomy, natural- 'Hujusmodi autem scicntiae, licet sint mediael nter scicntiam physically Ka1, without defining to what form of analogy he referred, cm et mathematicam, tamen math«- dicitur hie a philosopho esse magis narurales quam khSLv-elr, it seems to me, runs the risk ofeither giving rise to serious misunderstand- maticae, quia unumquodque unde, q«j» gs denominarur et speciem habct a terrruno: in regard to the notion of analogy (in fact what is above all meant in philosophy harum prinripu sdentiarum considcratio terminatur ad materiam naturalem, licet per by ""ks/—knowledge by the analogy of rightful proportionality, of whTtoch theu metaphysidan makes use for the knowledge of spiritual things— . "

THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL 54 KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE immanent in our reason the law ofcausality and the mathematical most often the old hypotheses of mechanistic metaphysics that physico- ccption ofnature has resulted in the construction ofa theoretical mathematical science (while fundamentally phw transforming them or ofthe universe which is more and more withdrawn and introducing into them vast zones of dislocation geometriciserl and irrationality) has where fictive causal entities founded on the real (entia rationis been so led to rejuvenate: not as E. Meyerson, cum fa* who, despite all his iamento in re), whose whole office is to serve as a support apparent rationalism, cannot conceive of the for matt*. reasoning process except matical deduction, have risen up to obscure a highly under Eleatic terms, supposes, by reason ofthe particularised essential exigencies of empirically determined real causes causal explanation, but because the account of or conditions. In mechanistic theory is fact it is the only causal representation which can manage to survive, ill or well, a general instructs us in a veiled, but not symbolic manner, in a reality not attained to in itself but reduction ofphysics to geometry. remaining in its own entitative order, while physical theories instruct us directly, but Pierre Duhem himself, as in a manner which becomes symbolic at a certain degree ofconceptualisation, Emile Picard recalled in his lecture in physical to the Sciences, 1 reality transmuted into mathematical terms, transposed into an order which is Academic des on 16th December, not its 1929, considers that 'a phy- sinking into the quest vain theories own) ; or of for ofconcordance.The perpetual renew- sical theory is not an explanation; it is a system of mathematical pro- (e.g. this als ofscience at moment, the recent ideas on photons, and the new mechanics positions whose aim is to represent as simply, as completely as possible, ofLouis dc Broglic and Hciscnberg) show how wise it is not to ask a philosopher to ad- 2 a body of experimental laws', —in fact the result is judicate on the degrees of truth or falsehood in the physical theories of light or ofthe that physics in atom: all that he needs is to hold true the experimental facts some of its departments (that of on which these theories energy, for example, as Duhem con- cull are based and to from these theories a provisionary image of things, destined to ceived it, or to-day ofwave-mechanics according to Heisenberg's inter- buttress his thought, not to shape it. pretation, to which Louis de Broglie has also given his support) makes One point remains true, and it is this that I would have liked to have seen maile dear use ofpurely mathematical symbols, without by Fr. Hocncn: the fan that we can see a symmetrical correspondence on either hand of attempting any causal ex~ that Sanation or the construction knowledge, which I shall later call 'dia-noeric', and which attains to its objects in ofthose figurative hypotheses whereby the their essence—on one hand, for things above, the knowledge by analogy ofrightfiJ pro- mind can in some fashion take to pieces the mechanism ofphenomena. portion, which metaphysics makes use of in its ascension to the First Cause—and, for But truly this abstention is because it cannot do otherwise and must the things below, knowledge by signs, which the sciences of phenomena cull from make a virtue of necessity. Duhem's mistake nature, above all that symbolic knowledge of the physically real in which physico- was in seeking the type- form of mathematical theories result in their highest elaborations from experimental dan. I im physical theory in these often exceptional cases, which he re-

well aware that this latter form ofknowledge is sufficiently pointed out by garded belongs, as as true examples. In reality they are borderline instances, where the word term: but 'symbolic', to the logic ofanalogy taken in the widest sense ofthe the mathematical transformation ofphenomena momentarily occupies in that case, strictly speaking, it is a question ofa metaphorical analogy which mathe- the mind in a state of complete isolation, with matics has the privilege of using for its knowledge of the physically real (cp. iii/k no underlying physi- cal image: chap, iii, pp. 196-201). One can say with Fr. Hocncn: 'Secundam maxiniam Cap- and they so little represent the type-form ofphysical theory tain (De ncm. anal, cap. quidquid etiam illidjU that 4): assimilatur simili ut sic assimitatur at the first opportunity the mathematical symbols so employed tale est simile, concludendum est: causa quam hypothesis verificata proponit assinulaw cease to belong to quod the domain of pure analytical forms and dissolve causae vcrae; quod nihil aliud est ac principium analogiae theoriae physieae wto explicative supra dclineavimus.' is eitkr entities. (This is the case even with energy: 'almost all (Dc vahre. . .p. 69.) Dut the assimilalio then in question a univocal «« scientists substitution, in so far as physical theories translate the facts and enable admit today that it is not only an abstract conception,' U. a which attain to observable and measurable structures or causations (co-determinations) pure mathematical symbol. An even more glaring case is that ofatomic have the valueofenf/a realia, ora physical theory symbobcor metaphorical one, in so far as number, which, ol beginning as a simple ordinal number, has ended as constructs on its interpretation own rational beings to assist it in the collection and designating its data by variety 01 the charge of explanatory deduction. This combination, in an almost infinite an atomic nucleus and the number of the degrees, ofunivocal description torcrpretadonol Un coup ofexperimental reality with symbolic d'atilsur I'histolre des sciences etdes tlttcriesphysiques, Paris, 1929. that same reality appears to me to be physico-nu^ *See in the particular characteristic of particular Duhem's book on La Tkioriephysique. matic knowledge. b

5 6 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL electrons gravitating about it.) On the other hand, the SCIENCE causal entiti structural systems constructed the nature of science. This I have represented by the physicist owe all on the their cons" diagram bv the track ofan arrow pointing towards to the mathematical which is, so metaphysics. to speak, incarnate " ^ For the moderns, it is mathematics Thus the interpenetration of mathematics and which acts in this entitative representati^ way It is neces therefore to draw an arrow appears to be essential to physico-mathematical sary pointing in the exactly knowledge., f^ contrary direc" tion, whose track represents a break, which it follows that, in the words of Emile a sharp, irremediable Picard, 'these qnantbrf cut between science and philosophy. the schools seem very far off and the 1° two points of view are strane intersection The of these two arrows is the mingled in the work of present-day scholars/ I symbol ofthe would rather say epistemolo- that gkal drama ofour times. they had become one. Duhem's too rarefied conception moreover The endeavour of the ancients resulted, annihilated the primary heuristic stimulants so far as the science without which physics of the can- phenomena of nature was concerned, not exist. These explanations in a resounding appeared to be necessary to avoid failure at least serious with regard to matter and movement. We may say misunderstandings. B ut let us now return to the main theme. that they stumbled and were pulled up short by physics (in the modern 5. With the physico-mathematical scientia media, sense of the word) materially physical The endeavour of the moderns has brilliandy and formally mathematical, a science ofphenomena succeeded in physics- as such becomes pos- and to-day we are witness to a crisis of sible. longer a science development there which is No of sensible nature which sought to the find willy- prelude to achievements still more brilliant. But nilly in phenomena those intelligible connections what will happen- which are the stuff even while remaining entirely in the domain of the of philosophy and which only explain science of pheno- phenomena when they have mena-to those sciences whose object cannot already transcended them; but a be so easily reduced to science ofsensible nature which applies mathematics which cannot be content to the detailed with an algebraic symbolisation study ofphenomena as such, as they are co-ordinated in ofnature, and where the real continues to be dominant in the space and time, the formal connections of mathematical mind as a relations, and function ofthe idea of being? It may well be that the modern which so approximates, thanks to the conception science of ideal quantity, to that of science wiU break against biology and experimental psychology deductive character to which it aspires and without winch it would not (without speaking even of the moral sciences be a veracious science. which are more closely To be at once experimental its matter) and aJon (by to philosophy) as that ofthe ancients broke against physics. deductive (by its form, but still more in regard to the laws of variation I 6. haye given here very summary of scale recognition to those organic re- which it brings into play) is then the rightful ideal of modern lations which sustain the mutual relations of the principal science. Producing as categories of it does both scientific knowledge a marvel- science. and Li putting these categories in a single column, we see them lous technical power over nature, but from the point of view of quan- ranged in then- hierarcliical order. Thus we recover again tity, not that of being; the classic having abandoned the direct search for real dmsion between the sciences, in the strict causes in order to sense of the word, and devote itself to the translation ofthe measurements pniiosophy. of things into a coherent system of equations, we see that physico- The word science, in general, in effect embraces mathematical science two great dominions, must be placed in our diagram at an angle between Whidl °WS tHngs h Gxst causes the " purely empiric science and ? md Hghcst rea the philosophy ofnature, thus breaking that sons £h 3nd d°main of science in the narrower sense of the continuity with which the ^ optimism of die ancients was so pleased. word° vf* ' knows thin !! Ss b secondary causes or approximate prin- For the latter, it was y die philosophy ofnature metaphysics which, ^Pdplt«. Metaphy and Si cs is a form of wisdom, it is the veracious of if I may use die phrase, wisdom drained off the material of empiric science and °f °rder Which accessible infra-scientific experience " hY reason dooc The and tried to level and pliilosohsopny °f ^ approximate it to the of nature is wisdom under a particular aspect, because it — SCIENCE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL 59 8 THE causes in a given order, in the order or representable: for the imagination presents principles and prime of • figurable deals with first inatively dimensions, as possible sub- would add, in parenthesis, that the study of the appear in our scale of major corporeal nature. (I T^as they the philosophy of number and continued observation; and when the scientist bases of mathematics, the — complete and ontological for a philosophy even the possibility of a com- to the sphere of the of nature, for region, e.g. the atomic, where continuum, returns ^nters into a 1 not bearing in itself on real being, does not observation of phenomena is out of the question, mathematical abstraction, pete and continuous order.) imaginatively representable objects to a in its own rightful from a world of imply wisdom L so passes bracketed together these two forms ofwisdom, pure without imaginable features. We could say that such a I have therefore world of things under a certain aspect, metaphysics and fault or 'by privation). and simple wisdom and wisdom worldis indescribable by the name ofphilosophy. visible to the invisible, to what is in it- \ the philosophy ofnature, under The other proceeds from the the for the principles I to the other sciences: mathematics— physico-mathematical bounds of all sensory observation, As self outside the sciences or those historical (paleontology, are pure objects ofintellection, not / sciences—the experimental which are the aim ofthe philosopher 2 sciences which have not (yet) received, and which will imaginative representation. This is a world/ linguistics, etc.) of sensible apprehension or receive, the dry light of mathematics into their essen- probably never naturally indescribable or 'by negation.

tial constitution, I have grouped them together under the name of objects, entirely different principle?. Having totally different formal ^ science in the narrow meaning of the word. and in the subject himself re- of explanation and conceptual technique, V virtues or qualities of dis-/ quiring fundamentally different intellectual philosophy and science' criminating illumination, the proper domains of m. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY scientific order can never be are not translatable. An explanation of a Though it is true that the material object of philosophy and of science vice versa. It requires an displaced or replaced by a philosophic one or /can be the same, e.g. the world of bodies the formal object, that which recognition of an im- over-great dose of simplicity to imagine that the / determines the specific nature of intellectual disciplines, is in the two functions oftheliver material soul in man and the study of the glycogenic cases essentially different. In the world of bodies the scientist studies the are two explanations J or the relations between the idea and the image laws ofphenomena, linking one observed instance to another, and if be obstacle to the other. which pursue the same lines and that either canbe an seeks for the structure of matter it is by representing to himself—mole- science, since they do not What is true is that the explanations of cules, ions, atoms, etc.—in what laws the only ex- way and according to what ' and are bring us into intimate contact with the being of things, I ultimate particles (or the mathematically conceived entities which take kind of formal planatory of proximate causes or even simply of that their place) from \ which the edifice is constructed, act within the frame- system of pheno- cause which is represented by the mathematico-legal \ work of time and space. The philosopher, on the other hand, seeks for constructed in support of mena (and the entities more or less arbitrarily \wM in fact that matter is which is so figured, what, as a function of in- necessity, and always, that system), cannot suffice for the mind, which by telligible being, is the nature of corporeal substance (whether it be split into regions ofintel- asks questions of a higher order and seeks to enter up and reconstructed into a spatial or spacio-temporal construction of ligibility. molecules, ions, atoms, etc., or or certain into protons and electrons associated the sciences have a unassorted From this point of view we can say that mto a series of the seek waves, his problem remains exactly themselves, because they same). r dependence on philosophy. The sciences imperfectly, uispire the for the raison Xetre and can only proffer it very mAe ^ibletoAe higher ^ibHfromtheobservabletothe the support of a ob^Tr\°observable mind with philosophical desire, and require (,,. observable, at least indirectly-I is always do not say it 226-8. »Jitf. pp. W** iSee infra, chap, iii, pp. 183-4 and PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 61 DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 60 THE substantial x at the base of phenomena:1 not nuclei, or of a only these, knowledge. Nothing is more curious than to measure the question of the possibility of the apprehension form of force but the very of things in after the positivism of the nineteenth century, this need of knowledge—a difficult thing no doubt and done in a with which, is our faculties of science and that in the most all more or less exemplified in all the domains disorderly wa which demands sorts of obscurely felt restrictions, j y competence being inevitably lacking surrounded with a sense ofincontestable fashion, philosophical with the but which is also certitudes—in lack of philosophical technique even in scientists of genius like Henri words, that of the intelligibility of the world, which, though i other a Poincare. doubtless in an undefined way and with sense of imperfect definition, i sciences have, however, no dependence whatever on philosophy in the meanwhile no one hesitates to posit in advance. Or The i nevertheless

their own intrinsic development. They are only de- question may be that of the values of the principles of the with regard to i again the principle causality,2 in pendent in principle (not in the sense that they are dependent on philo- reason, most of all, the of regard to the world ofl insufficiency sophy for their principles and their use, but in the sense in which the experience, i.e. in other terms, the of changes to explain' explication and justification of the latter belong to philosophy). Per- themselves by themselves

haps it is precisely because scientists have no need of an immediate ^The habit of calling a spade a spade keeps scientists from numerous vain causes of to their agreement about words and the things they represent. recourse to philosophy for the exercise of their own rightful activities quarrel. It is fine to listen among scientists an atmosphere of confidence, a uni- V This remarkable accord creates that they are so given to misunderstanding the nature of this depend- son whence they draw a certitude which is none other than a robust faith. There is pro- if they were to reflect rather more ence of which I have spoken. But bably not a chemistwho does not confound the reality ofsulphate ofbaryta with the idea ask such a question ofseveral ofthem. To all it attentively on the nature ofthe very activity which they exercise (which which he has ofit. I had the curiosity to exceedingly odd. I could see, by the dubious glances with which they looked would indeed be already a form of philosophising) how could they appeared at me, that they doubted whether I were not mad to ask such a thing. What happens order ofphilosophical fail to observe that it involves in itself a complete bodies from their pro- • in actual fact is that a chemist makes the absolute substratum of

activity, wrapped up, so to speak, in practical terms? perties, and knows no preoccupation with the highly hypothetical character of this like the conception.* (G. Urbain, 'Essai de discipline sdentifique,' La Grande Revue, March All employment of the methods of experimental criticism, \. 1920.) Formulated as it is in language which suggests entirely different philosophic opi- determination of the degree of approximation of the acquired results, nions, this comment by a scientist ofunquestioned authority, as M. Meyerson observes formed logic {logica utens), in question him- constitutes a form of applied or Hvingly {op. cit.ii, p. 235), is evidenceof all the more value since 'the scientist the which only becomes pure logic and the object of a speculative art ex- self professes, in theory, a sufficiently orthodox positivism and evidently finds definitely blame- I accuracy, reflective gaze whole way of thought, which he describes with so much plicitly studied for its own sake {logica docens) under the 1 worthy'. logic, a of the logician, itself is nothing other than that but which in 8 his My claim is that the scientist affirms in acta exercito in the exercise of own I truly philosophical discipline, in practice. scientific activity, the value ofthe principle ofcausality (without waiting for anyphilo- unconscious methods ofits verification or On the other hand, whatever may be the conscious or sophical reflection on its meaning, its bearing, the various everything the still less, its critical justification). If he were not practically persuaded that metaphysical opinions from which he draws his conception of

1 he which happens has a cause, he would not give himselfup to the work of research, being, every world and which he follows out in his life as a human lines of what I shall would not even begin it. In the course of its progress along the thinking as a transpose scientist in fact, in the operations of his own science, when i later call its empiriological autonomy, science itself may need to refound or so the ofthe world which it con- scientist—we owe a debt of gratitude to M. Meyerson for having concept ofcause, and even perhaps admit, in the picture chap, iii, and structs, lacunas which make holes in the field ofwhat for it is 'causality'. (Cp. forcibly stressed this point—practically affirms (in actu exercito) 1 82-6 world and the springs of pp. and 23 i-j .) Here, between the scientific vision ofthe degree to with a dogmatism which is the fearless in the very to that between more mental work from which it emanates, there is an analogous disparity r propo- universe which it is unconsidered, a number of eminently metaphysical the scientific universe perceived by the physicist as a physicist and the familiar of world, which he knows as an ordinary man. sitions, whether it be a question of the reality of the physical l ontologies -, the existence of things as apart from the mind, of stable 62 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 63 Finally, every scientist has a certain idea, often only very partial! sphere of action of each of them, for we have just seen how absurd explicit or even highly confused, but which is practically and highly effective to treat a problem of the scientific order as if it were one of philo- active, of the true nature of his science: an idea winch it is and without doubt and vice versa: but it implies that it is a higher science. part in the intellectual orientation sophy plays a major of the great initiators therefore independent, at least by its own formal view, could be more Superior, constitu- What, from this point of noticeable than the aphor- philosophy is, as such, independent with regard to the sciences. are tion: isms on the nature of physics which so frequently on the lips of M is It should be understood: there noformal dependence of philosophy Einstein? But these considerations of the true nature of such and such a with regard to the sciences. No scientific result, no scientific theory, in science do not in fact belong to any science, but to philosophy: to a short, no science in the exercise of its own proper means, can ever gnoseology formed by living. adequately cut the knot of a philosophical problem, for those problems first In short, there is no science without the principles on which the depend both in their origin and their solution on a light which is not whole train of our reasonings must be fixed, an infinite regression in in the reach of science. this order evidently rendering all demonstration impossible: and every There is, most certainly, a strong material dependence of philosophy scientist, by the very fact that he applies himself to no matter what form on the sciences. To begin with, philosophy is like the oilminating point of demonstration, has already given his adherence, very positively of the hierarchy of knowledge, and as a result comes pedagogically however undeclared, to an important number of philosophical pro- last; and the philosopher, since he judges of the value, the limits and positions. It very evidently follows from this that all these things which subordinations of the sciences, must evidently know them as they are live latently and vitally in the mind of the scientist could advantageous- and the stuff of their proper life; more, scientific data are like illustra- ly be brought to light and looked at face to face as objects ofknowledge, tions which normally serve the philosopher in the exemplification and in other words, be dealt with by philosophy. Then we should see ex- embodiment of his ideas; finally and above all, the progress of science, plicitly the objective links between the sciences and philosophy. Their at least in regard to the facts discovered if not the theories, should nor- axioms are determinations ofthe principles ofmetaphysics: for example, mally, above all in what is concerned with natural philosophy, renew the mathematical axiom," two masses equal to a third are themselves and enrich the matter offered for philosophical explication. Thus, for equal, is a two things particularisation of the metaphysical axiom: example, modern discoveries concerning the organic structure of the identical with a third are themselves identical. It is philosophy which cell, in particular the embryo and the sexual elements, artificial par- justifies and defends their principles, determines the first objects which thenogenesis, etc., should give a new precision and a greater quality to towards which they value, their work, and as a result, their nature, their the way in which the problem of the eduction of the vegetative soul is which limits as sciences. It is philosophy, for example, not mathematics, posed. The new developments in geometry begun by Lobatchevski and tells us real be- whether irrational numbers and indefinite numbers are Bolyai equally oblige the philosopher to clear up and re-order his ings or only geometries are rational beings, whether the non-euclidian notions concerning quantity. rational leave the constructions built on euchdian geometry and which But such dependence remains material, and the changes which it in- latter its privileged constitute a position, or if, on the contrary, they duces primarily affect the nature of that imagery whose importance is much greater system specimen; have ofwhich euclidian geometry is only one so great in his vocabulary, and the halo of associations which whether mathematics immovably and logic are divided or not by gathered about the actual didactic terms: to imagine that philosophical drawn frontiers, etc. the order revolu- In a word, it is philosophy which assigns doctrines need to be radically transformed to fit in with scientific which reigns between the affected and sciences : sapientis est ordinare. tions is as absurd as to suggest that our souls are vitally In all this procedure it does not impinge in any way on the proper altered by a variation in the elements ofour dietary. a

64 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 65

Their other error is a rejection of the primordial values SOME ELUCIDATIONS ON THE NOTION OF FACT of sensible is from this intuition, in one intuition. It way or another—and even A question arises here which must be briefly treated: that question transcends the of the when the fact in whole order of the empiric and experimental part played by experience and fact with regard to that all existential apprehension pbjlo. the sensible— originates (it is the same sophy. of our existence, for our experience own which is spiritual and non- The latter, according to St. Thomas, rests on facts; it must accept the empiric, but which supposes reflection upon our acts, as for the know- facts, begin by an act ofhumility before the real already made known by ledge of the existence of God, which is established apart from sensible the senses, attained by our physical contact with the universe. physical order in And the things). In the or that of the knowledge of bodily- philosophy of nature, differing in this from metaphysics, has not only nature, it is by the senses, through a discriminating and critical judg- its origin but the end where it must verify its conclusions in the experi- ment of the intellect, that the facts are given. To distinguish, in that senses: although a other than ence of the in way that of the experimental order and in the use made of them in the natural sciences, the category of sciences. fact from that of theory, we should not say that the one belongs to the

What then is a fact? It is a well-founded exis'tential truth: in exis- intellect and the other to the senses, which would be far too summary a tence a certain group of conceptual objects is posited beside the thing; view; but that the intervention of the intellect, with its natural or arti- and this in itself implies that this existence is face to face with a mind, a ficial resources, we might even say with its knowing devices and most spirit which can lay hold on its objects. A fact which interests human delicate refinements of theory, remains in the former case ordinated to observation is not created by the human mind, it is given. But it is the discernment and formulation of what is furnished to it by the in- 1 given to someone; if it is given, it is because it is received, a stone is not tuition of the senses, while in the latter, with the same resources, to given to a stone: a fact is given to a mind. That is to say, the mind discovering essences and laws, and their underlying reasons. discerns and judges it. To wish to make of this a sure and simple Into die complex of things attained by the perception of the senses the transcription of external reality without any discrimination is a decep- activity of the mind so intervenes, not in order to create, but to discern tive simplification due to the unconscious materialism of the imagina- what interests the observation. And in so much as the moment a science tion. is bom, the rightful point of view which characterises it emerges at the

Even in the order ofthe external senses, there is, as St. Thomas said, a same time as the first facts on which it is based—whether before ad- iudgment by the senses; sensible perception is itself induced by and pre- vancing into a scientific region and there unearthing new facts the supposes the bringing into action, instinctively or otherwise, of the mind has already begun to enter and acquired the habit ofsuch science, or internal senses or ratio particularis. The discernment of any fact presup- whether before crossing the threshold of some particular scientific region poses a judgment either ofthe senses or ofthe intellect. On that point the it has already begun to philosophise, already in some measure disengaged idealists are certainly right. But they are wrong in thinking that the the notion of being as such from the principles to which it is attached activity ofthe mind cannot ask or draw from things information whichis —in that degree the discernment ofwhich we are speaking will take place at at once enunciated by and given to it; their error is to believe— a certain level of abstraction and in the light of certain principles gratuitous postulate and in fact quite absurd—that every interpretation, or in regard to winch the fact holds its value, a value, that is to say, more exactly every judgment, by our faculties for knowledge is either 'In the orders superior to those of physics, which will be in question at a later stage, a deformation profound or a creation, not a more or less pure and this work of the intellect, characteristic of the 'registration of facts', is ordinated to assimilating rightly raake of oneself to the object, a conformation to what' it clear an existential position which we conceive by analogy with that furnished by the IS. intuition ofthe senses. .

66 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 67 trudi. may conclude from this that of knowledge and We all facts only briefly indicate some of these, arc Here I can most of all in the en- they do not constitute not of the same rank, that an indistinct crowd rare an instrument deavour to exhibit how of epistemological analysis arrangement, piled pell-mell in the field without hierarchical of sensible the principles of St. Thomas, and to draw is offered by attention to one various sciences to come experience for each of the and pick out characteristic features of his noetic: the the I of the order and organic dif- in themselves • wares of their desire. Facts belong to particular hierarchies ferentiations which it establishes among the sciences, and the care which are facts of common sense, scientific facts ofknowledge: there (i.e. facts (unlike many modern systems which exhibit it takes them as all on the 1 the natural sciences), mathematical facts (e.g. the which occupy (ideal) same plane) to recognise and respect the structure and particular proce- continuous functions without derivatives), logical 1 existence of facts, dure ofeach.

philosophical facts. ' Let it be remembered that every science is a response to two ques- one can say from this that philosophy is /Materially speaking, 'experi- tions: first the question an est, if a thing exists: second, the question facts. This is true in the sense that /taental' and founded on experience is quid est, ofwhat nature is it. entirely [not for philosophy, as it is for mathematics, pre-scientific, infra- For mathematics, experience has only a pre-scientific function, in the being entirely deductive / scientific, mathematical science and axiom- sense that if we had never seen a ball or a stick we could not have atic and apart from imaginative intuition and those notions which formed the notion of a circle or of a straight line; if we had never experience alone allows abstraction to form and reconstructfThe method counted on our fingers the parts of a concrete whole we should never /of philosophy, dh the^cdhtrirfy, is analytico-synthetic; and, just because have formed the idea ofnumber. But once in possession ofthese notions,

A it deals with real being, rightly capable of existing outside the mind, thanks to the abstracting power ofthe intellect, they present in themselves

/] experimental affirmations form an integral part of philosophic obset- objects ofthought independent ofexperience, so independent ofexperi-

/ vation as such. ence, that we can generalise analogically from them, de-ballasting them

But for philosophy, in contradiction to the natural sciences, this is of that very intuitive scheme in which they were first made manifest. If only the material foundation from which it rises to the consideration of mathematical entities could only—when they are capable of existing essences and the necessities which they imply, by a formal resolution outside the mind—so exist in matter, they could not exist mathematic-

into the first truths in themselves intelligibly known: it only returns to ally: the straight line, the circle, the whole number are realised in sensible experience—in natural philosophy to verify deduced conclusions and things, but lose thereby the conditions of ideal purity which are im- seek for ever fresh material—in metaphysics to take up new points of posed by the mathematical mode ofexistence. departure, new analogical material, not to verify conclusions which In the mathematical order the question an est bears on the ideal (possible belong to an entirely immaterial order. For, formally speaking, 'Here I follow the ideas which St. Thomas develops in his commentary on the a form oi Posterior metaphysics is in no degree an experimental science, but Analytics (book ii) and on the De Trinitate ofBoethius (q. 5 and 6). Let mc re- call here knowledge far more purely rational than mathematics. S the fundamental text from the latter: 'In qualibet cognitione duo est consider- ate, scilicet principium, et finem sive terminum. Principium quidem ad apprehen- aoncm pertinet, terminus autem adjudicium, ibi enim cognitio perficitur. Principium igitur cujuslibet terminus cognitionis non THE STRUCTURES AND METHOD OP THE PRINCIPAL KINDS OF nostrae cognitionis est in sensu. . . . Sed semper est uniformiter: quandoque in imaginatione, KNOWLEDGE quandoque enim est in sensu, quandoque in solo intellectu. . . in Deduri The foregoing conclusions imply several important consequences autem ad aliquid est ad illud terminari: et ideo in divinis neque ad sensum, Deque ad imaginationem autem ad imaginationem, et epistemology. debemus deduci: in mathematicis non ad sensum; in naturalibus autem etiam ad sensum. Et propter hoc peccant qui uni- ormitcr in tribus *Cp. Pierre Boutroux, VHial scientifque de$ mathimaticiens, chap. iv. his speculativae partibus procedere nituntur.' . .

68 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PHILOSOPHY EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 69 1 the entity under consideration; or rational) existence of and starting be directly verified by imaginative elusions needs to intuition: but that this entity once so posited as capable from the notion of of mathe- verified by it either directly or analogically, they need to be i.e. according which concern it (quid est) are matical existence, the truths deductively they are constructed by intuition, or whether to whether they belong to constructive operations which established, by means of may apparently notions (as for example non-euclidian or a system of archimedian geo- the principal part, but which in fact remain only material: formally play metrical entities), itself issuing from a system of constructable notions in

intuition (like the euclidian entities) and which can find in this Plane, the IfttellufbLe. 1 AnEst. QiodEst. system an analogical interpretation. SCIENCE-. / \ LAW. (substitute Inttlliqi-bl-e plane. / 9 for QuU. Est.)

\ /

\ I ^fcno-*LedLqe issuingana

loflicilly SCIENCE.. ia the* iCTisifaLe.'j

ScTis"LbLe Fact. Plwie oj- \ Est. (sensible "Plane ofienwble _ * An fact.) "# Knowledge r«sul±ina in. Ex. Sensible Existence.;. Existence trtriencc.

EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCES.

nATHt-MATlCS. Fig. 3.

Fig. z. In the experimental sciences experience is in itself essential and entire- mathe- it is by virtue of the intelligible connections which proceed from ly rules. The question an est bears directly on the facts experimentally matical deduction, whether these connections are themselves guided criticised. Science does not arrive at seeing the essence in itself or dia-

estab- 2 and determined all the time by constructive operations, or are , noetically as it lies embedded in facts, it only grasps it blindly: not in its of signs 3 lished and justified once for all by the rules of an [ constituting signs but in those of peri-noetic intellection which it con- ancients where the art so determined has only need to be applied. The tents itself widi in their place (above all the constancy of a well-verified

is held that in mathematics the judgment—by which knowledge relation), and that substitute which is scientific law—the judgment, by This which achieved—resulted not in the sensible, but in the imaginable. knowledge is achieved, issuing in experience itself, or in other con- should not be understood as meaning that each of the established words, every newly acquired conclusion needing to be verified by sen-

sible fact. 1 division: The sense of the words 'ideal existence' is fixed according to the following When it is a question of the physico-mathematical sciences, the de- aaaa[ real ( ductive theory and the system of notions elaborated by it come face to being] face (.possible with experimental results to find there their verification, although J lidcal 1 ! Vide infra, chap iii, 201-2. Vide chap, iv, p. 248-9 rational being. p. infra, | *&id. betog J p. 251-2. ' .

DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 71 7o THE to which knowledge in a somewhat rigorous fashion by of an immaterial object is able to rise by apt to translate them means of an existence intellection).1 And from the recognition of such an adopted vocabulary; and it is a mathematical quid est, not an inductively analogy (ananoetic causality, of the physically real, reason, by the triple path of eminence and negation, established law, but an algorithm which is then biect verification either from the sensible or the imaginable, since it substituted for the ontological quid est. without establishes conclusions nature, sensible fact forms the material of the purely immaterial, concerned with In the philosophy of part of is a case (analogically known) and the perfections of the Pure Act. observation, which thus essentially depends on experience, but it does nature not constitute the formal medium of demonstration. The question an a nature which abstraction has Est QwhL non «t (sabttttutiruj Quid Est.) est bears on the Teal existence of been able Intelligible pUne. An SCIENCE. • i (Knowledge, issuing In If*. supri-senuUc) Quid Est ) An Est PUnc A-nATwetfc Intellection.) lntelliqlblt 12T r / \

Sensible Fact PUne of Sensible. 1 Existence \ V SensiMtV Fact Knowledge, result™ PUne o;f Sensible V i NATURAL TH&OLO^y. Existence in experience. Fig. 5.

PKllOSOphy Of Nc\tUTt , THE CONDITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. ITS RELATIONS WITH FACTS Fig. 4. Moreover, whether it be a question ofnatural philosophy or ofmeta- vegetative to raise to a point where it can be considered in itself, e.g. the physics, philosophy, which emerges, as do the positive sciences, from

soul; and starting from this so posited nature, reason establishes its pro- sensible experience and empirical knowledge, but which transcends issuing in perties by an inductive-deductive alternation, all the while them in a much more perfect and pure manner, »

experience and verifying by sensible facts the conclusions so obtained. 1. makes use of an experimental material which is proper to it, much of Finally, in metaphysics sensible fact also forms the material part more simple, universal, immediate and incontestable than that of the

but it knowledge, because we only rise to the invisible from the visible, experimental sciences. The facts on which it is based are not facts which /

veri- are J does not formally constitute its medium, neither are its conclusions more or less difficult to define—and which, in the degree to which in pure science incidence fied by it. Thejudgment, by which knowledge is achieved, issues progresses, become more and more only points of J it es- elabo-J intelHgibihty. For it is not because, like the philosophy of nature, between the real and the constructions (ever more complex and transcen- ab- sentially depends on sensible experience, but because of its rated) previously established by the reason—but facts which are to the dence that metaphysics (as mathematics does not do) descends solutely general and primary. supra-sensib e world of sensible existence. It also ascends to the world of l 268-71. rea V!iie infra, chap, iv, pp. existence. Thus in natural theology the question an est bears on the OF RATIONAL 72 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 73 2. These facts are not drawn from 'common experience' (altho torturing them to wring from them I, us avoid pretended avowals: that is in a sense more certain than scientific experience) 1 / ; this let coram neither let us fawn on them! But us continually ask them straight- enters into philosophy in so far experience only as it takes the place which presuppose diat of a forward questions, we already possess some in- as yet undeveloped scientific experience and thus in the same necessary to compare (secondare formation. It is them, and as many of them as manner as the latter. The rightful material of philosophy springs from possible, to enquire of the scientist for everything concerning dieir or- an experience which is philosophically elucidated, and is therefore their experimental J much dinary conditions, significance and the fashion in superior to that of common experience, for philosophy judges and which they have been established. All should be treated with respect and criticises diis material in the light of its own perception, in such a look-out for the way as to we should be on the appearance of any new ones. But establish it with complete certitude, since being able by right to philosophical ofwisdom it is only in relating them knowledge which has al- to its rightful principles, it also defends and defend (indirectly) justifies ready been acquired by other means, with philosophical principles, that

in itself. • I the value of sensible perception From this point of view one an intelligible content appropriate to philosophy can be drawn from

Icould say that the fact that something exists, the fact that multiplicity them, in order to discern and judge the ontological values implied by

{exists, that cliange and becoming exist, that knowledge and thought exist, that them, and use can be made ofthem, either to confirm and establish facts desire exists, are all rightly philosophical facts. which are rightly philosophic or as a point of departure for philosophic

With regard to scientific experience, to scientificfacts, we see that it is demonstration.

possible for them, as I said just now, to bring new material to philoso- A whole nest of critical problems is revealed by this, which I must

phy and to be annexed by it, since philosophy knows well how to make content myself with signalising in passing. I have just shown how in a

alien material its own; nevertheless they do not as such constitute its generalway we can distinguish in the natural sciences the category offacts

proper material, and must in any case, like the latter, be judged and from that of theory. But because in the concrete these two categories

criticised in the light of philosophical perception before they are constandy overlap one another, since science proceeds by a continual

fitted for philosophic use. encirclement of facts by new theories which again serve for the creation

A scientific fact in itselfbelongs to the stufFof the natural sciences; and ofnew theories from the new facts so discerned, it becomes necessary to

ifit is true that what characterises these sciences is the resolution of their establish a hierarchy of scientific facts in themselves, from the point of

instruments of knowledge in the sensory, a scientific fact in itself can view of their varying values as facts and also to make a division be-

only be interesting to that form of explication. In so far as it is only tween 'facts' which rightly merit the name and those which in one way or another scienti- illuminated in the degree to which it was first of all seen and utilised by have usurped it. The facts immediately exposed by fic theoretical die scientist, it interests the latter, not the philosopher. It is thus an illu- observation themselves presuppose a certain number of and already originate sion to believe that any appeal to scientific facts with no higher per- established propositions (the. foremost of which from and ception turned upon them can ever nullify a philosophical assertion, sensible perception) concerning the objects to be measured the means construct such as, for example, hylomorphism. In diemselves of course they have of measuring, the apparatus which it is necessary to then let to this end. As scientific facts mediately established, they nothing to say about it one way or the other. For heaven's sake to the other result l ob- either from the coincidence of a verifiable datum and a prelimi- 'The layman believes that a scientific experiment is distinguished from common a physical narily itself when servation by a greater degree ofcertitude; he is mistaken, for any account of constructed system of theory, or from the explication ot experiment lacks that controlled witness it immediate certitude and relatively easily asserts that it is the only one possible. The need for numerous dis- latter by the common, non-scientific observation. It is less certain, but surpasses the criminations is therefore imposed on the philosopher. When modem number and its essential precision of the details which it makes known to us: there lies astronomy or when and veritable established that the earth turned round the sun, superiority.' (Pierre Duhem, La Thforte physique.) THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 74 PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 75 modem physics established the existence of atoms, such 'facts', medi service to philosophy in done immense delivering it from the essen- as they arc, have nevertheless an incomparably greater value as fat which had oppressed it for tially alien burden so long, of the necessity (higher also in the first case than in the second) than the hypothetical and, the for explaining phenomena; on other, if the loss or weakness of 'fact' ofLorentz's contraction or that ofthe curvature of space postulated the metaphysical spirit is an incalculable misfortune for the general by Einstein's system. How then do we find the principles of discernment? order ofintelligence and mortal things, it is also true that the predomin- Nowhere else than in the critical analysis of the reasoning process em- ance of the metaphysical spirit, unaccompanied by critical rectifications ployed in each instance in particular. The more mathematics is reduced of exceptional vigour, can nullify as though per aeddens the particular in physics to allow ofour grasping, thanks to measurement and the cal- interests of experimental research. And this accident is a costly one, for culus, in a physics not so transposed, those causes and conditions whose experimental research and the smallest advance towards the minutest character as entia realia the philosopher has reason no to doubt, the more truth of fact are also a work of the spirit and the spirit brooks no im- the result merits the claim of being held as a fact. The more physics is pediment. reduced to intervening simply as a discriminatory element in theoretic But on the side of the object there is no necessary link between the constructions whose proper value belongs to their mathematical mechanics, physics and astronomy of die ancients and the natural philo- amplitude and coherence, or as a simple foundation for entities which sophy of the scholastic tradition. The whole edifice of the experimental the philosopher has reasons for holding rational, not real, beings, the science of the ancients could fall in ruins, and this immense wreck has more the result should be considered as belonging to the order not of seemed to hurried minds as if it were the ruin of all the ancients had facts, but ofexplanatory images. thought, in reality their metaphysk and their philosophy of nature, in

If philosophy is in itself independent of the sciences, cannot the latter their essential principles, as we are able to disengage these in the thomist nevertheless indirectly exhibit the falsity ofsome philosophical doctrine synthesis, have been no more affected than the spiritual soul is altered by as a consequence deduced from a given principle which, being recog- the dissolution ofthe body. nised as false, exhibits the falsity ofthe former? If the purity ofphilosophic and metaphysical knowledge has been so

That is true in so far as a philosophical doctrine impinges upon science delivered from many, alien elements, it is evidently as necessary and de- as such or holds as a necessary consequence a scientific conception or at sirable, once this purification has been performed, to recover, after the least a general framework for science whose worthlessness is thus exhi- interruption of three centuries of bankruptcy and misunderstanding, its bited. organic relations with the grand totality, the life, actuality and activity,

But whatever may be said by certain popular writers (such as those of the sciences. For the position of a soul without a body here on earth is who attribute to the ancients their own casualness in distinguishing in- exceedingly uncomfortable, and the prison of the body is a definite telligibility from topography, either in metaphysics or astronomy) this good. (As for the modern metaphysical systems, most often in reality

to its they only the hypostatised is not the case when the philosophy of Aristotle is brought back represent the oppression of metaphysics by ambitions authentic principles. On the side of the human subject we must needs ofthe science of the sensory world.) in Under integration, which has already recognise that a too great confidence in the intelligibility of tilings and what conditions this work of phil- been begun at pursued to be brought to a the procedure of the reason, in a region which is not rightly that of several points, needs to be had good end, essay may serve as a cer- osophy, but of experience, and where essences are not discoverable, the notions brought together in this antique tain indication. must be on their guard its part (and perhaps a preponderating one) in the errors of Those who take part in this quest in science. go all against both an indolent separatism and a too facile concordance, From this point of view, and here I am prepared to has order to re-establish without offending against the lengths, we are persuaded that, on the one hand, modern science the vital connections —

76 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 77 essential distinctions and liierarcliical order of the universe oft entities and symbols ofmathematical real, that the physics have a founda- ledge. it is the measurable tion in reality. But in that it resolves all its concepts,

For this end it seems to that it is ' 1 me essentially necessary for it. to distine I which alone has a meaning And once in possession of its measure- clearly between different cases: two the case of essentially lives by weaving between them a physico-mathemati 1 ments, it web of mathe- science and the sciences of which it is a type-form, and the cas? f matical relations deductive in form, which constitute its formal object sciences ofthe biological and psychological type. and which doubdess need to be completed by a certain hypothetical re- construction of the physically real, but from which it is only asked that

their ultimate numerical result should coincide with the measurements KNOWLEDGE OF THE PHYSICO-MATIIEMATICAL TYPE AND PHILOSOPHY of things effected by our instruments. In my opinion it is necessary to abandon, as contrary to the nature of This is no manner ofpragmatism. I do not in any sense suggest that in diings, the hope offinding any continuity or close connection in regard such a science utilitarian success substitutes the truth, in my eyes a barbar- to the explication ofthe real, I do not say in regard to the^cft (b so far ous conception. Like every other science it only exists to be true and the as they can be isolated from theory), but the theories, the conformity between ourjudgment and the conceptual ela- . definition of truth— thing borations of mathematical physics, and the proper texture of philoso- endures for it as for all the others, but in the following sense: a physico- phical and metaphysical knowledge. The discontinuity is very clear-cut mathematical theory is called 'true' when the coherent system and the and is due to the explicatory very essence of these sciences. Mathematical physics is fullest possible range of mathematical symbols and entities not a formally physical science: if it is directly physical in regard to the which it is able to organise coincides in all its numerical conclusions matter whereby it verifies its judgments, if it is orientated towards an with the real measurements effected by us, without it being in the least end in the physically real and physical causes, it is not in order to grasp necessary that any physical reality, a certain nature or ontological law in correspond with each of the sym- their intimate ontological nature. I shall return, in chapter iii, to a further the world of bodies, should precisely question.2 need for consideration of this conviction, which is as frequently put forward by bols and mathematical entities which are in The scientists1 as by philosophers, but which it is over-easy to misunder- v . . physical . . . The whole of our physical knowledge is based on measures. . The stand and ofwhich the full epistemological meaning is a delicate matter world consists, so to speak, of measure-groups resting on a shadowy background that lies outside the scope of physics.* (A. E. Eddington, The Nature oftlte Physical World, to fix. Such as it is, it suffices for out present object. 1928, p. 152.) Physics is based upon ontological reality, it is preoccupied with causes, 'The whole subject-matter of exact science consists of pointer readings and similar it is because of a passion for the nature of things that it bestirs itself. But indications. We cannot enter here into the definition of what are to be classed as simi- lar indications. approximate coincidence of the pointer with a it only envisages this ontological reality, these physical causes, from the The observation of scale-division can be generally extended to include the observation of any kind ofco- angle ofmathematics; it only considers certain analytic them in pursuit of relativity theory, incidence—or, as it is usually expressed in the language ofthe general translations, in divisions effected retains of the have by mathematical means. It an intersection of world-lines. The essential point is that, although we seem to real very these conceptions do not only its measurable bearing, the measurements taken of it by our in- definite conceptions of objects in the external world, science enter into exact science and are not in any way confirmed by it. Before exact struments—and it is dianks to these which are certainly measurements, the can begin to handle the problems they must be replaced by quantities representing ^he object of exhibit to mathematical theories (of physical phenomena) is not to results ofphysical measurement.' (Ibid. pp. 251-3.) us die veritable nature unique of tilings: that would be an unreasonable claim. Their described as con- This is a generalised application of the method which the ancients aim is the co-ordination which of the physical laws discovered by experiment, but in regard sisting in 'saving sensible appearances', and they made clear and explicit first widiout the assistance of enunciate. The mathematics we should not even be able to to Pierre Duhem has astronomical theories, later in certain sections of physics. As question whether ether for in fact exists is a matter for die metaphysicians; die essential homocentric pointed out in a remarkable passage, aristotclian astronomy with its us is that everything happens as if .' I'hypothlse) it did. . . (H. Poincare", La Science el THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 78 79 explanations which remains immanent in the which seeks to grasp causal physical reason of and of philosophy— ontological principles in the issues, in the highest syntheses, in the construction their reality—affirm their apprehension the physicist of a very stuff of of things. It is in 1 rational entities founded on the real and the I have tried to show elsewhere, that certain number of produc- this sense, as we must both pay a shadow of an image) of the world to the conceptions tion of an image (or the capable of tribute of admiration introduced by Einstein in deduction. It would therefore be a they create a sustaining mathematical proof of a the degree to which powerful physico-mathematic syn- optimism to hope to make pretensions very uncritical and truly naive any real con- thesis, and reprove any which may be made to give them a tinuity between the way in which the theories of mathematical physics righdy philosophical significance. Does this imply the breaking of any organic connections between appeared with the observed facts, spheres, however irreconcilable, as quickly is the first application ofthis method, 'the first ofall physical theories. For the first time, in fact.in mediaeval Arabs and Christians, on the significance of the results obtained as in our the construction of this theory, we see geometry starting from a certain number of own day on the theme of 'the value of science'. St. Thomas has clearly indicated the simple principles which it has received from elsewhere and, conformably to these prin- bearing of the method in question in the following passage: *Ad aliquam rem dupli- retouching, ciples, constructing a system of hypothetical mathematics, complicating citer inducitur ratio. Uno modo ad probandum sufiicienter aliquam radicem. Alio this system to the point where it has saved with sufficient exactitude the appearances modo inducitur ratio non quae sufficienter prober radicem, sed quae radiri jam positae described by observers. ostendat congruere conscquentes effectus; sicut in astrologia ponitur ratio excentrico- "When observation had learned from phenomena that the whole system of homo- rum et epicyclorum, ex hoc quod, hac positione facta, possunt salvari apparenria sensi- centric spheres was forever impossible to save, geometric astronomers accepted other bilia circa motus caelestis: non tamen ratio haec est sufficienter probans, quia etiam, principles and, with their novel aid, combined them in new hypotheses; but the method forte, aHa positione facta salvari possent.' (Sum. theol, i, 32, 1, ad. 2.) which was followed in the construction of these new astronomical systems did not I would add, to avoid all misunderstanding, that crco£ew to. au>6p€vx in no sense that which had served for the building up of the system of homocentric differ from implies that refusal of the search for causes and an explicatory hypothesis which Du-

spheres. hem attributes for his part to physical theory (see supra, p. 55). These are in them- in extending this method from Astronomy to the other sections "There was no delay selves causal explications and figurable entities which are elaborated by the physical the Mechanical Questions, which was attributed to Aristode, of Physics; the author of sciences and which are arranged to save phenomena and which are true (not in the abso- gave a its application to the equilibrium of solid weights, and Archimedes attempted lute sense in which a metaphysical doctrine is called true), but true in the measure in this admirable formula- rational form ofrare perfection to the science ofequilibrium; which they succeed, without assuming a penetration into the essential nature of things. the method, to the equilibrium of liquids tion he extended, following as always same It is therefore a secondary question whether a scientist attributes to a theory the value of

and offloating bodies. a simple mathematical representation or that ofa causal explanation, or both at once, or the single hypothesis the equality between the 'Euclid on his side showed how of oscillates between the two (as Ptolemy did in astronomy; or as, in our own day, in phy- phenomena presented angle ofincidence and the angle ofrefraction sufficed to save the sics, 'some ask if the electron has not only a purely analytic existence, is only a centre of by concave and convex planes and mirrors. vibration in a system of waves which are the true reality. For others, it is these waves the equilibrium of Thus, two centuries before our era, Astronomy, the Science of which have only an analytic existence: for a surrounding field ofdiscontinuity a field precise theories, weights, and a part ofOptics had taken on the form ofmathematically ofimaginary continuity has been mathematically substituted' (E. Picard, op. cit.)): for, many parts ot in the desire ofsatisfying the demands ofexperimental control; though in reality, this 'causal' explication in itself remains 'empiriologicaT, and has no rightful of groping; but, in Physics have in their rum only taken on this form after long years or direct 'ontological' significance. (Cp. chap, iii.) sciences had doing so, they have only followed the method by which the earlier As M.Rene" Pokier has written, from a point ofview which otherwise is verydifferent from logical or already arrived at the conditional ofrational theories. mine, 'There is no essential difference between the way in which a science" has given 'The attribution of the title of"creator of the method of physical numerical allegory rationalises the real and that of a structural scheme or figurative Descartes, others tor in rise to many quarrels; some would claim it for Galileo, some for hypothesis The most abstract schemes of statistical energy and of Relativity In fact, tn Francis Bacon, who died without having ever even understood this method. general do not proceed from any other attitude of mind, correspond to no other form of his rune of or the method of physical science has been defined by Plato and the Pythagoreans comprehension than that which produces the mechanical models ofthe atom applied for the fars solar between with a clearness, a precision which has never been surpassed; it was system; the difference between abstract and intuitive theories is like that homocentri time by Eudoxus when he attempted, by combining die rotations of the and * (Essai). mow-) spheres, to save the apparent Le Systhne du movement ofthe stars.' (P. Duhem, *Cp. an Reflexions sur I' intelligence, chap. vti. The same discussions, moreover, must have taken place among the Greeks go THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE g] Certainly philosophy and mathematical physics? not. In die very shadow-images in which it appears nature images and in the last analysis the order of the explication ofthings there is a continuity effort of physical theories can only of the between the explicatory result, cannot be, as was nature and mathematical physics, ifnot in the the natural philosophy of explicatory for so long believed, prolongation of the ontological expli- elaborated by the latter, at least in the degree to which, by philosophy. Nevertheless theories as I said cations supplied for the latter this is an philosophy with an immense supply above, science furnishes of facts, excellent purification. Philosophy must renounce a state of satisfaction despite the fluctuations of theory. they the a gain which endures This is the case with images—whether be explanatory but imaginary images

with the existence ofatoms (which have nothing in common with those of science or the natural image, which is still more baseless for any ex- to-day has of Democritus), a probability which grown next door to planatory use, proffered by common sense. I shall endeavour to show in 1 certitude: I say the existence of atoms, not, be it noted, the nature and a later chapter how it is possible, but in another order than that of the structure attributed to them by science, for these latter are subject to knowledge in this sense of term, for philosophy to re-connect with constant alteration and consist in large measure of scientific symbol- these scientific images and incorporate them in its own field.

isation. But if nowadays, for example, the Rutherford-Bohr atom

is eclipsed by that of Schrodinger, and has become, in anticipation of KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE further avatars, 'a wave-centre of probability', the existence of the

constituent elements of the molecule called 'atoms' (and of their In the sphere of life and organic wholes the distinction between the constituent elements, 'protons', 'electrons', 'neutrons', or whatever point of view of philosophy and that of the experimental sciences re- other names science has endowed them with) seems in no way over- mains exceedingly clear; the conceptual vocabulary, the procedure of thrown, although conceived of in such varying fashion, as though verification, the laws of the resolution of concepts and the organisation of knowledge being necessarily different one thought out solely in the form ofmathematical symbols. from the other. But in this sphere a certain 'continuity' or between the specifically On the other hand, in the epistemological order, in that oftheories of rational and specifically experimental sections of knowledge can be knowledge, the organic link between physico-mathematics and meta- and true established—despite an essential epistemological diversity—in what is physics is closer than ever. In the determination of the nature concerned with the explanatory theories which are furnished by the value of physico-mathematical science, the place, the part and the bear- in the sciences and the final explanation given by the philosophy of nature. ing of its explications, metaphysics not only maintains order For, although resolving their concepts in sensible and observable being system of our forms ofknowledge, but renders to physico-mathematics in the inevit- very degree to which it is sensible and observable, experimental the essential service of protecting it against otherwise almost biology and closed that it is psychology do not undertake the construction of a t/H able deformations, above all, against the pernicious illusion universe that things only of mathematically inspired phenomena, and it is natural itselfcalled on to be a philosophy ofnature and the belief that i the form of deductive explication to which they are attracted should be begin to exist when submitted to the measurement of our instruments. of a use ot philosophical, and not mathematical, type. \ Physico-mathematical explanations are free to make use and good It to is not in the least that I wish to deny or lessen a priori the part played dislocations of time and non-euclidian space, for they have the right by well in physico-chemical explications (which are in themselves orientated progress along the lines of their own development: they do towards the If it is significance integral mathematisation of the real) in biology. doing their own work: the eyes of the spirit are set on their true that physico-chemical forces are the instruments of superior onto- and know its limitations. logical principles the field of that in living matter, it is possible to hold that There is perhaps an element of melancholy in dus assertion 1 , discoroan St e infra, chap, iii, pp. 222-4. image of the universe, or more exactly the more or less 82 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 83 can be unceasingly extended, although a halt these explications has to be 'irrationals' which inevitably CONCLUSION called before certain specific arise of them-

1 it is also possible to hold that in the measure to right to hold that thomist selves. But which the We have the philosophy rather than any keeps the sense of reality proper to living things, and position to supply the sciences biologist demands, other is in the with the metaphysical phenomena, a type of explication which does can follow out at ease in the study of not, in framework where they the necessities of their own resolve this reality into its constituent elements, which will do the last analysis, in a proper development and them no violence: not only he refers himself to the notion word, to the degree in which of living because it is essentially realist and critically justifies the extra-mental the so discovered physico-chemical being, that he will subordinate ex- reality of things and the value of our faculties of knowledge, which all ofbiology, or to planations to an 'autonomous' conception the penetra- science implicidy presupposes, but because it guarantees the autonomy, grouping tion of the detail of phenomena and the of them under more the specific quality of each, and its metaphysical elucidations of the real and more general experimental laws—without the pretension thereby imply in consequence no necessary systematic deformation despotically ofresolving them in that universal mathematical explanatory deduction imposed upon experience. envisaged by physics (and moreover without quitting the ground of the In fact the reproach addressed by the misinformed to scholastic observable and the measurable)—and will remain based on that ontolo- philosophy recoils on the modern systems. For it is these systems which

gical structure which is understoodin the concepts furnished by philosophy. derive from systematic prejudices like mechanism or monism, psycho- On the other hand, ifthey do not put their intelligence in blinkers, the physical parallelism, the cartesian theory of knowledge, universal evo- biologist and the psychologist are inevitably led by their very objective lutionism, etc., which necessarily and as such impose on science such

to ask meta-phenomenal questions; to which they can certainly en- exasperating metaphysical fetters. deavour to reply with the aid of their own conceptual equipment, their It is not a question of finding between the aristotehan-thomist instances, in- sciences that detail which have own means ofanalysis, so winning, in the most favourable philosophy and the concordance of we limita- just rejected: afErrning rather a in general, a good un- direct and circuitous solutions, surrounded with inconceivable but of concord to them. derstanding, a natural friendship, of which the very liberty of science, tions, which rnimic those of philosophy and are at a tangent that the This is Thus Driesch2 has recognised, in the course of remarkable work, ease with which it spreads its wings, is the best indication. embryonic development depends on a non-spatial/acfor E which main- explicidy affirmed by several representatives of the natural sciences, depend ona while elsewhere a remarkable renaissance themes proper to the moral tains the specific type, or again that the actions of animals also of are indi- philosophy of St. the juridical and moral non-spatial factor, thanks to which stimuli coming from without Thomas is visible among enriched by its sciences, which I have not the space to speak ofin this essay. vidualised, and the functioning ofthe animal mechanism is had psychotl If there is no lack of labourers, if unreasonable prejudices—due most own exercise—a non-spatial factor which he prudently christens philosophy, in be- of all, it seems, to a morbid fear of ontological research, and of all philo- But it is only in making use of the apparatus of a ngm- sophy directed towards things (as if a philosophy of coming themselves philosophers, that they will be able to give the knowledge of wni being could not also be a philosophy of the spirit) do not turn them ful and adequate solution to those supra-experimental problems — be able, or back from the study of the sole philosophy which claims to confront the experience itself constrains diem to envisage; diat they will E. universality ofextra-mental reality without claiming in the same stroke one example, to learn the veritable names of a psychoid andfactor to absorb a all knowledge into itself, we may hope to see the dawn of 'See infra, chap, iii, 235-40. pp. great new misunder- the scientific period, which will put an end to the Philosophy of > *C . my preface to the French translation of Hans Dricsch's P standings engendered in the field ofexperimental research by the quarrel ganism (Pzrh, 1 921). THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE S 4 PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE 85 between Aristotle and Descartes, and where the phenomenology as if in the mirror of sensible things— them, and there, where they arc sciences will at last achieve their normative organisation, some, especi- as the facts asserted realised immaterially, by the world of experience ally physics, subject to the attraction of mathematics and following infer. The supra-sensible cannot m compel us to be, at least in the natural the path of their splendid progress, others, on diose lines especially object of an experimental science; order, the it is nevertheless the object! psychology, subject to the attraction of philosophy, biology and and rightfully so called, the sciencejwr ofa science excellence; for ifthe universe! there that organic order ofwhich they have such need, finding and the such, disengaged the of being as by mind when it delivers its objects] development which will be not only material, conditions ofa but rightly materiality, does not fall under from all the ken of the senses, on the general redistribution worthy of the human mind. A which comes from intelligible necessities are there other hand, seen in such a degree of per- phenomenological science, but the natural growth of which also pre- ordinated fection that the knowledge in regard to such a world of in- supposes, diat is clear, the supreme regulative power of metaphysical telligibility is in itself of the highest certainty, though we Indeed may wisdom. have difficulty in acknowledging it. For we are an ungrateful and medi- would be the restitution to the human soul of that divine bles- This ocre species, who only ask the right to fail to achieve the heights of unity, which for three centuries has been broken, sing ofintellectual which we are capable, and who in ourselves, even when the highest the character ofa science, because for him Kant denied to metaphysics gifts have fortified our eyes, have always a preference for the dark.

experience was both the product and the end of science, which creates it by applying to sensible data those necessities which are purely mental forms; but St. Thomas recognised in metaphysics the supreme science of the natural order, because for him experience is the point of depar- ture for the science, which, reading in sensible data those intelligible

necessities which surpass them, can transcend it in following out those

knowledge which is ab- f necessities and so come to a supra-experimental *y \solutcly certain.

1 \ Being ism fact the proper object of the intellect; it is enracinated in all

what is given its concepts, it is towards it, in so far as it is absorbed in

through the senses, that it is first ofall directed.

consider it in When the intellect disengages this conceptual object to

it is not ex- itself, in the degree to which it is being, it perceives that discovered; it b hausted by the sensible realities in which it is at first founded upon a supra-experimental value and so also have the principles in order to it. Thus die mind, if I may say so, 'loops the loop', returning being which it grasp it metaphysically and transcendently to that same sensible. was given first of all in its primary intellection ofthe per- ' intellectual And so, because it has in its metaphysical concepts the which can ception of objects, such as being and the transccndentals, them, it realised odierwise Uian in die matter where it perceived perceiving also attain to these objects—without, diis time, dirccdy »

CRITICAL REALISM 87 Descartes did to throw a bridge effort than between thought and himself on the principle of things, basing causality; he was indeed the the effort since he had obliged first to make himself so to do by placing ofknowledge in the point of departure intuitive thought: it is therefore that every scholastic stricdy accurate to say who thinks he is a realist be-

cause he accepts this setting of the problem is in reality a Cartesian CHAPTER II The cartesian experiment was a wonderful metaphysical enterprise,

CRITICAL REALISM marked with the purest genius; we owe much to it, if only for its bril-

liant proof that every tentative of this kind is doomed in advance to I. CRITICAL REALISM failure; but it is the height of simplicity to begin it again in the hope of By the name critical realism I do not here mean those contemporary obtaining contrary results from those which have always followed, be-

and in Germany, have . philosophical ideas which, notably in America cause they are of its essence. . . One may begin with Descartes, but one 1 rather the aristote- adopted that title to characterise their position, but will end along that road with Berkeley or Kant. There is an internal Uan-thomist conception of knowledge. It strikes me as having a better necessity in the very essence of metaphysics, and the progress of philo- precisely consists in an increasingly clear consciousness title to the appellation. sophy of its con-

useful controversy on . . will ever from the cogito the M. Etienne Gilson has raised an interesting and tent. . No man win justification of the 1 8 realism constitutes a St. Thomas.' Aurea dicta! Let us give thanks to a philosopher this theme, by mamtaining that though thomist realism of 'methodic' realism rather than anything naive', it can nevertheless only with such a rich historical background for this vigorous witness, in the

very moment when it name of history itself, to the intelligible necessities which, despite all the become a 'critical' realism in conceding, at the idealism. 3 accidents ofmaterial causality, rule the historical development ofthought. claims to strike them down, to the pretensions of penetrating observations, The criticism which he suggested from this point of view of idealism Gilson's study is marked by many just and 2 idea of asking from the carte- is exceedingly pertinent. History attests at once the essential impo- and it excellently exhibits how vain is the in it, any elements tence ofidealism 'to pass on from criticism to positive construction' and sian cogito, however many amendments one proposes writes, 'necessarily for the preservation ofthe rightful content ofphilosophy as distinct from of a realist noetic. 'He who begins as an idealist', he halves. There is no need that of a chosen regulative science—and the necessity in which it finds ends as one: it is impossible to be an idealist by "Cogito, ago res itself of substituting for the real (because it does not start from things, to doubt what history teaches by so many examples. 3 is con- but antithesis of what from thought) rational not real beings 'which are only false coin'. sunt" is , that is to say, the exact made a greater It is certainly true, on the other hand, that, though fundamentally sidered scholastic realism and the cause of its ruin. No one and consciously 'realists' in actu exercito, neither Aristode nor St. Thomas swtuiK x the exterior world Still less in particular to that theory of the perception of ever felt the need to qualify themselves as realists in the modem inter- with so m neo-scholastics, and opposed not only by Kulpe but also by several is attau ^ pretation of the term; for the reason that the error to which it op- sensation is only reason byj. Grcdt {Unsere Auswelt, 1921 ); according to which, posed professed thanks to an intere had not yet arisen in the West. But the realism by as a subjective end which is objectified in a secondary manner Regens Thornists to the explicit. And Geyer), . to-day is only a passage from the implicit *'Le Rdalisme me'thodique,' in Philosophla pereimis (Melanges found in i4 this transition to think that 1930, vol. ii. L. Noel's reply ('La Mdthode du rdalismc') will be is itself a form of progress. It is even possible scolastique, Nov. 1931. in this, idealism has played a necessary historical part. Precisely because ' et $

here I in the ful- to things and being given its measure by an esse independent of it, how little, the idealist setting ofthe critical problem; and am

consists in the re- is it possible 'so to judge, how, under what conditions and what lest agreement with M. Gilson; and the other which measure is it really thus in the beginning and in the various degrees of fusal of any possibility whatsoever of posing as philosophically soluble Gil- human knowledge?' It is absurd to demand from philosophical thought the whole critical problem. It is here that I part company with M. particular office of that it should begin, before rightly knowing anything, by giving proof son. I believe that it is possible—in fact that it is the that of that it is able to know (which it can only know by knowing); it is ab- wisdom—to face this problem in a wholly odier fashion than surd to suppose first of all that what cannot bejudged as true by thought idealism. idealism1 may, by the action of some malign genius, not be true, in order to de- To my mind it is inexact to say that realism only exists by error mand as a result that this same thought should demonstrate that in fact (on that ground no true thesis would exist except by right of the the error it is not so; or to admit that thought can only attain to phenomenal- which it refutes, and a dogmatic definition would depend on must 'borrow objects and then ask that it should prove that these objects are extra- which it opposes), and that realism, in order to be critical, point mental realities.4 Such things are those stultae questiones which St. from idealism 'the posing of the problem'. Nor is it sufficient to 5 or to Thomas, following St. Paul, counsels us to shun. out that realism has succeeded at the point where idealism fails, constructing a viable demonstrate the insufficiency of the latter in *R. Garrigou-Lagrange, 'Le Rialismc thomiste et le myst^re de la connaissance,' 2 whose Revue been reprinted in philosophical system. Without doubt that is an indirect sign de phibsophie,]an.-Fcb. aad Mar.-Apr., 193 1. (This article has Le to bring rfalisme duprincipe definaliti, Paris, 1932.) value is far from negligible. But the point which it is necessary 2 it- Cp. impossibility in Reflexions sur V intelligence, chaps, i and ii. the mind to take full cognisance of is the absolute reason for de TonqueMec, 21-2. self and as such of idealism. More, there is not the slightest J. La Critique de k connaissance, pp. Cp. thiologi^, Reflexions sur Vintelligence, p. 41. JE. Gilson, 'Rialismc et mdthodc* {Revue des sciences philoscphiques et s mani- 'Stultae lessonii, '. . . . Item quando vol. xxi, 1932), p. 7ji. qucstiones de vita', Tit. iii, 9: St. Thomas, festum se tenere in srienna.' proponitur ut dubium, sc. quaecumque debet aliquis per */W.p.7J3. RATIONAL REALISM 5>o THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL 91

thought has begun to operate, to know and to philosophise it is possible to proceed to the detail of instances and But when after which science and of wisdom values to acquire the certitudes of concerning things discrimination of gnoseological and what in the act of their first cause, it has need to turn back the real and what on the constructive activity and the soul, and upon itself knowing depends on and apply itselfto the knowing of the treatise on the Divine Names in the Summa and on these acquisitions, knowledge, of the mind (thus concerning it and to verify it (in order to advance again, of theological knowledge; and thus again all search for to judge and is a critique

itself . . .).This is the task of of physical theory is an attempt at a critique of again to circle back upon metaphysical the true significance 1 like, for instance, the discovery of wisdom which, as the highest natural point of spirituality among the physico-mathematical knowledge), principles these transcendental theme which is at various times under sciences, has the power to go back over the of latter and the laws of that direct demonstration— book. over its own, in order tojustify (if not by for it is discussion in the present has a veritable understanding of the object an apaedeusia, id est ineruditio* to wish to demonstrate everything—at The mind throughout judges of it in accord with the intrinsic least by a reductio ad absurdum) and so fulfil that self-return which is pro- which it proposes to itself and indeed, in the strictest sense of the per to the spirit. necessities proper to knowledge; knowledge which will have been in- In a sense it is ungrateful and dangerous work (the danger is suffici- word, it is a critique of will always and essentially remain a taking endy obvious), as is all rescension and verification, all the registration of stituted. But its work another activity which is the knowledge reflex valuation, a work which goes against nature, but which is in- cognisance of, a return on activity. When this condition is fully dispensable, for the intellect even more than the hand needs to know of things, a purely reflective principal danger drops away. Such a critique of how to control its tools and that instrument which is itself. It understood the subject to no idealist contagion. For it is in makes a particular call on the sobriety and humility ofveracious science knowledge will have been all re- all idealism to mix a constructive desire with and on that respect for the object, which is in this case the mystery pro- effect essential to unacknowledged it may be, however dis- per to knowledge. Thus humbly, by the impossibility of their contraries, flective activity (however a pure methodical austerity)—at least the the fundamental truths and particularly the general validity of know- simulated under the aspect of this prepara- principal desire to make the whole nature ofphilosophy depend on ledge and its first principles are confirmed: then follows the soon as one which to make it wholly consist of it. As business, where research can advance and exhaust itself endlessly: tory self-reflection, ifnot exclusively reflex, full re- of a critique is purely and consists on the one side in the analysis and description—with acknowledges that the work and therefore cannot in its di- secondary (not only in order of time, but of nature) spect for its integrity—of the objective content of knowledge of the real without 3 other side, separate itself for an instant from the knowledge verse phases and ofthe witness which it gives to itself; on the securely innoculated and its having recourse to illusory self-devouring, one is of the endeavour to penetrate metaphysically into its nature an itself: against cartesian fever. causes, and to make it in the rightful sense of the word, know non pro ban ^Considerandum esc in scientiis philosophicis, quod inferiores scientiae supeno sua principia, nee contra negantem prinripia disputant, sed hoc relinquunt negantem SCIO ALIQUTD ESSE scientiae; suprema vcro inter eas, scilicet metaphysics, disputat contra disputare, pot« thomist criti- principia, si adversarius aliquid concedit; si autem nihil potest cum eo it follows that a ' If the foregoing remarks are correct, R- G^IlS° tamen solvere rationis ipsius.' (St. Thomas, Sum. theol, i, I, 8.) Cp. reason of the cism of knowledge will differ from the beginning and by Lagrange, art. cit. type of idealism, and very method of its procedure, from that of any *St. Thomas, lit Metaph., book iv, Iect. 6. particularly by these three points: . ' 8 been dis its It is here without doubt when it has which makes that something will remain, i. It is shut in on itself metflo . in no sense the pure cogito by time and reduced to more modest proportions, of the phcnomenological THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL 92 KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 93 point of departure. Criticism, as a work of philosophy, implies the a c conscious knowing—I am conscious of knowing at of least one thing, that that consciousness whereby the mind goes philosophically back over its t> which is, is. liminary work ofknowing; and this is not the act ofconsciousness whi h The cogito ergo sum is ambiguous: it is proffered at the same time as is in point of fact and chronologically first (to what point in that case point of departure for the whole of the of philosophy and for the critique. infant experience would it be necessary to return?) but that act in search of an equally ofcon- If we were ambiguous formula, to serve both sciousness which is verified by the philosopher as being by right and logi- aims, we could say: 'scio aliquid esse (seu these esse posse)', but it would cally first, when he lays bare those most primary roots of knowledge necessary at once to resolve it into the be two significations which it which constitute his point ofdeparture. How is this exactly determined? embraces and which would need to be differentiated, for the one is In my opinion three primordial axioms, which each imply the others concerned with direct knowledge and the first movement of the mind, are included in this fundamental act of consciousness and impose the other widi reflex knowledge and the mind's secondary morion. themselves on any philosophic analysis: the incontrovertible evidence When I say, 'I know that some thing is (or may be)', I can have the in- of the principle ofidentity, that primary fact to which are affirming simply we led by the tention of that some thing is (or may be), aliquid est, an resolution of the knowledge 1 which has already been acquired and in enunciation in this case concerned with the first movement of the mind, find which we the very first (i.e. in the order of reason) living connec- and thereby related to the starting-point of all philosophy. The concrete tion between the mind and things; the general truthfulness of our experience which it translates includes beside3 all the complexity of my powers of knowledge, which is like the first if highly indeterminate cognitive activities, for my intelligence there lays hold of intelligible witness which the intellect gives to itself; the notion of truth, whose being, on which it bears direcdy, and which has been perceived by it in elucidation presents the primary problem which criticism must solve. exacdy so far as the surrounding possibility ofeternal exigencies forms the

Thus if we wish to formulate directly that experience which forms the objectofitswholefirstpurelyintellectualcertitude(principIeofidentity), point of departure for all criticism, it must run not, I think, but—I am but which it grasps in fact in turning back on some singular object

given to it by the senses and from which it has caused it to arise; and in Hujusmodi autem principia naturalirer cognoscuntur, et error qui circa hujusmodi going back also, although entirely implicidy and by the single fact of principia accideret, ex corruptione naturae provenirct. Unde non posset homo mutari judgment, on its own act of knowledge and its relation to the thing; vera de acceptione principiorum in falsam, vel e converso, nisi per mutationem naturae.' on the self which knows and whose existence in act for my me the Sum. Contra Gent., iv, 95. — Cp. most indubitable R. Garrigou-Lagrange, op. cit. "This primordial evidence belongs to the first of all such existence—is so made known to me—but intellectual apprehension pig- of being or of the real and to the necessary and universal as though in its germ (in actu primo) and not yet effectively—each ment which immediately follows it; these direct acts are necessarily anterior to any re- time that I know.1 flection upon them. Then this primary and indestructible evidence is confirmed by the If I say after this: intellect's reflection 'I know that some thing is (or may be)', having on its own act, on the nature ofthat act and its own nature, ofwhich it sees the essential the taken explicit direct knowledge finality, as it sees the finality of the eye or of the ear. And by this cognisance only ofwhat was included in

intellect sees that the idea it, is ofbeing, impressed on it and subsequently expressed by and meaning to say that I know that some thing is or may be, ego cognosco as essentially relative to extra-mental being, whether actual or possible, wholly differ- aliquid esse, my statement is then concerned with the second motion of ent from being only existing .' in die reason. . . (Ibid.) the mind, refers a critique. 'It is untrue that states, to the point ofdeparture of we are first conscious ofour certitudes as "purely subjective" from which the The deals first of all we subsequently conclude (no one has ever explained by what right) position so taken up is this: Since the intellect existence of reality distinct from our knowledge, in "objective" truth. No, immediate neidicr with itself nor with myself, but with being, the very first evidence gives us the object; evident- if it did not, no reflection it-it is only too on evidence (I say first, where what in itself is could not in the order of time, discover it among its acquisitions.' de Tonqucdcc, op. cit.) (J. (note The real is us *Cp. infra, pp. 108 (note 1) and 124 1). given straight away in the activity ofknowing.' (L. Noel, art. cit.) 94 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 95 primary is only implicit, but in nature), the evidence which in 1 itself is rst of real universal doubt. Such fi single moment a moment in effect in- intellect is that of the principle of identity, 'discovered' for the in die actu exercito the negation of what it cludes in is assumed one as yet being or of the real. intellectual apprehension of of (I mean, the essential knows nothing ordination of the intellect to in question is 'not necessarily 2 I have said that the real in the creates a vicious circle. I 3 actual being), and As have indicated elsewhere, the (existential) order, although it may be as incarnate in the veritate example universalis dubitatio de ofwhich St. Thomas, following Aristotle,* intellect first of some sensible existence that the lays hold on die J'ln fact the evidence takes us by the throat and leaves us no time principle of identity. In itself this principle bears on the whole exten- to defend our- our eyes, not like a blind selves; it leaps to force, but like an irresistible light. The sion of being and primarily on the order of essences, on the possible the decides to reflect, it is subject to this moment mind shock; not a moment is given it reality.1 at the same time in the intelligible order itself a instantly But certain for deliberation, its reflection comes across evidence which it cannot dispute,

it has not to justify', but only to observe and record. actual reality is given to the intellect in this first act of perception and which There is not, nor can there be, at the beginning of the critique ofknowledge, any instant's pause, a second of un- judgment, this time from the side of the subject, i.e. the existence abstention or ignorance, ofany real doubt.' J. certainty, ( de Tonquedec, op. cit.) of the thinking subject itself, for all that it is implicidy and pre-con- "This is what Descartes, the founder of modem idealism, did not see when he said 2 sciously and by an initial act and not yet as an express object ofknow- that God, if he had so wished, could have created square circles or hills without valleys. Descartes did not comprehend that he was committing an unforgivable ledge. sin as grave as that which is called in the spiritual order the sin against the Holy Ghost or against the Thus the intellect here embraces in its own sphere at one and the light of liberation. From the dawn ofour intellectual life we have an absolute certainty same time—the possible real: the object ('all being . . .') set before die that neither God, if he exists, however powerful he may be, nor any malign genius, however perverse and deceiving, could a square circle, this mind and attained by it, and signified in the enunciation of the principle make for is not only in- conceivable us, but really in impossible.' 3 by itself (R. Garrigou-Lagrange, art. cit.) of identity —and the actual real : the reality ofthe thinking subject, not 2 And this is not the only one. 'It is impossible to deliberately put in doubt the value yet attained in ultimate act (in acta secundo). Intelligible being and the self of all certitude without expressly referring to an absolute and incontestable ideal of are given it at once and together, but being is in the foreground and, as it certitude, to a notion already acquired and held as assured of certitude, to a rigorous the were, on the centre ofthe stage, and the selfin. the background or in principle which will dominate all further discussion: let it be quite clear, viable, scienti-

fic certitude which carries as its correlative, objective truth carries such characteris- wings. It is only with the second movement of the mind, in that reflex — — tics, implies such conditions. Here for reflection, at least, is something which is not in act which serves as a starting-point for the critique of knowledge, that the least dubious ! There is a considered, even philosophic, certitude, moreover one that is

it comes into the foreground. easily recognisable, which must be rescued from universal doubt! But it implies all the 2. An authentic criticism of knowledge does not in the least imply a elements ofcritical philosophy: the notions oftruth, ofreality, ofobjectivity, etc.; criti- ca^philosophy has therefore been in action before the point assigned for it to come into

x action.' (Cp. Du Roussaux, 'Le Neo-dogmatisme,' Revue nio-scokstiqiie, Nov. 1911.) See infra, pp. 111-12 and 123-4. 'It is perfectly legitimate to make an inventory and a critical revision of human 2 (actus On the distinction between the initial act () and the final act knowledge. It is indeed what has been attempted in the present book. But in this enter- object 01 secunclus sea uhimus) in the order of knowledge see infra, 141. When the p. prise there is no place for universal doubt. "The reduction of thought to a bare poten- the act intellection is a thing other than myself it is (directly) known in initial act by tiality which knows nothing about nothing is an impossibility, even for the duration of and the (i.e. purely of actuation of the intellect by the species impressa, and in final act a flash its es- of lightning, . . . Every attempt at universal doubt is still-born, dead in When simply) by the act ofintellection itselfand in the species cxpressa or mental work. sence, void of reality or possibility. The interlocutory question is a vain interrogation; it is known it is the act ofintelligence or the intelligence itselfor die existence ofthe self, it is answered by the asking." (Du Roussaux, op. cit.).' de Tonque'dec, op. cit.) know- (J. (reflexivcly) in initial act by the very fact diat the intellect is itself a direct act of in *&tfiexionssur I' intelligence, p. 42. ledge of a thing, and by that very fact intelligible in act to itself, and it is known 4 concept. final act reflex Aristotle,Mef(7p/t.,B.c. iii, de Tonque'dec has shown (effectively known) by the act of reflex intellection and in a 1. (St. Thomas, book lect. 1.) J. the true meaning his book, op. cit., pp. Cp. infra, p. 108 (note 1) and p. 145 (note 2). of this expression at the concluding chapter of 436-441. 8 ' 'A11 being is what it is.' 96 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 97 putting in question, or ' speaks, that universal aporia ' which is the d wisdom of the natural order. And videtur quod supreme although in the interests lege of metaphysics, that non which is the beginning of of 11 order in a written treatise (where exterior one must behave, alas, scientific research and which stops at nothing, is as if not in any slieht knowledge were achieved and fulfilled), it is convenient degree a living or exercised doubt— to place the no more than it is the phenomen at the beginning of metaphysics, like 1 critique a sort of introductory logical eVopj —it is not a living i-norf but one put forward as a hypo- apologetic—in reality, criticism, ontology and natural theology thesis examined, a conceived or represented all to be doubt (and by this much together, even more closely interconnected grow than the moral vir- more rigorous and much more sincere than the cartesian doubt, for it in. are integrated into tues, since they one and the same specific whole. volves no ruse, no arbitrary forcing from the side of the will, no pseudo- being a pre-condition of ontology, 'Instead of epistemology ought to drama); and the end which the mind arrives at as a result of this univer- with it, sustaining it amd being grow in and sustained by it, beino- at sal problematisation is precisely the clear and deliberate consciousness once explanatory and explained, mutually supporting elements of one of both the absolute impossibility of realising a universal doubt (or a 1 true philosophy.' The critique of knowledge or epistemology has no 'putting in parentheses' of all certitude concerning the being of things), distinct existence as a discipline from metaphysics. To give it a separate and of the knowledge which it already possessed, rooted in the exer- existence is to interpose a third term between realism and idealism, be- cise of its basic activity, although unformulated, from the very start, of tween yes and no, which is indeed the pretension of the modems, with its essential ordering for the apprehension of things: for in every judg- 2 their unthinkable notion of a 'pure phenomenon', which voids the ment the intellect tacitly and virtually knows itself, in cujus natura estut very concept ofbeing ofany being, that most general ofall our concepts. rebus conformetur? The intellect lives realistically before it recognises the It is in this way by the very setting-up of the problem, and from the name of realism. outset, that a thomist critique of knowledge is distinguished from all the Finally, an authentic critique 3 3. ofknowledge, comprehending that it pseudo-critiques of idealism. is absurd to go back on its traces at the first step, does not give itself out wishes it so, at the end, by way of reflection), but after natural philosophy and after as the preliminary condition of all philosophy.3 The conception of psychology. For in order to criticise the value of knowledge it is necessary first to 'philosophical radicalism'* formed by Cartesians and neo-Cartesians know psychologically what it is, to know how to distinguish the formal object ofthe intellect (being and the reasons of being of things) and the formal object of the senses appears from this point of view as an. almost perfect type of (sensible phenomena).' R. Garrigou-Lagrange, art cit., cp. Revue thomiste, Jan. 1924: presumption in the field of human knowledge. The critique of Dans quel ordre proposer les sciences philosophiqties. knowledge presupposes a long-continued effort to know—knowledge L. Noel (Notes d'episte'inologie thomiste) supports this thesis, while pointing out, as is very which is not only spontaneous, but also scientific—not only scientific (in true, that the critique also serves in its turn the progress of the philosophical sciences. Here, as in all organic growth, causae ai invkem sunt causae. the modern sense of the word), but philosophic and psychological, logi- *E. 5 Gilson, art, cit. cal and metaphysical. It is itself a part of metaphysical knowledge, the

There is, of course, a perfectly legitimate notion of phenomena, but which is not J On this i-noxr), see infra, pp. 123-4. separated from that of the 'thing in itself'. It is the sensible appearance of the thing *Sc. Thomas, existing in itself. De Vtritatc, i, 9; cp. infra, p. 108 (note 1).

s of the 'More, in maintain that 'What is necessary is to free ourselves from the beginning from the obsession order to rightly call oneself a Thomist, it is necessary to

cit.)- what is 'first sensible things, the idea that epistemology is the essential preliminary of philosophy* (E. Gilson, art. of all known by the human intellect' is the being of proper object intellectual apprehension which On this point I share the fullest agreement with M. Gilson. ofour mind, and that there is a primary can be called a 'view' (cp. M. D. Roland-Gosselin, 'Peut-on parler d'intuition intellec- 'Cp. E. Husserl, Meditations carte"siennes, tuelle dans la philosophic thomiste?' Phihsophia Perennis, vol. i, p. 730) or a 'perception', ''According to the thought of Aristotle rightly understood! or an and St. Thomas, when 'abstractive intuition'. Reflexions sur 1'inteUigence, Annexe ii, and (Cp. J. Maritain, the critique if one of knowledge should not come at the of metaphysics (or, Philosophic beginning Bergsoniemic, also L. Noel, op. cit.) The particular word is unimportant, G M.D.K. 9S THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM Will M. Gilson grant after this explanation that his 99 objections to th which it implies-the philosophy of nature possibility of a thomist critique of knowledge and metaphysics-it are not insuperable is in and necessary to treat first effect of all of noetics, and to that the idea of critical realism is not self-contradictory establish a certain like that 'of ofpropositions concerned 1 number with the much square circle? more general problem relation between of the thought and reality. I shall In any case it must be obvious why I hold that thomist begin then with a realism is not sketch of the solution winch, I believe, can be brought only not naive (if by that is meant the absence of to bear on these scrupulous scientific problems by the principles of the critical accuracy and the thirst for verification; realism of Aristode for the word can also imply and St the Thomas. This exposition will perchance make naturalness ofthe procedure, a recognition of the it easier to confront primacy ofnature over thomist thought and those diverse tendencies reflection), but that it is also which have been 'conscious, considered and deliberate' grouped or in England and 2 America under the tide of still Neo-realisni 'methodical' ; more, that it is truly and righdy and which in critical, indeed the Germany have been christened Phenomenological only gnoseological doctrine which rightly merits the name. Philosophy TheV are tendencies which seem to me to possess great interest These comments on die notion ofcritical realism are only a and which I perlimin- hold possessed of a high degree of intellectual ary. It is necessary now to stimulation, but touch on some of the questions which are cen- which seem perhaps a little too much under the tral to the critique itself. compulsion of the In the endeavour to posit anyjust idea ofspecu- need to re-act against dominant prejudices and are thus too lative philosophy and of the two typically distinct degrees much and too era ofknowledge tmtously a priori and thereby too indifferent to the real depths ofmeta what is essential is to recognise Physics. I shall that the object is immediately attained [v. only offer on these infra, p. 149), themes indications and and that our does suggestions mind not only 'conceive* of being, as some neo-scholastics (Zam- in passing, for my plan is not to propound a boni for example) have suggested, thorough examination but also in conceiving it, 'perceives*. It is also neces- of such tendencies, but rather sary to maintain that the species to treat of the degrees intelligibilis is quo and not quod (cp. p. 144-6); and that of knowledge, the the knower divines the philosophy of nature other as other as much in the 'first' or initial act (by the specks and metaphysics, and so to fix first of all the impressa) as in the final or 'second' (by the cognitive act itself). If gnoseological propositions these points are not which are requisite for that end. maintained, there is a break between the critique ofknowledge which has been set up and the principles ofAristode and St. Thomas.

*E. Gilson, art, cit. Actually it is the conception which certain neo-scholastics have set II. HEALISM AND COMMONSENSE up ofrealism which M. Gilson has had his in mind, but I should myselfhold that if his . Nowadays, objections run directly counter when the world suffers to such positions as that ofjeannierc (whom he does not so much from the mind's self- mention) or of S. Picard, or still more those of the phenomenologists, his discord ^nwhencommonsense has had to put up with so many insults, a with L. Noel is less concerned realist with doctrine than method; and it is possible that Mgr. philosophy usually begins by some attempt to Noel would himself agree rehabilitate com- that the role assigned to the cogito in his Notes d'epistimo- monsense in one fashion or legie famine (particularly another and to reopen connection on p. 8 8) is in fact secondary is essential to with it in regard to what a an his mind. This latter must excellent preoccupation, rather be sought in the forcible criticism which he directs for it teaches philosophy a certain against measure Picard and Zamboni. I as of humility, rejoice to observe that fundamentally, e.g. in a point it brings it back into line with nature, and it tends important as that of the immediacy of intellectual perception and those put forward on -establish intellectual unity at the most fundamental P- 97,ti. 3, there is an essential and modesdy agreement between such writers as the lamented Fr. Gemy, man point that R. Garngou-Lagrange, point where the thought of the J. de Tonquddec, E. Peillaube, L. Noel, A. Masnovo, M. Cor- man in the street dovani, R. Kremer, and eS *at of E. Gilson; the differences them being the philosopher. But it is which subsist between . also dangerous, for com- tnose divergences which circle of mon 6 a fundamental unity, and which attest the possibility n0thin homogeneous and because a large part of scientific collective work really causing ? a positive advance in the treatment of philosophical prcTreT^gress, h above all in its questions. modern expression, runs exacdy contrary to it. commonsense *E. Gilson, ibid. in the purest sense of the word, mean- j tl^V re that y common awareness of truths known as such and the ioo THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM IOI principles of reason (habitus principiorum), that metaphysic which is u self-verification, is to shut it up in a state of pure artificiality which be- formulated, but rich in the possession of certain absolutely fundament 1 of simple-headcdness, that longs to that worst form of the professor. certitudes for human life, which reason by the aid of experience draw We mi°ht well ask of those philosophers who are at pains to 'put an end from those principles, then, for Thomists, it must be said there is in- they to get to all this simplicity' how managed born: they will find it deed a solidarity between commonsense and philosophy, though at th equally hard to get born into wisdom (and so into criticism). Let it be

, time a clearly same drawn distinction; for philosophy is a form of know- added that, in any case, simple-headed simplicity is better than elabor- ledge where the fundamental certitudes of commonsense are redis- ated simplicity; it at least is in line with nature and curable. In fact, in covered, but as they are formulated critical I by reasoning and in a scien- the course of the history of thought, it is simple-mindedness which by tific state, and which endlessly extends these certitudes by means ofnew reflecting on itself little by little becomes critical. And such critical pro- ^discoveries and new demonstrations, and which is based not only on gress is destined to endure forever. A or a Plato, an Aristode commonsense, but on the evident necessity of those principles which or a St. Augustine by no means ignored the critical problem; the the intellect knows by intuition.1 St. Thomas's position is thus, while Fourth Book [gamma) of die Metaphysics is pregnant with a critique maintaining both forcibly and respectfully the coherence between com- 1 without the name ; there is a deeper criticism in , in monsense and philosophy, very different from that of Reid and much St. Thomas or Cajetan, than in Kant. Nevertheless they never dreamed more critical. ofmaking a special body ofdoctrine of the reflective and critical section Simple-mindedness and the superstitious fear of being so are, we ofmetaphysics, so leaving vast regions ofknowledge lying as it were fal- may observe in parenthesis, the two enemies ofany sane critique. Philo- low; and one must add that in their time, as I pointed out above, there sophy in so far as it is wisdom needs to verify its organs and its instru- was a much less explicit and defined separation of the critical problems ments in the degree to which it advances, and can take nothing from and their corresponding technique. It remains for the Thomists of to- either nature or culture without examination and judgment. But to day, of this 'reflective age', to carry this technique to a point worthy of pretend to justify 2 oneself from the beginning' and to take nothing the thought oftheir masters. The apparatus ofobservation which should from nature, to make the course of the world consist in .the fact of this be applied to primary notions and first principles will always require

J perfecting: cannot Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, we have done with pre-critical 'naivete' once and 'La Philosophic de letre et Ies formules dogmadques', " tor all. Le Sens commun, Paris, third edition. * Knowledge precedes reflection, as nature precedes knowledge.

2 Critical reflection E. Husserl, at. There must increase with each increase of natural know- pp. is a form of singularly naive credulity with regard to the possibilities ofphilosophy in thinking ledge. that the latter should constitute itself first of all by a radical* act ofself-cognition and I said build itself up progressively on the 'fundamental that general commonsense was not at all homogeneous. In fact basis of a full, entire and universal act ofself-cognition'. The human mind will never it is made up not only of those intellectual elements of which I spoke, achieve this act of self-cognition. And, moreover, consciousness of self presupposes a but also of self and that in all the stages a mass ofimagery, according to which, for instance, the sun of knowledge: in the highest degree (metaphysics) as in the lower (the parriouar moves round sciences), there is a self-return, a critique (here partial and the earth, height and depth are absolute determinations limited there universal and radical) which philo- or space, presupposes direct knowledge. If the antipodes live upside down, etc. It is absolutely necessary sophy should effectively fill the human mind with a more and more profound self-cog- to discruninate between commonsense and this imagery: and it is only maon, it is first ofall on condition ofbeing itselfconstituted and progressively built up on condition exactly as knowledge of being, of dieir deliverance from the latter that science and philo- thus permitting the better penetration of itself by thought (by a reflex process sophy can which, thanks to the deviation has for two advance. of idealism, ^ centuries resulted in a corrosive and destructive action with regard to that very know- Cp. R. ledge Garrigou-Lagrange, ' Le re*alisme thomiste et le mystere de la connaissance", ofbeing on which it is a return). iiev - de Ph 'l; Jan.-Feb., Mar.-April, 193 1 ; and op. cit. 102 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 103

Finally, it is necessary to keep in mind one of those fundamental universal ideas apo- we call 'man'? How by can we know what in its own ex- thegms which St. Thomas is never tired of repeating, that the human istence is singular, by theorems of the rectangle the geometric properties mind belongs to the lowest stage the of scale of minds. By reason of of this table? And how can we look at this bindweed or this apple with- this, the natural word has, when in relation to man, two entirely oppo- out ourselves participating in the sensations of their vegetable existence? site meanings. Commonscnse, in far so as it is 'natural', i.e. in conform- We are thus constrained to make a certain divorce between things and ity with the essential inclinations of the mind, is naturally in the right thought, to recognise that the conditions of the one cannot be those of agile and intuitive, and goes from being towards God by a sort of the other. The way in which things 'live in our thought in order tojbe, spiritual phototropism: and it is in this sense that philosophy is its con- known is not the same as the way in which they live in themselves. tinuation. On the other hand, when the word natural' is taken in the (The mind thus, as soon as it begins to reflect on itself, perceives that second and wholly different sense, and means 'exposed to all the ordin- there is an inwardness of thought, a universe apart from, however open ary perils menacing our intelligence', commonsense has a certain natural to, things. It is above all necessary to be on guard against the reduction propensity for stupidity, for materialism, for the incomprehension of 1 of mental things to spatial imagination, but it is vain to try to overleap what is living and spiritual; in and this sense philosophy is constantly . the limits ofhuman language; the expressions 'in thought' and 'outside obliged to correct it. thought' have no more spatial significance than the word spirit, which Thus it is easy to see why the history of thought, at least in so far as it originally meant breath, or the word God, which originally meant is a progress, is made up of a series of scandals for commonsense, each light. In the same way, when we speak of creatures which exist 'apart ofwhich is followed a by higher reintegration and reconquest, a victory from God' the use ofspace is entirely metaphorical. Here it simply sig- for commonsense. Each of our paces on this earth is in itself the begin- nifies that sometimes the thing exists—actually or possibly—for itselfin nings of a fall and its recovery. the universe which we see, and, more generally, in the order of simple

position or existential effectuation, and sometimes not for itself, nor in

this THE TRUTH universe, nor in space, nor in the order of the simple positio extra nihil, but under quite other conditions which are those of thought, One of these primary scandals for commonsense is that concerned and as a beginning or end of the act of thought; in this case we say: with the relation between things and thought, and the very notion of it exists in thought. 2 To draw any argument from the metaphorically the truth. 'What I think is what is,' thinks commonsense (and it is not material or spatial sense evoked by this 'in' and the 'outside' which cor- m the wrong), but at once this affirmation is materialised, sinks into a L. Noel facile representation, and has rightly pointed out, apropos of this, that the idealist formula 'what is be- we begin to imagine that thought is sort some yond thought of is unthinkable' belongs in fact to exactly this spatial form ofimagination, copy or tracing of the thing, in all ways coincident with it, so that all or simply signifies that thought cannot achieve an end without its being, by that simple the conditions of the fact, one are also those of the other. thought of, 'a sufficiently useless truism*. (Op. dr.) Reflection is not slow in evoking certain Cp. St. bitter disillusionments. If Thomas, Sum. theol, i, 59, 2: i-ii, 86, I, ad, 2; Sum. Contra Cast., iv, ir, thought or sect. 3 In knowledge is : IV Sent., disc a copy, a tracing of things, if all the conditions 49, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 2. of If, on the other the one are also those hand, we take the word in in, I do not say a spatial sense, but even of the other, how is it would possible to err? It only that ofentitative inherence in the subject, then St. Thomas warns us that knowledge be absurd to imagine error as the tracing of is not. considered something which not as accidental to the knower (conditioned by the entitative order implied And how, by by means of a all created - multiple thought such as the idea of 'living knowledge), but as a relation to the known and in the pure line ofknow- being edge, joined to the idea is not in the soul as of the word 'in' (because of 'capable of sensation' and that of 'capable of in a subject, in the entitative sense it is intelligence', outside any entitative order). 'Secundum quod comparatur ad cognoscentem, can we know a tiling one and undivided in itself as is what notitia , in«t cognoscenti sicut accidens in subjecto, et sic non excedit subjectum, '

io 4 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM IOj responds to it is the banal sophism of idealism. But to interdict und the Hon devours the antelope, in the " In one the other he achieves by means pretext that the mind is neither a courtyard nor a cupboard the of the copula the predicate, carnivorous. And the possibility of of such expressions as 'in the consciousness' and error 'outside consciousnes's'i simply arises from the disparity between these two worlds. All would be to take exception at the outset to ofwhich that inwardness which is shows that thought is not a copy of the thing corresponding materially proper to the mind and condemn oneself to describing knowledge with with its model^there is an abyss between the conditions and mode the mind left out, in other words, the interdiction of of any penetration ** thought and the condition and mode of things. — into what is knowledge. This comment having been here made once But it also signifies that there is between the thing and the thought, and for all, we can pursue our proper object without tripping over thought that is in act, an incomparably deeper unity than words and without fear of using language that between which, like all metaphysical a model and its copy. For if things were modified or in terms, only refers to space metaphorically). some way changed, I do not say in /Things their conditions, their manner ofexistence, but in have two different forms of esse, two differing planes of exis their rightful constituents, in what they are, by sensation /tence: their rightful existence by which or intellection, they act and hold themselves there could be neither truth nor knowledge, I apart from and the theoretician of nothingness, and the existence which they take on in the knowledge could not even begin to lift a finger in explanation, for in / apprehension of the soul, so as to be known. In order to enter into the that sense case he would have only two, equally impossible resources: of sight the bindweed and the apple either have to leave off that matter by to say knowledge implies a relation with things but one which de- which they subsist; in order to enter into the intelligence and the forms them and so they can never be known; that t reason, they lay by or knowledge im- their individuality. In the inward world of our plies intelligence no relation with things, and that it is an expansion of absolute \ there are a multitude of distinct aspects or concepts of thought which has only itself \thmgs which in the for object, a position incompatible with world of nature exist in an undivided state, and the fact of error which lead and that of negative ideas, and which moreover ap- m one world a life wholly , different from that of the other., pears self-refuting, 1 since one can only affirm that knowledge itself is

quknun^kveniturincsse.dicuinbimeati. this or that in holding it distinct . . . Secundum quod comparator ad from the act by which one thinks. It • hab qU°d bsit SGd has * ' U0d sit d been very well 2 " 1 - ™" au«m quod ad demonstrated in England and in America that the " "IT ^ ZS n0t 111 aCCidentis ex hoc uod est 2™' Cp. op. cit. p. 51; cp. pp. 76, 88, 106, 109): as if 'to verify" were Inflexions sur 1'intelligence, p. 24; de Tonque'dcc, J. op. tit. According to the re- something other than 'to recognise as true', for to define the truth by verification is a searches of P. Muckle, this celebrated definition does not come from Isaac Israeli, the non-sense. Similarly Husserl, at the instance ofDescartes, takes obviousness as a charac- Jewish doctor and philosopher, who lived in Egypt between 845 and 940, to whose teristic ofthe object of thought (cogitatum) taken as separated from the thing, instead Definitiomlus St. Thomas attributes it. Transmitted by it must ot some compiler or other, coming from the thing itself (ens intelligible) as it is objectified in the mind as the be regarded as being much older and was in any case prepared for by Aristotle. object ofjudgment. io 8 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL ] KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 109 I or possible) existence—or in more exact terms, when the identification or not, we have no other means in each operated it be so case of knowing than 1 by the mind between die two terms of a proposition corres- the resolution of our thought into the immediate assertion of sensible ponds to an identity in the thing, then the mind 1 is true. And whethe experience and the first principles of the intelligence, where our know- 'It is a well-known thomist intuitively thesis that the intelligence is only ledge, being and immediately ruled by what is, cannot possessed of troth be only says true or false, in the judgment. A commentary on the passages where St' false. Thomas treats this question, in particular on the classic passage ofthe De Veritate i o_! But what is important for the moment in these Veritas remarks is to keep holct^ est in intellect* et in sensu, licet non eoiem modo. In intellect enim est sicut consc'qm, actum intellcctus et sicut cognita per intelkctim; of the fact that truth is grasped in relation to the (actual or possible)/ consequitur namque intellectus operatiLm secundum quodjudicium intellectus est de re secundum quod est: cognoscitur autem ah intellect secundum quod intellectus in the second act by express reflection, reficctitur supra actum suum, non solum known as the nature of the habitus (ibid. 10, secundum cognoscit actum 9) suum, sed secundum from which the act proceeds, and the very quod cognoscit proportionem ejus ad rem: quod existence of the soul (ibid. 10, 8). quidem cognosci non potest ms, cognita natura following points ipsiusactus; quae cognosci non potest, nisi The two should be carefully observed. 1. Ifthe nature ofthe act, of cognoscatur natura principiiactivi quod est ipse the habitus and the is intellectus, in cujus natura est ut rebus conformetur; potency so known, at the same time as their existence, by express unde secundum hoc cognoscit vmtatm intellectus reflection and immediate experience, it is precisely quod supra seipsum reficctitur'—will be and uniquely in so far as the act is found in L Noel (op cit chap v), andj. specified by the object and the degree de Tonqucdec (op. cit. chap. vi). Cp. also to which the habitus and the potency (Slid, i, 9: M.-D. Roland-Gosselin 'Sur theone are principles less h thomiste de la vente\ tev. des 10, 9) more or proximate to the act and essentially ordinated to it. sciences phil. et thiol, April 1921, and R Garngou-Lagrange, art. cit. (This is a question of an experience ofmy act, my habitus, my intellect, ofmy mind, in their concrete Here I should like to recall and particularise certain singularity.) Vide De Veritate, 10, 9. points which seem to me speci- alty important. 2. My soul, on the contrary is Conformity to the real ('logically true') not made known to me by this concrete ex- is the Wological truth' it- self for perience and the senses and the intelligence in act. express reflection, either in regard to its existence or its nature, • All true knowledge is a knowing of the truth. because Simple apprehension is only true in it is not a proximate and operating principle, but only the radical and this sense. But truth is only possessed as such it substantial one when is itself known, and it is only of these operations, and because its essence is not specified by them. known by thejudgment where the mind, in giv- * 7 ing its assent to the mental presentation (Hid.) which has been constructed for this end, pro- nounces on a thing and declares that One could add that this implicit and living, not yet express, reflection, by which, it is so, ita est. 'Quandojudical rem ita se habere, before any sicut est forma quam de re apprehendit, logical or critical reflection, the mind in the judgment knows in actu exer- tunc primo cognoscit et dicit verum. Et hoc cito that tacit componendo et dividendo. it is true, or in conformity with reality—that it is by it also (more than by the Nam in omni propositione aliquam formam signi- simple iicatam per praedicarum, vel applicat apprehension of the objects of concepts, where nevertheless already it becomes alicui rei significatae per subjectum, vel removct intelligible abea. (Sum.theol.i, in act to itself) that it knows in embryo, pre-consciously, before all intro- 16,2. Cp.De Veritate, 1,3.) spective By the simple fact that the mind so reflection, the existence of the thinking self, which only becomes the object of pronounces on what is, there is here a reflection in actu effective hereto by the mind on itself knowledge (in a second act) with express reflection. Thus it is in judging of and on its proper conformity with the thing ('super things that ipsam sirmhtuduiem reflection-, we have at once an implicit experience of the truth ofthe mind, and the still cognoscendo et dijudicando ipsam', In Met., book iv. lect hidden or 4). This reflection is not yet pre-conscious germ, the initium of the experience of ourselves. This is why a logical or critical reflection (cp. Ferrariensis, In Contra in Lent., i, any reading of i9) where the mind knows the passage (De Veritate, 10, 8) where St. Thomas explains how each in actu signato its act and its concept a new act by nas and a new reflex) actual knowledge concept, it is only of the existence of the soul by (express) reflection on its opera- a 'taking in hand' of itself by the mind, which is tions, in none other than the act judging particular on its acts of intellection, he implies, I am convinced, by the latter of itself, in such a way that Cajetan can define the judg- ment Mia cogmtw not only simple quae sui ipsius conformitatem apprehension, but also and most of all thejudgment, the act of intellec- cum re cognoscit (In 1, 16,2). This is very dearly tion a. pointed out by St. Thomas achievement. Here is this capital text: 'Quantum ad actualem cognitionem, qua himselfin the precious elucidations ofthe commen- tary acquis in lerxnerm., book considcrat se in actu animam habere, sic dico, quod anima cognoscitur per actos 1 lect. 3, n. 9: 'Cognosces habitudinem autem pracdictam suos. (conforms In hoc enim aliquis suae ad rem) nihil est percipit se animam habere, et vivere, et esse, quod percipit se aliud quamjudicare ita esse in re vel non esse; quod est entire et componere et dmdere; et ideo lntelligere, et alia hujusmodi vitae opera exercere; unde dicit Philosophus in intellectus non cognoscit veritatem, nisi componen- do vel "c dividendo per - ca Scntimus autem inteltigimus quoniam intelligimus; suum judicium.' _ ( P- 9): qttoniam sentimus; et e quia K hoc sentimus, intelligimus quoniam sumus. Nullus autem percipit se intelligere nisi huma b Ae a C "y « ( P- P- "7- ** 3) tni^i ^ f C P^y W*. C uc"^ aliquid ^ "!,. 1 intelligit: quia prius est intelligere aliquid quam intelligere se in-

no THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM III ' existence contained by the thing: verum sequitur esse remm* value in this notion of a thing ofwhich we have madcuse up to And a W then is the problem at once confronts us. question is all the important it is now in this analysis? This more in that notable contemporary attempts, in England and THING AND OBJECT there that die most Germany, to overcome the dangers of idealism have alike broken down. If the preceding analysis is correct, we see that the same thing can bc The moderns, generally speaking, take the object as pure object, de- found at one and the same time in the world of nature, where it exists tached in itself from any thing where it could exist, i.e., from existence and, when it is known, \x\ the world of the soul or of thought; and independent of my cogito, posited in itself before my act of thought and it is necessary for us to distinguish the thing as thing, existing or able to independent of it: existence which one may call in this sense extra- exist by itself, and the tiling as object, 2 set before the faculty of know- mental, without tliis 'externality' having the least spatial implication, or ledge and made present to it. The objects as such of our intelligence arc could also be called pre-mental, i.e. previous to the knowledge abstracted which from actual existence and only hold in themselves a possible which we have of it, or again, metalogical, not in the sense that to know existence; on the contrary, the objects as such of our senses denote an it it is necessary to repudiate logic or to make use of another logic than existence in act and grasped ut exercita, held in the present if it is ques- logic, but in the sense by which it does not belong to the sphere of tion of the objects of external sense, without die determinations of logic or of the rightful constituents of the life of the reason, to the tirne^ (or in uncertain time) for those of the imagination, belonging sphere of the known as known, but is 'beyond' that sphere. It is essential to to die past in the case of the objects ofmemory. The of modern add that in speaking of extra-mental existence I am not only thinking uoetics began when the scholastics of the decadence, and Descartes of actual existence but also and first of all of possible existence, for our Mowing them, separated the object and die thing; the thing thus be- intellect, in the simple act of apprehension, abstracts from existence in coming doubly problematic in" its concealment behind the object. What act, and in its judgments does not only judge of what exists, but also of ^St Thomas, De Veritate, i, i, 3, sed contra. Cp. In I Sent. i. 19, q . j, a. 1, also In what might or might not exist, and of the rightful necessities inherent ISoet. de Thfi., q. 5, a. 3. 1 The word in essences, first all to the possibly real that 'object' is taken here in the strictest so that it is of with regard scholastic sense (formal object). It is superfluous to add that in current modern language it has a very different meaning, it 'justifies itself', or better, confirms itself or makes explicit to itself tne opposition between objective and subjective having finally achieved the transference to the object of all the values proper 'Cp. R. art. cit. son existence et sa nature, th edit. 'Esscntiac to the 'thing' or 'the real'. To-day, English nec- Garrigou-Lagrange, ; Dieu, 5 reanst philosophy and German rerum antequam existant sunt entia realia, ut ens reale distinguitur contra jictitium, non phenomenology have given back to the word object some of its authentic meaning. tamen ut distinguitur contra non existens in actu, secundum distinctionem Cajetani in As to die word, thing, it is taken I. de Entia et Essentia, c. iv, 6.' Bannez, In Sum. theol., i, 10, 3 herein the widest possible sense. If first of all it is q. taken as meaning the sensible and visible I have already noted that die irrefragable certainty ofthe principle of identity (p. 93) thing' which is naturally found by our in- telligence (for ; m ideas all originate in which is the first law metalogical being before that of logic, is included in the first the senses) as the simplest paradigm of reality, it of also applies to all reality, of whatsoever motion ofthe intellect's self-consciousness. In fact it is in an actual (and contingent) exis- kind, spiritual or corporeal, to all actually or possibly posited or able to be posited tence grasped it Cajetan, In II Anal., ii, that the intellect data existing in independence ofthe mind. by thanks to the senses (cp. 13) It is because the existence in act perceives, by virtue its this necessary law of all possible being. From this denoted by them is not determined as to time that of proper activity, toe objects presented by the point of view, and discriminate between the problem of the imagination are either so integrated into sensation that granting that we sharply tiiey merely complete it and thus existence of the external the critique of sensation, and that of become one with the objecfperceived, or are entirely world, which belongs to displaced by sensaaon and the flux purely possible extra-mental belongs to the critique of intellectual know- of the present and relegated to the unreal. When being, which tiu reduction does not take place, ledge, one can say with (Rev. nio-scol, Nov. 193 1): 'La donnee re*elle e'est they may themselves be taken for real objects, or at L. Noel least nungle an illusory la intelligible. m interpretation donnee sensible,* which is in fact and in the concrete at the same time (cp. P. Qcercy, Etudes sur Vhallucination, Paris, 7 SCnSe f In the concrete complex of our cognitive operations, the senses and the intellect work * ° ie Prcsent » weakel*d as the result ofa defect in Zthe5™Wsynthetic activity r^ with an ofthe consciousness, together; our direct knowledge sensory perception interpenetrated it is sensation which takes on an unreal aspect. starts from is necessary intellection not yet explicidy conscious of itself. But for critical reflection it 112 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 113 reflectively the value of intellectual knowledge, whence the said that this is fundamentally critique of It must be erroneous: philosophical re- knowledge must primarily proceed. It is because of their to reconstitute misunder- flection has neither the thing apart from the object as a standing of this fundamental point, because they confound the possibly necessary hypothesis, nor to suppress the thing as a superfluous hypo- real with rational being and only recognise the actual as real, that the thesis, which is a contradiction in itself, but to affirm the fact that the noetics ofso many modern writers go astray from die outset. thing n given with and by the object, and indeed that it is absurd to wish Then, the object being taken as pure object separated this from all that is to separate them. On point a truly critical critique of knowledge, extra-mental or metalogical even if it is recognised — that the objects of one which is entirely faithful to the immediate stuff" of reflective intui- the senses and of the intellect, having as such their rightful and irredu- tion, is in accord with commonsense in its apologia for the thing. In cible value, their constitution, consistency or intrinsic resistance, are not thomist language, the thing is the 'material object' of the senses and the subjective modifications or products of thought, but typical struc- intellect, while what I have here called the object (i.e. on one hand, tures given by intuition, the question presents itself of knowing how to colouring, sonority, cold, heat, etc., and on the other, the intelligible explain the stable connections and internal regularities exhibited by these quid) is its 'formal object': both the material and the formal object being pure objects: and the idea that they are distributed in discontinuous attained at once and indivisibly by the same perception. groups because they are aspects (rightly it would be better to say 'in- If the word thing appears suspect as belonging already to common spects') or elements of cognisability of certain ontological nuclei called speech, nothing prevents our adoption ofa vocabulary more in confor- things, capable of extra-mental existence. The idea that the law of con- mity with the habits of modern science, in odier words, more artificial nection between the different images which our eyes perceive in looking and more didactic, but which also shows a greater desire to guard against at this table from various points ofview is explained by the existence ofa die uncritical preconceptions of common acceptance. I shall therefore thing which is precisely this table, appears simply as one explanatory say, bowing down in my turn before thejargon of pedantry, that as the hypothesis among a crowd of others, equally possible. Some, indeed, object is correlative to a knowing subject, to an ontological 'for itself' to hold with Bertrand Russell and A. H. Whitehead that by the principle which it corresponds, which by reflection on its acts of thought per- of economy (Occam's razor) ceives it is better to pass by this hypothesis, immediately, not, as Descartes thought, its rightful essence, but which results, righdy the speaking, in a form of Leibnitzianism heroically fact of its rightful existence, and which we may call the cis-objective pushed to the absolute, in subject, it the passing over of all subjective or material is also, not correlative to, but inseparable from (because it causality and the reduction is itself) of reality to a cloud of predicates without an ontological 'for itself' which precisely takes on the name subjects flying about in of the unbounded air and which we endeavour to con- object in so far as it is present to thought, and which we nect up widi each may other by purely formal laws. Others, like E. Husserl, call the objectiviable or transobjective subject, not certainly in as endeavour to re-absorb die thing in itself and its existcntiality into much as it is hidden behind the object, but, on the contrary, in the transcendental subjectivity, it up degree one of whose functions will be to set to which it is itself grasped as object, and that it nevertheless within itself: which in constitutes is only another way of suppressing the diing an irreducible in which the possibility of new objects to be any authentic sense of the and grasped word, the thing which is extramental remains always open (for it can give rise to an indefinite se- metalogical. quence of 1 necessary and contingent truths). The transobjective is not to consider the primary ana- datum in itself (as detached by psychological and logical lysis) apart from intellectual with I should like perception at stick, I said {cp. p. 9S) to quote here the just a frequent and this is why very comments ofJ. de Tonquddec on R. Garngou-Lagrange, prin- sophism, that the consciousness of the unbreakable certitude of the which Fonsegrive has expressed in a characteristic formula. Fonsegrive has ciple ofidentity as the law (philosophical) "tten: The o( ^possible being makes a part of that first concept of an object which should be at the same time in itself and an act ofconsciousness which jeet of is the point ofdeparture for the critique. knowledge is clcarly.contradictory. ... For to say object ofknowledge is the —

H4 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM "5

an unfigurable field of the unknown, which withdraws in the core of that reflection in which it takes cognisance of its degree lect in the very to which new objects are grasped, but that ofknown subjects indefinitely movement towards its object. This apprehension of being is absolutely as objects. Cis-objective or transobjective, the in all our other intellectual apprehensions. knowablc subject is primary and is implied Hence attained purely as such; but it is precisely tins (a rational, not real being) can never which is attained an object incapable of existing well be 1 consists as object; the process of knowledge in making ic into an conceived, but on condition of its being referred to being, or to objects

object, capable of existing, i.e. transobjective (possible) subjects which the Tli at it is so, every act of (intellectually conscious) knowing tells us, mind makes into objects, and at the instance of which this object is

so that if we admit that the mind really attains an object valid in itself conceived, and without which it could not be built up by the intellect. deal, also admit, in with which it can we must and die same degree, that If the notion of being can be extended to what neither exists nor can

it attains a (possible or actual) thing, a transobjective subject which is one exist except in the mind it is by an afterthought and on further con-

with this object (or which is the ground or occasion of it, if the latter is sideration, by a secondary improper use of this primary notion, which

a rational not real being). Being in effect (the being contained in sens- makes it signify—conceived as it is in the way of being—exacdy that 2 ible things) is the first object attained by our intelligence. And what is which is not.

meant by this name of being, if not what exists or can exist; and what is Advancing further in this corrective analysis of the immediate con-

first and immediately presented by this to the intellect, except that it tent of knowledge it can be said that, in the very order of sensitive

exists or can exist in itself or outside the mind? It is sufficient for knowledge, the content of a sensory perception is not only some sen-

each one ofus to think for himself to experience for ourself the absolute sible quality or some stimulation, but rather—in so far as what belongs

impossibility of the intellect's thinking of the principle of identity to a non-intellectual plane of knowledge can be described in intellec-

without positing (at least possible) extramental being, of which this tual terms some thing impinges on us as an extensive field ofdetermined

first is ex- of all axioms expresses the bearing. A primary object which , sensory-affective awareness, and so excites our motor-functions. The 3 tramental intelligible being without which nothing is intelligible, behaviour ofanimals can only be explained if, even at the lowest stages,

there is the inescapable datum of fact which imposes itself on the intel- the stimuli received are not only individualised in the subject in an act 1 of sensation, but are still more individualised on the side of the object, it is same as to say known. . . . But it is entirely evident that the known, in as much as in the animal. known, is not in itself in the degree to which it is known.' (Essais sur la connaissance, p. something at once sensory and stimulating perceived by

1 dc Tonquijdec proves only one 86). J. rightly replies: This entirely formal argument Ascending the zoological scale, we see this something—which as known thing: that the fact of being is itself different from that of being known. But that the by sensation itself is something purely indeterminate underlying sen- one is not the other docs not result in the exclusion of the one by the other. The con- sory distinguishing it- in perception—become determined, solidified, and cepts are different, but it is not 'entirely evident' that they cannot be realised together the same being. By this same pitting against one another of abstractions one could self more and more through the synergy of all the external and internal quite as well prove that 'the round and shining concept' of a moon at once senses and by the effect, it may be of hereditary instinctive estimations, 'is clearly contradictory' because the moon is not round in so much as it is shining. it may be of individual experience. dog does not only know visual, the A (J. de Tonquddcc, op. cit.) The known as known defines the sphere of logic; audible, etc., variables associated in a certain way, he knows his master known, or rather the knowablc, as extramental being defines the sphere of the real. he has on, —without the power ofsaying so to himselfor of knowing why; According as it attains itself by reflection on its own acts as in the case ofmen, or sub- on the similarity, primarily and above all, another object, as is the case with angels, the cis-objective sensitive plane, thanks to innumerable associations of ject is also the transobjective. something analogous to the knowledge—this time given by the intel- *Cp. Cajetan, In de ente et essentia, q.r. lect—which we have of this thing, that transobjective subject which we 3 J Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, art. cit. Cp. , Die 'Seek' als elementarer Naturfactor, Leipzig, 1003. OF RATIONAL n6 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 117 1 master. And if the sheep flies from the wolf, it is call his not, as St. consciousness ineluctably relies when in search of the original type cor- object thus perceived has Thomas said, that the coloured wounded its re- responding to the notion of actual existence, which is undiscoverable tina, but that it sees in it 'its natural enemy'. the prime origin and significance apart from of this notion. It is under All of which presupposes that from the first the external senses have the compulsion of the evidence of the intuitions of the senses that the not only their 'proper communicated to the animal sensibility' and at mind is led to make its primaryjudgments on existence. As to the ani- sensibilities' the same time the 'general such as extension, but also, in a mal, if it lacks this notion, the relaxation of its motor-functions by sen- wholly implicit and potential state—indiscernible by the senses them- desire sation, the thrill of or of aversion which makes it run to or fly the selves—a thing ofwhich the proper object of the senses is an aspect. The object so sensibly perceived, at least gives to it its practical equivalent, ancients, assigning a reasonfor this fact, explained that theperceptive act of the value and alike attests of the existential certitude (not known as the external senses issues in the thing itselfor ends with the thingitself, ter- such) with which the action of the senses is impregnated. minate act rem, and that in the very degree to which"the thing existsoutside If the existence in act ofa thing actually acting is thus implied by sen-) the knower, i.e. in the degree to which it exercises hie et nunc an effective sensation, the at least possible existence of a possible thing, of a possible/ action on the sensory organs ofthe knower. And it is with regard to the transobjective subject, is equally implied by intellectual knowledge! thing so attained diat they spoke of a.judicium sensus, by which the senses On the one hand, in effect, every predicate signifies not only such intel- 2 at once adhere to the object perceived as an existing reality, and which is ligible determination, but that which had such, determination; the simplest 3 capable ofdeceiving us, when affected by the thing otherwise than as it is. intellectual apprehension, in perceiving what I call 'triangular' or 'conic' Existence is not a sensible object per se but, though the senses are in- or 'musician* or 'philosopher', perceives some (possible) thing which is capable of showing or 'discovering' existence as such, what the intellect given to it as an object under the formal aspects in question. On the other discovers (thanks precisely to the perception of the senses) and what it hand, intellectual knowledge is above all achieved in judgment, and calls to itself existence—existence not only possible, but in act—is what is ajudgment ifnot the act by which the mind declares the identity nevertheless attained by it from the fact, being rooted in its object. The between a predicate and a subject in the thing or outside the mind which analysis of consciousness attests this irrefutably: it is on what is given by differ in the notion, or in their intramental existence? For all veritable the that external senses (long before the reflex data ofany possible cogito) judgment identifies two terms notionally different, sunt idem re seu sub- x in jecto, diverse On animal knowledge and on the difference between grasping a conceptual object rationed the notion of 'the whole' is formally other than the itself (which is proper to the intellect) and that sensory complex in which this object is notion 'greater than die part', the notion 'Mr. Bernard Shaw' is for- realised, see the important Caliicr dephiloso- comments by Roland Dalbicz in the 4th mally other than that of 'dramatic author'; and nevertheless phie de la nature, Paris, 1930. when I judge that 'Mr. 2 Bernard Shaw is a dramatic author', or that 'the whole Cp. St. Thomas, In III Sent, dist. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol. r. 'Intellcctus noster dctcrmina- is greater tur his quae than die part', I posit in actual existence a diing ad assenriendum ex praesentia intcUigibilis . . . ct hoc quidem contingit in or object of statim determinaror thought, . . . intelligibilia fiunt, sicut sunt prima principia; ct similiter 'Bernard Shaw' and an object of thought 'dramatic author' judicium sensitivae partis ex hoc quod sensible subjacet sensibus.' Sec also the text from De as identical, and that the possible existence of a thing or object of Potcntia, quoted on p. 143 (note). thought whole' and the object ofthought 'greater than a part' are iden- 8 drinks Thus the tongue of a fever patient, covered with a bitter coating, finds sweet tical. I accomplish, in the depth of my thought, with my noemata an sour. 'Per hoc quod sensus ita nuntiant sicut afficiuntur, sequitur quod non decipiamur operation inter- which only makes sense it relates injudicio quo judkamus nos scntire aliquid. Sed ex eo quod sensus alitcr amcirur because to the way in which ex hoc (at least in dum quam res sit, sequitur quod nuntiet nobis aliquando rem aliter quam sit. Et possibility) they exist outside my thought. The proper func- SeC fallimur per sensum circa rem, non circa ipsum sentirc.' (Sum. theol., i, 17. 2. ^- *• J St. Thomas, In I Sent., dist. 4, q. 2, a. 1; Sum. theol, i, 13, 12. Cp. Sum. tfieol.iii, id, the very excellent commentary on this text op. (it) by J. de Tonquc'dec, l ad. < « 1; Contra Gent., i, 36: John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil log. ii, P. q. j, a. 2. )

CRITICAL REALISM Ii8 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 119

which the simple apprehension (as grasping in it its tion of the judgment is thus to make the mind progress from the plane subject the unity simple object significant of thought) disunited. This unity cannot begin in of simple essence, or of die for thought, to that differing objects (actually or possibly) the contrary the mind breaks it in order to fulfil it of the thing or subject containing existence, and of the mind, since on outside the mind, in (actual or possible) exis- which the thought-objects predicate and subject are the intelligible as- anew. It commences 1 far as it is held in (exercita) is outside the order of pects. If we do not admit that the objects of thought are aspects ('in- tence, which in so or apprehension.1 Finally, in order that the judg- spects') of actual or possible things; that each of them contains, if I may simple representation it is necessary that every object posited be- put it so, an ontological or metalogical charge, the rightful function of ment should so take place unintelligible. analysis intellectual should be poshed as able to exist outside the mind (or, if I thejudgment becomes The of know- fore the mind ratwnis, as if it could exist outside the mind); in / ledge thus gives us the same fundamental evidence in favour of the it is a question of an ens intellectual perception, K_thingsx transobjective subject as that ofsensitive knowledge. other words, it is necessary that our intuition or multiplicity unresolvable 'simple In anodier sense than Lask's one can say with him diat everyjudgment far from confronting us with a of

supposes an 'unbroken harmony' (on the side of the thing) and— natures', should confront us with an object found everywhere and every- worked by the judgment itself—'a reconciliation after conflict'.2 The where varying, which is being itself, and in which all our notions are re-

'embrace' preceding that 'condition of tearing apart' which it is the solved without prejudice to the irreducibility of essences. Under these

function of the judgment to 'conquer*, is in the thing, in the given conditions judgment is possible, that is, as a logical movement which in transobjective subject.3 The judgment restores to the transobjective comes from simple apprehension (itself in concrete, vitally ordinated to the judgment); 1Thcnotioaofthejudgmenthas beeninobscurity since Descartes. The Cartesian theory otherwise he does not sufficiently distinguish the simple apprehension orjudicative ap- senses, definitely results in making the judgment consist in an act of the will consenting to a prehension (which is resolved it may be in the experimental intuition of the or quod immediately attained by the mind (in idea) as an object conforming to its double maybe the intellectual intuition offirst principles).

(the real quod so ideated). One would have to turn a Cartesian despite oneself to see in that 'Existence is attained and brought to the mind by simple apprehension not in die judgment (as the tendency of certain contemporary scholastics seems to allow) a degree to which it is held or may be held (existentia ut exercita) by a subject, but in the comparison between the mental word and the object ofthought, and an affirmation of a certain degree to which it is itself conceivable per modum quidditatis, as constituting this conformity. On the contrary, what is declared to be is that object (predicate) at- intelligible object, a certain (existentia ut signijicata). It is only in the second tained in the mental word. The text already cited on p. 108 from the Commentary on the the ut exercita, as held. (Cp. Cajetan, In Sum. theol, i, 2, r; 82, 3). We should note that Metaphysics does not mean that in thejudgment the mind only decides that the concept operation ofthe mind (composition and division), and in thejudgment that it is known itself is true or is conformed to the thing; but rather that it knows in actu exercito that it existence; it af- judgment, is not content with the representation or apprehension of ('Ex hoc conformed to the thing, i.e. possessed in itselfthe similitude ofthe thing known. the mind the firms it, it projects into it as it is effected or able to be effected outside cognidonern. quod cognoscens habet similitudinem rei cognitae, dicitur habere veram intelligence, when conceptual objects apprehended by the mind; in other words, the

2 i sa m^ act ofexistence E. Lask, Die Lehre von Urtheil (cited by Gurvitch, op. cit.). tjudges, lives out intentionally itself, by an act proper to it, that which mav kc said that even 8 the the dibgexeitisisi^^T^^ And it is there that it is seen. In fact the mind does not approach from outside in the subject is known as subject, that is, in- real. very act ofjudgment the transobjective 'distant and isolated' concepts deTonque'dec, cit.) would apply to the (J. op. which he tentionally subject.) grasps in lived by the mind in its function of In throwing itself on the thing in the endeavour to penetrate it, it sees and order is introduced, which preparation It is here that a new, a capital element of the intellectual it both a diversity of conceptual objects into which it divides it (this is the concerns judgment is called by St. Thomas, objects the esse rerum, and by reason ofwhich the of the judgment, as it issues from simple apprehension) and the unity of these the cognitionis.' Sum. theol, ii-ii, assents, achievement of knowledge ^judicium est compktivum (which it elucidates to itself in the construction of a statement to which it but implicit reflection where- of per- 183, 2). And this in itself presupposes the not expressed, which is the judgment). I would point out here what in eyes is an error my by conformity with the the mind, when it judges, knows in actu exercito its rightful spective in the otherwise penetrating pages which de Tonqu

the order of the purely rational (or, in modern terms, a substitute objici for esse, priori) pro_ make an abstraction of being, or these illusions gresses from the one to the other. It is not on 'the unity of transcenden- have no more power to hold us. tal apperception' but that (of a simple analogy or proportionality) of Because the primary datum of thought is being it is impossible to transcendental being on which the possibility of the separated from ontological stuff holding or cap- judgment is think of a pure object 1 based. Whether it bears on rational or factual truths, on the 'ideal' or able ofholding existence in itself, of a pure object separated from being the (actual) 'real', it is thus irresistibly realist. object sensation or intellection is a deter- in andfor itself, ofwhich the of And what is it then that thought wishes to 1 observe ifnot the thing, the mination or an aspect. If this object is not an aspect of a thing known, of transobjective subject in all its ontological richness, in the 2 the thing infinity of its a transobjective subject, then it must become an aspect of objectifiable reserves? pure object (if a A such notion were conceivable) which knows: each of the great systems of idealism have endeavoured at bringwith it nothing b ut itself would andhaving once served and no more any price to escape from this alternative, and they have failed. Husser- thought could but turn the leaves the of objective world like a book of Hanphenomenology likewise fails: it couldbe shown thatwhen, by means pictures. the idle If Schelerian idea of a 'perspectivism' of the world of of an ill-conducted abstraction which acts like a separation, it claims to essences has a foundation, it is in the degree to which that world rises escape any (metalogical) extramental subject, what it does shows up a world of things or of subjects, from in which—so that they may each what it says, and it only makes use of his 'I-pole' and the various pro- considered in their rightful be essence, or in the relations which mutually gressively reconstituted stages of his 'objective world' in th inking de- support them—new objects of thought are inexhaustibly discoverable spite itself (while all the time rejecting any such thought), of the former

directions its as the of attention succeed one another in the human mind. as a transobjective subject and the latter as a cis-objective subject existing

Indeed the phenomenalist notion of a pure object—a notion from outside the apprehension ofthe mind. And when it claims to reconstitute which neither the neo-realism of Russell and Whitehead nor German the one or the other in the depth of the transcendental ego and the 'uni- phenomenology has 3 succeeded in breaking free—appears as rightly in- versal self-consciousness' it is only persuaded of its success by recourse conceivable. The unforgivable ambiguity from which it suffers arises to a conjuring-trick, which consists in making use of transcendental be- the fact that, from in order to conceive it, it is necessary at one and the ing taken in all its native fullness to reduce it to one of its modalites (to same time to posit the idea of being (from the instant that one thinks of being in thought)—in other words, by drawing out of extramental being, object) an and to reject it (the moment one thinks of a pure object). The which has been once and for all 'put in parentheses', the reality and to and fro between the two terms of this contradiction deludes the mind existence in which the self and these others are muffled up, to which at with the sense of conceiving this entirely imaginary notion; a victim the same time all 'real' or 'existent' being is refused, if not in and by here its of natural propensity for being, that apprehension of being the intentional life of the consciousness, yet in their dependence on the which aids the 4 deceiving idea of its capacity to think that which rejects transcendental subjectivity and as inseparable from it. both this apprehension and all thought. More, by a redoubled equivo- Let it be stated here once and for all: there is no way of 'transcending' cation, being, as though it could itself make an abstraction existence, J latter of 0r which serves as the basis or occasion for the object ofintellection, when the comes to the point ofgiving its name to this pure object which makes an is a rational not real being. BOr, means of such abstraction of it, and the philosopher at all cost directs his meditation in the case of a rational not real being, a mental work made by aspects of tilings. towards the mirage of an 'ontology' devoid of being. As soon as it is 3 Cp. E. Husserl, Meditations cartisiennes, 4th and 5th meditations. understood that this notion of the should pure object demands that one 4 'Every imaginable meaning or being, whether called immanent or transcendent, ^Quot modis praedicatio v, fit, tot modis ens dicitur,' St. Thomas, In Metaph., book makes part of the domain of transcendental subjectivity, in so far as it constitutes all lect.o. meaning and being,' (E. Husserl, op. cit.). 122 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRmCAL REALISM 123

realism and idealism; no higher position which surpassess and recon- This fundamental misunderstanding is bound up with the pheno- there is only a choice between them, 1 ciles them: as between good and menological eVoxv hi so far as it 'puts in parentheses' the whole evil. Any realism which makes accommodation separates the with Descartes and register ofextramental existence andthus object (the essence- Kant will one day find that it is false to its name. phenomenon) from the thing—an irroxq of which it must be said that,

the cartesian doubt, it would be legitimate ut signifcata, as envis- 1 like a digression of phenomenology and the Cartesian Meditations aged eventuality—recognised as impossible—but which implies a con- It is curious to observe that the origin of the phenomenological tradiction utexerdta, as really lived and experienced. In demanding from movement lies in a form ofactivation ofpost-kantian philosophy by con- the outset, by an imposed postulate whose conditions have not been tact with the aristotelian and scholastic elements transmitted by Bren- critically examined, that one should livingly put extramental being 'out tano: the notions of the Wesenschau and intentionality clearly show of bounds', the possibility is practically and by presupposition admitted this influence. But from the beginning there is a complete deviation in of stopping thought short at a pure object-phenomenon, i.e. ofthinking the fact that reflex activity (though clearly recognised as such) has been is seen that the cartes- of being while refusing to think of it as being. It not utilised as ifit were primary: it is taken as a basis for immediate a priori ian assertion, according to which, in order to build up a philosophy radi- perception, as though reflection could, in returning on its direct opera- 2 cally free of 'preconceptions' not based on reason, the mind must first tions and on their already apprehended object, fashion for itself from of all cast out in actu exercito every certitude concerned with extramen- the latter an object attained before it, more immediately attained tal being, is itself a pre-judgment born from a naively material con- (and finally substitute itself for it), and betake itself to the discovery of ception of the life of the mind: for to allow nothing to enter into a those evidences which as 'primary in themselves' surpass 'all other con- material recipient which has not previously been verified it is essential 2 ceivable evidences'; as though reflex observation, whose proper busi- first of all to empty the receiver of all content; but, since the power of ness is purely critical, could become constituting and constructive.3 auto-intellection and auto-criticism, of a complete return upon itself, is There lies the irp&Tov fcvSos ofphenomenology. the privilege of the mind, the latter has no need to empty itself in reality *It is phenomenology as seen by E. Husserl which is in question here. The pheno- of its certainties in order to critically verify them: exactly that of which menological movement in Germany has been highly complex, and it would be a mis- it is and remains really certain in actu exercito it can ideally represent to take to think of Husserl as its sole initiator. Without speaking of the divergent ten- dencies attached to the name of , and to-day to those of Nicolai Hart- itself in doubting of it, in order to realise whether such a doubt is pos-

mann and , etc., there is the school, which does not follow Munich sible, and it is only by such a suspension ofjudgment, signified, not lived, Husserl's nec-idealism, and of which it is difficult to appreciate the full importance as that it is possible to make critical proof of the primary truths. It is long as the teaching ofProf. Alexander Pfander has not been published in any complete form (cp. other itself, and the only 'novelty' is the A. Pfander, Logik, Halle, 1929). The object ofmy study being what it is, it is than the critical reflection of the mind on sufficient assigning first period of phenomen- here to concentrate on that highly significant aspect—which is the best known to it of an impossible task of construction. The in — ology (the this point of view much exhibited by E. Husserl. But it must be clearly remembered that the con- description of the cogitata as such) presents from struc- sideration here is thus limited. greater interest than the second (the wholly artificial reconstitution of 'aprioric 2 tures' of E. Husserl, op. cit. universal reality). sceptics, used here 'This need ^Suspension ofjudgment' is the phrase ofPyrrho and the ancient to constitute and construct in the heart of the reflective process is marked on nearly in a methodological sense. every page ofthe Meditations earthiennes. 2 This is why the lt is in starting confirms (justifies') to itself the veracity phenomenology regards itself as all philosophy, and as replacing from this that it reflectively 'naive ofthe world. So that to pose, ontology' ofthe older metaphysics. On the other hand, in my opinion what can senses and its own certitude of the existence ofthe sensible be retained—after as is so intellectual knowledge by bringing a process ofcareful straining—ofphenomenology and 'the discoveries* often done, the problem of the bearing of being in which it glories The into question, first of all possible extramental belongs only to the reflective and critical parts of philosophy. as real being other than the ego, not non-sense. 'transcendental experience' nothing but only the existence (in act) ofthe sensible world, is a which it disengages is, in what is authentic in it, or non-existence CRITICAL REALISM 124 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 125

transparent in a given direction, ofseeing objects in its own depth, because the mind is capable of a perfect return being upon itself that it can above all that property of thought, the privilege of its immaterial undertake a critical (reflex) description of its cogitata as cogitata, without it is which being in itself and outside the mind, i.e. entirely inde- any need to practise the eiroxq ofHusserl. nature by it, posited pendent of its action, becomes existent in and integrated by Still more he has not seen that the first, absolutely unbreakable, apo- thought for thought's own action, and by which henceforward both dictic certainty of the intellect is concerned with, possible (metalogical) supra-subjective existence. exist in it in one and the same extramental being, ofwhich it knows in an entirely and eternally certain if refuse to the the If we do not go as far as this, we mind power, and necessary way that in so far as it is it is not nothing. But his misunder- is real, 'surmounting' and interioris- which is only real if being itself of standing of the proper life of the intellect as such and confusion of it with ing being in itself, the pure transparence of intentionality is inevitably that of the senses gives rise to the supposition that this first certitude turned material, being regarded as a 'constituent' of the object through should bear on the actually given, in the search for it in the pure cogito.1 1 it to constitute the other and con- its 'structural laws', by the asking of And he sets ego cogito cogitatum as the point of departure for all philo- 2 fer on it its own proper meaning 'starting from my being as myself' sophy; keeping faith with the primary evidence of intuition, it should (whereas on die contrary it brings the other to me 'starting' from its rather be ego cogito ens, the starting-point, not for the whole ofphilosophy, otherness, and makes me be the other). And even, as so often happens but of that reflective part offirst philosophy which is the critique. with Husserl, one seems so to speak to brush against the true nature of The effect of this prime deviation is that the very notion of inten- side of the great secret. 2 knowledge, always in the end he passes on one tionality, in passing from the hands of the great scholastic realists to itself at- It is left dark that knowledge does not need to come out of to those of the contemporary 'Neo-Cartesians' (it is E. Husserl's own tain the thing which exists or can exist outside itself—the extramental description of himself in his last book), has lost both its efficacy and its thing which has caused the prejudice it is desired to exorcise. It is in value. How indeed could it be otherwise since its whole meaning comes thought itself that the extramental is attained, in the concept that the first of all from its opposition to the esse entitathum of the extramental real or metalogical is touched and handled, there that it is grasped; for thing? Intentionality is not only that property of my consciousness of the very glory of thought's immaterial nature is that it is not a thing in 1 My ego given to me in apodictic fashion—the sole being which I can posit as exist- exterior space extended over another thing, but rather a life superior ing in an absolutely apodictic .' manner. . . (E. Husserl, op. cit.) My own existence (re- perfects itself with flectively to all spatial order, which, without quitting itself, grasped is certainly the most basic and irreducible of all existences in act given draws to me. That is why it is practically more important to me than any other. But all actual what is not itself—the intelligible real whose fecund substance it existence which is not that of the Pure Act is contingent. And it is an absolute necessity J of all subjectiv- Cp. E. Husserl, op. cit. We know that Husserl, the declared enemy (but in the order ofpossible existence or of essences) which should include the most ism (in the usual his doctrine of transcendental subjectivity basic and irreducible sense of the word), opposes data ofapodictic knowledge or science. This is why the prime datum to that, which shuts up the mind in a subjectiv- of speculative into which Kant fell by inconsequence, knowledge is the principle of identity, not that of the self. The ancients ity which according to which the activity ofa subject rightly held that might be called cntitative, and the certitude ofmy own existence, absolute as it may be, is not for all considered the object of knowledge. For that a secundum esse naturae produces or engenders scientific certainty, because it bears on a contingent object, and so, on the side of it is him (see Gurvitcli, the object is neither produced nor engendered, the object, it op. cit., p. 22) lacks that'necessity which is required to constitute a knowledge infrang- by an act formation, that the intentional synthesis is ible at all points. of attention or fixation, not of in one way or constituted. But in order that this constituting synthesis may take place 2 Cuique suum. It is singular to see E. Husserl, critics write of the regard to an object and many of the who another the essential thing is that it should be constituting with phenomenological movement, paying discovery of in- Kant). To honour to Brentano for his (which is why Husserl admits in his own way the 'Copernican reversal' of tentionality. This discovery is at least St. Thomas precisely what is seven centuries old (for neither was make this the proper function of intentionality is to misunderstand its inventor). It is possible also to observe characteristic as- the dependence of certain most typical in it. pects of phenomenology with theory of regard to , in particular to his a E. Husserl, op. cit. ideas and the esse objectwum. 126 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 127

from the world (of objective realities) has for all of us, anterior to all from the senses, gathered by them (materially) existent in act. which the rightful mystery 1 Husserl, in order to free transcendental idealism from the The way to evaporate the of knowledge is precisely to philosophy.' exorcise extramental being, to suppress these ontological (metalogical) 'absurd thing in itself', reconstitutes by a more and more artificial pro- universe of realism in the heart of the 'for themselves', entirely independent of my thought, which my cedure the whole transcendental 1 2 thought makes its own by making itselfinto them. ego 'starting from its rightful being'. Though one may call this 'for- Despite the important services which it has rendered to contempo- midable' task the discovery of the apriori constitution of the world of all possible being by the complete explication of the rary thought (above all, perhaps, like Bergsonism heretofore by its the real and of

extra-philosophical influence, notably in the stimulation which vari- transcendental ego, it remains in reality a reconstitution, and, like all

ous scientific disciplines have received from it), despite its original realist reconstitutions, presupposes an original: the world of naive realism, impulsion and its liberating virtue in regard to monism and mechanism, fromwhich phenomenological idealism is suspended like aparasite trying phenomenology runs the risk from the outset of ambiguity. Nothing to suck into itselfits subject: it is by it that it lives, not only with regard to

it after first is more instructive than the way in which, finally vanquished by the the various levels or stages of objectivity which reconstitutes

parentheses, also in regard to its notional in- false 'radicalism' of Cartesianism, it has ended up to-day, proud of its of all having put them in but recovered chains, by indubitably returning to the kantian tradition and struments, the Denkmitteln which it employs, and which are gathered by by affirming a new transcendental idealism, which is certainly different way ofanalogy from the conceptual register of the knowledge of things. from kantian idealism, but mainly in the fact that it refuses to 'leave Nevertheless an unexplained residuum remains outside this universal open the possibility of a world of things as such, under no matter science: the 'naive' belief in extramental reality. Even if this belief is what name of limited-concept.'2 "While 'naive metaphysics' operates illusory it is necessary all the same to assign the reason for such a uni- 3 with 'the absurd thing in itself' on the other hand, 'for phenomenology versal and irrepressible illusion; but in that case the method of pheno- menology has been betrayed: and if this beliefhas no need ofexplication . . . being' is a practical idea—the idea of an infinite labour of theoreti- 4 because it in the interior of the pheno- cal determination', and the world also 'is an infinite idea, relating to an finally finds itself reconstituted infinity ofconcordant experiences'. 5 menological eVopj, then it is not illusory and the thing in itself is not truth Despite the reserves necessitated by the difference of the two cases, absurd, but it is phenomenology to which an end has been put. The is that the reality is not reconstituted, but replaced one could say that Husserl's position in regard to Kant is comparable to belief in extramental by a it is supposed to that of Berkeley to Descartes. Berkeley also, in his battle against the substitute; a dispensation from the need to explain be . 'thing', believed that he was avenging intuition; in suppressing extra- supplied by the production ofa counterfeit in the idealist Thus Extramental being mental 'matter' he believed he had retrieved, he also, 'the meaning contradiction is in the heart of the business. which one parentheses in forbidding either its de- 1 began by putting in Thcse comments do not only apply to the idealism of Edouard Le Roy, of Leon nial or its affirmation finds itself (by the simple fact that in erecting a Brunschvicg, and so many others, or to the phenomenology of E. Husserl, but also to object the solipsism of Schuppc and the general immanentism ofRickcrt (see on the work ofthe philosophy one accepts in actti exerdto the separation of the and two latter, A. Krzesinski, Une Nouvclk Philosophic de Vimmanence, Paris, 193 1). the thing) practically denied and finally cast out (without ever having 2 E. Husserl, op. cit. been criticised and without even a question whether this separation was z lhid. I will willingly concede the absurdity of the kantian 'thing in itself, in itself possible—a fundamental omission which should cause transcendental unknowable and separated from the phenomenal (in place ofmanifesting itself through neo-Cartesianism to be regarded as a system which is radically naive). it). But it is ofeverything capable of an extramental or metalogical existence of which Much more understanding—but in order to E. Husserl is speaking here. logical than Descartes, a *iiid. mid. Hbil Ibid. 128 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 129 Descartes make himself more cartesian than and to sacrifice the excluding the transobjective subject, the rightful effects notion spring up. In of of extramental being—that the cartesian problem of passing into the very world of intelligible from the materiality are introduced essences certitudes consciousness of my thought to concerning die being it is vain to try not to treat this world of and the 'a priori', and in empiri- is a 1 things (thanks to the divine veracity) 'contra-sense', E. Husserlhas 1 those who think with their eyes and dieir hands treat the cist fashion, as undertaken to construct his entire philosophy without coming out of concrete world of the sensible; for if the intellect in its proper life is pure, Nevertheless it the phenomenological eVopJ. comes about that he those experimental deposits from which it draws all its I do not say of leaves it despite himself, since he reconstitutes so admirably in substance, but from all material co-action and empiric servility, it is be- the interior of the iiroxj all that he had left outside and put in cause all the contingent, the potential and the material, all that inert mass that in end everything that was in parentheses, the parentheses finds which can be defined by its resistance to intelligibility, makes part of the to the interior of the transcendental ecology itself transferred —every- world which it is absorbed in and it knows, but is situated outside it as is extramental subsistence and existence, which thing except have been that world itself. On the other hand, by the fact that the essences per- the other cast turned out of the parentheses at end and out into nothing- ceived by the mind are no longer seized in transobjective subjects exist- there parentheses and ness. But then can be no more no more eVo^. In ing outside the mind and themselves included in the flux of time, the maintaining the eiroxq to the last limit it has been suppressed—an ad- extra-temporal objects of the intellect find themselves, in an unexpected mirable achievement certainly in transcendental sleight-of-hand, but re-appearance of Platonism, separated from real and temporal existence; equally undeniably a glaring contradiction in fact. and in order to reunite them there is nothing to be done but to invert

The ambiguity of this last stage ofphenomenology is such that it only the intellect, giving time dominance over being, whether like M. Berg- needs a momentary misunderstanding, a lapse of mind, to think out in son one seeks to substitute time for being, or whether with M. Heideg- realist terms this renovated transcendental idealism. "What in effect has ger to establish being over time. This is to assure the existence ofrealism been reconstituted in the heart of the 'intentional consciousness', before by knocking away its foundation. the cogito, is the whole universe of Nature and Culture, and it is cer- tainly true that in so far as it is known this is in the mind. When one CONCERNING IDEALISM involuntarily thinks that this same universe is also (and first) —at least It must be obvious from these considerations that the problem of the possibly—in existence outside the mind, one has passed surreptitiously 2 thing and the object is the central-knot of the problem of realism. into the world ofrealism. I am indeed not at all sure diat it is not thanks to J As phenomenology essentially declares that it is an 'eidetic' description or analysis, it such unobserved slips ofmind—the revenge ofnature—that idealist philo- would be well, it seems, to remedy this inconvenient point. But the remedy remains sophers are systems. able to believe that they have thought out their insufficient. In making the object ofthe various intentional functions freely variable, by Finally, it seems that from the beginning phenomenology has ad- imagination, in order to retain only their eidos, a rightful necessity grasped in an es- in- sence is not set but only the statement of a factual necessity of the vanced by a form of unnatural hybridisation between ontology and before the mind, tentional life, a succedaneum of the veritable intelligible necessity. Victor Delbos s logic. It is a grave thing for a philosopher not to be able to distinguish be- comment that phenomenology runs the risk of subjecting thought to the indeter- his tween the ens reale and ens rationis, and he runs the risk, despite all mination ofthe sub-logical, finds in this point in particular another verification. protestations against casde-building, to on the 'eluci- Tonquedec's book of setting work 'Various useful comments on this problem will be found in J. de notion dation' of a universe of fictions, and of leaving on one side the proper which I have already cited, and in that of L. Noel. Cp. Rend Kremer, 'Sur la de re"alisme epistemologique,' in Philosephia Perennis, vol. i, p. 739. duty ofan honest philosophy, which is to assign the reasons for the given referring In those passages o£Reflexions sur I'intelligence to which L. Noel is certainly also data and to win knowledge of them. Other inconveniences will and affirma- (op. cit. pp. 153-4), my discussion did not exclude reflective descriptions are not simple 'E. Husscrl, op. cit. tions, rather it pre-supposed them. Affirmations which moreover

I M.D.K. ,

DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM i 3 o THE I3r

Cartesianism call all authentic (^Philosophers imbued with realism 'naive'. of nature or metaphysicsfTor what is either the philosophy the proper one demonstrates that to apply such an appellation philosophy ifnot theworld of thingssubject However much to object ofnatural to time and realism is puerile, they will not be undeceived, also that of the experimental , I aristotelico-thomist for movement, which is sciences at work on it in beginning with an act I this naivete* consists of knowledge angle? And to what is metaphysics directed j to them of from another except tcv j; ., U ofknowledge ofknowledge. Let it be so ! The mind above time which are ^'^tnings and not must wards a world of truths realised in temporal exis- * its way from the beginning, must make a primary super-temporal reality in fact choose own de- tence, and towards a supreme pre-eminent above which will command all its destiny. But the first act of reflec- an exclusively reflective philosophy cision, all thingsr/While does not judge_

that diose who have chosen according to nature and without is, the tion shows what is, but the idea of what and idea of the idea, and the idea of light which shines across our hearts, the rejecting the first ray of first the idea of the idea ofwhat is, and all this with a tone of superiority be- chosen wisely: and those who choose objective evidence, have against cause it has not stained its hands with the real or run the risk of its demand another light without pursuing the first, have them, the courage proper to " nature, who . scraping the skin off natural philosophy as with what comes second. chosen foolishly; wishing to commence to metaphysics is to face these extramental realities, to turn its hand to

One does not think of thought until after having thought of the things and judge ofwhat is. And their rightful humility is to take their thinkable 'good by existing' (the real or at least possible); the first act measure from things—which is what idealism will not do at any price. thought. cogitatum of thought is being independent of The of the first It is scandalised by the idea that an intelligence may be measured by a eat eaten, cogito is not cogitatum, but ens. One does not the one eats bread. thing, by an ontological 'for itself' which exists apart from it—in an

~To separate the object from the thing, the objective logos from the existence less noble than that which knows it, and to which the intellect

metalogical being, is to violate the nature of the intellect, at once needs to unite itself by an effort of submission, which it has no power

rejecting the primary evidence of direct intuition and mutilating ever to exhaust. This scandal arises from the fact that intelligence exists

reflective intuition {that same reflective intuition on which everything is not only in the created, but at a very low point on the ladder of spirits;

the first of its immediate presentations. Idealism made to depend) in 5 an angelic intellect is not intelligence per se: how much less then the hu-

sets an original sin against the light in the very heart of its whole philo- I man intellect! But indeed the privileges of intelligence suffer no detri-

sophical construction. ment by this, for, far from opposing to the intellect I know not what

Since Leibnitz the whole endeavour of idealism has been directed to obstacle of matter absolutely without any connection with its nature,

the suppression of all material or subjective causality in order to leave the being of things has a secret and as it were sleeping aptitude for the

only formal causalities and at the same time to annihilate the 'thing embrace of the mind, and in taking its measure from them our intel-

every cis-objective or transobjective subject, in order to leave only pure lect in reality takes its measure from the intelligence, intelligence in pure

objects. Unless its full value is fully restored to the thing it is a vain en- act, by which things are measured and from which they draw their be-

deavour to call oneself a realist. Philosophy has become more and ing and their intelligibility (and on the other hand, it is again intelligence

more purely reflective, it is only equivocally that it can now call itself —the intelligence which illumines, the created participation in the in- tellectual light of God which renders things intelligible in act andl empiric registrations, but rather analyses ofa special type, capable ofdiscerning the intel- — which ligible constituents and even the nature, as St. Thomas says, of the intellectual act and by means of the senses and of things determines the intellect

is the object as ob- 1 the intelligence. Ifon the other hand it is proper to distinguish what which knows; and finally it is it which, under the same illumination be- ject from what is the object as thing, I do not hold that that is the place to pause l tween the first and second considerations to solve certain epistemological questions (cp. 'Quae a nobis materialibus condirionibus sunt abstracta, £unt intelligibilia actu per or lumen op. tit., p. 228); as if the notion ofipure object which should not be either a thing nostri intellectus agentis.' (St. Thomas, Comtn. in de Sensu tt Sensata, lee, 1.) See that a thing could not be based upon, was, even by abstraction, thinkable. '"fii, p. 152, note 1. .

DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE i 3 2 THE CRITICAL REALISM 133 derived from the Primal Truth, achieves actualising its object within multitude of it- Surrounding it there is an immense transobjective sub- it so much its own—this is the office of self, and makes the mental word described by the second person, the one 'to whom one jects who are letters spirituality—and it only sees here below— and its of — what it it- speaks to us, each a mysterious core, rich also in a cer- speaks* and who transparent with its own transparence.1 self expresses, ) The mystery of and ontological depth, and whom in this relation of tain metalogical allay the scruples ofidealism; and it is creation alone can this ascesis pro- treated with respect, and with love. Thou me and thee wish to be intelligence that idealism expressly rejects. per to a created swallow: it is charity which comes to super- spring, thou fish, thou teleological But an obscure and powerful motivisation also inter- the relations naturally perfect our feeble philosophical aperception of venes, which idealism unconsciously obeys, so playing false at its own between beings, and St. Francis will speak of Sister Water and his game. The point for it is precisely not to be led to a certain end, to avoid brothers, the birds and the fishes. No attitude has a more profound certain final conclusion. If from the very beginning there is so careful a metaphysical truth, and it is one which is essentially realist. Evidendy of things and their extramental consistency regnant an avoidance over ' conversation with a for M. Brunschvieg there is no sense at all in a our thought, it is in the need above all, by a secret instinct all the more bird. not to finally face to imperious that it remains unavowed, come face with is it that they And all these things to which T speak familiarly, what a supreme and transcendent reality, an abyss of personality to which say? 'The third person is he of whom one speaks.' He is in all dieir all hearts are open and before which all our thoughts must needs ador- mouths, all things speak of him. And while I know him not myself I bow. The bastions and fortifications of idealism thus show them- ingly only hear the voices of all creatures speaking to one another ofhim: but selves like huge works of defence against that Personality who is divine. when I do know him myself—with no other intermediaries than the Nothing is more significant than these colossal works. It suffices for light and the enunciations of faith—then oh then, it is Thou, yet more exist for God to become inevitable. Accord to a point ofmoss, things to hidden and more mysterious and more free than all created things or the smallest ant, the value of their ontological reality, and we cannot to than all men that might be created, it is thou that I hear! longer from the terrifying hands which made us all. escape any Things are opaque to us and we are opaque to ourselves. Pure spirits these circumstances the humblest definitions of grammar take Under see themselves and see all things transparendy. For them the object is a singular and powerful significance. 'The first person is he who on the subject grasped in its entirety and its inwardness, not parcelled out speaks.' This describes what I have called the cis-objective subject. He in aspects as it is for us. Butfor them, as for us, the distinction between the certainly in the sense of Husserl's 'pure I', stripped of all says T—not object and the subject persists, their glance does not exhaust the obedi- entitative subjectivity but because a mysterious ontological and meta- — ential potency which is in them, nor the sum of all the predicates which universe unto itself and core of liberty, knows itself in logical depth, a will come to things in the progress of time. Subject and object are ab- this I. solutely identical for God alone, like existence and intellection. He Y entirely in- *Cp. infra, p. 153. It goes without saying that I am speaking here of an knows himselfcompletely and all things in himself, for Ms act ofknow- > more vital terior and spiritual expression. The deeper is the intellectual intuition, the ledge is itself the more in- his infinite essence. and intimate is this spiritual expression by which it is accomplished, and to my Thus is a world of things existing exhaustible it appears in relation to oral and material expression. Cp. the preface then the world of authentic realism that I have used in Philosophic Bergsomenne, 2nd edit. It is by design, on the other hand, themselves, a world, an immense family, a symposium of individuals an intel- the phrase: 'it only sees, etc.,' for when the intelligence knows without seeing and personalities in interaction, as the thing which knows is itself either thing, ligible, for example, divines or obscurely experiences, or plays with a beautiful an is there in the for form individual or a person, and this thing which knows the fact is that it knows, I do not say without concepts, but by making use aestnen midst into the heart means of something other than concepts, e.g. affective connaturality or, as in ofthe others in order to draw them in a certain way perception, ofthe intuition ofthe senses themselves. °fitselfand to feed itself on exactly that which they righdy are. 134 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 135

'There are two ways', says St. Thomas, 'in which a merit of St. Thomas and his great commentators to have thing can be found the peculiar which is the most perfect. In the first, according to the perfection of its formulated this problem, important one of all own being in frankly treated as it should what is proper to it according to its own rightful species. and which cannot be be without the bring- But because the noetics, thing is distinct from the play of the most sensitised metaphysical equipment; and not specific being of one specific being of another ing into it, to thing, the result is that in every created thing the perfection indeed to have formulated but have provided the most pro- which it only lacks absolute perfection in the degree solution. Before attacking it, they remind us of the need to raise possesses to which equal per- found to a higher level, for we then enter into another order of fections arc possessed by all other species, in such a way that the perfec- our minds elevare ingenium, aliumque return ordinem tngredi: the errors tion of any thing considered in itself alone is imperfect, as being only things, et disces so frequent in this region proceeding from the fact that we part of the total perfection of the universe, which is born from the which are spiritual happening like knowledge with the union ofall these particular perfections gathered together in it. too often confound a feed experience. 'And therefore, in order that there may be a remedy for this imper- material happenings which our common brevitatis studio, proposing a fection, another mode of perfection is found in created things, accord- I shall take the liberty, of here very seven points of the thomist doctrine of the nature ing as the perfection which is the property of a thing is itself found in succinct resume in advantage of these forms of condensation is that another thing. Such is the perfection ofknowing in so far as it is such, for of knowledge. The synthesis occupied solely in the degree to which it knows the known in a certain way exists in they constrain the mind to the production ofa essentials. it, . . . And according to this mode of perfection it is possible that the with perfection of the entire universe may exist in a single and particular 1. There is a rigorous correspondence between knowledge and imma- thing.'1 teriality. A being is knowledgeable in the measure of its immaterialism.

2. Why is this so? Because to know is, by an apparent scandal for the HI. OF KNOWLEDGE ITSELF principle ofidentity, to be in a certain way another thing than what one

This passage from St Thomas introduces us into the very mystery of gen Theorien, die am meisten von Erkenntnis sprechen, die eigentliche Erkenntnis- problem gar nicht kennen.* knowledge itself. It is time to ask ourselves in what this mystery con- The return to a realist attitude which was shown by many at the meeting of die sists, what is the intimate nature of what we call knowing. It is, it must Kant-Gescllschaft in May 193 1 is a most striking fact. Unfortunately a misunder- be admitted, a question which modern philosophers have not begun to standing of the rightful nature and proper value of the object of the intelligence as such, as on the other of the senses, has resulted for treat, because they have never made up their minds to ask it. Neither hand of the bearing of the intuition N. Hartmann, in forgetfulness of the fact that the transobjective intelligible must be Descartes, nor Kant, nor the nco-realists, not even the phenomenalists sought for in the possibly real, and, again, that the senses attain to the extramental real as (except, it seems, M. Nicholai has at least profoundly Hartmann, who such, as existing and acting hit et hunc, in a demand for the data of reality from emo- felt the 2 faced it. It is tionally-transcendent' implies and declares the extra- antinomies with which it is pregnant) , have righdy facts (i.e. facts where emotion mental reality of what affects us). His book contains a brilliant analysis of such facts; l and mutu- De Veritate, 2, 2. it is obvious that in the concrete our life of knowledge and of emotion are **",d- ally inclusive. the sense of the 'tough- *Cp. N. Hartmann, Metaphysik tier Erltctmtnh, 2 Aufl., Berlin, 1925- In a rcccm v But it is also clear that the facts in question, and ness of the included in dress to the Kant-Gescllschaft (Zum Problem dcr RealiiStsgegehenheit, 1931, Heft 32). real', imply the primary value of certain facts of knowledge the them; by the proper order of Nicolai Hartmann has stressed in the most remarkable way the insufficiency of refusing to consider, thanks to philosophic abstraction, rela- knowledge order of the problem of standpoint of ordinary phenomenology, and die fact that knowledge implies a apart from anything else, and the treatment in this current die thing and to the classification of tion with a being independent of the mind, a 'transobjective' reality. With the the object, the realism ofN. Hartmann limits itself auf das the evidence powerless to base it on reason, conceptions of phenomenology 'man vcrgtsst die Hauptsache, die Dczichung of the general consciousness, and remains das Er- to defend and the value of knowledge in its Seiende, dem die Erkcnntnis gilt; ja man hat schon in der Problemstcllung confirm it by a truly critical analysis of diejeru- various degrees, kenntnisphaenomen verfchlt. So ergibt sich die paradoxc Schlage, dass gerade as is required ofmetaphysical wisdom. ;

136 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 137

to become another thing than 1 characterises is; it is oneself, 'fieri aliud a sc', to he as taken first of all in what human knowledge, or beco I but another in so far as it is another, 'esse scu fieri aliud in directed towards another. An angel knows itself be- quantum aliud' 1 which is primarily Which presupposes, on the one hand, the emergence things; God knows himself, he is himself the sole specific of the subject fore it knows capable ofknowledge from matter (which restrains his intelligence, and it is in his essence that he or imprisons things object worthy of in the exclusiveness of their own being); and possible and things created. In order to give a on the other, a form of knows all things, things union between the knower and the including the whole of this analogi- known transcending any material definition ofknowledge capable of one; for when matter receives a form it is in order to be necessary to say that to know is to be or become a constitute widi it a cal span, it would third term, a tcrtium quid, which is informed jnatter. Thus a oneself or another—otherwise than by the existence actuating a material jjjjjjg

being can other, i.e. 1 things become can change or modify itself, it cannot be- subject. An angel in knowing is itselfand other otherwise than by come the other. While the knower, while all die time as limited subject; God by his wisdom is himselfand keeping its own its own existence a nature intact, becomes the known itself and is identified with it the things otherwise than by the existence which actuates a subject.

knower being thus incomparably more one with the known than the 4. The act of knowledge is not any of the actions which we cus-j 8 matter widi the form. tomarily observe about us, it does not come under either the heading of *. To know is to the senses and die intellect, taken as such as cognos- 'action'—nor that of 'passion'—in Aristode's table; taken purely in it-*

cirive functions, as to exist is to die essence, to the quidditative function. self it does not consist in the production of anything not even in thel

It is a form of existence which defines knowledge. To know does not depth of the knowing subject. To know is to advance oneself to an act consist in doing something, nor in receiving something, but in a de- ofexistence ofsuper-eminent perfection, which, in itself, does not imply/-/ gree of existence greater than that of being removed from nothingness: production. ^

fit is an active, immaterial super-existence, by which a subject exists no In fact there is the production of an image in sensitive knowledge,? llonger only in an existence limited to what it is as a thing included in a of a mental word or concept in intellectual knowledge; but this interj

certain kind, as a subject existing in itself, but widi an unlimited exis- ior production is not formally the act ofknowledge itself, it is at once » 3 tence in which it is or becomes so by its own rightful activity and that of condition and a means, and an expression of that act.

others. This is why die ancients called the act of knowledge an action pro-

This is why in God, because he is infinite, existence* and knowledge perly immanent, and perfecdy vital, which belongs to the heading are purely and absolutely one and the same; between the esse divinum 'quality'.

and the intelligcre divinum there is not the slightest, even virtual, distinc- J. Wherever it is a question of a knowing being other than God, who 3 tion; his existence is his very act ofintellection. is in himself super-eminent over all things, we are constrained, if we Having come to this point we can comprehend that die formula 'to wish to conceive of knowledge without absurdity, to introduce the

become the other in as much as odier' certainly defines know- d'aprh les most "'Esse non per modum subjecti,' writes M. Pierre Garin, in his thesis, L'lttie principaux thomistes, Paris, 1932. *Cp. PJJlcxionssur Tintelligence, reproducing the J p. j3.John of St. Thomas, faithfully etc.). The ex- Not in the external senses, but in the internal (imagination, memory, thought of Aristotle, St. Simonin does in Thomas and Cajctan, docs not say, as H. D. ternal Thomas, Quodlib., v, 9. sense W format sibi aliquam formam scnsibilcm.' (St. an tliiol. 4 otherwise perspicacious article, but not on this point (Re v. des sciences phil. et ad. 2.) May 193 1): become the similitude (immaterially of die object, but become tlie other, become s Cp. the mental word by the act of _ Reflexions stir I' intelligence. the production of and intentionally) tlie object itself. On intellection, Cajetan, In Sum. theol, 1, immanent as such and virtually productive, see *, In HI, De Anima, coram, v, digression;* parte ultima, g. 2. 27. Nat., iii, P. It, a. 1 1; 34. r, ad. 2; 79, 2: John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil, Phil q. 8 Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, c««.tfoo/.,i,p.q. Dieu, son existence et sa nature, 5th edit., p. 399- 27i diSp. I2ia . s . —

DEGREES OF RATIONAL 138 THE KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 139

notion of a kind of existence which is entirely particular, Scrutinise everything entitative in the transmitting which th into it. medium of ancients called esse intentionale, intentional being, qualities, will the and which is opposed the sensitive you only find properties and the wave to the esse naturae, to the being which a thing possesses movements that the physician recognises, will when it exists in and other you not bring its nature. For indeed the scandals suffered own by the principle ofiden- the soul under the scalpel: its quality has nevertheless entered in, secun-

tity can only be apparent, and it is certain that if since the senses will perceive it the characteristic of the dum esse intentionale, when the waves of

is thing it is, knower to be another than what we must needs, to avoid the vibrations reach the organ. It is a dream of the materialist imagina-

absurdity, distinguish two ways of having existence, like Democritus, it conceive ofan esse tion to think, that enters in entitatively, or because it

is the rightful existence which not of a subject as such or of its accidents is not so to deny, like modern 'scientists', that it can enter in at all. The

is it that the is the /How knower known? It cannot be according to esse intentionale, even when not concerned with the world of know-

/its natural being that it can be what it is not. ledge, is already for forms a means of escape from the slavery of matter;

I How is the known in the knower? It cannot be according to its natu- the scholastics firequendy call esse spirituale this existence not for itself,

. ral being that a tree or a stone is in the mind. this tendenz-existence by which forms which are not their own supervene

'It is therefore necessary to admit another form of existence, according in things. I hold that a great field of interests lies open for philosophers

'to which the known will be in the knower, and the knower will be the in the study of the part it plays even in the world of physics, which is

known: an entirely tendential and immaterial existences whose office doubdess the cause of that form of universal animation by which

is not to posit a thing apart from nothingness in itself and as subject, but movement brings to bodies more than they are in themselves, and 1 on the contrary, for another thing and in relation; which\ioes not seal colours all nature with a semblance of life and feeling. However this

up a thing in its natural limits but disengages it from them; bV which the may be, our concern here is with the part it plays in knowledge and the

thing exists in the soul by another existence than its own, andrhe soul is immaterial operations of the latter, the intentional presence ofthe object

or becomes the thing according to another existence than its^own: in- in the soul and the intentional transformation of the soul into the object,

tentional being, which is, according to Cajetan, there to remedy that the one and the other functions of the immateriality (imperfect for the imperfection essential to every created knowing subject of the posses- senses, absolute for the intelligence) of the cognitive faculties.

sion of a limited nature and the lack by being itself of all the rest. 6. What is the means of union of the knower and the known? The

In another order than that of knowledge, in that of efficient activity medium thanks to which the known is intentionally in the knower, and is it not equally necessary to admit an intentional manner of existing by which the knower becomes intentionally the known? It is the whole

the way, for example, in which artistic talent passes into the hand and world of intra-psychic immaterial forms which in the soul are like the

the brush of a painter? For the entire picture is the work of the brush, deputies of the object and which the ancients called similitudes or there is nothing in the picture not caused by the brush, and nevertheless species. This word, species, has no equivalent in modern language, and I its beauty and intelligible the radiance, the spiritual values with which 1- rhe movement of projectiles, which caused so much difficulty for the ancients, picture is charged, the surpass all the capabilities, in its connection with could be perhaps explained by the fact that at the first instant ofmovement and because

material universe, causality of it, of the causality proper to the brush itself: a the qualitative state which exists in the agent and is the immediate cause of the

higher movement (speaking that I do not use the terms than its own, and superimposed upon its own, must then have in ontological terms, it is by design which belong to die vocabulary of mechanics) passes secundum esse intentionale into the passed into it. Ifyou scrutinise everything 'entitative', or existing secun- mobile principle object. From this standpoint it would be possible to hold the Galilean dum esse naturae in die brush, will find of the painter's of you no element inertia viable not only from the point of view of physico-mathematical science (at art, least, only the substance and the qualities of the brush and the movement according to the mechanics of Einstein, for a space ideally supposed which would be totally devoid of the philosophy ofnature. to which it is directed by the hand; neverdieless the art has passed curvature) , but also from that of THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE HO CRITICAL REALISM 141

that aptest rendering of it is the have decided die expression, presentative depths; and having so become intentionally has entered into its the sen- 1 than that ofthe esse or objectifyingform. No more intentionale, the notion or 'prime* act (the sense and the sensible sible in the initial then make of species is not for the philosopher an element of explication which operation), in the terminal is only one principle of or 'second' act it be- already known and fully elucidated by others. They are rather supports action, then comes it, in its own immanent and makes only one act which result from the analysis of the data and ofwhich it constrains the with the felt—not without producing at the same time an image of die reality mind to recognise the —with certainty if the analysis has itself latter, a species expressa of the sensible order in the imagination and the progressed correcdy and under the constant pressure of intelligible memory. necessities. It is absolutely necessary that some determination should The intelligence knows things in forming them in the fruit which it supervene in die knower, thanks to which what is not its should he in it conceives in the bosom of its own immateriality. The Thomists, fol- secundum esse intentionale and not like an accident in a substance, and lowing Aristode, recognise in it an active light (the agens or activating which will be able to exist with the same active super-existence as that intellect) which, making use of sensible representations and disengaging of the knower become the known. The species is nothing other than the intelligibility which diey contain in potentia* (which is not possible 2 this internal determination. without leaving on one side the individualising notes enclosing the In the case ofsensitive knowledge, the external sense, itselfin a state of sensible as such), specifies the intelligence by means of a species vital tension, and which has only to 'open itself' to know (all is ready in impressa, of a 'presentative form' abstracted from the sensible and

advance for it, in it and this is comparable to an already acquired intel- 'received' by means of it. This is then the prime or initial act of die in- lectual habitude),3 receives the thing by its qualities acting on the organ, tellect; it has become, as indeed a principle of action, intentionally the offers which so itself to be felt (we call it 'the sensible in act'), a species object, which in its species is hidden in its depths like a fecundating seed,

impressa, a presentative form imprinted on it—let us call it a 'received a co-principle of knowledge (according as the intellect, the sufficing presentative 2 form'—thanks to which it is specified as by a germ which principle of its own proper action, is already itself). And it is thus, ac-

tuated by this species impressa, and producing thus in it, like a living ^he expression, 'presentative form' would be preferable if'presentative' evoked the intelligible order, idea of making present rather than that o( presenting, which is sufficiently inapplicable fruit, a mental word or concept, a species expressa of an to the intelligible species impressa (it is the concept which presents the object to the an 'elaborated presentative form', in which it brings the object to the mind). The expression 'objectifying form' is better, on condition that it is understood sovereign degree of actuality and intelligible formation, that it becomes that it is the thing itself which, by this form, is become object (only in a radical itself in ultimate act this object. If the distinction between the prime and manner in the intelligible species impressa, in express fashion is the concept); but it is is because to be feared that the habits of modem language may here induce a misunderstanding. the second act re-appears again thus in the act of knowing, it

"Cp. St. this last, as I said, constitutes in itself alone a whole meta- Thomas, Sum. Contra Gent., ii, 98. have already physical order, re-united, transposed into the same line which rov 8 cwidrjTtKov ij ja£v Trpa>rr) fierapoXr/ ytvertxi vtto tov yew&VTOs orav where are Be yewrjdfj, e^« rj?>Tj i6-«>-) process of human knowledge consists in bringing them progressively, first to intelli- Cp. St. Thomas's commentary, et natum lect. 12: 'Quod nondum habet sensum intellection in act gibility in act (in the species inteiiigibilis impressa), then to the state of est habere in potentia ad sensum. Et quod jam habet sensum et nondum sentit est (in the mental word and the intellective operations). potentia sentiens, sicut circa scientiam dicebatur Sensum autem naturaliter inest unum agens.' (St. Thomas, De anirnali: ''Intellectum est intelhgens . . . ambo se habent ut unde sicut per generationem acquirit speciem, ita acquirit propriam naturam et debeat Veritate, ' • • Cum cognosces sensum. Secus 8, 6, ad. 3.) Cp. Cajetan, in Sum. theol, i, 14, % autem de scientia, quae non inest naturam, sed acquiritur homini per quia hoc omni- per intentionem esse sufficiensprincipium suae propriae operationis, quae est cognoscere— et discipunam Cum autem animal jam generatum est,' WW hoc bus specificativum principium illius, ntodo habet sensum, perfectis naturis commune est—oportet quod sit sicut aliquis habet scientiam quandojam quando jam senrit Mat. Sed quod secundum actum, tunc est esse cognitum' se habet sicut ille qui jam actu considcrat.' 142 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 143 is that of knowledge, at once the distinction of the essential word or concept, a presentative form form and mental proffered from within it- the existence in the line of being and that of the operative intellect, and form and the self by the by which it intentionally becomes in the final operation in the line of action. Is not knowledge at once existence and act the thing taken as such or according to its intelligible determinations. (immanent) action? soul, its faculties The by of knowledge, becomes explain thanks to the universal motion ofGod working in all things, first (intentionally) die object in the prime act, in order a motion which is to become it as generally prerequisite for all not only the actions ofcreated things, but also in particu- a result in the second, as nature exists before it acts. lar for the objective influence ofbodies on our senses, see the remarkable writing ofR. 7. In what is concerned widi the species or preventative Garrigou-Lagrange in Le RJalisme principe forms, it is du definable", 1932: cp. , Intro- connaitre, necessary to distinguish carefully between duction a Vontohgie du 193 3 .) I would only here draw attention two very different parts or to the fact that while the object of intellectual knowledge is attained, as I have said on pp. 139^41, in functions. On the side of immaterial forms, these species are modifica- the concept and in the mind, the object of the externa] senses on the contrary is attained tions of the soul, and by this right they determine the faculty in the same not in the word or image, but such as it is outside the mind, in the very action, extramen- as way any other form determines any odier subject, but these modifi- tally, of the thing on the senses: sensus secundum actum sunt singularium quae sunt extra

atmam (St. Thomas, In De Anima, book ii, Iect. cations of the proper nature of our soul, these entitative modifications, T2), sensatio termmatur ad resprout extra stmt (John of St. Thomas, Phil. Nat., iii, P. q. 6, a. 1 and that is to say—for sensation arc not prc-rcquisite to knowledge; they make no part of 4); knowledge. a is not transitive act, but an immanent art which is accomplished in the senses—that On the other hand prescntative forms are, in so far as they are means the end of the sensation (like the end of every immanent operation, an end contem- plated or loved, .not produced) is to knowledge, purely and formally deputies of the object, simply its in the subject itself, in ipso operante, but on the other hand the similitudes, sensible reality is in the senses—by its transitive action, actio in passio—such as i.c. in the soul they arc die object itself detached from its is outside the soul; sensation, while all the while terminating in the senses, thus termin- own existence and present in made an intentional and immaterial state; ates in the sensible externally, prout est extra, in the action ofthe thing on die senses; and in this way they do not the existence determine the faculty as a form determines mat- in act, outside the knowing subject, ofthe thing present in it by its action, is one ofthe ter or a subject, but in relation to the entirely immaterial and supra- constituent factors ofthe object as such ofthe senses; the wholly immanent act ofsensation, whose beginning is the species impressa, has an end, an object which in subjective union by which the one becomes, first intentionally in the its very objectivity implies the existence in act of the thing: to such a point that in the first act, then in the second act and by its vital operation, the other in absence ofa thing actually given by its action (even if a star had ceased to exist at the itself. moment And diis entirely immaterial information, in which the soul only when its light reached us, it is yet present by its action), sensation in the right- ful meaning of the word (I do not mean an imaginative perception or a hallucination) receives or experiences in order to exercise its own vital activity, to is absolutely impossible. 'Si organura sentiendi non movcatur a rebus extra, sed ex bring itself in act into an existence not limited to itself, is what consti- imaginationc vcl aliis supcrioribus viribus, non est vere sentire* (St. Thomas, In IV tutes knowledge. "**• a. r, sol. /•> 44,

pantur . . sequitur / In thus making a resume" of knowledge, it shows itself to us as an im- . quod homo non sentiat calorem ignis si per ignem agentem non sit simihtudo caloris ignis in organo sentiendi. Si enim ilia species caloris in organo ab 'manent and vital operation, which essentially making, but consists not in alio agente ficret, tactus etsi sentirct calorem, non tamen sentiret calorem ignis nee sen- in being: in being or becoming a thing itself or others odierwise nret — — ignem esse calidum, aim tamen hocjudicct sensus, cujus judicium in proprio sen- than by the existence actuating higher sibili non errat' (De Pot., a subject; which implies a much 3,7). Cp. Sum. tlieol, iii, 76", 8, and the veryjust remarks ofJ. de Tonquddcc, op. union than that of die form and matter composing a conjunction or cit. It is this resolution ofthe knowledge ofthe senses in the thing it- self and in actual existence which finally is the primary foundation for the veracity of tertium quid, and wliich inten- also presupposes diat die object known is our knowledge. (CP . John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil Nat., iii, P. q. 6, a. I.) tionally made present in die faculty prescntative In thus thanks to a species, a particularising the scholastic theory ofsensation, i.e. in admitting that the in- form; finally, 1 a tuition of the senses that intellectual knowledge is accomplished thanks to bears on the externally real in itself, not as taken from the stand- point of nature or of essence (which is the proper object of the intellect), but as it 'It has not been intention (For the actually acts my here to treat specially ofsensitive knowledge. on the senses by its qualities, or as it is exterior in its action on the senses (an mystery proper to this all the acton which mode of knowledge, which implies immateriality while is something real but which is accomplished in the organ), it is possible while being to reply the act of an organ and which the philosopher can only in the last analysis without difficulty to the principal objections drawn from the 'errors of the 1 1

144 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM H5 which see in a portrait painted on canvas we gallery, are objects on THE CONCEPT1 which our knowledge rests for a moment and passes on from them to which are known thanks to them, to the fire of which Thomists distinguish between two forms of sign which are essentially other objects the the instrumental sign the effect and the sign, to the sitter of whom the portrait is the different, what is called and theformat sign. An in- smoke is the sign. strumental sign is something which once known in itself makes an- image and trail formal sign is one whose whole essence is to signify. It is not an ob- other thing consecutively known: a of smoke rising to the sky, a A full ject which, having at first its value as an object, nevertheless primar- senses' (the apparent curvature of a stick under water, the Dopplcr effect, etc.). The ily signifies some other object; it is something which makes itself known sensible quality is perceived in effect such as it is in tlte action which a body exercises being itself known as an object, or more precisely, something upon it, and in the instant that it attains the sense after transmission through the (in- before ternal or external) medium. The fundamental realistic value of sensible perception and which before being itself known as an object by an act of reflection, is at the same time the measure ofrehtivity which it implies, on account of the materiality only known by the knowledge which is conveyed by its means to the with which it is bound up, are thus at once safeguarded. mind of the object, in other words, which is known not in 'appearing' Ifit were desired to draw out a sketch-plan ofthe diverse moments ofsensible know- ledge and intellectual knowledge, one could do so like this: as an object, but by 'disappearing* as object, because its essence is to re- 1 late the mind to something other than itself. Everything which has

OUTSIDE THE. fliND. been established up till now enables us to comprehend that the species impressa, or enlarged presentative forms which intervene in knowledge,

are formal not instrumental signs. Remembrance or the presentative

form held in the memory and which the memory uses hie et nunc is not

what is known when we remember, it is the means by which we know;

and what we know by this means is the past itself, the thing or event

held in the substance of our past. The concept or mental word is not ] what is known when our intellect is at work; it is the means by which in-

tellection takes place; and what we know by this means is the nature or

intelligible determination in itself of some actual or possibly existing' thing. These (elaborated) presentative forms3 are the sole realities which]

«k3 thing-- 1 See infra, pp. 147-50.

s Receivcd presentative forms (species impressae) are not called formal signs by the scholastics, because they are at the beginning, not the end, of the act of knowledge,

and thus are not themselves known (in actti exercito) in the same knowledge as attains the object. They form part ofthe pre-conscious equipment ofknowledge; ifconsrious-

• TheoL, IN THQMIfO. ncss can attain to them (cp. Sum. theol, 1, 85, 2: Contra Gent., ii, 7s; CompenL

cap. 8j), it is by the mind's reflection on its acts ('secundum eamdem reflexionem in- telligit et suum intelligere et speciem qua incelligit,' Sum. tfteol, ibid.), and only in so far Fig. 6. speciem as it is conscious of the object of which it is the species ('intellcctus cognoscit intelligibilem speciem, sed cognoscendo l treat non per esscntiam suam, neque per aliquam For a more detailed exposition, I would refer the reader to the chapters which objectum reflexionem,* De Veritate, 10, 9, ad. 3). The the same Bergso- cujus est species, per quamdam theme in RJJiexions sur I'lntelligcnce, chaps, i and ii (cp. La Philosophic intelligence actualized intellection the object has become (but only in so far as it nienne, preface paragraphs, by of to the second edition, Part ii, chap. which the following 2), is (for nothing is so actualiscd and it perceives the object) intelligible in act to itself like the preceding ones, presuppose and complete. K M.D.K. '

146 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM H7 correspond to the notion offormal signs, a notion 'cut to their measur knowledge in a synoptic table, we should obtain the following according to the exigencies of an analysis which tellectual respects the rightful whose scholarly aspect needs excuse, but which is of assistance in nature ofknowledge, and belong only to it. All the scheme, other signs ofwhich important distinctions which in my opinion are capital. we have experience are instrumental clarifying certain ones. This is why, the moment one neglects or forgets the irreducible originality of the things ofknow- In theMind Outside the Mind ledge, presentative forms are so easily confounded with instrumental St. Thomas Concept (Quo) Thing (Quod) ones, just as the immanent activity of sensation and intellection is as modification as species object as thing confused transitive with the activity proper to bodies, and at once ofthe subject (formal sign) (formal object) (material object) knowledge perishes. having St. Thomas, refuting beforehand certain idealist positions, took great intentional existence existence in nature care to point that species out the or presentative forms are not the objects ofour knowledge, but pure means thereto. They only, become the ob- Idea (Quod) fdeat (Quod) jects of knowledge reflectively, and thanks to the production of a new Descartes 'formal' reality 'objective* thing concept. If, he explains, our knowledge stops at them, in other words, of the idea reality which resembles

ifit is (of the idea) the idea our own representations that we know, then, on the one hand, all [The Intentional has disappeared] sciences would be absorbed by one unique one, psychology; on the other hand, contradictions would be true, since a true judgment would Berkeley idea-thing nothings be a judgment in conformity with our representations: he who decided that 2 plus 2 equal and 4 he who decided that 2 plus 2 do not equal 4 Kant phenomenal thing-in-itself would be equally right in each declaring according to their respective unknowably built up.

representations. Thus presentative forms, concepts in particular, are

pure means of knowing; the scholastics call diem objectum quo, mental [In Absolute Thought] Hegel No thing-in-itself objects by which knowledge takes place. What is known thanks to these (productive auto-objectification ifnot thought immaterial species, they called objectum quod, the object which is known. spontaneity) of the mind itself Ifwe should group the various elements which coalesce in an act of in-

[In Intentional Consciousness] intclligiblc otherwise than it is in act); and it is by the same reflection on its intelligere Phenomenologists Nothing- extending itself by degrees, by the same and only act of consciousness ofits knowledge and in-itself of the object, that it takes nature (in consciousness, in the degree of their existence and Critical Realists* (The intentional object-essence thing has re-appeared) so far as it knows them as origins of that act, which they arc by their very essence) of the specks soul impressa, habitus and potency—and, only as to its existence, of the [In Consciousness] itself (which non est principium actuum per suam essentiam, sed per vires suas,' De American The immanental thing- Veritate, 10, 9. Cp. supra, p. 108, note 1). An act of consciousness which is singular and Neo-realists thought in so much as concrete and an entirely different thing than the abstract and universal (and also it is thing reflective) scientific knowledge ofthe nature ofspecies, of habitus, ofpotency and of the souL of I It was by an inadvertency, which I hasten to correct here, that in certain passages have distinguished two elements in the concept: an entitadve Reflexions sur Vintelligence the species This should be function, impressa was called 'formal sign'. by which it is a modification or accident of the soul, and an in- corrected and 'pure means, quo' read in its place. tentional function, by which it is the formal sign of a thing, in which 148 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALrSM the object is grasped by the mind. This object which is grasped by th 1 concept to be abstract and universal. It is essential to the mind in and by the concept is the doing in itself, taken extramental according to one thing to be singular and concrete. The object, on the other hand, or other of its determinations, and which, first by which sensation and dien b the thing exists with natural existence, is singular in and concrete, as is abstraction has been brought—though stripped of its proper existence— thing, and which exists proper to the in the concept with intentional within the mind. For the three first terms of this diagram are all inside which is abstract and universal, existence, is indifferendy one or the diought; it is in die depth of thought that the object is attained,1 in the 2 posited in the mind other. It is in a state of abstraction and universality heart of die intelligence that it is (which is known why the ancients of- comes to it from its existence in the which concept, where it is attained ten called it objectivus conceptus), it is only the thing in its own proper the mind, but this state is not essential by to it, since in the judgment, in existence (possible or actual) which is extramental and metalogical. declaration 'Peter is a man', the for example, I identify Peter and the But what is capital is that while existing under two different conditions object ofthought, man. in the concept in a state of universality and of abstraction which en- As to the concept or mental word which I have in mind when I think ables it to be manipulated, divided, compared by the mind and also 'man', it is held to be the sign of the thing, the similitude or deputy of enter into the connections of discourse—and in the thing in one of in- the object, an inward end in which the object is intellectually per- dividuality and concretion, nevertheless the object and the thing are not ceived (terminus in quo). But let us be on our guard against that two known terms, two quods, but one: it is one and the same quod, materialisation or spatialisation which language always brings in its which exists for itselfin the thing, and which is attained by the mind as object. or as signified reduplicative ut sic (this existence, otherwise, is only of interest to the mind's logical reflection on itself, which is it Let the thing, for example, be Peter. He exists outside the mind under why has not been dealt with here. On the«« cognitum, cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q. 12, disp. ij, a. 3 : R. Dal- certain conditions: he is not only man, but animal, substance, etc., biez, 'Les Sources scolastiques de la theorie cart&ieruie de 1'etre objecrif', Rev. d'hist. de philosopher or musician, ill or well. Let the object, for example, be Peter laphil., Oct.-Dec. 1929.) The two other forms of existence, as the object ofthought 'man', which has in Peter and outside the mind on the other hand, are of a real or 'physical* (in the scholastic sense of the word) order: the first positing a natural existence, and in the concept and in the mind an intentional the thing in nature as divided from nothingness; the second positing its presentative form in thought and directing ^existence (and posited be- which in the degree to which it is known or the mind on the thing— and being also the form ofexistence whereby the mind is the 2 fore the mind has only an ideal existence). It is essential to thing. Immaterial existence is or rational immaterial and non-entitative, not for itself, yet real; it has this formal effect not by what the thing is (if not in the mind, by its presentative l 'Objectum attingi.' form), but by quod intelligitur debet esse intra intellectum ct intra ipsum what the mind which is the thing knows; it really, physically, affects of St. Thomas, intelligit the species which (John Curs, tlieol, i, P. q. 27, disp. 12, a. 7, n. 4.) 'Intellectus non makes known and the mind which knows. It brings a tension, a nisi trahendo Thomas stimulation res ad sc, et intra se considerando, non extra se inspiciendo. Et D. to the mind, a plenitude; it makes it fecund (in the species impressa) or pro- ceeds docet rem intellectum non posse esse rem ut ad extra, sed ut intra, et ut est unum cum from it as it perfects itself (in the species expressa). intellectu, ut Df q. 9 de Pot. a. 5, et q. 8, a. 1, ct locis infra citandis.' {Ibid. a. 5, n. 5.) CP- *Which does not, I would remark en passant, prevent there being a refex concept, Veritate, 4, 2, ad. 7 which is righdy and distincdy so, of the singular. Cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs. the 'Three forms of esse must therefore be distinguished: the esse naturae, by which rai7.War.,iii,P.q.io,a.4. thing or as exists outside thought, is, in itself, singular and concrete: entitative existence So considered secundum se, seu In statu solitudmis, nature is neither singular nor uni- known, thing. The esse intentionalc, by which the thing exists in thought in order to be versal. Considered secundum esse quod habet in rebus (esse naturae), it is, in fact, singular. abstract is, in itself, abstract and universal: representative existence or as sign. Equally Considered secundum esse quod habet in abstraction intellectus (esse intentionale and for and universal, the esse cognitum scu objectivum, the thing exists in and esse cognitum by which seu objectivutn) it is, in fact, universal. The whole of this doctrine supposes thought, determin- in the degree to winch it is known, is purely ideal, and implies no real the real distinction (in everything which is not God) between nature and esse. Cp. ation which neither in the thing nor in the (unless presumptively in the degree to St. Thomas, mind De Ente et Essentia, chap. 4; John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil, log. ii.,P. the existence being thought of die object presupposes the thinking of the mind): ideal q-3-a. 1. THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 1 5 o CRITICAL REALISM 151 object is by no means in train if we are not careful. The the concept as a and known, it is not as signified it is thought end that it is intelkctum in actu, content in a material container, it is no material thing enclosed material conpenetrated by intellection grasped and in act, it is as signifying end. 1 'word', omitted in another; it is an immaterial by the mind in explain- Finally, the concept in its entitative function and as modification of object; to contain, for it, is simply and purely to know. The ob- ing the and the concept in its intentional the subject function and as formal sign concept and is attained in the concept in the sense ject exists in the that distinct things are not two (just as intentionality is not precisely a thing- concept, in the fulfilment of this intellectual produc- in proffering the rather a in-itself, but mode). These are two formal aspects of two for- attains tion, the immanent act of intellection by this and immediately mally distinct values of the same thing, the intentional function only clad in the conditions of the concept; die object, and attains it and this is applying to knowledge, the entitative function to the being of nature because the concept is only a sign, a deputy or similitude only possible this occasion, the soul itself). (on As the divine essence has itself, in be- of the formal sign, as was pointed out above. of the object by right intellection in act, ing pure the value of both species impressa and species What does this mean, if not that the notions of deputy or similitude expressa for the intelligence of the blessed, as the substance of an angel or image must be purified here of all those features which would is itself the species impressa for its intelligence, the entity of the concept belong to things coming before the eyes of the mind, like a por- is in itself for us the formal sign of the object. As thing or entity the bodily eyes? But then, if the concept is not a thing trait before our concept is an accident, a quality of modification 2 of the soul ; but as the object, what remains of it? It remains being—as exis- resembling arising in the soul as a fruit and expression of the intelligence already intentionally in the soul, and so carrying the object to the ulti- 8 tent formed by the species impressa, already 'perfect', and under the action as making known what the thing or object is 1 mate degree of spirituality, Verbum est 'quiddam mente conceptum quo homo exprimit mentalicer ea de qui- and the thing make two from bus cogitat'. by right of the term known. The concept (Sum. cheoL, i-ii, 93, i, ad. 2.) the line no longer - On the nature of the concept and its identity, "with regard to intelligible the point of view of entity; but as formal sign and in constitution, with the object, see the long discussion in Appendix i, apropos of the criticism offered it must be" said that it and the object of being, but of knowledge, by M. D. Roland-Gosselin. It gives me pleasure to mark the agreement which dc the intel- J. two. The fruit of intellection in act, its content, is Tonque"dec has do not make exhibited towards my position on this important question (cp. op. which as object is set tit. pp. 145-6). ligible object itself, but this intelligible content, and has for "The scholastics class it among the before the mind, as concept is vitally proffered by the mind, qualities ofthe first kind (dispositions and habits), because constitution it suitably disposes nature in regard to knowing (cp. John of St. Thomas, log. the act of intellection itself; as to its intelligible its existence ii, P. q. 18, a. 2). But with this difference from habitude in the ordinary sense of the not say in concept is identical with the object—indeed I do word, therefore the which belongs to the subject and its dynamism, the concept comes from the side as much as it is the ofthe object, which as much as it will be what is known, but exactly in it presents to the mind. in ultimate act, Actuated in actu primo sign and inward end by which the intellect becomes, by the species impressa, the intelligence is the sufficing prin- ciple ofits sign is not own operation. This is why Aristotle and St. Thomas call intellective action It has just been pointed out that the formal what it knows. actus perfect!, the act of that which is already in act. 'Hujusmodi autem actio est actus leads to the knowledge something known at first which consequendy perfecti, id est existentis in actu, ut dicitur in 3 De Anxma (lect. 12).' (Sum. theol, i, 18, in the very ad. known > 1 The of another. Now it is understood that it is something 3 .) apocryphal opuscule De Natura verbi has a precious passage on this theme but which making known. needs to be carefully understood: 'Prima actio ejus per speciem est formatio degree to which it makes known and by the act of sin objecti, quo formato object to the intel- intelligit, simul tamen tempore ipse format, et formatum est, The immanent reason of the presentation of the et simul intelligit, quia ista non sunt motus de potentia ad actum, quia jam factus est intellectuality is steeped in intellectus lect in act, the concept or mental word in actu per speciem, sedprocessus perfectus de actu in actum, ubi non requiritur in act, is its ahqua species in act; to be thought in act, to terminate intellection motus.' John of St. Thomas for his part writes: 'Ex quibus patet pertinere ad ipsum the intellect intellectum, suo actu qui est intelligere, formare sibi objectum in aliqua simi- intrinsic denomination, since it is in it that the object like tudine repraesentante object that et intra se ponere, ibique unire per modum termini seu objecti achieves the ultimate act of intellectuality. But it is not as quod intelligere terminatur, sicut per speciem impressa m unitur ut principium '

152 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 153 of this created participation in the intellectual power of God, of that concept has (like all die objectifying forms) the privilege of transcend- centre of immateriality perpetually in act, the highest point of entitativc information exercised it, 'spiritual ing the function of by and of be- tension naturally present in us, what should be called the active like a spirit. It is from the intellect ing present in die faculty intelligence itself, (intellectus agens) .whence the intellect which knows derives all its for- from the intelligence in living act, that it holds this privilege, as though 1 mative energy, diis quality, this modification of the soul which is the the intelligence gathered all its own spirituality into this one active point,

detenninans intellectual ad pariendam notitiam. Ille autem actus the is quo formatur obiec- there to bring it to a maximum. Thus concept in the intelligence turn est gaitio:cognoscendoenimformatobjectum,etfor>nandoMtelligit, quia simulformat only entitatively or as a formative form, but also as a spiritual form .' not et formatum est, etintelligit. . . {Curs, thcol, i, P. q. 27, disp. 12, a. 5, u. 5). It neverthe- absorbed in the actuation of a subject in order to constitute with it less remains that ia as much as the object is not formed not in the word, the actuation of the intelligence is imperfect with regard to its end, and this is tertium quid, but on the contrary as actuating or rather terminating the why this processus other hand, this form which the intelligence, primarily put in gard to its end in producing the word On the and in forming by it the object. Moreover the word itself is not perfect with us first species impressa, engenders in itself through the discontinuous at the stroke; rather on the contrary, it is cease- act by the lessly retaken up, progressively elaborated and ripened in the process ofdiscourse. (Cp. light of the active intellect, is truly, as I have said, the pure sirnilitude or St. Thomas, Injoann. i, I.) 'Verbum debet exprimere rem ut vitaliter attactam ab ipsa 1 spiritual ignition of the object, or rather the object itself made mind, cognitione, ergo non solum ut intelligibilem in actu primo, sed ut intellectam in actu and intentionally present, not as object, but as sign: because its entire secundo Aliquando procedit verbum ex necessitate in indigentia, quia objectum intelligence illumines ipsura non sufficienter explicatum, et evolutum, et ita proceditur ab imperfecto ad specification comes from the object, the which perfectum, sicut in nobis fit per discursum et cogitationem, et sic praecedit verbum and that which knows being for it equally ^determinate. Thus the intelligere perfectum, sed procedit ab intelligere imperfecto et in fieri; et generahrer concept (in its intentional function) and the object are indiscernible, quandoeumque formatur verbum, ipsum fieri verbi etiam est intelligere in fieri. Ali- intellectum possibilem recipiet quando vero procedit .' And again: 'cum erit anima a corpore separata, per verbum ex abundantia inteUigendi. . . (John of St. Thomas, species effluentes substantiis superioribus, etper intellectum agentem habebit virtutem ad Curs. Phil., De Anima, q. 11, a. 1.) a intelligendum.' (Ibid.) in the Contra Gent., iii, 1 j: 'Cum anima a corpore tali fuerit Causae ad invieem sunt causae in diverso genere. Without there being the least priority And in separata, intellectus possibilis intelligere potent ea quae sunt secundum se intelligibilia, time on one side or the other, the concept is at once produced by intellection in act scilicet substantias separatas, per lumen intellectus agentis, quod est similitude in anima and a condition of it (on the side of the object). It is the intelligence itself which acra- intellectualis luminis est in substantiis separaris.' The conclusion can be drawn alises itselfin actu ultimo in forming it. quod actuation of the in- x from this that, in the state of union with the body, it is under the It would be in effect erroneous to think that the role of the intellectus agens stops at tellectus made fruitful by it by means ofphantasmata, the formation agens that the intelligence, already of the species impressa. St. Thomas had a higher idea of it, whose much the species ex- and formed in the first instance by the species impressa, produces in itself metaphysical importance is often misunderstood. The active intellect is the signature in pressa and us actuates itself in actu ultimo. of the divine light. While the force or intellectual light of an angel and its vitality x it is because are identically If it is better to than to love inferior things (Sunt, theol, i, 82, 3), one and the same, with us there is a double action. The knowing intelli- know way, gence, they exist in the in a higher mode than their own. This is why 'in a general which is at first void of forms, has in itself the vitality characteristic of know- mind ledge, material realities are efficaciously known per similitudinem than they would be is capable in itselfof vitally becoming the object. Nevertheless the virtue which more r, ad. 1, De Pot, it thus per essentiam' (M. Roland-Gosselin, art. fit.) Cp. De Veritate, 3, 2; 7, 7. possesses is only actualiscd by the effect of an intellectuality ceaselessly in act ad. 2. These God's knowledge of things in his essence) must which can alone account for the process of immateriahsation or imellcctualisation of passages (which refer to the standpoint of the im- which we are actu- nevertheless be understood in a very formal sense. It is from the authors, and which is already in itself at the supreme degree of per speciem than they would ation, but materiality ofthe esse that material things are better known without an object, and in order to illuminate, not to become. The intellectus be by be, despite its materiality, a medium agens is thus the activator 'principium their essence, supposing that the latter could ofthe intelligence, its light, the core ofall its force: of we know much less of things in activum proprium, per dick, knowledge. It is clear that from other standpoints quod efficiamur intelligentcs in actu. . . . Pliilosophus their essence. The knowing if were able to know them in ut quod intellectus agens est ut dicitur: signa- them per speciem than we habitus quidam et lumen . . . et in Psalmis essence similitudo rerum*. turn est super nos lumen Veritate) ofGod is itself 'supereminens vultus tui.' (St. Thomas, q. disp. De Anima; cp. De 154 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 155 save as the one makes known and the other is known, • the one is illusory. Thus we see certain concepts, made use of by science and the other the if not signified, and that die one exists only Y m the min^ for long enough, and which are certainly not absurd, vanish for theotherinthemindandinthething. ^ *"* truly ever, leaving no trace: the ancient concepts of chemistry with its phlog- By this we comprehend that the intuition proper to the intelligence 1 for example; we can find in the sociology which stems from hves istic, (at the lowest stage) in abstract perception working by mel % Comte and in modern psychology concepts equally perishable. the concept,* and that for the things which fall in the first place with! the grasp of our intelligence this perception maybe absolutely infallible giving us those CERTAIN IDEALIST POSITIONS AND ATTEMPTED REACTIONS first principles, known by themselves, which direa the whole development of apprehension. And If now we return to our diagram, it is easy to pick out the classically yet-because our intelH gencemustsoformitsobjectsforandbyitself,andin significant moments for modern idealism. The latter is characterised, the degree to wHch a advances in admit, a radical misunderstanding of the very nature knowledge, actively draw from the truly we must by same received pre- sentative form (species idea itself, and of the intentional function of knowledge, which is , impressa) those varied of the concepts which discon- nect the aspects of one intelligible nucleus henceforth conceived in the terms ofan event in the material order. Des- according to the diverse directions within thought; of attention prevailing in the cartes clearly perceived that the known object is known mind (for things are not only brought in the separation the object and the thing, in the belief species impressa to intelligibility his capital error was the of in act, they are also in the present in heart of the intelligence, inventoried that the object is inside thought not as an intelligible made and debited in multifarious ways the mind identifies itself in order to be brought in the concept the mind by an immaterial form, with which to the final degree ofintellec- tion Thereby the inten- in act)-lt is equally comprehensible intentionally, but like an imprint stamped on wax. that the work ofconcepts may be complicated and tortuous, tional function disappears, the known object becomes something be- progressing from the indeterminate and innate, and in- generic to the determined, admits longing to thought, an imprint or portrait which is a large measure of artificial construc- sign). This por- tion causing us often to take wholly tellection stops at the idea (regarded as an instrumental indirect views of things or 'con- tused, trait-idea, a thing which it resembles, but partial, derived or negative'* idea-thing, has for double ones, and in short, runs the risk of error in the which is not itself attained to the act of intellection. Here, therefore, degree to which it by advances, and that not only in facts of are is need of the divine veracity to as- judgment or reasoning, but also two separated quods, and there in the very facts of abstract perception. attain there righdy is i-or when our intelligence sure us that behind the quod 'idea' to which we is already occupied by these forms, the new a quod thought cannot achieve it by concepts which it engenders, 'thing' which corresponds to it: and whose formation does only de- not 2 itself. pend on the thing, but also on the already possessed objects by means of winch 1 I'explication the new object is See, on this comments in E. Meyerson, De set before the mind, may well be formed awry. point, certain interesting dans ks doubtless, when these are sciences, vol. ii. not pseudo-concepts presenting to the mind conceptus objectives, a complex of "Certain flaws in scholasticism (e.g. the Vasquezian notion of the contradictory elements [e.g. the greatest whole number or and the Scotist pointed out in P. Geny's Critica and in my Reflexions sur I'intelligence, the most perfect world), they always present of supra) prepared the to the mind some aspect notion of the esse objectivum, pointed out by R. Dalbiez, art. tit. the real-or some rational being denounced by L, Noel {op. founded on the real-but one which can way for this great cartesian error. The latter is vigorously be so arbitrarily ,'would maintain that reconstructed tit.). 'Few scholastics, if any,* R. Kremer has written, on his side and cut about that the product is meagre, the object. In any case, for what we know directly is only a copy, a subjective print of n U e "'• of Hc °ktS 0ut thar the the not the representations ? P A™ totle 4& connection used ancients and St. Thomas, it is indubitable that we know, worritword ^v*wJ° S Vf " » ( M,.©M,c. (d.4),cp things, and to know is to have 5 .DeAnima,iii,c.4. but things themselves (vide e.g. Sum. theol, i, q. 85, a. 2); !M. intermediary which D. RoLmd-Gossclin, Bulletin this object for the normal end ofintentional activity. The subjective thcmiste.Jm. i 9a. 156 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 157 Thus the idea becomes, as Locke said, the animal or a plant, a lichen immediate object rf same way as an or a polypus, vegetates and thought. J. t ot grows. Berkeley perceived, not without reason, that present-day reactions against idealism, under these conditions As to the reactions which cer- there is no legitimate reason for preserving this thing eyes appear seriously incomplete, which is the double tainly in my they are seen under of the idea, and he believed he was returning to the evidence of com two principal aspects. On the one hand the neo-realist school (Perry, monsense when he affirmed that we have an immediate Spaulding, Marvin, Montague, etc.) by insisting on the immanence perception of of objects, but that these objects are our ideas. the thing in knowledge seem to misconceive the whole distinction be- Finally Kant, admitting anew, like Descartes, object, a thing {das Ding-an- tween thing and and to enclose the extra-mental thing itself in sick) hidden behind the object, but regarding it as thought, which has all the air ofa contradiction. constructed by the ac- tivity of the mind according to its a priori laws, arrested our know- On the other hand, a more important group—to which it is possible ledge at that ofso^onstructed phenomena, the thing in itselfremaining despite their differences, to attach at once thinkers like Russell and unknowable. B Whitehead, and those who have chosen the name of 'critical realists' AH these philosophers equally neglect the rightful nature of know- (Strong, Sellars, Santayana, etc.) as well as the German phenomenolo- ledge. They envisage the work ofknowledge gists stop knowledge at an object which is no longer a product the on the plan of material ac- — of tivities, holding that an activity M extra which is essentially immanent. mind, as it is for the idealists, but rather an essence, an irreducible datum, For cartesian innateness, thought is an intelligible independent of the mind or at least proffered to it an essentially passive; it is matter which by has received an imprint: it is intuition. But this object-essence remains for them, as equally so for the empiricists, who regard for Kant and the this imprint as stamped whole tradition, transobjective subject on thought not by God, but by things. Kant modern separated from the or wished to restore the extramental activity of thought, but always in accord with thing. The latter is only hypothetical and enigmatic, and the same type ofa transitive indeed, die principle of and Occam's razor, it or productive activity imposing a form on by economy would be matter: in this case the better to pass it by. indeed it is held 'absurd'; and, remaining with- form belongs to the side ofthe mind: concepts are Or empty forms, and it is out observing it in a certain dependence on Hegel, against that pan- sensible matter which will be subsumed and or- ganised by these logism against which at bottom they are reacting, but from which they forms. The inexhaustibility of the thing as subject having been thus have learnt to confound logic ontology, they endeavour like Hegel transferred, by virtue of the 'Copernican principle', and from thought as to re-absorb the thing into the idea, and characteristics are attributed to generative to the subject, the former appears as an in- definite process the object, taken in transobjective subject, for the manufacture of objects. entire separation from any Indeed, the which only in reality come from thence: no longer that reality in itself intentional function having disappeared, knowledge be- comes perfectly unintelligible. which Hegel accorded to the Idea, but unproducibility by the mind, and For in the entitative order it is clear that a thing cannot be another irreducible consistency ofessence. than what it is. Our idealists think it absurd, as they say, to look for This process makes of the object, which is neither an aspect of a thing something outside thought. Everything is absorbed into it,, and henceforward nor a modification of the mind, something entirely irrational, and knowledge is its self-development in the knowledge vitally serves to make things known itself an entirely unintelligible process, neither im- is not known by us in the first instance; its existence manifestly depending on that primary manent nor productive; which, moreover, if it is neither productive nor direct knowledge, Tins is, in my opinion, the essential diesis of immediate" or vol. "direct realism".' {Art. tit., Philosophla Perennis, transformative as Kant wished it to be, thereby remains rightly with- scholasticism, see also E. de la pauie MiTT, Gilson, Etudes stir k rSk out an end: not in the very true sense that knowledge continues to pene- rMMvale dans la formation da system cartfsien, Paris, 1930, and Maricain, U Son e de JJ." S trate sense that, Descartes, Pans, 1932. endlessly into things in adding truth to truth, but in die 158 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM I$9 only laying hold on a thing rules, it by can only, despite 1 the (The one, the sensibly existent, is ephemeral real. the origin of all our knowledge: constructions reared by the theoreticians of this idealism redivivus, mentally end the other, the existent, may be reflectively experienced when less over-reach itselfby substituting one truth for another, without knows itself by its acts, ever the mind or may be attained to by reasoning being possessed ofany one. knows God and the spiritual when it world—by analogy with sensible with which our mind existence, must still be in relation in some degree even in the knowledge of the supra-sensible.) THE UNIVERSE OF EXISTENCE AND THAT OF INTELLIGIBILITY It must not be forgotten that if, in effect, the singular as such is not Everything which has been said of the concept the object of science, and is not direcdy seizable by the implies the aristote- human intelli- Jian theory of abstraction, according to which gence, it is nevertheless indirecdy seizable, in reflex concepts; the intelligence actively and it is in / draws from sensible data, from things as they it (as transobjective subject) that science ends, completing the are first of all attained by circle of / the senses, a content in its intelligible motion. This is why we have need which intelligibility is potentially found-an of the senses, not only operation which is only possible to draw from thence our ideas of things, but for the by leaving out all those individualising resolution of the J characteristics which are found in judgment, which in one way or another (and even the thing as such. It is this intelligibi- when the judg- J ment is not verified 2 / lity that the intellect actualises, and proffers by the sensible) must needs take place in the in the concept, and is the object senses, sicut extremo et ultimo, ad quod resolutio 3 ! known by it. If one thus distinguishes, fat, because judgment is as Aristotle and St. concerned with (actual Thomas did, the thing and the object, or possible) existence, and 'sensible and visible but without separating them, and, while maintaining things' are for us the paradigm of the existent. their unity, what comes from the thing and what For St. comes from the mind arc considered Thomas a science ofnature which did not return to the singu- apart in knowledge, then it is lar real comprehensible would be not science, but a dream. And it is the same, how, from the things which exist outside the mind, analogi- which make up what cally, for metaphysics, which also returns to the singular, and for mathe- we may call the universe of existence, the mind draws a world matics, in so far at least as it comes back to an intuitively constructible ofabstract conceptual objects and universals, which may be called the universe singular, where its fundamental entities have an imaginable existence.4 of intelligibility or of human knowledge, which, In effect, 'the on the one side, in end in which the knowledge of nature is achieved is the order that it may be known is detached from the universe of existence, and, •Even in on the other hand, is identified with it for its mathematics, -which makes an abstraction of the order of existence, there must be subsistence. Thus it a return to the imaginably existent, i.e. is most certainly die tilings of the world or existence the constructibility of imaginative in- tuition, at least which indirectly or by analogy and in relation to directly constructible entities. we attain to in attaining to the world of intelligibility, but Thus non-euclidian J geometries, for example, definitely keep their full logical security neither in their y singularity nor in the their from the contingence of the flux of possibility of our ability to construct euclidian models of them, the intrinsic singular eventualities. coherence {i.e. Our senses so attain to them: science only attains exemption from internal contradiction) of euclidian entities being itself assured by their i to them directly existence for the imagination. in die natures and universal determinations which give aSee V the grounds for their supra, chap, i, pp. 67-71. intelligible necessities. And it is in returning, as St. Thomas, Cajetan says in a 1 De Veritate, 12, 3, ad. 3. It is notable that the judgment, the intuition passage quoted above, by the ministration of the ofthe senses, and also the appetite are all three them related, though in very differing senses, to singular and of contingent things diat the is realised; fashions, universal to the esse rerum: the judgment as declaring how the thing attained in our in the reintegration of notions die intelligible in die existent, whether in the compares with this (actual or possible) esse: sensible intuition as so attaining sensibly e sensibly existent, or in die existent in act; the appetite as bringing the subject to bear on the thing as it spiritually so, that it achieves its grasp of the 'exists in act. 'Cajetan, In Anal. Post., i, i, 'See note i, c. 8. Vide supra, chap, i, p. 35. supra. 160 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 161 the senses, above all by that of sight. thing attained by As the cutler 'nothingness' is made up of 'being' to which is joined the notion ofnega- further knowledge of the knife than is does not seek for required by the these are only non-essences (negations tion. In themselves ox privations)— work he has in hand, that is, to make this particular knife, in the same non-being conceived in the likeness a chimera is a ofan animal—or rela- way the wise man only seeks to know the nature of a stone or ofa hone they indubitably cannot exist tions, which although outside the mind, in order to find the reason of the things which the senses arc aware of: intelligible have nevertheless the same content and definition (irpos 1-1) and as the judgment of the artisan of the knife would be deficient if he objects are things, as real relations. Such not nevertheless they are not ignored the work in hand, thejudgment ofthe scholar would be equally pure objects separated from any transobjective subject like the pheno- so if he ignored the evidence of the senses. On the other hand, all that 1 mena' of the moderns, for they are conceived b the image of such sub- is known by our intelligence (even mathematical beings and metaphy- jects (a preliminary knowledge ofwhich they presuppose) and they are sical realities), in the present state of the soul's union with the body, is constructed from elements drawn from the real: far from being sepa- known in some relation to the sensible things of nature. Thus it is im- rated from these they are thus doubly bound up with them. The (actual possible that the judgment ofour intellect should not be deficient when or possible) real remains their foundation and their occasion; from 1 the exterior senses arc dosed up by sleep.* thence they draw all their objective consistency. If we can make judg- It is indeed not true to say that there is only one world of intelligi- ments about them, it is because we treat them as if they were things: bility drawn by abstraction by us from the world of existence. There 'ratio de eis (non entibus) negotiatur quasi de quibusdem entibus, dum arc as many universes of intelligibility as there are degrees of materiali- 2 de eis affirmat vel negat aliquid.' And if the mind can be true or false sation or otherwise in the object. with regard to them, it is by an indirect connection with the reality which makes their foundation and occasion. If you suppress the nature RATIONAL BEING of a circle or that of a square, you cannot say that a square circle is The mind docs not only abstract from the sensible those intelligible unthinkable; if you suppress the whole of apprehensible nature in its natures which arc realised in the world of existence: it does not only set they arc made by the mind before being knonm by it as rational before itself those natures or the notions which arc born from such, in *Let it be added that beings. I employ the ideas of blindness or of death to signify that a man has lost consideration of the world of existence, all of which arc able to exist: in his sight or ceased to live, long before knowing these rational beings as such, or real beings, Le. beings capable of brief, it docs not only conceive of perceiving that I am thinking of death or blindness as if they were things. From

ad instar rational being it exists existence, it can also construct in the image of such natures, this angle 'esse est percipi seu intelligi' is not even true of a : gen- in the mind before being known: and without doubt (and that is how the idealist entis, objects of thought incapable of existing outside the mind (e.g. formula is applicable to rational being) this existence in the mind is itself only der and species, the subject, the predicate, etc.) which the ancients an esse ebjectivtim seu eognitum, but which refers to the cognosci of the real elements called rational beings, entia rationis. with which the rational being has been constructed and at the instance of which it is

is only possible to say These objects of thought, which do not merit the name of essences, conceived, not to the cognosci of die rational being as such. It of the mental concept. by the purely and simply 'esse est intelligi (ipsum intelligi intrinsccum)' for essence is the capacity to exist (esse)* arc not wholly created 'Cognitio formans ens rationis non est reflexa respiciens ipsum tamquam rem cog- intelligible arc arc essences or realiter mind. They made up of elements which nitam ut quod, sed ilia cognitio directa, quae ipsum non ens reale, vel quoJ

diought relationis realis. . . Non aspects first of all grasped in dungs. For example, the object of relativum non est, denominat eognitum ad instar ends vel . quod, sed . . . cognitio reflexa quae practise ens rationis denominatur eognitum ut

*Sum. iheol., i, formaliter 84, 8. Cp. De Veritatt, 1 2, 3, ad. 2. cognitio directa qua denominatur eognitum ad instar ends id quod non est, Thomas, ue t- « per se of St. Thomas, log. ii, P. q. 2, a. 4, <&* ^'Essentia diritur secundum quod cam ct in ea res habct esse' (St. primo format ens rationis.' (J°hn Commenlnq, ultimo.) el Essentia, c. 1). 'Non habct (ens rationis) essenriam iliquam.' (Cajctan, c.i.q.i.) 'St. Thomas, In Mctaph., book iv, lect. 1 , n. 540. 162 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICAL REALISM 163 various degrees of determination, you cannot say that the species is a est, et ideo fingit illud, 1 apprehendere quod non ac si ens esset.' Let it portion of a genus. be noted here that if there are rational beings (like the square circle, the Aristotle and St. If, as the critical realism of Thomas teaches, extra- greatest possible whole number, the chimera, the best of all possible mental intelligible being is the first object of the intellect, and if the worlds) which cannot exist because they are intrinsically contradictory existing real is first of all given us through the senses, we can be certain —they are the thieves and forgers among rational beings—there are, on that our first intellectual apprehensions do not bear upon rational be- the other hand, numerous others, honest rational beings, which cannot ings. Ab actti ad posse valet consecutio: since there are ants the ant is pos- exist, not because they are composed of impossible characteristics, but sible. And as to the possibility of being in general, it is certified for us, because their place in existence is incompatible with one of their objec- independendy even (by right) of all actual perception of existence,1 by tive features. The notion of the predicate is not absurd, but it would be intuitive judgment of our minds, which precisely affirms the very first absurd to attribute an existence outside the mind to a predicate, which 2 that being is not not-being. But how can a philosophy which only is defined by a certain function which a thing possesses in so far as it is starts from thought, and according to which the mind attains at first known. « itself, be sure that all the objects of our thought are not rational only to Implicit in the notion of them as some relation to something real is where the malign Genius plants his barb: the problem beings? This attained by the mind is, we say that these rational beings arefounded on crucial for Descartes (and for Leibnitz). By that violent re- which was reality. It thus happens that a rational being, which cannot exist outside living contradiction which is in the heart of idealism, how torsion, that the mind as it is itself presented to the mind, i.e. as a being, can very to avoid the question whether being itself, in the is it possible finally clearly show, by reason of its foundation on the real, what exists out- rational being is made by thought, and which in the image of which side the mind, and it is indeed only constructed for that end. To say that the intellect as a (possible) reality—whe- first instance is conceived by Neptune is observed by an astronomer is to posit a rational relation in

ther being itself is not a rational being? Neptune, but it is certainly real to say that the astronomer observes the weakness of God does not make rational beings; it is a mark of Neptune. Evil is a rational being in the sense that to rhfnk of the bank- to con- our abstract intelligence that in so many cases it has no power ruptcy ofgood which there must be in a subject I am forced to conceive

form itself to reality except by constructing these rational beings. We ofit as if it were a thing. But evil exists most really and positively in the in the can only grasp the wounds of being in conceiving of them sense that the subject in question is thereby mutilated or deprived of 8 image of being. 'Tunc efficitur ens rationis, quando intellectus nititur something which should be vitally in him. The physician does not find

deafness in the for it in order to destroy it as 'Cp. supra, p. m, note i. ear and he does not look a for a he Thus 'we see at once that it is not only inconceivable, but really impossible would a colony of bacteria, nevertheless it is a very real thing to be onco- thing at once to be and not be. And we thus affirm already the objective and be- subject. logical value ofthe principle ofcontradiction before making anyjudgment on existence, 'Quia ex proprio conceptu est ad aliud,' John, of St. Thomas profoundly says, that requirit fore reflecting that this primary affirmation presupposes ideas, and before verifying fundamentum, non solum ut existat, sed etiam ut sit capax existendi, id est ut sit our entitas these ideas come to us, by abstraction, from the sensible things laid hold of by reatis.' (Log. ii, P. q. 17, a. 2.) Abstractive understanding can thus conceive of this object the subject connected senses.' (R. Garrigou-Lagrange, art. cit.) of thought as well where it has a real foundation in with 3 ab- one term (the relation is then real, thus the ship really draws away from the shore) And we can only perceive relations in forming a separate concept of diem, as in it- where it has no real foundation in the subject (if there is then for all that a real foun- stracted from the subject where they have or have not their foundation. Being dation, or a it is said that the shore draws its notion rational relation founded on the real, as when self only one of a pair, one, if I may put it so, among tilings, not implying in back pure con- from the ship). On the conditions necessary for a relation to be real, see John of either the exigence ofexisting in itself or ofexisting in something else, but a St. Thomas, not neces- art. cit. nection between this and that, relation is an intelligible object which does its 1 its basis m Oposc. sarily in itself imply oncological grounds, and is only real by reason of (apocr.), De nattira generis, c. 3. degrees of rational knowledge !64 the rational being deprived of the sense ofhearing: the 'deafness' is founded in internal organism of on a very real derangement the the ear. degrees that such Moreover it is in very differing and such an object note of unreality of thought can be affected by the characteristic of while all the while referring rational being. Evil and deafness, to the CHAPTER III a good which should very real fact that a subject lacks be there, are, SENSIBLE NATURE set before the mind like a substance OUR KNOWLEDGE OF in so far as they are objects or a a not-beings. A geometric surface is possible being (if it is a quality, I. THE MAJOR TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE rational .condition which euclidian surface) affected by a prevents it precise very general sense of I have said that science—in the though absence density its existing in nature with that absolute of which defini- knowledge in a perfect and irrefragable mode—attains to those intelli- excellence the reality of sensible nature, tion implies: movement is par gible universes immanent in the universe of existence; but these it con- but we can only conceive of it by retaining in the memory that part of siders apart, in order to impress them in some way on the universe of that 'if the soul did not exist' time and it which has already lapsed, so These universes of understanding are made up of abstract 1 existence. movement 'would not be', i.e. with that unreal consistency (rational substitutes), of laws and neces- 2 natures (grasped in themselves or their It is very condition) with which our apprehension endows them. im- sary relations, while the universe of existence is a universe of individuals the part played portant, as we shall see in die next chapter, to consider and events. In this universe there is contingence and hazard, an irrever- in re. in our knowledge by these rational beings founded sible flux of singular formations in interaction, none of which ever re-

' Phys., iv, 223-6.) l"AMvwm> dvai ypovov ^i}? pj ovotjs (Aristotle, 14, appear again in exactly that form; there is liberty. This is the universe in Miriam, Philosophic Bergsonienne, and Theonas. Sec J. which we live, in the midst of particular and contingent circumstances. 1 'unrealisable ele- cases the mind has 'completed the real with some *In the two Utter It is absurd to imagine that it can ever be wholly under the dominion of that object conceived by it is an em ment, and it is only for this reason (completive) the science, for all these features which I have enumerated are not, as such, iubium; St. Thomas, InlSent., dist. 19, rationis. Cp. Cajetan, In 1, 28, 1, Aiprimum vera objects for science, in the precise sense of the word. The knowledge q.J,a.l. of the world of existence, exacdy in the degree to which it is concrete and existing, belongs, from die point of view of speculation, to experi- ence and to history, to die certitudes and of memory, the

constatation of facts, to conjecture and well-founded opinion, in short, to the work of the intelligence when occupied with the senses: from

the practical point ofview, it belongs to art, to prudence, to knowledge by cdnnaturality. Science, apprehension in the strict sense of die word,

only considers those intelligible necessities which this world invests

with its reality. Each of our types ofknowledge considers in the world its own universe of intelligible necessities and that alone. Nevertheless

there is a supreme form ofknowledge, a prime-knowledge, a knowledge together, offirst principles, which can consider all these differing universes it ap- not in order to substitute a particular form of knowledge which J65 1 66 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 167

plies to each in turn, but in order to comprehend its own form of transobjective intelligibility, the universe ofthe trans-sensible appr third zone of hension, to defend and justify its principles, and thus to establish unity __the universe of the metaphysician—which opens out into the world then, at least in their most What general types, are these diverse which can only be analogy. uni- of the {to us) trans-intelligible, known by verses of intelligibility which our intellect sets before itself when it en- These three general types of understanding belong to the order of deavours to disengage itself from the senses? The aristotelian tradition speculative knowledge. 1 which I have already recalled, recognised three principal types, practical then, which If it is a question of the order of knowledge, from the correspond to what Thomists call the three degrees of abstraction: the heights of metaphysical understanding, the mind returns towards the universe of the principles and laws of mobile and sensible nature, the world ofexistence as such, and comes, by the stages ofmoral philosophy world ofphysica: the universe ofquantity as such, the world ofmathe- and the practical sciences which are its continuation, then of prudence, matica; the universe ofbeing as being, and of intelligible objects which finally to the point of immediate contact with the singular action re- as such, do not require matter as a condition of their realisation, the quiring regulation. This practical order, however, is not in this 1 world ofMETAPHYSICA. present instant, our theme. Is it desired to give to these three degrees of abstraction, names more In the speculative order, metaphysics is that supreme and master- in conformity with the habits of the modern' didactic vocabulary? form of knowledge which was referred to above. It is possible to ask

We can say, making use of the terminology proposed in chap, i that with Kant if metaphysics can be a science (to which I answer, Yes), or if the assemblage of what the knowing subject can attain to in the with Maine de Biran and Bergson if it is in itself an experimental science

transobjective subjects submitted to the grasp of its intelligence (i.e, (to which my answer is, No). In any case, no other form ofknowledge,

2 which proffer themselves to it in order to be turned into its objects), in particular none of the experimental sciences share with metaphysics 3 constitutes in a general way the transobjective intelligible, the first zone the universe of the trans-sensible, or the third degree of abstraction.

with which the human intellect is in relation in this vast totality, is the Inversely, neidier philosophy or any ontological form of knowledge

universe of those objects which can only be realised in sensible or em- shares widi madiematics the universe of the preter-real, or the second

piric existence, what we may call the universe of the sensibly real. How degree of abstraction.

" is it possible to surpass this universe? Either in rightly escaping from On the contrary, in the first degree of abstraction we find two differ- the real and the renunciation of the endeavour to co-ordinate know- ing forms ofunderstanding, one of an ontological order, the philosophy the experimental sciences ledge with that supreme value which is existence apart from the mind, of nature, one of an empiriological order, share out among them- i.e. by application to objects which (if they are realisable) can only be ('Science' kolt iia%rjy in modern terms), which degree that we realised in sensible existence, but which are conceived of without rela- selves the sensible and mobile universe. Thus it is in this encounter significant the problem, or perhaps is it tion to existence, as it is in the second zone of transobjective intelligi- in its most form science and philosophy. We have al- bility, the universe of the preter-real, the universe of die mathematician: necessary to say, the conflict, of ready as it first of all presents itself to or by rising beyond the sensible, in application to objects which are con- taken cognisance of diis problem, methodological standpoint of the ceived in relation to that supreme value of extra-mental existence, but reflection, i.e. from the primarily endeavour to penetrate it from which are realised in a non-sensory, non-empiric existence: this is the theoretician of die sciences. Now we shall 1 the For this it is necessary to re- Cp. chap, i, pp. 44-7. point of view of critical philosophy. *Thesc cor- science, in order to subjects which are proportionate (connatural) to the human intellect are turn to die consideration of physico-mathematical poreal and sensible things, sciences. examine afresh diis queen and goddess ofthe experimental 'In the in the didactic terminology proposed here the 'intelligible' is taken word ^This is considered in chapter vii. sense of intelligible to us. 1 68 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 169

into it. Without constituting a science of physical being enter obliquely MODERN PHYSICS CONSIDERED IN ITS GENERAL EPISTEMOLOGICA1 obliquely admits ontological values. FORM as such, it The system of mathematical relations which it seeks to establish be- 1 Such a science, we have seen, appears first of all as a mathematisa- tween sensible phenomena, and which constitutes its highest formal ob- tion of the sensible; claiming from induction well-founded sufficiendy satisfy or stimulate the mind of the empiric ject, does not in itself data, but in to subject order these to a form of deduction and real. a rule of scientist. His interest is directed towards the physically By reason explication which are of a mathematical order, it belongs to that epis- of the reality on which his science is founded and towards which it temological type which the ancients called 'intermediary sciences' leads, of the invincibly ontological tendency of the human mind, and (scientiae mediae), sciences which overlap the borders of physics and the pressure exercised on all sides, despite himself, on him by the prin- mathematics, which are materially physical and formally mathematical ciple of causality, he is necessarily led to integrate in his mathematical so that they have at once more affinity with mathematics than physics in deductions—in the very domain of his own science—into his formally their laws of explications, are and in the end by which they verify their mathematical explanation of observed appearances, a system of prin- judgments, more physical than 2 mathematical. ciples and causes of an (ontologically) physical order which he has built One primary point must here again be made clear, which has al- up anew for that end. (In the same way we often find, in the initial prin- ready furnished a theme in the chapter consecrated to scientific experi- ciple of a new theory, the intuition ofsome explanatory entity which is ence: it is not the nature of physical causes considered in itself which physically conceivable.)1 And thus such a science admits of a relation forms the object of physico-mathematical research. Physico-mathema- with real being, not only considered as the inexhaustible source of ob-

tics works in the terms of the physical real, but in order to envisage tainable measurements, but also as the foundation for those reconstruc-

them from the formal standpoint of mathematics, and of mathematical tions ofwhich I havejust spoken. laws which connect together the measurements collected by our techni- One thing must be particularly observed: the so constructed entities cal instruments from nature. All its concepts arc resolved in the measur- may be real or rational beings—to him the point is entirely indifferent.

able. And what verifies the deductive synthesis which it erects is simply It is for the philosopher, if he can, to draw any such distinction between

the coincidence of its numeric results with the measurements given by the diverse entities set in action by the physicist. The physicist himself is

experiment; it does not follow that the mathematical beings which in- not troubled by any such question, for all that is important to him is the tervene in this synthesis represent determinatively real causes and entities lr bring certain consequences in their train, to which are like the ontological articulations of the world of sensible These mathematical manipulations which M. Emile Picard has rightly drawn attention. 'If it is asked to what the wave- nature. 3 Physical correspon- theory is verified en bloc, by means of the touch a point theories of Fresnel are attached, it is necessary to reply, and we here on dence established the equations. between the system of signs which it employs and which is capital for scientific philosophy—to a system of differential Now from the molecular measurable data which have been recognised by experiment. these, as is too often forgotten, have only been formed, starting conception of die ether-medium, by the making of numberless hypotheses on the re- But a second point needs also relates to the ob- to be signalised, which to con- lations of this ether with ponderable matter, and in passing from discontinuity servation I have just recalled, physico-mathematical reduced, the point that tinuity so as to obtain these differential equations, which have moreover been in so many of the knowledge, while all the time taking its formal texture from the mathe- in order to escape inextricable analytic difficulties, to linear form, as themselves matical questions in mathematical physics. More or less analogous conditions present order, nevertheless remains, in the end to which it is directed, difficult it is to de- elsewhere and, under these conditions, it is comprehensible how more physical prc-occupations than madiematical: and ontological coup d'ceil sur finitely condemn the initial conditions of a theory.' (E. Picard, Un 1 the Acaddmie des Cp. I'histoire des sciences et des tMories physiques, a lecture, delivered to supra, chap, i, pp. 52-tf. ^Cp. ibid. 8Cp. Sciences, Dec. t6th, 1929.) supra, cliap. i, pp. 76-7. i o THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL 7 KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 17 r

x explicative value of these entities as functions of the system outline-spaces, etc. And it is obvious that a of eouati ber transfinite number, of physical theory. So that his ontological appetite is as of the physically real which does not scrutinise in well, ifnot b form of knowledge ter, satisfied by rational as by teal beings. themselves, in their own physical or ontological reality, its causes and It is moreover possible that he will be shocked this reality purely from the to hear the philosoph essences, but which reconstructs point of speaking in such a way: for a vast misunderstanding rises relations of measurement which it contains and according to from the fact view ofthe that the two attach a different meaning to the mathematical deduction in the most generalised form word 'real'. The philo- the exigencies of sopher opposes real being and rational being in the make use of a great number of rational beings critical and logical possible, will necessarily sense which I have here explained, and it is very auxiliaries. Among the entities which enable the phys- important to him to as its indispensable discover to which of these two categories the entities with think out his numerical records in use under the present condi- which he is icist to every kind, the dealing belong. This opposition and this investigation are alike uninter- tions ofphysical observation, they will be of from mul- esting to the physicist as such; more, he ignores them. And he assumes titude of more or less elaborated entia rationis which only respond to on condition that they are defined authentifications and which translate conceptually the ob- by measuring operations which are at experimental structures the real,2 to those entities, such as least theoretically realisable, that the entities ofwhich he makes use are servable causations and of is concerned with the real, i.e. that they express in an authentically physical way the real bear- the atom or the electron, which appear, in what the atom or ing ofnature. 'I entirely believe', replies the philosopher, 'that they have question an sit, as realities (something exists which words

is with the been made for that, but that is only more manifestly the proof that they electron determinatively enclose), and, in what concerned approximations to, but are entia rationis'. The physicist immediately adds at that, as though to question quid sit, as images which are not only the spatio-temporal organisation of contradict his colleague, that these real entities are only 'shadows' or il- symbolical of primordial parts of reconstruction of real be- lusions, and that it would be ridiculous to ask of them anything con- matter (we may say that they are symbolic 3 the cerning the essential nature ofmatter ings); up to those entities, of which Einsteinian 'time' offers to-day most famous example, which are in the full sense rational beings, sub-

REAL BEING AND RATIONAL BEING IN PHYSICO-MATIIEMATICAL stitutes for realities whose ontological value has no interest for science.

KNOWLEDGE Naturally I am speaking of rational beings founded on the real, for they

l with regard to the in- This is a typical instance of the important part, indicated at the end l hold 'transfinite number* a real entity (ofabsolute potency) finite transcendental multitude implied by the notion, but an ens rationis with regard to of the preceding chapter, human know- played by rational beings in and the^efieraJ unity which fulfils its notion (which is only a unity of apprehension), ledge. Because rational being the is maintained by our — order which which so to speak, allows for the return to and the analogical re-imposition ofa mathe- in that conceptual objects taken exactly as known, i.e. according to the life matical order, and mathematical considerations of equality, integrity, etc., purely metaphysical which the whole transcendental multitude taken simply as which they lead in our mind—because rational being constitutes the order to such belongs. are specific object of logic (that is the privilege of that science), we 'God', said Kronecker, 'made whole numbers; all the rest is the work ofmen.' a tempted to believe that these entia rationis only play a part in logic: 2 See infra, p. 195, note 2. grave error rational beings S reason- indeed. Already, in general comprehension, M. Wolfers rightly complains that 'many students have taken to the habit of say ing if they were pawns in a game of are made use of at every instant: it is so, for example, every time we about electrons, protons, photons and atoms, as chess, crowd of hypotheses, obscurities and 'Evil has triumphed or 'the sun forgetting that these terms still contain a in his soul', or 'he is a victim of'deafness, On subjective ideas.' (Transmutations des ilimmts, Paris, Soc. d'^dit. scientif., 1920.) sub- - rises', for evil and deafness are privations, essences capable of L'CEuure de Louis de not the physical significance of wave mechanics, cp. Andre George, sistence, constandy physical presentation by more nor does the sun mount in the sky. Mathematics is Broglie et la physique d'aujourd'lmi (193 1). 'The attempts at creating or less traditional all to a non-plus.' rational beings, such as an irrational number, imaginary num- means have come 172 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 173 are founded on the real behaviour of nature, on measurements and facts 2 1 real time, and it is under the conditions and modalities of this for nace really found in nature— example on Michelson's results; there re- quantitatively measured and regulated, that the interacting real quantity, main also other rational beings, entities incapable ofexisting as such and their qualitative activities. In mensura, pondere causes in nature develop which have no more intrinsic and direct ontological value than the harvest entitative numero. Physical reality breeds a rich of riches ir- material models constructed in space by Lord Kelvin. et reason its materiality, be- reducible to terms of quantity; but by of and How are we to comprehend this formation of explanatory entities the substance of bodies mediatized by quantity, cause it emanates from all which present in the most diverse degrees the aspect of entia rationis is intrinsically subject to quantitative determina- this world of qualities and which nevertheless remain all the time founded on reality? It is by extrinsic and artificial measure- tions (that is why it is accessible by our applying ourselves to an exact doctrine of quantity that we can answer as the first accident ments). Quantity thus ontologically considered, of this question. corporeal substances and as the matrix of cosmic activities, is the object Considering things from the standpoint, not of the physicist, but of of consideration for the philosopher of nature, who is otherwise inca- the philosopher, to express ourselves and in his language, quantity, quantitative pable of passing on from this to the consideration of those i.e. the extension of substance and the metaphysical unity of its parts determinations to which the physical world is subject and ofrediscover- which are diverse with regard to position, is a real property of bodies. ing for human use the heights and depths ofnature. 1 There are, in nature, dimension, numbers, real measurements, real But quantity can be considered in another way: when disengaged abstractio formalis, set before the mind in itself, as *Cp. R Dalbicz, 'Dimensions absolucs ct mesures absolues,' Revue thomiste, Mar.- from its subject by Ap., 1925. To make more exact what I have said in Theonas, when basing oneselfon the constituting in itself a separate universe of knowledge {the universe of aristotelian doctrine of the three kinds ofpredicative relations {Met., v, 1.5: St. Thomas, the the preter-real), it is then treated no longer ontologically and from lesson 17: cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil, log. ii, P. q. 17), it is requisite to distin- point of view of being, but quantitatively or from the standpoint of guish the measurement ofspecification, which is the basis for relations of die third kind which sustain the objects of and which rules measurement secundum commensurationem esse et veritatis (this measure those relations of order and measurement to is of another order than what is measured), from the measurement of comparison, thought so discernible as the forms or essences which are proper them. which is the basis for relations of the first kind, and which in particular is the com- I well aware Thus considered it is the object of the mathematician. am parison ofnumber and unity, standards of scale (mathematical measurement). observer (the numeration of the physi- Our physical measurements imply a transcendental relation (or secundum did) between nothing to do with the numbers found by the form of is bound up with the most fundamental our unities and instruments and the reality which is to be measured; a real (predicative) cist). It is so, for example, that time quantity sought for in the movement of the stars, and to-day is secundum esse relation o( thefirst kind between our unities and the measured movement (what the ancients of • light or inter-atomic motion), the measure of (the measure ofcomparison); and a secundum esse relation which is rational (not real) rather sought for in the movement of con- (in universe. (Thus St. Thomas says, for the the third kind which makes the being of the measured depend on our measurements another time than that of the material that there is only one , measured by the fashion in which we conceive ofthem (measurements of specification). cept ofmeasure can be applied analogically, ) because con- the the measure or scale of nature escapes us, Outside these (ontologically) real measurements ofspecification—which can be duration of the first angel.) But to a quantity, but only metisura in- in reality this is not a question of a scale which can be applied cerned with quantity in itself (for, in my opinion, it is to this category that instruments belong to Sent. II, the ontological application. Those measuring tr'mseca 'quae est in mensuratio sicut accidens in subjecto' (St. Thomas, In basis for such an universe. dist. its own the Mind which created the measure and scale of the 2, q. 1, a. 2, ad. r; must be referred, as a body is intrinsically 'measured' by numerating mind numera- ofcom- St. Thomas explains {In Arist. Phys., iv, 23) that without a dimensions, ontologically determined)—there are in nature real measurements possunt esse sensibilia sensu their di- tion is impossible, that there may be numbers: 'Sicuti parison, which are ontological measurements, according to which things, and but existente numerante. That in a non existente, ita possunt esse numerabilia et numerus non mensions in particular, are extrinsically determined and bound up with another It cannot be called reckoned sw is to say, that then this is not numbered (in act). unity ofco-ordination and subordination funumquodquc mensuratur simplicissimo number dicitur id quod num- call number' 'Numerus numeratus ... generis', Sum. thcol., can unless offered to numeration. j, 10, 6: cp. In Met., x, 2), and which the philosopher numbers out below, erarur in actu, vel quod numerabile.' {Ibid. lect. 17.) (in the sense in which, according to St. Thomas, as is pointed number which has 2See Maritain, Theonas. exists a parte ret and as numberablc before being numbered) but JSee infra, pp. 201-0". J. » '

174 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 175

that for many modern theorists of pure mathematics depends on external perception presupposingly, the latter h and which only as does object, but only purely formal logical relations, 4° so that according imagination itself. The part played by imagination is explained by the to ° celebrated definition ofBertrand Russell, it can be reduced ' as the first accident of corporeal substance, precedes to 'a stud fact that quantity, which one ignores that ofwhich one is speaking, and the whole qualitative (energetic and physical) does notknowifwh« (innatural priority) order, says is one true', a discipline without content, and in sensible order, and is so known by the senses by which such objective and thus the whole content as survives is furnished by the physicists. qualities, not without, for all that, a whole synergic But this nominalist means of sensible tendency, in my opinion, only prevails in mathematics perception (it is, as it were, a 'commonsensible'). Imagina- because an un- of justified abandonment of intuition goes hand in of the intellect can therefore penetrate into the world hand with the precious tion in the service rational acquisitions represented the sensible matter by development of the axiomatic of pure quantity, abstractively detached from —and that This intuition is not intelligible intuition (nor measure in which imagination, although it presupposes the pure intuition, in the in the very kantian sense), as the geometricians (I that its objects are not subject to for long believed, giving them- external senses, is free of them mean selves for object a world ofplatonic models cut out from the amorphous the relative conditions which affect hie et nunc those of perception, and background regard to external physical which these figures defined (i.e. the eternal and condition- which proceed for an actual dependence in ing universe) are and which was called 'space': neither is it an experimental circumstances). The intuitive schemas of the imagination—which intuition, springing the symbols or sensible illustrations from external perception, the observations and in no sense the object itself, but only measurements thus exhibit to us sensibly, but in a way which are affected thanks to the senses and our instru- of the object of mathematics— the essences and the ments. It is an imaginative intuition, an intuition of 'inward meaning', independent of all experimental conditions, both

- *As M. Rene Poirier has rightly properties which in themselves precede the sensible order and are pointed out, 'the word, axiomatic, can be applied to a theory whose postulates and indefinablcs are made evident. Every stricdy formal independent of it. And this action of the imagination, without in the science is thus axiomatic. But this term can also designate, in opposition to another smallest degree diminishing the strict and rigorous rationality implied theory, where an endeavour is made to retain the accustomed meaning ofthe original intuitionists too often to believe, is notions, those by logical verifications, as the seem theories where any such attribution is abandoned, where they are seen simply is here, as in metaphysics, purely as terms whose significance consists in their use according to some formal con- indispensable, because the object not vention. In this sense current intuitive geometry is not axiomatic, but Hilbert's is, al- intelligible. The constructive power ofimaginative intuition must make most perfectly. This ambiguity is apparent in formulas like the following, which the manifest adsensum the intrinsic possibility of the entities considered by whole world accepts, but interprets variously: every exact science must tend to an are at the beginning axiomatic form. the mind, above all of those indefinables which In the first sense this would imply that it must be set out in a rigorously hypothetico-deductive of the that, far from' concealing some secret manner. In the second, we reach this much more seditious con- science, and so assure us clusion: every pure science consists in the invention ofan alogarithm, in itselfdeprived impossibility, these are veritable essences (on whose foundation more- of all objective significance, and used in such produced corres- a way that the results over rational beings capable of ideal existence can in their turn be built pond to those ofexperience, in a purely symbolic and verbal manner. In other words, a up.) truly abstract theory of phenomena is made up of symbols emptied of sense.' In dis- die axiom- agreement with M. Poirier, I Whatever be these entities constructed or reconstructed by do not hold that his first thesis implies the second. . It is possible to ask, on the other hand, if on the side of this development of the atic method—which, when they are not direcdy figurable by intuition, axiomatic, that of physico-mathematical science has not been in part the occasion of at least indirectly or analogically fall into the field of the imaginable, that epistcmological up-set by which the moderns, misunderstanding one of the pri- such as multiplicities, the legitimacy of which became mary categories of mathe- non-euclidian knowledge, tend to integrate, in order to give it a content, matics with a evident in the day when, following in physics. In return, a just critical appreciation of mathematico-physics as relation to all geometry on scientia media, in the epis- as pos- very degree to which it requires an exact notion of the pure the steps of Beltrami, a euclidian translation of them was seen temological types and so encountered, should restore both its content sources of to mathematics sible—they exhibit, by this connection with the intuitive its superior position. "

KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE 176 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR NATURE i 77

mathematics, in themselves a content, a field easy to comprehend how in making a mathematic exegesis of truth and rightful It is thus telligibility—entirely in itself independent (if not physically real—which is precisely possible because quantity, in the pre-scientif" of the accident of bodies, is grasped by mathematical paths which have led the mind thidier) of physical formations which is the first know- and ex perimental existences. In the same a higher degree of abstraction and immateriality than that of way the confusion of mathemati ledge at and logic comes from a fundamental misunderstanding physics1—the mathematical physicist can have a mathematician's in- of the natur character of real or rational being in the of logic. A non-reflective science, which does not find, difference to the entities of as logic does can even be led, as can see its object in the objects of the other sciences in so far which he makes use, and we among our own as they are dealt with the ('in as as contemporaries, to employ in the explication of extra-mental reality by mind much they are known') has necessarily essentially inapplicable to any existence outside its own domain of knowable natures, a righdy mathematical terms the objective and direct content. mind. In that very degree the universe which he constructs will become This objective content unfigurable—in the degree to which mathematical rational beings are of mathematical observation, is then, as the as these are direcdy ancients (but a employed in its construction, and not representable saw whole new synthesis requires building upon the intuition like the etttia ratioms of euclidian geometry and foundation their principles), by imaginative of being under the terms of quantity as 1 the arithmetic ofwhole numbers. such, of quantity taken in itself, with its own 'qualities', the relational The fact remains that mathematical rational beings are founded on structures and the properties of order and measure decipherable in mathematical real beings, and that the latter are disengaged from the limited and unlimited quantity; all the more so that the incessant con- experience of the real world by mathematical abstraction, as they are quests of modern mathematics oblige us, as by a series of logical ex- grasped in the depths of that real quantity which the philosopher haustions, to enlarge, revise and refine many of the notions previously considers ontologically. Quantity is there, it is it which definitely, and held of these beings, and that, by a form of effort after a total spirituali- that in the most radical fashion, bases on the real the entities built up sation of all mathematical knowledge, number for three centuries has by the physicist in order to refind, starting from the constellations of tended to reduce and absorb the irrevocably potential field of content, mathematics, die natural earth; from it he draws his measurements and on the other to escape, if it were possible, from quantity itself and spatiality in order to extend its empire over the whole transcendental ^'Mathematica dicuntur per abstractionem a naturalibus—naturalia autem se habent per appositionem mathematical superaddunt enim mathemaricis naturam sensibi- multitude. However this may be, these mathematical beings, as I have ad lem et motum, a quibus mathematica abstrahunt: et sic patet quod ea quae sunt de already pointed out, turn abstract not only existence, but the very order rarione mathematicalium salvantur in naturalibus, et noa e converso.' (St. Thomas, De of existence, so that they can be indifferently, while remaining the principles and Caeh et Mundo, iii, 3 .) This is why the student ofnature can use mathematical

2 ' legitimate objects of science, real (in the pliilosopher's sense) or rational. in his demonstrations: Magnitude addit positionem supra numerum; unde punctus dicitur esse unitas posita. Similiter autem corpus naturale addit materiam sensibilem More, it is precisely in entering in the most decided fashion into the super magnitudinem mathematicam; et ideo non est inconveniens si naturalis in de- region oientia rationis and pure ideality that modern mathematics has monstrationibus utatur principiis mathematicis.' {Ibid, i, 3.) made so many admirable discoveries. This use ofmathematical principles in the knowledge ofnature can either remain acci- l dental and represent a borrowing from mathematics by the nahiralis, or be an essential See supra, chap, i, p, 45, note 1. to the is clear that science under consideration, which is then properly a scientia media. It *It goes without which * saying that the word real is not used here in the sense in these various degrees of accidental 'mathematisation' must progressively change purely mathematician distinguishes numbers between real and imaginary numbers. Irrational the type- physical science into a scientia media. Modern mathematical physics realises arc real numbers would in the mathematical sense of the word—and the philosopher form mathe- of scientia media perfectly. On the other hand, in my opinion the use of call both is called rational, not real beings, like imaginary numbers. Imaginary number matics in biology or psychology will never achieve the typical subordination of these so because it does analytic not truly correspond with the notion of number; it is an disciplines to the rules ofmathematical explication. expression. M m.d.k, 178 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE i effectuated by means of his conventional 79 ruler, and thence he sets ff or apprehensible nucleus climb the sky: an unceasing to and of an ontological manifested by an assembly fro thanks ' to which mathema ^ hie et nunc. (For example, physics incessantly grows. of qualities perceived I find in the course of a botanical excursion a plant unknown to me. It belongs to some species Finally, although that science is little concerned with ontology —and by smell and sight and touch I eagerly seek to discover its charac- such, it accumulates in its own growth physical facts which, howeve^ teristic features. I can either ask myself concerning it: what is a living wrapped up in theories, however difficult they may be to formulate plant? Or: how do I classify this in my herbarium?) It follows from apart from them, have nevertheless their own and independent valu • a case such as this that there are two ways in which to resolve our con- and among the entities which it has constructed, those carry the strong- cepts: one which rises towards intelligible being, in which the sensory est indications ofreality and are least wrapped in up purely rational con- remains observed by me, but indirectly, and as serving intelligible be- ditions which are most directly related (U. have the least theoretic ing: and another, which descends towards the sensible and the obser- interpositions) to experimental data. Thus die progress oftheoretic phy- 1 vable as such, where doubdess there is no absolute abandonment of sics, that is to say, the more speculative part of mathematical physics, the idea of being (without which, indeed, there would be no thought), which is accomplished by making more and more use of mathematical but where it is subservient to the sensible in itself, and before all to the ideality, should not make us forget the immense treasure ofpurely phy- measurable, and only remains in the mind as an unknown assurance of sical results, of facts and observable configurations, in brief, of entk the constancy of certain sensible determinations and measures, and as realia—for all that they are more particularised and less interesting to allowing for the drawing ofstable limits round the object perceived by the philosopher—accumulated by the physics of the laboratory, that is, the senses. This is certainly the way in which concepts are resolved in by the more experimental part ofmathematical physics. experimental sciences. I call these two methods respectively the onto- 2 logical (in the widest use of the word), and the empmological or spatio-

temporal. ONTOLOGICAL AND EMPIRIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION (AND THE It goes without saying that in 'ontological' explanation being con- TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE NOTION OF CAUSALITY) tinues to be considered (at least in so far as we remain, as in this chap- In submitting itself fully to the attractions explana- ' of mathematical ter, within the limits of the first degree of abstraction) in the terms of tions, and in translating itself into those terms, in the great revolution observable data. But the mind in its consideration of these seeks for accomplished by Da Vinci, Galileo conquered and Descartes, physics their inward nature and intelligible reasons, which is why it comes in its autonomy with regard to philosophy. More or less completely, following dus path to the statement of notions like those of corporeal more or less rapidly, the other sciences have followed its example. This enfranchisement of the phenomenological sciences has been in progress *Cp. supra, chap, i, p. 48. for diree centuries the and is still going on. If we wish to characterise ^he use made here of the word 'ontological' is much wider than that ofthat part of method philosophy known as ontology general metaphysics. It is used to designate a by which this self-determination has been accomplished, it can or be characteristic common to the whole philosophic discipline. I would add, to avoid any said that side by side with the conceptual dictionary of philosophy, appearance of ambiguity, that ontology in this extended sense does not by any means which is ontological, a totally empirio- different one, winch is of an monopolise all the claims and demands ofthe real. These, though manifest in an entire- logical ly order, has been constituted. different way, are certainly no less present in empiriological apprehension; and it would Our observation two be wholly erroneous to make this a point of opposition between me and M. of some material object is the meeting point of Emile Meyerson. In its construction of rational beings physics only endeavours to win forms of knowledge, in the the sensible and the intellectual. We are a better explanation grasp—in accord with its own rightful method of conception and presence of a kind words, of sensory flux stabilised by an idea; in odier —ofobserved reality. 180 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 181 substance, quality, operative potency, material or formal cause, etc. in the natures or essences ofthe corporeal world, but these all itself. It works though applying to the world of the of which, observable, do not object. de- are not as such its scribe objects which are in themselves representable by the senses empiriologicai or ex- But in this very category of the two clearly different pressible in an image or spatio-temporal scheme. They are not distinguished, according as the defined types ofexplanation can be empiric con- which can by observations or measurements be performed in a receives its form and its laws ofexplanation particu- tent (i.e. the measurable) from determined way. lar mathematics—then there is the type of 'empirico-mathematical' expli- In 'empiriologicai' explanation, on the other hand, ontology mathematico-physical science or as the is still cation characteristic of — empiric as I pointed out a moment ago, since it is a question there, of intellec- content (in this case, the observable in general) implies a form and rule and we do not cease to be reasoning tual knowledge, animals by taking of explanation which is purely experimental—then there is the type of 1 to experimental science; in that sense, the scientist, like every other man, 'empirico-schematic' explication characteristic of the sciences of obser-

remains invincibly ontological, but in this case the ontology is oblique vation not subjected to, or at least not yet subject to, mathematical ter- these and indirect. The ontological is never under terms sought for it- minology. I shall return to this distinction later. At this point I only wish

self, it is only there as a basis for empiric definitions and representation to point out that in the one case as in the other, the empiriologicai dic-

or of physico-mathematical entities. The mind considers the object as tionary proper to the phenomenological sciences tends to set itself up in

at the origin of the registration of certain constants, as a complex a more and more perfect independence with regard to the ontological 2 describable by its encounter with our senses and our instruments in a terminology ofphilosophy.

certain particular fashion; so that the essential conditions of the oherva- This kind of purification is particularly far advanced in physics. But

lility of the object play a determining part in regard to scientific ex- maybe by the elaboration of new concepts or the re-phrasing of defini-

planation. All the derivative notions introduced by science in order 'to tions, maybe by a new use, applied in toto to sensible verifications, of

assist description, so that the trees should not conceal the forest', re- general concepts (of philosophic or pre-philosophic origin), sciences can be included it sult in its condensation into the measurable and the observable. And if such as biology or experimental psychology, which — conditions and with what reser- the analysis is conducted in terms which are not in themselves attained will be seen in a moment under what for type, tend, yes, they also, to create by the senses (or, if it is a question of psychology, by introspection, vations—in the empirico-schematic these al- for vocabulary which is more and more self- all experimental psychology is not necessarily behaviourist), themselves a notional precarious continuity with ways remain conceived in relation to recordings and imaginary per- determined. Since they abide in a much less them than for physics to isolate this ceptions (for example, factual impossibles, as in the case of the ether), philosophy, it is more difficult for ob- notional the entry of philosophical concepts and like hidden observables indirectly attained thanks to the patent dictionary, to prevent are which, in this region, give space for pseudo-explanations. Nevertheless servables which require them: so that all the motions employed preference is ex- they persevere endeavour, and we can observe even a strictly held within the order ofwhat has been, could have been or in the of lan- for the most rudimentary conceptual equipment (like the system of perienced by the senses.1 In this sense, and by an abridgement ontological guage, one can say that explanation has no empiriologicai rationalised *I mean by this phrase that in this case experience is not thought out or things ob- {i.e. directly ontological) attains the being of accord with the value; it only according to the laws of mathematical conceptualisation, but in known in reason in liquely and as an indirect foundation, without making it schetnas which have themselves been experimentally discovered by the phenomena. the Kan™" *It is here that foundation for the methods of the natural sciences give a freedom for autonomous being ^This is what an eminent scientist has called 'an assertion of notion of is involved phenomena (the philosophical system on which this notion xvii.) development*. (A. S. Eddington, The Nature ofthe Physical World, p. cutaway). 1 82 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 183 psychological notions employed by the Freudian school) 1 on the on empirico-ontological notion (which is in truth intrinsically of a popular condition that it will assure this independence. producing ambiguous) of the 'cause' as a phenomenon another—and of Thus, in a general way, in all empiriological recording, the resolu- (philosophical or mechanical) empirico-schematic one of the a scientific is made in an infra-philosophic tion of concepts direction. It is not to which another is connected by a universal what 'cause' as a phenomenon is die things are in themselves which point of interest; what is expresses a world 'law' and, finally, important necessary concatenation which — of the possibilities ofempiric proof and of mensuration are which they re- empiriological notion of the 'cause' (from which all philoso- a purely present, and also ofconnecting together, according to certain stable as the spatio-temporal condition laws phical content has been withdrawn) of the data furnished by these means. Every definition must be made constellation of observable and measurable deter- no a phenomenon or the 'by the nearest gender and specific difFerence', but longer by observable minations with which a phenomenon is bound up, a notion which and highly determined measurable properties, to each of which is the formulation of physical connections as- finds its perfect expression in each case the method ofrecording and ofpractical signed in verification. by means of mathematical relations, such as those which furnish the possibility of observation and measurement thus The replaces for differential or tensorial calculus. On this plane of conditionality the idea the essence or quiddity sought such forms of knowledge for in things of transitive action, in incessant transmutation among the various masks by philosophy. of causality of which here I have only given a brief abridgement, is The registration of conditionality (which keeps the mind attached to completely shredded away into that of phenomenal co-determination. the sensible and the imaginable ) tends in the same way to substitute that At the same time science has in this relation, as we see to-day, reached of causality, which, when it is pure, causes the mind to progress at once something of a critical point. In the course of its own line ofprogress it to reasons of being not representable by the senses. has seen some of its laws take on the form of statistical laws, which

Such, at least, is the ideal to which empiriological knowledge leads. thrust causal determinations into the background, others transformed the In fact its noematic material is far from being homogeneous, and if one into what are called identical-laws or 'truisms', which explain be- makes a cross-section of the procedure a whole series of conceptual haviour of things by that behaviour itself, where it has become, thanks structure strata are visible in the course ofone notional function, ofvery different to some mathematical transmogrifications, a property of the particular is intelligible density and forms of refraction. Not only, for example, is of a world built up for that end by the mind (which in what physics, the existence of natures or stable essences in the corporeal world a pos- has befallen in the geometrical reshaping of certain sections of

tulate of the pre-philosophy of the scientist, but, in the very operations such as gravitation). atomic world, science of science, the natural notion supplied by commonsense of these onto- But, above all, in crossing the threshold of the the movements of a logical nuclei continues to operate on certain planes, while in others it has discovered that mechanics cannot account for entirely defined. has been replaced by a scientific notion remodelled according to the particle in a way which is on all occasions impossible to assign a fixed possibilities of measurement. We learn by wave-mechanics that it is planes in a group of waves, this only al- In the same way a scientist will make use at once, on differing trajectory to a particle associated the presence of that particle in of conceptualisation, of an ontological notion, furnished in a confused lows the knowledge of the probability of particle can never have at once a state by commonsense, and incarnated for him in a measurable or ob- a more or less extended area; and the and perfecdy perfecdy defined energy. The quantum servable relation, of the 'cause* as an activity productive of being— defined position and with the mechanics of Heisenberg and Born, which are in agreement psycho- *It should not be forgotten that of the method of apart from the value Broglie and Schroedinger, but in exhibit- contamin- wave-mechanics of Louis de analytic investigation, the (empiriological) psychology of Freud is in itself statistical significance, ing that it is necessary to give to their principles a ated by a fundamentally erroneous general philosophy. RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 1 84 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE OUR 185 causality—in the very form of that and seeing only in the wave a pure mathematical symbol, abandon The principle of phenomenal co- which it has been reduced by even the possibility offollowing die movement ofeach particle. Science determination to science—is seen as open indetermination' riddled with lacunae, robbed of its universal has thus come to the 'principle of or the 'relations of to exceptions, value. A re-

is possible to which certainly those who abandoned a incertitude' ofHeisenberg; it only determine the speed of a sult against truly (philoso- particle by leaving at that moment its position undetermined, or to de- phically) ontological standpoint have no right to protest. With science empiriometrics, termine its position by leaving its speed in indetermination. In order to devoted to pure empiriology and more and more under

is rational precisely observe the position of an electron it necessary to disturb its the spell of mathematical being (we owe thanks to the new this speed (in lighting it up widi a short-length wave, whose quantum is of physics for the degree to which has been made evident), it was ob- high energy), and in order to measure its speed exacdy it is necessary vious there could be no other end. But the scientists do not seem pre-

(in only lighting it with a long-wave length of a low quantum) to pared to take it so lighdy; for it has been the general belief in the prin- render its position uncertain. Finally it is necessary to sacrifice 'the tra- ciple of causality which was the vital impulse behind research. Like ditional idea which attributed to corpuscles a well-defined position, Einstein they hope that 'strict causality' will one day recover its sover- 1 speed and trajectory': more, we can no longer attribute 'a well-defined eignty in physics. Einstein gave voice to this hope in 1927. Since then energy to the corpuscle, but only speak of the probability by which micro-physics appears rather to have accentuated its mdeterminist' ten- 1 2 it manifests itself with such energy'. The series of waves is only, in dency. Whatever form it may assume in the future and even if a Heisenberg's phrase, a 'bundle ofprobabilities' trine denies the possibility of free will To draw aa argument in favour ofphilosophical So we see science so far obliged to renounce determinism, precisely in determinism from this formula, and to conclude from it that there cannot be spiritual the form in which determinism is 'scientific' and as it means, not that or free agents, whose behaviour, by the very definition of their freedom, is outside the the course of events excludes any contingence, but simply that the laws domain ofmaterial science, and whose action, without causing any change in the laws of matter, prevents, by of nature can—in the given circumstances at a given moment—stricdy the introduction of a new (non-material) factor the initial state ofa system from exactly deterrnining its ulterior ones, is a simple piece oftrickery. determine the way in which in the following moment such material In the same way the formula of scientific determinism presupposes that all the con- 2 phenomena will offer themselves to observation and measurement. ditions of the initial state (or at the moment of observation) are given, from which it follows J that the ulterior state is determined. But it in no way says that certain of these L. de Broglie, Introduction a I'itude de la mkhaniaue ondulatoire, Paris, 1930. conditions cannot be simple positions of fact (depending for example on the intersec- 2 It is important the to point out here an ambiguity of which the public is too often tion of causal lines, or if it is a question of an absolutely initial state, of an arbitrary de- victim (and sometimes scientists themselves), tightly speaking, is a gross and which, cision). This is why, as was shown in chapter i, scientific determinism does not ex- sophism. clude contingence in the philosophical sense ofthe word. For the scientist the philosophical principle natura, determinate ad unum (see It is only with regard supra, chap, i) is translated on the empiriological plane into the formula: 'The to the quantum theory that the differential method of New- ton becomes inadequate, initial state of a (material) system, separated from all exterior action, entirely deter- and in effect strict causality has broken down. But the last word has not been said. mines its ulterior states;' or again: 'If at a certain moment the state ofa universe (hypo- It may be that the spirit ofNewton's method may give us the power to re-establish the thetically composed of purely material agents) is known, the state of this universe at accord between physical reality and the most characteristic and any ulterior profound feature of instant is entirely determined;' which is the very formula of scientific de- Newton's teaching, strict causality.' (Nature, 26th Mar., 1927; 'A terminism. Message for the Centenary ofNewton.')

But in the enunciation of this formula it is, implicitly explicitly, presupposed that or ^ contradiction to Einstein, Dirac considers the possibility of a return to 'strict it is a case purely the of material systems, ofpurely material agents and phenomena (in causality definitely excluded. 'Since physics is only occupied with observable magni- philosophic sense in- u of the word, i.e. whose bearing depends entirely on the natures in «, the classic determinist theory is indefensible. ... In the quantum theory also, we teraction) for which the law of causality takes exactly Scientific determinism "art from this form. certain numbers and deduce other numbers. Let us seek to penetrate to the is thus a conditional determinism ('supposing that there are only purely material agents'), P ysical essence of these two series ofnumbers. The perturbations which an observer which is by no manner doc- n of means absolute determinism, which as a philosophical lcts on a system in order to observe it are directly subject to his control and are the :

1 86 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 187

return should become possible to the methods or only 1 heterogeneity, to return to our theme, of the die idea of stri The materials in one determination, what is important to the action philosopher and sineukrl notional line brought into by science is thus sharply apparent. A lights up the nature of empiriological apprehension critical analysis is so opened up which I (and what justifies great field of have only wished this digression) is the fact that science has one day passing. The essential point is to come to know a state to indicate in comprehend the grave of mind with regard to causality as characteristic as the one which we error into which we fall when we consider science statically as com- are actually observing. plete, as 'all of a piece', not only with regard to its extension and its ob-

jects ofknowledge, where the error is only too clear, but also from the acts ofhis free will. It is uniquely the numbers which are described by these acts offree view of its internal noetic morphology, its will which can be taken as initial • point of intension and its numbers for a calculus of the quantum theory. . {Address to the Solvay Congress, Thus, the very point it 1927.) by rigorous application of the principle typical forms. At where detaches itself from the pre- that 'physics is only occupied with observable magnitudes', the physicist is led to scientific basis of commonsense in order to build itself up more and recognise the inalienable part which he himself and the 'acts of his free will' take in purely as a science its extensive growth is his calculus of phenomena; more accompanied by a pro- it is so because he can only observe by material means not purely mentally (cp. infra, pp. 233-4). gressive internal formative movement, which brings it into connection 1 We know that M. Paul Langevin has tried, with certain determined epistemological types which it has only as yet by re-casting the terms of physical re- presentation, to realise Einstein's hope and surmount the crisis ofindeterminism. (Cp. partially realised in very varying degrees. But if a total and homogeneous A. George, L'CEmre de L. de Broglie et la physique d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 193 1. He refers to realisation of these ideal types must be regarded as an asymptotic limit, an address delivered by Langevin at the College de France and to speeches at the Union what is very remarkable Rarionaliste in is that, anticipating so to speak future possibi- 1930, which have not been published at the time of writing.) Langevin points out that the question: lities and before all subject is it possible to follow the movement of a particle while to the exigencies of its ideal form, science determining at each instant its speed and its position? is only possible if the notion of only makes a material use, and as if without recognising or qualifying the individual existence of the particle is first of all admitted. But if there is no indivi- for them, of notions which belong to the less developed strata of con- dual particle, the question of the application of the law ofcausality to its behaviour is ceptualisation. not raised. He thus The formulas of scientific intelMgibihty, above all, pass proposes the sacrifice of corpuscular individuality for the saving of by determinism. the higher stages, the notions which are most typically pure. Thus, in the This effort of Langevin seems to proceed not only from scientific forms purely preoccu- of knowledge with which we shall be occupied presently, in pations, but also from philosophical opinions, which are, in my opinion, not exact: the phenomenological sciences, e.g.u is according to the formally activating value is attached him, by an anthropomorphic interpolation that the notion of in- to dividuality is applied to the the elimination of the ontological atomic world, 'the portion of matter which we label and and the philosophical for the pursue is a projection from benefit our individual consciousness,' which results in the denial of of a wholly empiriometric or empirico-schematic explanation. any ontological value to the notion ofindividuality. Again, seeking to save scientific It is comprehensible that, for a mind limited by its habitual preoccu- determiiusm, it is also, it seems, an effort to save the philosophical deterrninist con- pations to ception of causality, no inteUigibihty at this degree, philosophic notions may lose all distinction having been made between these two. But nothing prevents the supposition that, significance. In a on the empiriological plane, science will find it in its certain sense the experimental sciences have progressed power to effectively rid itself of the notion by fighting of corpuscular individuality as it has rid it- against the intelligence: for the intellect has a natural ten- seU ot the notion of absolute time: physical magnitudes being represented in the new dency to introduce into the conceptual register these sciences dynamics by purely mathematical proper to symbols (operative factors), it is quite conceivable that an significances as rattoms can be fashioned, which belong to another, the philosophical, and which in from which individuality is excluded. Meanwhile it must be pointed out that consequence Langcvin's solution appears to run against serious diffi- disturb and retard experimental knowledge as such, by culties: Lorn de Broglie does not seem inclined to agree with it (cp. George, op. cit.) preventing A. its approximation to its pure type. Oeorge remarks that the abandonment of corpuscular individuaHry is far from easily Finally it reconciled with the atomic is possible to say that the natural sciences are bound up with conceptions which have become fundamental in modern pnyacs or with numerous ontology in a experiments concerned with photons and electrons (C. T. way which is implicit, obscure, thankless and unavowed, R. Wilson s method, Crompton's effect, a this for photoelectric effects, etc.). two reasons: first of all in so far as these sciences necessarily 1 88 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 189

presuppose a philosophy or pre-philosophy, a latent knowledge ofnature from the dominion ofa number ofprecon- substructure which free our may be rudimentary, unformulated, or unconscious, mathematical ideas, and, to speak briefly, a reaction of the phys- but which is non ceived the less real, and which assumes as indubitable postulates such (the theoretical physicist) against the pre-arranged frame- the existence of icist as things as distinct from thought and the rationalist possibility of attaining them work imposed on physics by mechanics, in itself held to be a more or less completely by knowledge. Then in so far mathematical science. (Mechanics, for all that, might itself as science itself purely be- exists in oblique reference to things as the foundation of the explanatory come a department of physics, at which any Aristotelian would rejoice, representations which it elaborates, and by the simple peripatetic doctrine that motion is in itselfa physical, fact that for it for it is good not a all rests on observation and then on die intuition of the senses (whose mathematical, thing, and what the mathematician retains—the varia- witness the scientific employment of measuring apparatus and denning tion of the distances of a point from co-ordinated axes, which is evi- instruments dissolves, so to speak, into a multiplicity of points of per- dendy, as Descartes said, 'reciprocal', and which posits no more reality ception, of graduated readings, but which remains nevertheless always in the point than in the axes, and vice versa—is not movement itself, but presupposed by these works), does it not impliddy declare, like the in- its effect or its translation into the register of ideal quantity: in itself tuition of the senses themselves, the existence in the exterior world of mathematics makes movement into an abstraction. This is why the hidden ontological structures, which, no more than the senses, can it mechanistic theory which has been taken as the metaphysical univer- scrutinise in their own individual being? salisation of mechanics in the classical sense, while claiming to explain But except for this double relation, which is at once implicit and ex- all nature in terms of extension and motion, is in reality a jettisoning plicit, to the ontological, the natural sciences tend to separate, in dieir of the reality of motion, which has become wholly ideal.) own particular structure, to die farthest degree the observable from the The new physics has renounced the attribution to any of the elements ontological. in the scientific picture ofnature of an absolute character, i.e. the posses- sion of certain unvarying quantitative determinations or properties, THE NEW PHYSICS which appertain to elements of the same kind when they are considered I have spoken of physico-mathematical knowledge in general. A in themselves or their essences by the mathematician, in independence marvellous renaissance has to-day taken place in this form ofknowledge of all physical means of observation and measurement (and which was whose importance cannot be exaggerated. With extraordinary rapidity- attributed to them by classical physics because it set up its picture of its fundamental concepts have been revised and re-adjusted, the founda- nature in a framework, not only, as was normal, mathematical in type, tions of Newtonianism have been shaken, and the theoreticians of but which has been thought out and established in a mode of concep- science attribute, it seems with good tion reason, to the work ofEinstein and and determination proper to the mathematician as such, not the Planck a magnitude equal to that of the great initiators of the classical physicist). It has renounced the absolute dimensions of bodies, an abso- age. Few spectacles could be more lute beautiful or more moving to the setting out in space as in time, the absolute character of mass, any mind than this of physics advancing on the like a system path of its destiny ofprivileged axes, whether it is a question, as in limited relativity great galleon in full sail. Here, for a of the moment or two, the course of these Galilean systems of reference, uniform in movement with regard reflections must pause, not to indulge in the to others, any rash forecastings of or, as in generalised relativity, of systems of reference having future of the dieories of the new physics, whedier its no matter but to inquire what movement with regard to others. Again, it is permissible scientific bearing confirms or invalidates principles to the epistemological regard the quantic theories, and the growing importance given to the which up to now I have been endeavouring to establish. discontinuouj in these new scientific conceptions, as a revolt by physics From die epistemological standpoint to against it exhibits first of all an effort the privileged position accorded by mathematical analysis and 190 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE KNOWLEDGE OUR NATURE 19l the recourse to differential equations in the exposition in fact from an absolute need of the laws of tivity proceeds and an effort of the widest nature to conditions of continuity. a high span to raise science to degree ofindependence with regard to the The reassertions of a form of realism in the physicist as particular standpoints of the various observers. In this the such—that is very spirit and of the resolution of the primordial concepts of science physical theory has evolved in complexes of ideal of and progressed. In the new syn- elements exclusively determined by really or 1 imaginably executable thesis the laws ofnature are set out in the same fashion, and magnitude physical measurements—has thus risen up to break an ' is like image ofthe phy- par excellence, which the sovereign of the physical world—the sical world which the classic age had drawn out in accord light (velocity for with the ideal velocity of which length becomes zero and the mate- supra-physical privileges of the mathematical universe. -is The physicist rial mass infinite)— measured by the same number for the observers has recovered in the same stroke all the native force of the urge and ofno matter what system of reference, whatever may be the motion of desire immanent in his habitual occupation, which seek question in to disclose the the systems in relation to one another; the image of things in secrets and ways of nature, the rightful mystery of the world of bodies themselves and the connections between happenings varying in conse- (return cognosccre causas, things have not changed from this point of quence. I have already had occasion to mark the importance of the view since Lucretius and Virgil, and it is with good reason that the de- necessary distinction which should be drawn between the laws ofnature cisive progress which has renewed our science of matter is attributed to and the concrete course of events: we can say that if the new physics the intuitive faculty for the physically real amid the most abstract sym- stamps with relativity the course ofevents (not with regard to the events bols of mathematics).^ What indeed would be thcprimum movens ofany themselves produced hie et nunc, but in the setting out of their re- physicist, even ifhe be the most devoted adherent of positivistic mace- lations in space and time) it is in order to assure at their expense rations, without such a.desire to penetrate to what is? They thus claim universally absolute form for the laws. to possess mathematics without being possessed, to treat it But it is outside as a simple things, ifI may put it so, and in the formal texture ot language, a mere instrument wherewith to scrutinise nature its deductive and matter. system, that physico-mathematical science attains to this But how do they set to work on this plan? And what are the results most absolutely, in to that expansion in the unconditioned to which all fact? We see the new physics expressly leading to a spiritual complete geometri- things tend: not in the discovery of the absolute in things them- sation. It is in taking the fullest cognisance of this demand, selves, rather, which is in- on the contrary, by escaping from the ontological, by re- herent in the very nature of modern physics, that it nouncing has . the built itself up integration in the scientific picture ofnature ofthe absolute and achieved all its victories. But it can only advance along this road by elements recognised in the real by both philosophy and commonsense, an even more complete renunciation than that of all and in the classical physics of replacement of these elements by rational beings elaborated ontological claims, and by multiplying more than ever, and with all the ^at is to say that the universe advantages offull advertence, being a multiplicity offour dimensions, and its pro- physico-mathematical rational beings. perties depending on 'co-efficients of It has been frequendy a quadratic form of the differentials of four co- . pointed out-and ordinates it is not out of order to fix in corresponding to an event', the laws ofnature passing are expressed 'by the relations the meaning of this eepuig with regard comment-diat Einstein's theory of rela- to this quadratic form an unvarying character in any transforma- tion of the sum of the co-ordinates' (E. Picard, op. cit.). thC Veil s mb y ^ conceals the reality. There are many Oa this question of the fw^Wi?^ L [ ™ ' unvarying form of the laws ofnature in the new physics, as hidcS on "^ ^ «8Pi&d: Einstein moves at his ease in a the notion of geometrical worTdI ofZ ti ^ explication, the dissymmetry introduced by generalised T^fb « Aesenever disguise re for him the physical aspect of things' (P. anvity, from the Sfa* standpoint ofgeometricisation itself, in the domain of gravitation C ma neti !m see T £ ' numerous excellent passages in the work already cited by PacaHJte if?7 ; tm and its finally M I greatest success is to • Poirier (Essai reconcile tLsT,,k

194 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL SENSIBLE KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE 195

ontological postulates implied by its laws of observation: physics, a schedule of pointer a ledri everything else in readings Scientific deliverance from the moment it is accompanied lead to by an equally wid investigation does not knowledge of the intrinsic nature of renunciation of ontology. ^gs The external world of physics has thus become a world of It follows from these considerations that the idea of 1 discovering th shadows.' nature ofmatter and of corporeal things in itselfmust this to forget appear to the new Prof. Eddington in seems that not only do the measure- physics, even more decidedly and to a higher degree than to all the phy- ments collected by our instruments from nature give us something real sics of yesterday and before, a pure archaism. 'The scientist of to-day (which may resemble a 'shadow' with regard to our familiar universe) cannot indicate the essence of the real. It is this that primarily distin- nevertheless the philosopher knows that there are very many differing guishes his attitude from that of his materialist predecessor and, even forms in which an aspect of things existing in themselves may appear to more, from that of the mediaeval physicist: he does not even first claim to us, but also that the degree or stage of conceptualisation, often very attain to the being of the real, winch, on the contrary, he sees as envel- elaborated, when we disengage from these measurements a description 1 oped in profound mystery.' It is remarkable that the quantum theories, . of the observable behaviour of things, also sets us in the presence of the in very act of stressing the unfigurable character of the universe of realities—I say, observable and measurable and taken precisely in that science, render still more profound the rupture between that universe sense,—introduces us into a world offacts, of observable causations, 2 of and knowledge of an ontological type. To-day the scientist reflecting *A. S. Eddington, op. tit., 249, 252, 257, and xvi, on his work is only aware pp. 259, 303, (The italics are his.) of a world ofsymbols. 'We have suffered, and Let also cite the following highly me characteristic passage: 'Something unknown is doing we still suffer, from expectations that electrons and quanta must be in we don't know what—that is what our theory amounts to. There is the same indefinite- some fundamental respects like ncss as materials or forces familiar in the work- to the nature of the activity and ofwhat it is that is acting. And yet from so un- promising a beginning shop—that all we have to do is to we really do get somewhere. We bring into order a host of imagine the usual kind of thing on an apparendy unrelated phenomena; infinitely we make predictions and our predictions come off. smaller scale. It must be our aim to avoid such prejudgments The reason—the sole reason—for this progress is that our description is not limited which are surely illogical; and since we must cease to to unknown employ familiar agents executing unknown activities, but numbers are scattered freely in concepts, symbols have become the descriptions. To the only possible alternative. ... If, then, contemplate electrons circulating in the atom carries us no further, only pointer readings but by contemplating eight circulating electrons in one atom and seven or their equivalents are put into the machine of circulating electrons in another we begin to realise the difference between oxygen and scientific calculation, how can we grind nitrogen. out anything but pointer read- Out of the numbers proceeds the harmony of which it is the aim of ings. . .Whenever state . we the properties of a physical science to disclose. body in terms of We can grasp the tune but not the player.' (Ibid. p. 291-2.) quantities we are imparting knowledge as to the response various "asatl0«i is of not observable as such or even in the degree it • ^ to which relates to the metrical indicators to its presence intelligible, nevertheless and nothing more. After all, knowledge I have used the word here to designate causations which result from of this kind is fairly observation, most of all comprehensive. A knowledge of the response of those resulting from graduated readings, if not immedi- ately, at least proximately; all kinds of objects-weighing-machines thus the experience of the Puys dc Dome proves very and other neatly, indicators-would if not immediately, determine that atmospheric pressure is the cause of the elevation of completely its liquids relation to its environment, its un- in barometric leaving only tubes. Thus, again, the—hypothetic—fact ofthe disassociarion of get-atable nature undetermined. .-. molecules in ions being . The Victorian physicist felt that he the cause of elcctrolic phenomena results (in a much less proxj- knew just e way) from what he was observation. This example can serve as a transition to that other kind talking about when he used such terms as matter ot causations and atoms. which could be called theoretic, and which only distantly result from obser- Atoms were tiny billiard balls, a crisp statement that was sup- oy means 1 of a whole physico-mathematical edifice which can only be verified posed to tell you all about their nature. that Y experiment at ... But now we realise its points ofincidence with the real It is to these theoretic causations science has a e nothing to say as to causal explications the intrinsic nature of the atom. It is, like elaborated by physical theory in that second degree or stage ] nceptualisation E. Meyerson, 'Le that is in question here have reference, e.g. the Einsteinian theory Physirfen „ l e t6e\> {Le Mohi June I93 r j. gravuanon where the presence of matter is the cause of an incurvation of space. ' :

196 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 197 observable structures which the theoretical physicist tends h simply as matter offered to his constructive genius, ° nor a simple instrument. This language supplies the laws of but which the^h language cist of the laboratory is not disposed to allow conceptualisation and explication, which give his science its to be rm^understooiT' analysis, already making an authentic part of physical science proper scientific form. I said that he wished to know the nature of itself. These fa can be established more or less certainly, more and their physical causes: did I say that he wished to know either or less hypodieticaUv things they can imply in one degree or another an ideal nature or these causes in themselves? Rather I said that he renounced achievement of that 1 the real by the reason, they none the less result from the knowledge in themselves of the nature of things and their physical order ofreal being the Notions such as that of the constitution ofgas (reduced to their essential meaning the formulas which I have by individual molecufe causes in endless agitation, or of the reticular structure quoted from Prof. Eddington can signify nothing else): but did I say of crystals, and a crowd other of similar ones, must be held for something that he renounced the knowledge ofthem absolutely and in every way? other than symbols exacdy in so far as they are translations of the The urge which drives him towards the physically real can only attain measurable and the ob- servable, and before theoretic effort, in the endeavour to the real in its measurable aspects, in its measurable structure as such to penetrate their significance and discover, in a complete explication, by turning it into mathematical terms and finally by constructing some- what they tell us gives us to understand that in the last thing else in its place. The physicist wishes to penetrate analysis we can only know symbol/ the secrets of cally what they say. But it is precisely this matter; but the very type of the science with he is connected second degree and second which stage2 of scientific conceptualisation that interdicts his attainment of the nature of matter in itself; Prof. Eddington has in mind- he attains to it and there it would indeed be foolhardy to reject his evidence. in its observable and measurable determinations, which are real by that The two characteristics which we have very fact, which are for him the succedanea its essence; discovered in the new physics of and he seem at the first glance contradictory: scrutinises and penetrates it on the one hand a mental urge thereby in the very degree to which he towards the physical in itselfand the transmutes it into mathematical symbols. mysteries of its behaviour', a will to physical realism: on the other, Let us say the construction of a world of symbols that his form of knowledge is not knowledge of the real and a more decided recourse (the given than ever before to geometrical and mathe- real) by the real (a more profound reality), but of the real matical rational being. This by the contradiction is purely apparent. The para- mathematical preter-real. It is a knowledge of the physically dox is explained by what real which has been said above concerning physico- becomes symbolic in as much as its mathematical regula- mathemaucal science in general, tion obliges it to and gives us the best possible illustra- attempt a complete explication, where will be for- tion of the theory of mulated scientiae mediae. In its opposition to Newtonianism in wholly quantitative terms that of which the forms and the new physics recalls to the our minds the fact that physico-mathematical formation come from a world of qualities; or rather, if it is permis- knowledge is primarily sible to use physical; and, at the same time, the degree to here an old platonic word, which is perhaps more expres- which it reaches beyond sive than the 1 Newton manifests even more strikingly its modern 'symbol', it is—at least with regard to that second formally mathematical character. The physicist regards mathematics as simply By the scientists supplying an themselves the word, symbol, is reserved for a much more particular instrument and a language: neither a simple but use: they will say, for example, that 'the associated wave' of wave mechanics is a pure 1 mathematical See supra, p. 164. symbol, 'a simple symbolic representation ofprobability*—since any im- aginable spatio-temporal representation, any physical image, of this wave is in itself Ut 5aybg b SpMkin of or periods there is no impossible, in other QU«ti?™f?° *? 8 ^ w° "W words, since it cannot be defined as the immediate object ofa cer- mC PhaSeS: tain ** arc c the course of the senes of physically [7fT u ^ ™^y ^«d k measuring operations, at lease theoretically effectuable. It is E useless to observe that the philosopher (or the scientist when he uses epistemological ^guage) understands the word, symbol, in a much wider sense. It is in this wider sense that it must be taken here. 198 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 199

stage of conceptualisation of which I spoke a of natural phenomena in the very degree moment ago—a kn mathematical knowledge to ledge of the physically real by means of myths,* that exact science. is, verified rnydT which it is an U which accord with the measurable 'appearances' scientist, shut up in a ground-glass bell, in which he and which 'sjj Suppose that a them: a science at once experimental and mytho-poetic the scientific information on which he worked, learnt of the physical^ received by radio ' real. a certain machine capable one day of the existence of of projecting its This is what gives to theoretical physics in its most height three-hundred times greater than its inspired discoveries own weight to a own. He such a striking resemblance to artistic creation. But— difficulty in approximating to the idea this and tin's is the mar would have even of mach- vel-this is a question of a speculative art, of an art in itself, as a sort of catapult constructed in accord with for the purpose of ine, unknown knowledge, where the imagination is only fruitful in would make more precise correct submitting to the given data; whose image he and in the constraints of a world of rigorous determinations, of laws established degree to which he was supplied with new information. If he learnt that with the strictest exactitude. I have already pointed out, in a previous this machine presented the features ofwhat men call memory, i.e. modi- chapter," that Plato saw very clearly the rightful method of mathemati- fied in the degree to which it functioned its way of functioning and of cal knowledge. He also saw, and with an equal penetration, that the cre- responding to stimuli, which was not the case with the instrument he ation of scientific myths-the noblest form of rational beings founded had himself reconstructed, he would perhaps resolve the difficulty by in re—is a necessary consequence of that method. The myths of the endowing the space occupied by it with some new dimension, accord- Ttmaeus may have grown old, but it is in no avowal of impotence or ing to which the past of this machine was conserved and modified in any flight into poetry that Timaeus makes use ofmyths, it is by virtue of some invisible way its structure. We others, who walk about in streets an admirable intuition oftheproper conditions ofphysico-mathematical and lodge in inns, are able to know that this machine in question is knowledge and ofwhat we call the exact sciences, when, ceasing to be called—a flea. The scientist could not know this, but the construction purely mathematical, they seek to explain the world ofexperience Aris- which he incessantly remodelled (from top to bottom in the stress of totle was occupied with something else, which Plato did not see: he hours of 'crisis') would present at each instant the sum of all the mea- was founding the philosophy of sensible nature, and for that he had to surable properties enclosed in the flea and actually known by it; and it oppose platonic metaphysics and the theory ofideas. But though he cer- is clear that in creating such an imaginary yet real model, exact and tainly recognised the existence of scientiae mediae, and though he himself rigorous in all its determinations, he could continually learn, but by constructed, in the theory of the homo-centric spheres, a physico- means of myths and symbols, more and deeper perceptions of the na- mathematical myth of the first magnitude, he accorded, it seems, a full ture of the flea. It would be inexact to say that he did not know this ontological value to these spheres, a reality not only (with nature. fundamental Only he does not know it ontologically or in itself. regardto their foundation on the nature of things) entire Let butformal and the simplicity of this metaphor be excused. It only translates into tin their formality, their thinkable construction terms itself). Because of the of the senses the way in symbolism and realism are in- prevalence which m him of the standpoint of the natural philosopher he did dissolubly united phy- not in the more highly conceptual part of theoretic see as clearly as Plato did the necessary part sics, It played by ideality in the would be erroneous to sever and oppose them. In this particular region W Say dut al ' they compose stuff. It is by the e skist s entides to the warp and the woof of one - are '»**£. I word - ^ M* Ari^T"? , | t * he creation of above aU *°* ofwhich he makes use at its most daring myths that physical theory most profoundly t S oft, T 7 r^ "^ ekbo ™d reconstruction scrutinises— ™ of the real, exactly at the point in its philosophy—material it£?Totmstarthestpenetranon own way, which is not that of into the secrets of matter. reality. a It is by material reality— Cp. chap, i, connaturalising die intellect with . g I10te p 7 ( j # not ras S ped in itself—that it constructs on the latter and in its place a 2oo THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF universe SENSIBLE NATURE 2 of symbols or verified myths. The oi closer it , . rcahty presses to , atoms and molecules the more it constructs believes that really exist; they are not mere these rational beings & Z fy** inven- our common experience; tions that enable him to grasp certain laws of as in the finite world of ^ chemical combina- Einstein ,T 'a In truth there is no mental tion attitude more contrary to ideal- J ports us from than that of the scientist who, face to ^ natoe of ^ atom ism face with nature, at once J d^™^^considered selfthe nearer it a, it- urgently seeks the inexhaustible ontological riches comes to this nature. with which it is Let charged and abandons the idea me hasten to add that physical of penetrating to them by any other theory is not svmfW; as I pointed out above, means than those which he knows are necessarily inadequate. He JffLt in its Z £2^*%*** has measurable behaviour 'the sense offinding himselfconfronted by an enigma of things or of symbols JT^£> at once wonderful founded on this and perturbing. He contemplates it with an same measurable behaviour: almost fearful respect, which and, in fact we r^ 7 to-day it is is, perhaps, not without a becoming more symbolic ^ certain resemblance to the feelings of a be- in the detl to 2 2 ceptualisation rises higher, Jthe T liever before the mysteries ofhis faith.' comes at once «^fe^* more universal and more pure (wiT temolo^cal Z 1 V type). The epistemologic/com * ^ toT rt A DIGRESSION ON THE QUESTION OF 'REAL SPACE'

There is no clearer word than the word reality, which means that which is. But its use implies the drawing of many distinctions, and a cri- tical consideration which is frequendy difficult. Let me try, in order to apply in a particular instance these considerations of the new physics, to examine the question of 'real space'. What is meant when it is asked whether real space is euclidian or non-euclidian, or whether the space postulated by Einstein's theory of gravitation is or is not real, or when it is said that, thanks to the new physics, one ofwhose particular charac- teristics is to carry to a higher degree than any attained heretofore the ds even knowledge ° ^n* there its value as a identification of of the r,=,1 t geometry and physics, that nevertheless 'we are ap- Ma J do as tence of ^" * » * PMosopher that the exis- proaching drawing !orpo^ lb the distinction between geometric and physical 3 space'? This distinction, I hold, is fundamental, but it is highly neces- the * substitutes whicJl *» sary to elaboratedZTf A , ?V° ^ « understand its veracious meaning. The word real has not the same de meaning for the philosopher, the mathe- for a pro ss th ^ *°* » *e matician and the -4^uT^ " T ^ physicist. If we do not keep this diversity in mind the Ed lean towa7d * M *ngton seems to question I have sTfot f ^ ^ asked turns up nothing but a tangle ofambiguities. r^ 1 onphysics P-e symbohsm in his reflections For geometry a space is 'real' which is capable of mathematical exis- (^Z^^°ld sensor bolic,whichim y P^eption already itselfsym- tence, i.e. Dhrr , which does not imply internal contradictions, and which P aphySiC ofa ^' hG much more rUt ^ " ™dly JA. whX 1T "f S.Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, 1920, p. 180. gPhySidSC - HashenotslLS.<;r°^ '!. Meyerson, art. " cit., Le Mois,June 193 1. icist, S° l0nS he tUnks *S phyS has a definite " * beheffnbClief m a reaI^T^ Vemadsky, world outside him. he 'L'Etude dc la vie ec la nouvelle physique,' Revue gherale les For instance, wmces, f " * Dec. 1930. " '

202 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE rightly 203 corresponds to the mathematical ndtion of space {, ytf t interpreters of physics: in order to construct a satisfying image nghtly constitutes a system of objects ofthought the of verifying eeometrirS observable phenomena, they postulated, as common observation axioms; and it is obvious that from this sug- point ofview, in virtue ofwha might gested, euchdian geometric properties, and attributed to factors of be called the circumincision of various an- geometrical systems (physical) order all properties not so foreseen. To-day these being mutually 'translatable' and other physics has inclusive, so that non-euclidk7 geometries abandoned this division, and for the interpretations of a synthesis where contain the euclidian as a particular instance, and nevc7 the geometry and physics may be as far as possible amalgamated ess can themselves be constructed by means in pro- of euclidian material -aU these portion to the degree to which they sever in nature, it has recourse to geometries, and all the still more 'general' geometries which could spherical or elliptic spaces. It is these that physics holds 'real' be Rented are equally true, in the sense and their spaces are therefc* explained, equally real Euchdian space I havejust and to-morrow there may well be others. . holds no particularly privileged position in any way, But it is neither from the standpoint of the physicist nor of the mathe- except that the constructibility of euchdian entities by imaginauve matician that I see the problem. For me the question is mtuition is the fundamental to kriow what is guarantee for the notional J herence real space in the philosophical meaning of the i.e. (absence of internal contradiction) word, as a 'real' entity of both euchdian and non- eucLdian geometric in opposition to a 'rational' one, and as designating an object of thought entities (since the latter can always be 'translated' capable of an extramental existence, not certainly in the way it exists in " 0thet W°rds °f the «»np«a% ' of hiboth euchdianTJ T^yl* thought, but rather as an assembly of features and non-euchdian axioms.2 objective in themselves For the physicist a which integrate its notion or definition. Taking into account the peculiar space is 'real' when the geometry to which it conditions ofmathematical beings and the rational condition (ideal puri- fication) which always ^^^^^^^y^bohsesphysicalphenomena, effects their very definition, we can say that a ^dL7J H mathematical entity is real where all our graduated readings (in the philosophical sense ofthe word) when find themselves 'explained'. An ^obvious it can exist outside the mind—not doubtless under the conditions proper ^at&on.tHspointofviewnospaceofanylid holds any to sort ofpnvileged position. Foralong mathematical abstraction (nature knows no point without extension period euchdian space sufficed for or line without density, nor abstract number; the point, the line, the whole number are, for all that, real beings)—but in so far as its defini- enclosc anon^udidian m u]tipndryof«dimenS ionsinacuclidian SpacC of^tl) (li. tion makes visible in a pure state or in its ideal perfection some charac- teristic (resulting from accidental quantity) which exists or can exist in

""^ maaa TLe condusio11 can fore the world be drawn * - Ae" of bodies. In ZTZl 1™ Z U order to be thus an ens rede such an entity does not cease to be mathematical, although it can only enter into actual and sensible existence by losing its as P ^etry: and now it seems to cover i mathematical purity. Taken existing limited field of validiL To „ t ? 6f in the thing could eUcMm 6 it is a feature of the latter which can only be scientifically easily be comtn^ted oufof ^P^*"' S ™* ImtcrlalsJ? M tafcef T* stance. n from that of Lobatchevsky, for in- known The r> 3rzjZ ^ , when detached by abstraction, leaves on P SP CCd sy mathematical which in y metrical: rwo of ° u can each tumapp^ t0 rl^ ' geometries one f ? ^ side all properties relevant to the activity of bodies, their move- ment, qualitative rfB^V.HeBi™ a euclidian diversity, sensible characteristics, to keep only what ^^.S3^^^ (p. 37) subsists after the emptying out of the physical. n,aticg ad must Let it be ^S^S^W r?f '." bc ^erstood the methodo- added that the various geometrical entities (Euchdian, Rie- :l I,1 nonad SCMura,d madlCmaCidS i 1 011""' mannian, ebemusdeduci/See^ ^ ™^ etc.), although they may be mutually 'translatable', so that all cL i these systems are equally true, nevertheless cannot be all equally real in 20 THE KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE 4 DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR NATURE 205 the accessory philosophical sense of the word. The assigning the part played by variations due to various right hand of the by for elliptic ,1 instance, and the ' figure which corresponds P physical circumstances. to it in the 2Ta stance are not different are open to this search for a criterion. expressions of one thing Only two ways We can analyse (in the 0rder T^" mathematical preter-reaT *** notions, in order to see if the entity there is no other 1 the genesis ofour in question, while UiL* Aan Z t thought itself constructed ° any internal contradiction or according to such Jd S t^£ not including incompatibility in its con- axioms), °f they are intrinsically i (in which case it could not have mathematical different entities helrW • stituents existence) does Wentworlds^ not imply a condition incompatible with existence outside the mind affirm the reahty ofone kind of space (thus a logical entity, such as the Predicate or the Copula, is is thus at the same iTto certainly not not the reahty, ' but the unreality ^ inttinsically contradictory, but it would be a of all the contradiction to suppose others-ofot^rs-of whichwr,,^ no canbethoughtofinthelatter. enuty its existence apart from the mind). Or we can consider a condition How then are we to know if a mathematical which a philosopher knows applies to the reality of mathematical en- being-and in particu lar this system of geometric entities which iscalled alrT T tities (he knows, in effect, that for these entities to exist outside the mind implies sensible existence, which is repugnant to the state of being con-

structed in imaginative intuition freely and purely representing to it- CmgS - Neither can the verifications of our senses or our ™«c, self what is quantitative without any a/orn'on'possibility of its positing in sensible existence) : the condition ofdirect intuitive constructibility. phy^cd order, and they presuppose a mathematical Now, among the systems of geometric entities which are called model or armatur Euclidian, Riemannian, etc., space, the three-dimensional euclidian COnS b °n °f0ur ^truments, space alone is directly constructible in intuition, the others only and in connection with satisfy- S^rwhich we correct andT mterpret the sum ing the posited condition by the intermediation 1 of the measurements affect of this space. The All the attempts which have been made to win an intuitive representation of the non-euclidian geometries—by Einstein, for instance, in his pamphlet on geometry and to space experience—go exactly to show that IsU . way rf^^t^t^fi^^^^^ these geometries can only be rendered imaginable COnvenaonal by reduction figures. r of to euclidian geometry. I only wish that, as Prof. Eddington suggests, 'to Thereisthusnotthele^tco^aiUn^l t P °P^« perceive non-euclidian space' I only had 'to look at the reflection of this room in a polished me.erroneousphiiosophy ** ** Stand oint of *• t0 door-knob and (kSfft ^4 ^ P imagine myselfone ofthe actors in what I see going on there'. [Space, Time and Gravitation, p. 14.) 'The image of my room in the door-knob is a due euclidian F j model traced on a certain determined surface of euclidian space.' -Gon»«h,cp.(ft. . J Without • ., doubt the sracew „ , Maritain, aons, WltH (J. Rlflexions sur Vintelligence, p. 257.) appears as euclidian; *?""*' 0Uf Crude erCeP" in other word! * inall ITh sicaJ we say the explanation Ae P y made by us, of gravitation by the curvature of space-time has an ^cofour semes, in thr^bnlhS ^""^ts by V exceptional intuitive value? interpreted mMt tl Evidently not; this space-time is doubly unrepresentable. on the ta ^^ ^cwlilf dkLm^^, ^^'^ irst conclusions because of ments can drawn from physical measure- time, which is joined to space in a purely allegorical way; then be- only have as mrh „ ™*1 ause the ««ny 1 h cs curvature of a multiplicity has only an intuitive sense if we immerse it in a non^uclidian ryp« ofC^ ™? ^ P ^ couM make «« °f as S ^ mbolic ec moment * constructions as 0Rfer- AU that « can do is to represent to ourselves a surface in that it chose those ! it wished, from the ^^ w J ! ^ ^VJ-uc dian Hyperbolic ie CUclidian '° space. Ifwe wish to farther, have recourse to the image of instance -^ - ne can a » go wc are obliged to such that^ n, ^ T W metric established hrtle different "^ ' °£its arts as wish on a euclidian multiplicity, to return to a Caylian standpoint. This « as P °ne - should be recS r l " ^ ^^ what 'it is "•d*™" » M. Einstein does his ideas impossible to (#** <>/>• <*)• It follows that at the end of his little book where he tries to make prove exoerim Ti u ar to the cause in fact * is euclid«n', or non-euclidian, ungeometrical reader. Practically, we shall imagine foreshortened measure- 'experimental srierT V .^ be- n0t ments, clocks lt connects ' ^ of s acc ocJ th which run slow for perceptible physical cause. The geometrically together' (ibid g P ' y e phenomena which no ) anonal will present itself as a physical irrationality.* (R- ?»>««. °P- «') .

206 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 207 plan of the thermic universe invented by Poincare", and in wh" I in supposing their existence 1 would be a contradiction outside the mind, should have adopted from the beginning Lobatchevsky's for their benefit, geometry T and thereby suppressing, the existence of the founda- highly simplified successions of sensation imagined by Jean notion of is based. Nk A tion on which the them which would endow a fictive ' subject with the idea of die most div° Either way we are thus led to admit, despite the use which astronomy geometries, confirm by a kind of counter-proof this privilege of eudf makes of them, that these non-euclidian spaces are rational beings; dian space. In order to present as natural to a thinking subject another and that the geometric properties of existing bodies, those properties geometry than that of Euclid we have to imagine a universe which in which the mind recognises in the elimination of all the physical, are itselfis a rational being as chimerical as an animal rationale datum Finally those which characterise euclidian space. For philosophy it is euclidian if we are assured by intuition, as has been already pointed 1 out, that the space which appears as an ens geometrkum reale. euclidian entities (and in consequence the others) are free of internal But by the words, real space, a totally different thing can be under- contradiction, it is because intuition began with the assurance that in ex stood, as describing space in so far as it is occupied by existences eluding the others and the former are well able to exist outside the mind in ' physical actions, and which is made up of the physical, not geo- the nature of things. metrical, properties of bodies, their activities and their causality, like On the other hand, it is possible to show that if it is possible to pass a network of tensions of heterogeneous qualitative intensities. This is from the non-euclidian spaces to euclidian space, and inversely by space no longer considered mathematically or geometrically, but 'phy- mathematical transformations, it is because in fact the non-euclidian geometries sically'; it is a qualified space, and the determinations which it admits presuppose the notions of euclidian geometry, not certainly 2 are due to what there is in space, to what fills it. The philosopher thus m their proper structure and logical development, but as a foundation for the distinguishes—and for him it is a capital distinction—between physical logical coherence of the entities which they construct and as the and geometrical space; and he can forecast that, in this extended sense, as psychological basis of conceptualisation. The process of generalisation physical space, that real space is not euclidian (neither homogeneous nor which finds its fulcrum in euclidian geometry results indeed, not in more extended generic concepts 'For of which the euclidian, non-euclidian the natural philosophy elaborated by the scholastics (as also, though in a very non-archimedian, different etc., concepts would sense, for the new physics) this real geometrical space is finite; effectively be the determinations, but in exkent space analog,cat concepts which is co-cxtensive with the scale of the world. Infinite geometric space is a include the one as the others, and ofwhich the rational being ('imaginary euclidian space'). concepts represent the analogised principle. From this point of It is apparently in this sense that Pierre Curie 'has at bottom envisaged symmetry as view we must needs say with Hamelin 'at bottom, a condition non-euclidian ofspace, i.e. as the structure of physical space (W. Vemadsky, op. cit.), and geometry ,s not self-sufficient',* one can also say and that the non-euclidian, non-archi- with Vemadsky that 'vital space is a symmetry which is particular median, and etc. entities have unique in nature'. thefoundation of their logical existence in the The euclidian. The metric properties of bodies, in so far as they are physically measurable, result non-euclidian spaces can then without the least intrin- from physically real space. Thus it is perfecdy true that 'only the union of the geo- sic contradiction be the object of consideration metrical by the mind, but there and the physical is susceptible of empiric verification' (H. Weyl, Espace, temps et mature), and without the reality (which is not experi- hS 'U S princi aUX ie thereby abandoning iosto P '" "?*»*>**. 2nd edit. Hamelin mentally ^S^lT' 1 r' verifiable) of euclidian space, the philosopher can add, in another sense than 0£h -quired for the comparison of °™S™

20$ THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 209 isotropic), since euclidian space is precisely that « (purely «,,*. , geometrical curvature for mechanical °»ewhichthernmdconsidcnaftertJ^ substitution of force. They forget modern physics entered on such a path from its birth: it is in avow- It is most important to realise that that in speaking so the phisopherlt not certainly explicitly (for in the beginning it believed itself to be the very fact that he opposes the ing, physical and geometrical a! Zo of nature), its impotence with regard to eduableorders-IooksonthingsbawaywhoUy^^^^ i a philosophy physical causes considered in themselves or in their essence, that it began the composi- the new phys.cs. Faithful to the essential spirit of modern sa tion of a mathematical myth of the physical world which liberated for latter tends, however far from W this end it remains, to abso b Wlf ofthis world in the form ofenigmas. geometry. Thereby it the secrets The 'forces' of classical it has abandoned the absolute '£££££ physics appear from this point ofview like a precarious compromise be- tweenthephyszcal and the geometrical equallywith thesearch forplyT tween the 'causes' of philosophy and the purely empiriometric cal causes in themselves or in entities their qualitative reality. The mark of« of a science of evolved phenomena, and it must be said that the 5 £mStdn iS *" he new ^nt, in order to advle freeTyfe physics has accomplished a step ofmajor importance in read,I" ; geometry itself i» the progress to- to the needs of physics,* and conceived of a lZ wards the scientific conception of the universe in exhibiting at whose^m c properties are able once to account for all the phenomena f radically and explicitly this renunciation gravieatxon.^The continuum of by physico-mathematical the thus extended univene so knowledge of the search for physical non-euchdian and wf causes taken in themselves, and its four-dimensional, where time and space are no profound tendency to emancipate longer mdependently measured, itselfcompletely from philosophy. but form an indissoluble cortex Th But this liberation from philosophy |--^P-pertiesofso must not itself be taken for a conceived space-time are themselves moi philosophy! fied by the matter There are two ways in which it is possible to interpret the which occupies it (i.e. by what is able to distune conceptions of the new physics measuring instruments of our philosophically. The one is to transport exploration' clocks, graded ZTliZ them literally, rays compasses, just as they are, on to the philosophical plane, thus filling electroscopes, etc.); and the mov ment the mind with pro uCed in following Si metaphysical confusion; the other is, in order to under- the natural tracks which are the geodlic ^ stand their bearing, for the mind to detach the noetic value in them. In the one case it will be said—not only, which would be wholly legiti- tUminS a SO °f * * " fuimel due t0 ** mate in the vocabulary Lcu^aZofincurvature ofspace m the! S and from the point of view of the physicist as it neighbourhood of the sun. has been defined SidStS above,—but in a philosophical sense, that the space pos- S esis rai ^ "^ ** -d °" - - tulated by the new ^ physics is m^entolv offmeaSUrem geometrically real, and exhibits the geo- ^°. ^ culled from nature, and confirmed nZrovl by metrically real properties of reyisIons of the corporeal world, which would result (in ' beins

210 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE OUR OF SENSIBLE NATURE 2II matter from the same geometrically real space when void^a«-*. \ji.of ««*. matter Under the pretext that space is a network of distances (but mass or energy, quantity ofmotion, pressures. i which geo- (>- . . .) and only occupied metry ideally and deductively 'measures') the assumption by something of the kind of that 'immaterial' would be ether beyond which 3 we made of having given geometry an object (geometry have not got. At the same time, geometry as a 'natural itself, its proper object 1^ science') in this network of distances materially and empirically ing misunderstood, like its epistemological independence mea- and its higher sured by physical apparatus. rank of abstraction, would be regarded, in so far as it is not an empty In the other case it is recognised that the pure" form, 3 space of the new physics as an 'experimental science', which would only hold as an encumbered objective ('void' or with matter) is a physico-mathematical rational content which makes it 'true', the physical entities and 'men being expressly constructed to save known appearances, suranons thanks to which the and which will mind chooses as 'real space', among the only be modified in the degree to which various formal spaces which errors may be found as existing it is pleased to imagine, the one which between the construction already agrees best with the built up by the reason and the new data widest and most perfect geometrisation of physics. experiment. 1 This of rational being is seen to be in the nature of a geo- metric symbol ofphysically real space (taking physical' space in the sense cumbrances) and the diverse spaces abstractly conceivable by pure geometry. given to it by the philosopher spoken of above), the geometric or meta- 2 See infra, p. 224, note 2. geometric symbol that best translates the reality of those physical inter- •A S. Eddington, The Nature activities . of the Physical World, i - whose ontological scrutiny has pp. 6l 2 . Cp. A. Einstein, U been abandoned for their bet- Wometne et exptrtence, Paris, 1921; and my Reflexions sur Vintelligence, ter mathematical p. 255 M analysis. The double irreducibihty (a form of value He™ Weyl equally .Links that 'the existence of geometry as distinct from physics' which is is definitely sacred for the intelligence) of the physical compromised (Espace, temps et matihe, (considered onto- p. 292). As Roland DalbL has written [art, logically in at. pp. 152-3), 'The metaphysician its essence) to the mathematical and can only see in this a sign of the old of the geometrical to empiricist and nominalist mood which only the mathematical recognises the truth of existential proposi- is thus safeguarded, and it is understood that the geo- tions That is the gist ofthe matter. Whether or no, in the hypothesis that no bodies metrisation of physics existed, can only be accomplished by introducing it would be still possible to speak a ofgeometric truth? In all philosophies which go mathematically transmuted beyond pure empiricism, mathematical physics into the heart of geometry itself, propositions do not require, in order to be true, the existence ofmaterial objects, which has a so much richer which does not for all that imply that the know- crop of rational beings, departs so much ledge of them is acquirable independently of sensible experience. truths more decidedly from teal Mathematical geometric being, that it is asked in addition to .are of a purely essential order; when we formulate mathematically a physical law one absorb it in its symbols and to must pass over from ' mathematicise physically real being. the existential to the essential order The same Isitnecessarytopomtoutthattheerymologyofwordsisamediocremcansforteaching considerations, mutatis mutandis, apply to the mathematic- u concerning the isation things which they signify, of the physically and though geometry is etymologically a real in the quantum theory, though worked in urveying measurement, geometry is only another built up as a science when it is known as way than something that of the theory of relativity; in particular, to essentially^different the from any survey? The new scholastic of the methods structure which the teachui of geometry new physics attributes to the atom, or rather to the S have without doubt pedagogical advantages as me- ITf. way in winch "' beCaUSe for several years it has *** hdd 0f Ac chad whoc he is, not yet on the changed the said structure from toesholdttluT' ^ & of geometry, in order day to raise him stage its ^ SCemS by stage to the science itself and " aS thou h science 7- § tended to endow this structure— absttamon but if they X ; are taken as methods ofgeometrical W% which has so become ffifT unrepresentable and at the same time detached rCtr°8ression '^"^ " t0 * Pre-pythagorean childhood. It must be rom SmWd I any ontological qUesd°n aS meaning—with a purely abstract mathematical to d* nature ^geometry does not seem very ckXatT^r4etlleoI ^ UeStion reridans °f can nevertheless and with advantage 'have " "°P and it is possible that in consequence these new geometries an unfettered « will KT unfc«SdevelopmentT a Us ( as a pure mathematical ^kieve the synthesis of electro-magnetism, and in consequence, of subject '(Eddington, op. dt., . ifa). ? ? ? phvsiys cs and gravitation.' (P, Langevin, L'CEuvre d'Einstein et Vastronomic, art. cit., p. 294.) 212 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE OUR NATURE 213 equivalent, a more and more fictive, a more and more perfect must evidently have another symb 1 f knowledge object and other characteris- the real nature, which is unknown in itself, of some existent itself up on another noetic plan thine tics, build than what in our modern ° which the determining name of atom corresponds, so that it may kn phraseology is called science; its office should be neither the continuation this nature more and more profoundly, but more and more on the same plane (in that direction, enigmati of science as M. Bergson once said, cally, or indeed meta-phorically, in the degree to which it science there is only ignorance'), builds up 'Beyond nor the decoration of the re- the myth—the rational being founded in re—which takes its place science with noble and vague sults of meditations. Though its rules of not those explanation are of science in the modern sense of the word H. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE certainly they should merit the name of science in the qualitatively According to a phrase of Prof. Eddington's, the and more authentic sense physicist of to-day, deeper which was known to the ancients, and that who knows 'our knowledge of the objects treated creates its possibility. in physics con- which For the natural sciences do not only lead sists solely of readings of pointers and other indicators', and the mind to desire this—in themselves, in who also their witness that nature is knows that 'this schedule of pointer readings' is 'attached knowable and that to some un- nevertheless they themselves can only know in an known background', is less much tempted to believe than 'the essentially unsatisfying way, they testify Vic- that a form of knowledge is torian physicist' that nothing is true except what can possible, where the intelligence, be reconstructed actualising the mysterious intelligibility 1 by an engineer or that physics is all-sufficient. Rather he is led to be- of things at a deeper level, discovers in these sciences the being towards lieve 'that a just appreciation of the physical world as which they aspire it is understood as their natural object: always on condition that the to-day carried with it a feeling of open-mindedness towards mind can resign itself a wider to the necessary curtailment and ascesis, and under- significance transcending scientific measurement',2 although stand that in order to he feels all grasp a little of the being of things it must re- too ill-equipped to discover for himselfwhither this feeling should lead. nounce the will to utilise this more noble knowledge, which is yet quan- This is true not only for physics but ofemphiological titatively poorer, knowledge in for any speculative or practical exploitation of the general. It is clear that in its essence such knowledge remains insuffi- riches ofphenomena. ciendy explanatory, and with it the mind cannot be content. This is a form The philo- ofknowledge which, even in one connection only, and sophical or pre-philosophical substrata which the scientist himself can- in a given order (in the order ofsensible nature) is a wisdom, a thing of not transcend are a clear indication of this. Some knowledge being fiuition', not of of 'usage'. And all wisdom must, in one way or another, itself is needed, of corporeal, sensible and mobile being, of the being 'pass through the eye ofa needle'. immanent in these natural realities in which the phenomenological It was in the quest for such philosophical comprehension that the sciences find their end and their verification, the basis of aU their con- knowledge of the natural world began. But it has taken long for it to ceptual constructions, over which they give us practical power. Such learn the spirit ofpoverty. The misfortune of the philosophy ofnature *A. S. Eddington, op. among the ancients at., pp. 258-9. 'The physicist now regards his own external was that it believed it was a science ofphenomena. worid in a way which I can only describe Let us also as more mystical, though not less exact and call by its proper name, the philosophy ofnature, the form of practical, than that which prevailed some years ago, when it was taken for granted that philosophical nottamg oouU apprehension I am here seeking to define: but let us under- be true unless an engineer could make a model of it. There was a time stand when the whole that it must needs lay aside combination of self and environment which makes up experience all pretensions to cross the frontiers of seemed likely to pass under its essence and the dominion of a physics much more iron-bound than it conquer the world. It we are going to refer ourselves to is now. That overweening 1 phase, when it was almost necessary to ask the permission of * Philosophy of nature which in my opinion is most securely based, physics to call one s sou] one's own, is past.' [Ibil p. 344.) an which has 2 the privilege of being in continuity with the most pure Z£t

214 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 215 ciples of Aristotle and St. Thomas, let us be equally " well aware ' immersed in the sensible, physics in that * as such Aristotle's meaning indispensable (and not half " of the so difficult as is ordinarily imagined) to s ord embraces the whole domain of the intelligible which rate those W is so im- principles from die applications and illustrations for lone oT" mersed. In the conception of the ancients all the sciences of nected with the material the scientific conceptions of the ancient world; and cl T make part of this form of knowledge, a world mark of a singular opti- see that this knowledge ofwisdom, this philosophy of being essentially and a most candid philosophic mism imperialism. With their minds subject to change, is completely free in itself from any connection with first of all fixed on philosophy, they had a tendency to absorb all the an astronomy and a physics forever gone to ruins. sciences into it. other natural In certain spheres, nevertheless, But what concerns us here are the these epistemological characteristics already and sciences had come to the knowledge of their conditions the own proper of philosophy of nature. It is in intelligible being itself methods and autonomy, but they regarded these as a special case however obfuscated it o'f may be by sensible matter, that such a form of sdentiae mediae, envisaged as the mathematical knowledge treatment ofquestions of resolves its concepts; it results from a type of ontologkal natural philosophy. And in the degree to which otherwise the explication open to the natural motions philos- of the speculative intellect. It ophy ofnature filled the place of a scientific systematisation is not of the de- with empiric conditions, but with reasons of being and causes in tail ofphenomena this too often gave rise to explications ofan the true sense of the word that extreme it is connected; it is the essence of things analytical insufficiency, which was often only verbal. that it seeks to discover. Proceeding, like all philosophy, according to an As I have had occasion to point out in a previous analytico-synthetic chapter, it is very method, it depends on experience much more close- important not to forget that, as St. Thomas ly often says,* the essence of than does metaphysics and must be able to submit its judgments to sensible things remains in general hidden from us, by reason of the the verification of the senses; but it is a deductive apprehension, assign- ing reasons and intelligible necessities in In the degree to which it is assured Kf. Sent. II, disc. 35, q. r, a. 2, ad. 'Sicut 3 : aliquando utimur non veris differen- of the intrinsic tia loco verarum, constituents or the 'quiddity* its propter earum occultarionem, ut in of objects. It is by this, I Post., text 35 dicirur ita coam loco yen generis for example, that it is able potest poni aliquid per quod genus magis to instruct us concerning the nature of con- innotescat.' De Veri- laie, 4, and 8 (quoted infra, 1 p.2 52,n.). Contra Gent., i, 3: 'Rerum tinuity and number, of quantity, space, sensibilium plurimas motion and time, of corporeal propnetaces ignoramus, earumque proprietarum, quas sensu apprehendimus, ration- substance, transitive action, em perfecte vegetative and sensitive life, concerning the in pluribus invenire non possumus.* In Metaph., book vii. lect. 12: 'Quan- soul and its doque aliquis divider* operative powers, . . . dividat per etc., and also to consider the ontologkal ea quae sunt secundum accidens, propter hoc quod non potest mvenire proprias et disposition ofthis universe, i.e. per se differentias. Aliquando enim as Aristotle does at the end ofthe Physics, mpt necessity w utamur kco per se differenriarum, its relation to the First differentiis per accidens, in quantum sunt Cause, and the adjustment between the necessary, 'gna quaedam differenriarum essentialium nobis ignotarum.* See infra, p. 255 (note 1). the contingent and the Here on fortuitous in the course ofits events. earth, writes R. Garrigou-Lagrange, 'man is die sole being whose specific If jerence belongs we wish to define the philosophy to the purely intelligible ofnature, we must say that it is a and not the sensible world: which is what U form of 1" S difFerent properties. knowledge - Lower beings only become truly intelli- which has as its object, in all the things of corporeal PiM T- "anscendcntal nature, mobile (°r common to all beings) and generic features, being as such, and the give 'WW, ontological principles which ' for ex:lm le that P ' mercury is a corporeal substance, a liquid metal, but the reason for its we A T" , mutability. It was Aristotle science, "^ who founded this Y *" "* Spe6£c «>- We k>ve, when it becomes Aristode necesl W 1 ^Y who showed that an ontology ° Pre°se tkC!e ene«c notions, an empiric, ofthe sensible world is possible, which^ g descriptive definition, StteKh not so far as it is M makinS iMelli ihk ie properties sensible, but in so far as S of this body. We content it is the world of changing being, oursel -TMyin8 that mercurv is a iiquid metal and that it implies at an ordinary temperature, silver in its structure intelligible dependent on white ^Ym invariants " 4° de rces wbJch toils at • S > 360 degrees, very dense; its salts are very specifying rotenr forms. acs but ' ^o very toxic. We can state the facts but we cannot state their why I ^^ While metaphysics ' 16 ^°r C ant embraces the not ^ 0r *e anJma' : wh° c^ assign the specific differences of whole domain of intelligibility a spe " I*" ^ P aes so that one could deduce the properties? If it is a question of man on the 216 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 217 matter in which it is included. It is only in the madiematical that escapes it. If it is orde 1, detail: it is the essence a question of deciphering we can consider a world ofessences as discoverable, which is the why it i h the multiplicities of becoming, interactions which make up the most dictatorial and sumptuous form of human science. In • die ph i splendidly multiform and close-knit play of nature, the philosophy of order it is indeed possible to reach certain essential and specific deterrnh )' nature can doubdess have, indirecdy, a heuristic value, in the stimula- tions concerning man and die things of man (his powers, habits etc tions which it is able to exercise in the minds of scientists (above all in but below man, at most times, the element ofresistance to intelligibilirv the case of those sciences which I have called empirico-schematic). But which belongs to matter, which renders corporeal natures opaque to uT in itself and in its own proper field it makes no such claims. There is no and knowledgeable by signs rather than by properties in the ontological other science of the phenomena of nature than the empiriological, and sense of the word, causes the essences to remain hidden from us in their that science is not a philosophy. specific nature. It follows from this that the philosophy ofnature cannot It must here be stressed that apprehension is only perfect when we can react to the ultimate specific diversities of bodily nature. And this im- know things, not only in a more or less indistinct fashion, leaving off at plies a grave restriction ofthe philosophic optimism of the ancients. generic determinations, but in descending to the most ultimate specific Wben it is a question of the distinction between certain very widely determinations. Ifmetaphysics is a perfect apprehension (I shall return to extended spberes-living and not living bodies, animals and vegetables this point later) , it is because its specific object (being as such drawn from men and irrational animals-the philosophy of nature is well able to' things by ahstractio formalis) is not a genus but a transcendental, which grasp the essential differences. There we are in a region accessible by taken as such, is at the ultimate degree oflogical determination. the philosopher, we achieve truly philosophical certitudes, in the very What then is the case with the philosophy of nature? Its object is not order of typological discrimination. In other words, we know that the ens in quantum ens, the object of the metaphysician. there is an essential difference between vegetable irritability and animal Neither are the specific natures of the world of bodies, as we have just sensibility; we know that the immanent activity by which the living seen, its object. These natures wovtli he the specifying object of the organism builds itself up, sensation, intellection, reveal quidditative natural sciences, if these sciences could, as they cannot, attain to it; they principles which enable us to enter into the inward structure of the stop at an empiriological knowledge. For all that the philosophy of beings under consideration. We know that the body as such is built up nature, no more than metaphysics, does not only bear on simple gene- by two complimentary ontological principles, the one purely potential ric and determinations. In reality it considers corporeal and mobile things determinable, the other specific and determining, which we call the from the prune standpoint of the transcendental being with which they are matter and the 'substantial form'. saturated. In this way it shares in some degree in the light of meta- But the philosophy ofnature must remain content certitudes of with physics, as our souls spirits. The sucn a also share in a way in the nature ofpure high degree of universality. It must leave all questions of the di- specific object of the philosophy ofnature is, in corporeal natures taken versities and specific particularities of the world of bodies, all the detail as such, the the ot the ontological mutability and the formalities by which workings of sensible nature, in the hands of that knowledge roind which can discern a difference of being (corporality, quantity, move- Leibnitz called 'symbolic' or 'blind', and which here I have sug- ment, life, animality, etc.): which is sufficient to assure to it its distinc- gested calling empiriological. That knowledge can enter die fullest tion into from and autonomy with regard to the experimental sciences. feaMres c * *? °—on to all meu-radonality, hberry, morality, But, on the other is not complete in SB3 etC--° hand, sensible or mobde being ae rationality, - appears like tie raison d'etre of all the others All W f itself; only has the integrity of its determination in specific natures. The the ^rrnediariorottionZ "* "'^ **"* "P ** b ry ' *? 7* ¥ experimental - Tt are two dis- <« Sm omtam, kphihsophie i'itre et ksfirmuk science ofnature and the philosophy ofnature dogmatizes, 3rd edit.) ^ k tort forms ofknowledge, but each incomplete, ruled by different laws ° '

2i 8 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 219

ofprocedure, the one above all of die intelligible, the other a disembodied soul. It has so undergone a purification from above all rf condition of the sensible, and which result, well or ill, in once more in contact self-completion defects ; to-day it has come with experimental It j, f, many this that they both belong to the same degree of abstraction is both natural and necessary. althourff science. This contact • from another point ofview, as have we seen, the philosophy philosophical facts on which natural philosophy is based (e.g. of naturC If the may be essentially different from the natural sciences. 1 diversity in the world of bodies; there are there is a real specific sub- I could gladly compare the relation of the philosophy living organisms are endowed with an activity of nature stantial mutations; which with the sciences of nature with that of the rational soul itself, etc.), if these philosophical facts can be established with its returns upon body. In itself the former is independent of the state of common observation (subject to a philosophical development of as starting from both the latter and their hypotheses. It rests on it is proper that in relation to self-develop- 'philosophic facts' criticism),, nevertheless the which are much more simple and fundamental than 'scientific facts' ment of the positive sciences they should be illuminated also from the Nevertheless, to insist too exclusively on this independence as the standpoint ofscientific facts, in so far as the latter can be disengaged from philosopher is often inclined to do, is to risk losing sight of the intimate theories. In themselves, scientific facts are incapable of producing any and substantial union which should rule over these two sections of the philosophical decision, but the rightful penetration of these objects and knowledge of the sensible world. For three centuries, during which their philosophical principles, like the light of the active intellect striking the natural sciences have been subject to the fascination of a mech- on phantasmata, carj, release in them the philosophical content with anistic metaphysics, the authentic philosophy 1 of nature has been in the which they are pregnant. Permanent as are its essential determinations, 'Thidifferencemust be regarded as essential and specific, philosophy must thus also to the law which things grow Ifit is true that it is the natural bow by gree ofimmatenalmaon de- of the object constituting the terminus adquem of the abstrac- old and are renewed, of fading and transformation, imposed on the operation and tive shown by the mode definition of which brings in the specific differen- uaaons among fleshly garment which it receives from the experimental sciences, and the sciences belonging to the same generic degree of abstraction (ep. supra, chap, i, p. 45> n.). It a clear that empiriological thanks to which its material supply offacts accumulates so marvellously; definition, by its resolution in the CaS SU m °f the while it also itself certain (not philosophical, but general - ?* W ** with its must free from reS ""^S^ W, resolutionol^ in mtelhgiblet \T^being. T The difference between *e the philosophy of nature and or 'vulgar') representations, which have been taken for pre-scientific phenomenological sciences, whether empiriometric or empiricc^schemaric, is thus much more interpretations, implied the familiar the senses. 2 marked than that between arithmetic by world of and geometry,' which are, for the scholastic, : two specifically ' distinct sciences. ^p. the views so wisely stressed by the regretted P. Geny in bis article, 'Meta- f St Th " ^S^Hes between natural philosophy and medicine. fisica ed esperienza nella cosmologia,' Cregorianum, 1920, vol. L (quafWl °T ^ hcet utraque abstrahat a materia singulari, tamen magis concern* materiam cor- 'Thus many of the ideas held by the natural philosophy of the ancients with regard m0Me Ut SiC '' R 3 C to the and will "' *>> - continuity of matter since the invention ofthe microscope have needed P q I TSifS^ ^ ^ * « P- m- ^ in ^f^^^^P^^ptilosophy and the sciences ofnature still require to be it is a question of bodies ex- on™T 1 T submitted to a serious revision, where diVCrSC ™ Maaca concretion in the object differ- hibiting ™lfe^ t* \ ^ ^ only only the appearance or the real character of substantial individuality. The ° 7 60'^ ComJndeSensuetSensataicu l),itispre- question ^ bTc I ^T to" presents itself of knowing whether the substantial unity of the individual ™ *" mmai Sciences > * certain fields already subject body [e.g. such and such a gas, some living organism) necessarily re- tTmar£ J aa0n^ «*I* molecule of or aS n° myand ri«.^ot yet conquered theirmetho- quires, as the doWdTZ ^ ^ °P the ancients believed, continuity by extension—in other words, whether y S0R C°nStrUCted ' de&Bi on m°deI of »™* substantial which may be pSlosophy ** r™ ** form cannot inform a whole made up ofdiscontinuous parts, T contiguous (like, for example, plasms ofthe blood and the arterial surround) or may be, m the atomic (in cases by th?~^^n scale, separated by intra-atomic or intra-molecular interspaces °f the PMos h «f the natural sciences to where, in in themselves SerwZT ^TtT °P y »*" ^ contradiction to Gredc's hypothesis, these interspaces are not informed by the substantial form of the individual whole). For my part, I regard such a structural discontinuity as compatible with the substantial unity of the individual whole, materia and am of opinion that the thomist theory of individualisation by the !

220 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 221 doctrine Iiylomorphism, The of for example, is as true doubtless better to-dav Descartes (and I might add, much than the experimen- it was in the time of Aristotle; it is its vocabulary and its exemplifi in favour with the alchemists of the Middle Ages). tal conceptions tions which have worn out, not its substance; only the four elements f the old world have been replaced by the ninety-two elements of M deljeff's table, which correspond to very different SOME COMPLEMENTARY ELUCIDATIONS scientific notions. We have a much closer knowledge of this tribe of elements than the chem- But how is this possible? Prof. Eddington, with his vivid descriptive ists of a hundred years ago; and it seems more than possible that they imagery, declares that a body is 'a world-tube of four dimensions, all derive from the hydrogenic atom by a series of changes which a separated from the rest of space-time by a more or less sharp limit'. This philosopher must needs regard as substantial mutations. Radio-active is far enough away from the world ofAristode phenomena furnish us with proofs ofsuch changes de natura in the world From Aristode's scientific ideas, yes : but what we are considering is his of bodies; not doubtless in itself a pure and simple scientific verification philosophy. Whether an elephant be an isolated world-tube with four (it is for philosophy, not science, to establish a fact whose formulation dimensions or a block offlesh and blood composed offour elements *nd implies the notions of substance, nature, species, etc., metaphysically the four primary qualities, in one case as in the other there is no resem- understood), but an indication or 'sign' empiriologically remarkable blance between the idea, which is expressible in an image or in a spatio- which the philosopher acting with prudence can disengage 1 as such. The temporal scheme, and at least reductively figurable, which science or existence of the micro-structure of matter is a definitely established common sense has of this animal and the essentially unfigurable and fact (which leaves open die righdy ontological question of the essence purely ontological conception which belongs to the philosopher in his of matter).1 If science incessandy revises and renews its conceptions of first statement of the principles which constitute the substance of the spatio-temporal organisation and the properties of the atom, it is by same elephant. affirming in so far the existence of the so-named primitive complex. Primary matter and substantial form belong to another noematic uni- And indeed this assembly of empiriological forms of knowledge agrees verse than this block or this tube; the theory of hylomorphism is rather with the ontology ofAristode than with that ofDemocritus or of favoured by neither the one nor the 'other, for it is based on another signata quantitate is thus verified without any special difficulty: the transcendental rela- foundation than these images. Whether it be a three-dimensional block tion between matter and quantity needing to be understood, in this case, as a transcen- or a four-dimensional tube, the elephant must needs perform that op- dental relation to a constellation ofpositions.

On the other hand, it is eration, which the street the scientist call by the same apparent that 'organisation' must not be regarded as the pri- man in the and vilege of living matter. The atom also is 'organised'—but without the progressive name though seeing it under very diverse terms, which is known as equilibrium and self-perfecting activity [actio immanens) characteristic oflife. 'eating': and it must needs end by that phenomenon which both call ^though indeed the present state of micro-physical theories and the epistemo- 'dying'. And the philosopher, who knows that the elephant in ques- logical structure of physico-mathematical knowledge are in high contradiction to tion is an individual 'substance', 'a thing in itself', specifically different any such hope, I do not imagine it is impossible that some day the configuration of matter the disposition and from the vegetable substances which it assimilates by nutrition and the distribution of its parts in space—not only the demicells, molecules, ions or atoms, into which the 1 mind discomposes a material mass of large Such the condi- an idea can be (cp. chap, i, p. jo) unfigurable by default as a result of dimensions, but the constituting para of the atom itself-may become the object of tions mathematicisa- ofthe observability of the object, it can also, in consequence of the a .knowledge from which all symbolism will have been eliminated. Even supposing tion of the physical, be only representable to the physical imagination metaphorically, that such a knowledge of the configuration of matter it would always were perfect, or even be only representable indirectly and analogically) to the mathema- leave open the (yet more question of its essence. The configuration of a body may be a com- tical does not cease imagination, as is the case with the waves of wave-mechanics. It pound of electrons and atoms, but the essence is a substantial compound ofpotency thereby that M to belong to the order ofthe imaginable or the figurable, in the same way the point is without extension while yet teductively belonging to the order ofextension. 222 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 223

inorganic materials into which its body can be is in another way that it should decomposed, is constrained themselves. It make use of them, in the to seek for the subject of these substantial mutations each is an element ofthe image in a radical poten- degree to which ofthe universe elaborated tiality which, following Aristotle (he could look to For the philosophy of nature cannot a higher name) he by science. dispense with scientific will call prime matter, ofwhich naturally, he will be needs the image (can the word still incapable of either imagery; it be used when it has be- describing the features either in a space of three 1 or the symbol dimensions or of four come unimaginable?) which the science ofits day fashions (for it has no features), or of explaining natural how, at once unformed and of the world. Moreover philosophy is aware that certain of the transcendentally determined the specifying by 'form' which joins with more serious entities which it itself constructs are myths, masks of the it to compose a single substantial being, it can proffers to clothe itself with 'acci- real which it the mind. And it is its duty to remember to dentals' and become accessible to the calculations and observation of make these—most of all because of the mathematical rational beings the ordinary man under the appearance of a compact mass, at once tan- which serve in their construction—more and more unrepresentable by gible and visible, or a prodigious swarm—which is, for all that, unre- the imagination. By diis heroic remedy it will escape from the tempta- presentable! of protons and electrons, i.e. of like a — 'undefined particles' and tion to represent, Descartes or a Democritus, the secret fibres of waves in motion in a given space, which are all only statistical symbols. nature according to the gross plan of the models which our eyes and our An insoluble hiatus perpetually attests the difference of order which hands can see and grasp. Science, which is absorbed in the world of the distinguishes philosophical from scientific explication; both being legi- sensible and the figurable—and which is nevertheless led by its very pro- timate and necessary. I might point out in parenthesis that if they had gress, not to transcend, but rather to dissolve it in what then only re- been sufficiendy observant this of fact some eminent scientists would hcthely belongs to the world of figurable,—holds in this a great lesson not have been led to confound 'substance' in the philosophical sense for the philosopher. Should he not have recognised for himself that the of the word with 'substance' in the common interpretation, as it is primary spatio-temporal elements of the world of bodies, by the very imagined in terms of that first outline fact of scientific knowledge which is that they make up the complexes which fall naturally within the commonsense observation and dianks to which we know that the sphere of our senses, cannot resemble these complexes? The world table is not penetrated by the sheet of paper that we lay on it. which is constituted by them cannot resemble anything known by our According to the principles the senses; of argument which we have been pur- to penetrate into it is to pass a shadowy threshold disturbing to suing, the Einsteinian universe the of four dimensions and its curvature, imagination: and in the lack of fuller knowledge, the unrepresent- ~ like the electron or photon of to-day, pure able must needs be regarded as myths of science have at least the merit of reminding us of this fact. physico-mathematical rational beings founded on the real. The ques- What, nevertheless, can the philosopher make of a myth? Doubdess tion then arises ofwhat form ofrelation philosophy, nothing can be sustained by but another myth, this time a philosophical one. There is no longer with the facts or no other entia realia more or less completed by the way in which natural philosophy can assimilate the myths reason, but with pure entia rationis of securely and the well-founded myths based on physico-mathematical apprehension into its own science. Here a point previously 1 order outlined must be completed. In my than by itself turning to the making of myths. Do not we know opinion natural philosophy must take over entire the ex- that in a the deposit of way the philosopher is a lover of myths'? Philosophicus est perimental sciences: but if it can be based on the facts established by aliqualiter phihmythes'?* these sciences, as on a strange substance which it appropriates for its own ^k supra, p. 221, note use, it is obvious 1. that it cannot look to ask from physico-mathematical t. Thomas, In philo- rational beings Metapk, book i, lect. 2. In fact Arisrotle did not say that the a means ofelucidating the ontological things in nature of m a wa y a mythophi], but that the mythophil is in some measure a philoso- phy„if T," ^ee supra, chap, i, 76-81. o tf.tXSfj.vBos pp. faXovofas tt

224 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL OF KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE SENSIBLE NATURE 225

An immense field is thus open to the creative that it requires by its essence imagination of th knowledge, and own a region of philoso- philosopher, e.g. when he wishes to interpret in the light of to accord with the an otherwis phical myths destined well-founded myths used in well-establishedphilosophical doctrine, such as that theories, as the ofhylomorphism th physico-mathematical completion of its union with the provisionary image which science fashions of the micro-structure of experimental body composed by the sciences. the atom. Hardly will he have invented a sufficiently likely very worthy of attention that the hypothesis It is a point world ofsensible nature assuming, for example, that substantial form informs, like a one in which we find our apprehension central is the only shared at once by a nucleus, the intra-atomic ether and the electrons which 1 circle it, when philosophy and an experimental science, the one being the soul of the the theories of Rutherford and Bohr, on which this interpretation a duality is is other's body. Such found in no other universe of intelligi- grounded, will begin to fall into dissolution. He must needs re-adapt has no ontological soul; it bility. Mathematics it has only an abstract and or invent another. The philosopher can exercise his wits on a four- ideal body. Metaphysics has no empiriological body, it has only a dimensional universe, or the ether, of which to-day physicists are spirit. 2 'careful not to speak', although it still seems diat they will find some difficulty in getting beyond it. But if in the course of such work he is m. THE MECHANISTIC THEORY convinced that he is occupied with philosophy in the rightful sense of the word, we can only regretfully compliment him on his If the preceding analyses are correct, we can see that the central fault courage. of modem philosophy in the sphere of natural knowledge has been to Although there is no continuity of rational explication and the un- give an ontologically explicative value to that form of mechanistic at- derstanding of things between physico-mathematical theories and natu- traction immanent in physico-mathematical knowledge, and in taking ral philosophy, we can so see that a secondary connection can be estab- this for a philosophy of nature. This it is not; it is an empiriological lished in regard to their imagery, in so far as it is true that it is of the analysis of nature mathematical in form and direction (an 'empirio- nature ofnatural philosophy to add to the field of direcdy philosophical metric' analysis). Though it is true that such an analysis must inevitably

Gredt, die build up for itself *J. Lehre von Matcrie u. Form u. die Elektronentheorie, cp, M. de Munnynck's a world of explicative entities destined to sustain communication to the Thomist Congress at Rome, 1925; articles in the Revue mathematical deduction, it is clear that, on the one hand, this world will ihomiste (1900) and Dims Tltotnas (Fribourg, Leslie Walker, S article in 1928); J. .]., he, as we have seen, pseudo-ontological, Philosophia abounding in rational being, Perennis, vol. ii, pp. 831-42; and the highly contestable, in my opinion, and, Essai by P. Descoqs. on the other, that it will be orientated towards the mechanistic as 2 its ideal limit 'I remember (although never wholly attaining thereto, since all the a conversation I had some twenty years ago with P. N. LebedefF, the eminent Russian irrationals physicist, who told me it was only possible to speak securely of die which science is bound to admit are opposed to an effective ether. That was the time when the notion into mechanistic of the electron was beginning to enter reduction). Mechanistic representations are in effect the sole physics. To-day physicists are careful not to speak ofthe ether and some ofthem doubt residuum of ontological explication able to enter into the substance of its very existence.' ( W. Vernadsky, VEtude de la uieet la nouvelk physique, art. cit., p. 700-) mathematical The ether, Lord physics itself; it is therefore that the physicist Kelvin declared, is no imaginary creation of speculative philosophy; with them it is as essential to us as the 1 endeavours air we breathe. (E. Picard, Un Coup d'ceil sur I'histoire Acs to construct the system ofprinciples and reasons of being of sciences) 'Nowadays it a is agreed that ether is not a kind ... This does not physical of matter. or geometrical order ofwhich he has need. But in that case it mean that the ether is abolished. not to be We need an ether. The physical world is is a .' question of provisional value exists, Elated arri representations, whose whole P cles ofmatter or electricity with featureless interspace. . . J™f™(A. b. lot in Eddington, op. relation cit., . the to the real regard to the p 3 1.) 'Einstein likewise holds that we cannot eliminate envisaged in itself, but with notion of a medium lacking deter- mathematical all mechanic and cinematic properties, but which relations which they sustain; a question not ofphilosophi- mines mechanic and ."' electro-magnetic phenomena. op. cit) es, but . . (E. Picard, of a methodological mechanism, at once problematic and RATIONAL 226 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 227 It would be possible for philosophy to retain this auxiliary. approxima- geometrisation ofphysics, it finds the need to mobilise measured dimen- image, this well-founded myth which tive spatio-temporal has con- pointer-readings made by the sions, the observers of various systems of that tributed to build up the structure of universe and its elements: it reference, to abandon the spatially unique and absolutely immobile frame explanatory cannot endow it with an ontologically value. which the mechanistic philosopher took over from mathematics to hold present 'crisis' In what degree then does the of physics imply new his cosmos, and within which he saw all the movements of the universe points ofview? ideal spectacle, as variations of a pure for, attaching an ontological value to First of all, the new physics seems have turned its back on mech- to geometricism, he has no means ofphilosophically considering move- anism. This is true in the degree to which we may take the word 'mech- ment as real. The new physics has no more thought for the philosophic in a strict sense, as it is understood by classical geometry in anicism' Des- of movement (that is not its reality affair), it is perforce that it finds a 'the whole of my physics is only geometry.' cartes' aphorism: But the the assistance place (with ofnumerous rational beings) for this reality in mechanistic theory is not geometridsm, it deepest centre of is mathe- physico-mathematical its synthesis; and by this very fact it attests that maticism: and on the other hand, geometry itself, in die degree to which the mathematicism towards which it tends has not the slightest ontolog- becomes abstract, tends to become co-extensive with mathematics. it ical claim. that the new scientific conceptions only make more daringly We can say the other On hand, it has been compelled to recognise a certain dis- the scheme of transmuting physics into a umversalised mathe- manifest parity the between notions and principles applicable to phenomena in the geometrisation of physics may reach this aim through matics. That our large scale dimensions and those applicable to the atomic scale. This a re-fashioning of geometry under the influence of physics (which re- is so because, as was recalled above, in the atomic scale the individually for the care that has taken to penetrate it), duces it all the more easily been taken material particles cannot be subjected to both a continuous obser- I have already pointed out. But that in effect implies little. Also these vation and determination. And if it is true that the resolution of con- ideal taken for crises and transformations ofthe mechanistic must not be cepts in empiriological knowledge takes place exclusively in the sphere its decease. The physicist will always remain attracted by the ideal of a of the observable and the measurable, and that in consequence in such 'unification of all knowledge concerned with the physical world in a a form of knowledge a concept only has meaning with regard to the single science which will be expounded ... in geometric or quasi-geo- experimental 1 circumstances and method which serve to define it, it fol- metric terms'. And as this tendency is not towards a philosophical geo- lows that, in the atomic scale, the very notion of the empiriological ob- achieve more metricism, he will accept without difficulty, in order to ject is modified. It designates something observable and measurable, a and nearly this ideal, all the reconstructions which the apprehension possibility of observation and mensuration, but this very observability symbolisation of the physically real impose on mechanics and geometry and measurabihty are fundamentally different. in themselves. Thus is it not astonishing that the entire organism of scientific expla- be- It is here that the epistemological superiority of the new physics nation should differ in the two cases, and that it should, for example, than comes patent in the eyes of the philosopher: it exhibits more clearly here and there admit of exigencies mutually incompatible with the law classical physics, and makes obvious to all, the purely methodological causality. This capitally interesting result makes evident the fact that supplementary character of the mechanicism or pythagorism of the toe mathematicism (above all statistical and, in the case of micro- scientist. which On the one hand it rehabilitates the reality of motion pnysics, indeterminist in form) and the geometrisation ofphysics have strict mechanicism has destroyed—a recognition of that irreducible ur knowledge reality the . of the external divorced from the nature of the which is, it seems (at least to philosopher), at world cannot be the eyes of a appliances with which Eddington, op. at., origin the we have obtained the knowledge.' (A. S. of the theory of relativity. safeguard But then, in order to P'iJ4-) . KNOWLEDGE 228 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR OF SENSIBLE NATURE 229

claim, any pretension of telling But the second law of thermo-dynamics offers other lost all philosophical us die nature of possibilities to nature, in particular material things in themselves: unless physics should itself die philosophy of with regard to the living organ- interdict its different scales, Is it not one of the marks of the irreducible specificness proposition to us under two I do not say of two different ism. of the latter without violating this principle, rather, on the images, that goes without saying, but of two conceptions of the same that, contrary, applyino- to its own use, it utilises the universal process of world which are rationally heterogeneous, whose sole continuity b it the diminution of 1 variously recompose its supplied by mathematical formalism. energy to both order and organisation, to raise for a time the degree of being (I do not say with regard to the quality of the energy, for life does not belong to one special form of energy, tES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES but with regard to the perfections of a higher, properly biological or psychic order)? (Material) life is a constructive This is not the place in which to try to reckon up the opportunities fire which feeds upon decay. which the new physics offers to philosophy, either in the order of facts On the other hand, certain conformities seem to create or of the apologetic conveniences, so to speak, which it presents. I between die would only proffer certain briefsuggestions. philosophy of nature and the image of the universe elaborated by the physics zones as it were affinity. Is Carnot's principle, which Prof. Eddington writes of with such new of The hope of deducing the di- verse physical constituents singular charm (and which is not an acquisition of the new physics, but of the world of experience starting from the which inextricably subsists in it, at least in the macroscopic scale), able minimum of primary notions (selected with a freedom possessed by no metaphysician), to cast any light for us on the problems of the origin of the world? The the idea of a finite universe, which is nevertheless, as a result deceptions which have resulted from some philosophical attempts, the of the curvature ofspace, without limits, and which, according to the diversity of the opinions entertained by scientists as to the degree of most recent hypotheses, is expanding, still more that of the discon- tinuity estimation in which the principle itself should be held, call on this point of energy and the variability of mass, find, abstraction being for the most careful reserve.2 made of their particular and scientific value, an a priori complicity, so

to speak, in natural philosophy (and I do not only speak of a necessarily Supposing the physics of the future renounces, like P. Langevin, the notion of cor- puscular individuality in order to save scientific determinism, these two pictures of dynamics is applicable to the universe considered as a whole, and ifone is in accord with which I spoke will remain none the less heterogeneous, witness, in this precise case, the Prof. Eddington (op. cit. pp. 74-5) in what he writes ofentropy, it seems that such a abandonment ofthe notion ofthe individual in the scale. atomic supposition is possible, by reason of the very singularity of this notion. In this way, 2 granted that the In any case the principle is unable to provide in itself a 'scientific' elucidation of the more time advances the more (of which the 'increase of entropy' is the empiriometric sign) a problem of the creation, even if it is admitted that it obliges us to presuppose, at the certain internal order immanent in the activity of the mat- erial world first stage ofthe history ofthe cosmos, a maximum degree oforganisation ofenergy— irreparably diminishes, natural philosophy could already, before giving place to metaphysics, rise an organisation which 'is, by hypothesis, the antithesis ofthe probable, something which to the consideration of the first cause, from which the order in question cannot happen fortuitously'. To draw from this the conclusion of divine intervention proceeds. Such a way at the origin of the world would be for science a coming out of the sphere of its own to the first cause nevertheless remains less perfect than that of meta- physics, because in possibilities, jJATctfktlveiv eiy aAAo yevos. To establish such a philosophical conclu- any case it only shows the necessity of divine action at tlie com- sion mencement in time philosophical procedure is necessary, which would bring into play philosophi- of the evolution of the cosmos (or in the evolutions, for we do not know if another cally elucidated notions (of which the physicist knows nothing) such as ontological state did not precede that one). Is it necessary to add that the causality, philosopher, precisely that the the analogy of being, potency and act, order, finality, etc., and would imply because he proceeds philosophically, and knows divine causality that the notion of entropy itself had taken on not only a physico-mathematical, but is in action all the time, could not think that 'some billions of years ago God a philosophical meaning. wound up the material universe and has left it to chance ever since' (op. cit. This elevation in the P- 84)? Through all the the events of the universe, to a plane ofsuperior intelligibility is maybe, it is true, possible extension of time the course of v light of "y chance itself, are of God. philosophical principles: if it is admitted that the second principle of thermo- subject to the causality, the overarching government 230 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE OUR NATURE 231 1 cartesian philosophy). Indeed it seems sometimes possible to disc world of the inorganic where they have been neglected, will perhaps in certain conceptions of the new physics, not certainly the with ways of thinking smallest b supply science new of the physical. stantial likeness, but a sort ofstylistic kinship with the antique accessori How, finally, can the imagination of the philosopher (or of the poet) of the peripatetic workshop, such as the natural state, condensation these light and resist the fascination of atoms which condense or transform rarefication, or the difference ofnature between the matter of the heaven- themselves into heavy atoms in order to radiate as light or as heat, of ly bodies and that of corruptible bodies, of which the distinction, is which this way in which mass measured by its internal energy, these stars is even more sharply drawn, between the 'matter' of the physicist and which by ceaselessly reducing. their mass, which is to begin with so his non-material' ether (in so far as he admits its existence) seems like enormous, and which will completely exhaust themselves after billions • the modern reproduction. of billions of years, pour forth in the present energy into the universe;1 It is notable on another side, that one of the effects of the present-day how fail to find here great symbols of the mystery of the very life of the revolution in physics has resulted in its enlargement, as M. Vernadsky spirit? pointed out in a remarkable address to the Scientific of Moscow But let him not forget how erroneous it would be to try to erect a and 2 Leningrad, with regard to the phenomena of life, to such a degree philosophy of nature, and afortiori a metaphysic, on the theoretic con- that the planetary importance of these phenomena will thereby be more clusions of modern physics and its explanations of the world, as if these easily recognised, and the typical traits oftheir physico-chemical behav- conclusions and explications could be taken as ontological foundations, iour {e.g. irreversibility or again, dissymmetry) passing over into the could be used as such by the philosopher without their previous sub-

1 jection to a rigorous critique. The physicist, That was the error of Spinoza with regard if he has any interest in metaphysical problems, will be even more aware than the philosopher to the physics of his time. It of these accidental philosophical connections of the new seems to me that, from very different physics. He will find, for instance, that the theory of relativity helps towards his com- standpoints, M. Bergson, and, if I have righdy understood him, Prof. prehension ofthe relation between creaturely time and the eternity ofGod. (Cp. K. F. Alexander, are neither of them safe from this danger; the one seek- Merzfeld, "The Frontiers of Modern Physics and Philosophy,' Proc. of the Amer. Cath. ing to Phil. Assoc., Loyola free a so-called 'durie criatrice immanent in the world of the Univ., Chicago, 29th Dec, 1930; 'Scientific Research and Reli- gion, The Commonweal, 20th Mar., physicist, which 1929; 'Einstein as a Physicist," ibid., Feb. 1931.) the physicist would misunderstand; the other making This is certainly legitimate as long as it is remembered that is of that it a case of comparisons world the matrix as it were from which the worlds of more and and metaphors which may help the mind to grasp a truth (in this case a philosophical more qualified, more and solid, realities is less truth), but which are not more emerge. There no therefore in themselves necessarily true (i.e. with regard to the theory of relativity, ontologically or philosophically true). . .We are . therefore obliged to admit that, in the course of its complete evolution, Mrf. tit., Revue ginhale des sciences, 31st Dec, 1930., The author, stresses the a star who diminishes at least in a importance proportion of 1000 to r. of the present-day crisis of science, to which he gives the value of one of It must be admitted that is the this diminution is bound up with radiation, since there no historic crises' of thought, points out that, as without doubt leading towards the loss 01 matter; these enormous stars do not let loose the atoms which they contain. In re-integration oflife into 'the scientific picture of the universe', it will at the same time consequence we are led to admit that the loss of weight corresponds to a complete tend to cause the disappearance of the striking contradiction, so continually accentu- estrucnon ofmatter, to a profound neutralisation ofthe electron by the proton, with, ated in the course of the classic period, between the objective scientific e picture of the a swan-song, a universe great production oflight, two photons resulting from the recipro- (where mechanics and the physico-chemical had alone right ofpossession and cal neutralisation ofa photon and electron. which made everything an human and living seem 'fragile' and 'null') and the work of The complete destruction ofmatter in order to produce light probably requires, for science itself, in so far as this is a 'social world-formation', 'made up ofliving person- its production in a potent pressure in the depths auties, of which more degree, conditions of temperature and than nine-tenths study 'regions without any connection "e stars which are how to realise. with the picture of p profoundly different from any which we know the cosmos falsely considered labours of ro as the result of the total Eddington in the , calculated it at forty million degrees of central temperature science The article contains comments of the greatest interest, science considered major ° ' on part of the mil- sociologically. stars, and the pressure would be figured by the atmospheric lu ^.,..'(P.Lan gevin,,? .or.) 232 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE OUR KNOWLEDGE NATURE 233 self-deception in the assumption that it is possible, misled ' the by the va mirage in the skies, over minds of investigators, who held that they advantages of which I have spoken, to draw from the begin to set to work without new physic") could not even paying some tribute to it. dicories a philosophy of nature; or, for instance, in the classical mechanics, still desire to find In abandoning more, in enunciating the in the indeterminist conceptions of contemporary physics any ar"* principle of indetermination for phenomena of the atomic scale, and ment against philosophical determinism. The refutation it is contradictory to of the latter by affirming that suppose that science can follow must be philosophical. However important or significant the ideas of and determine at each instant the bearing of an individual corpuscle, in Heissenberg, for example, may be to the dieoretician of the sciences other words, that it is not possible to know its complete past and thereby they have absolutely nothing to do with the problem of liberty. Doubt- to foresee its future, the new physics has done away with the very rea- less they may assist in destroying some scientific fictions, but it would be sons for the existence of all this pseudo-philosophy, which looked on a misappropriation to wish to utilise them directly in an apology for the mind and free will as a scientific scandal. This is no small achieve- free-will; they have no more value in that region than the dinamen of ment from the standpoint of the sociology of the intelligence. 'Physics Epicurus and Lucretius. no longer offers any moral objection to free will.' But this result in it- I do not fail to appreciate the important bearing of the reversal of self has no formal and intrinsic philosophical value. For it would be values produced by the conceptions of die new physics, in what is con- false to hold that mechanics and classical physics as such implied die cerned not only with science itself and its own 1 interests; in its general negation of free will and the mechanistic postulate of the possibility human and intellectual aspects, in the social and economic worlds of explaining everything by the laws of movement, in other words, by From this standpoint, which I might call the epistemo-sociological reducing everything to the displacement of corpuscles, any more than science is no longer considered in itself, as being true or false, in the de- any other metaphysical conception. The quarrel between 'determinist' terminations which follow in themselves from its exigencies in the and 'indeterminist' mechanics is outside the field of philosophical pro- knowledge of things, it interests us as a collective formation produced blems. here and now in the minds ofmen and producing in the latter, like a fer- It is equally impossible to find in the indeterminism of the new cor- ment or a centre oforganisation, varied reactions, associative rather than puscular mechanics a philosophical significance otherwise than by tying rational, which are accidental with regard to the sciences themselves. it up with a metaphysical error; then it is imagined as mediating against Thus classical physics—per widens— _ gave force to the illusion of an the axiomatic value ofthe principle ofcausality (philosophically under- integrally mechanistic explanation of the universe; so-called scien- stood). I have indicated above that the principle of indeterminism in- tific picture of the cosmos—where consciousness and life must needs be troduces a lacuna into die field of scientific causality,2 or more exacdy, subject to physico-chemical processes and these again to mechanics, and movements of the greatest bodies and the lightest atom; nothing would be uncertain; where, thanks to that unique formula of which Laplace dreamed, die the past and the future would alike be before its eyes.' (Laplace, Essai philosophise sur calculation of the movements les of material points according to New- probalilitds, 1 8 14). Taine speaks in the same way ofthat 'supreme law' which moves ton s laws in of attraction the eternal torrent ofevents the infinite sea things'. should have allowed in dieory, if not in fact, the and of These famous unfree prediction of all events statements are doubly erroneous. They admit that the contingent and all the history of the worlds of brute matter, events dependent on universal interaction can be both calculated in advance and fore- of organic life and of humanity, of the or the seen development of thought with certitude, which is not calculate such events in advance an in- trembling exact: for to of a reed even finite as of the motions of die stars^-set up, like a intelligence is necessary {and such an intelligence does not foresee, it sees). And they deny the intelligent possibility of contingentfiee events, dependent on the will of idl ' * given buaat should which na- agents outside, (Cp. JS^T ^ " - knt>w all the forces by in so far as they are spiritual, the domain of the material sciences. die reSpecdve bein s suffi- s"pn, g ofwl"<* « » made up, if also it were p. 184, note 2.) ticlZTciently great, to subject? , these data to analysis, the could embrace in

DEGREES OF RATIONAL OF SENSIBLE 234 THE KNOWLEDGE . OUR KNOWLEDGE NATURE 23

among those succedanea of causality reached by physico-madieniati inordinate prestige of the new, and which doubtless will only pre- 1 ofdie in its re-shaping of the in favour of contingence and apprehension concept ofcause. But, if it public opinion liberty in stamping is so it i judice precisely in the degree to which science has left behind of matter and the principle of causality with discredit. an ontological the substantiality standpoint and abandoned thinking of phenomena I know that physico-mathematical explication cannot sub ratione entis As for myself, 'We have abandoned strict causality in the external widi philosophical. From this point ofview we world,' writes one be in continuity must al- of the most distinguished theoreticians of the 1 those who think that it would be prudent new physics. In place of low the reason of to interdict this 'we' it would be better to read the in 'empiriometric science', that appre- the entry of philosophers into workshop which the new quan- hension which resolves all concepts not in In fact this physico-mathematical being but exclusively in the tum theory is built up. universe is a measurable, and which has now perceived that the entire physical world closed world, where geometricism (understanding this word in the wid- cannot be exacdy measured. this To endow renunciation, which only est sense, in so far as it conforms to the ideal of the new physics as to that has a meaning in the empiriological field, with philosophical value of the old), where mathematicism produces a pseudo-ontology, sub- would a strange be misunderstanding. It is impossible for human science stitute both natural philosophy and metaphysics. Tliis pseudo-ontology

which observes and measures things by material instruments and by phy- plays only a methodological and subsidiary part, but it is there, and sical experiment, and which can only see an electron by encircling it thanks to its rational beings founded on the real it builds up a system of light, widi to know determiningly the way in which a corpuscle will total explication which makes this intelligible universe a whole shut in behave at each instant. But suppose the existence of a pure mind which on itself. The philosopher will explain how this universe of the physic-

would know without material means (and so also without empiriological ist conies to be built up. He will borrow its materials. It is also, as I have concepts) 2 the behaviour of this corpuscle at each instant—such a mind said, from it that he will ask for his image of the physical world, in ac-

would see die strictest application of the principle of causality, in die cord with winch he will in his turn fashion his myths, in die platonic full ontological sense. This hypothesis has no significance for the phy- meaning of the word. But he will have superimposed on this universe sicist; but if it has no significance for the metaphysician it is because he a different one. has not yet learnt metaphysics.

Neither let us indulge in the hope that the social bearing of scientific ONTOLOGY AND EMPIRIOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF THE LIVING ORGANISM and philosophic discovery will show itself as any more sensible in the future than in the past to the distinctions, which are neverdieless indubi- The case is odierwise for the other experimental sciences—above all table, which are here in question. The new physics will act on die general for biology and experimental psychology—whose essence does not mind in the . same irrational way as classical physics, by associative in- consist in a mathematicisation of the sensible, and where the mode of fluences or sub-intellectual induction; it will raise up in its turn, to all resolution of concepts and of explanation primarily belongs to the appearances, the larva of a philosophy, a new 'scientific picture of the epistemological type which I have christened 'empirico-schematic'. In cosmos', which will only saying save us from the errors of the first at the price this I certainly do not mean to say that diese sciences reject any 'A. S. Eddington, op. cit., p. 309. mathematical treatment of the observed subject: far from it! If such 2 I have mentioned already treatment is onto- (p. 1 86, note I ) P. Langevin's hypothesis, where he aban- finds its prime field in physics, since corporality as such dons corpuscular individuality. Whatever may be the scientific fate of this hypothesis, logically wherever soaked in the quantitative, it nevertheless penetrates the philosopher, though he may ignore what are the individual ultimates of the atomic the shadow ofquantity finally that of matter; and this shadow world, knows at least that the extends or concept of the individual is valid (i.e. in the ontological sense which the philosophy reaches to the things in the degree to which we rise of nature recognises) in that world as in the world of large of the soul itself. But dimensions. above and the particular world ofphysics, and the object gains in richness 236 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 237 ontological perfection, in proportion the quantitative aspect of die is also done by the soul (and its vegetative potencies) sub- means, everything ject under consideration becomes, I do not say less real, but less significant Rooted in a substance endowed with immanent the first principle. and more subordinate, and the science in question less easily reducible energies there produce, in the degree to activity, physico-chemical to a form ofinterpretation which is in principle purely mathematic and its which they are instruments for the soul vegetative faculties, and It would be assuredly vain to pretend to diminish die part which phy- without violating the laws of inanimate matter, effects which surpass sico-chemical analysis (and in consequence, the calculus) already plays in what they could do by themselves alone, in the sense that they actuate 1 biology, a part which every day only increases. In a region as irreducibly and raise ontologically the subject itself. And without doubt it is pos- biological, as governed by concepts of form and of organic totality as which, sible to conceive ofa form ofexperimental biology consenting so experimental embryology, Brachet is able to write: 'The physico- exclusively the to speak to a kind of amputation, would turn to ener- chemical epoch is only in its infancy, but there is no doubt that the getic and physico-chemical analysis of living phenomena and thus be 2 future belongs to it.' The fact remains that it represents the material- orientated towards an entirely mathematic and mechanistic ideal, leav- conditions and means of study. And as all the facts of the living organ- fact ing all the rest to natural philosophy. "Whatever orientation may in ism are physico-chemically built up, this analysis can and should advance direct modern biology (where to-day a sufEciendy sharp anti-mechanist indefinitely. reaction is visible), I hold it nevertheless for certain that in the experi- Does this imply that it can ever exhaust biological reality? Assuredly mental field an empiriological analysis is both possible and requisite, not. For ifeverything in the living organism is done by physico-chemical which sets itself to penetrate vital phenomena as such, and which, while clearly distinct from natural philosophy, makes use ofexperi- H shall never subscribe to remaining M. Bcrgson's judgment: '. . . In the field of life the calculus can be drawn, at are stricdy irreducibly biological (like those most, of certain phenomena of organic destruction. With regard to mental concepts which and organic 1 creation, on die contrary, and the evolving phenomena which rightly consti- of the prospektive Bedeutung and the prospektive Potenz of centres of or- tute life, I do not even see how it can be thought possible that these can be subject to ganisation, of the specificness of plasma,8 etc.), and subordinate to ener- mathematical treatment' (L'Evohtion criatrice, p. 2r). Neither do I subscribe to the getic, physical and chemical concepts. While, for example, the philo- claims ofmechanicism. In my opinion the application ofmathematical treatment to the phenomena concepts for the oflife is capable ofalmost infinite progress, but as it remains normally sub- sophy of nature makes a place among its explanatory ordinate to another treatment, which is righdy biological, of these same phenomena, concept of finality, the facts of biological finality only present for phy- whereby (in Buytendijk's terminology) the scientist endeavours to truly 'comprehend', sico-chemical to be reduced as far as not analysis an irrational requiring only mathematically explain. (On this question of physico-mathcmatkal analysis possible; biological analysis ofwhich I have been in biology, cp. W. R. Thompson, 'A Contribution to the Study of Morphogeny in while for the righdy the Muscoid could be Diptera', chap. iii. {Trans, of the Entomological of London, 31st speaking, they result in an empiriological concept which Dec, 1929.)

A. Brachet, La Vie admitted into the current criatrice desformes, Paris, 1917. It is the same in physiology. If, for 'These notions introduced by Hans Driesch are to-day example, the 'real potentiality muscle is considered, according to the studies of Hill and Meyerhof, as a language ofscience, under the somewhat less happily chosen names of motor of an • absolutely special (chemico-colloidal) kind unknown to mechanics, this and 'total potentiality*. Brachet has pointed out their fruitfulness. does not prevent 'the mechanism appearing, certain secondary lacunae being included, 2 Emil Rohde ex- 'What we see re-emerging is the highly biological notion which as a physico-chemical whole, producing no reaction, no force not recognised in inani- there are of pressed in the striking formulas: there are as many species of plasma as mate matter, and rigorously subject to the law of the conservation of energy' (L. 'specific' plasma, plants and animals; more, every living individual possesses his own Lapicque, in the collection, L'Orientation actuelle des sciences, 1930). This 'physico- specimens on the so that there are as many individual plasma as there are individual chemical whole' is the assembly ofthe energetic and material means ofthe phenomenon. midicak, globe.' (Remy Collin, 'La Thcorie cellulaire et la vie', La Biologic IOJ9-) Materially physico-chemical, the phenomenon itself is formally vital, it is an auto-actua- which are referred to Generally speaking the strictly biological experiment concepts tion the subject, of and it implies that the brought into play specification of physico-chemical energies here relate to 'typological laws' or 'laws of are what Hans Andre" calls the precisely the means, the activity. instruments of the radical principle of immanent life. 238 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE KNOWLEDGE NATURE 239 1 described by die same name offinality, but winch of saving sensible appearances1 would have to b remains that ), but which nevertheless tirely recast, and all emptied of its philosophical significance, re-compose its object in the field of and which" does not mathematical ideality by leaving on one side the whole use of finality as as far as possible from a causal explication withdrawing it its reality in the world and nature would simply express that general pre-explicatory condition* the sensible; and which as a result can enter into a that the of certain theoretic functions die of living organism, and the use which it with philosophical explanations. makes of its struc- continuity If these sciences may tures, supply for the continuation of life. As to the concepts to compose explicative rational of the soul happen beings, for all that it is not in and the vegetative potencies, diey play an indispensable construct a universe of part in natural order to deduction which is substituted for that philosophy, but they remain outside die field of properly biological of real beings: they remain imperfectly deductive: instead of making experimental analysis, as they are outside that of the universe on which the physico-chemical a closed universe of natural philosophy is super- analysis ofliving phenomena. rather imposed, they make up with natural philosophy two stages or Thus it is obvious in what sense I meant that biology conditions of the same universe. did not consist in a mathematicisation of the sensible. However largely biology may, and In so far as they approach nearer to the purity of their type, they tend has the right to, make use in the material analysis oflife of mathematical as we have seen, to create for themselves an autonomous empiriological means, these remain a simple instrument. It knows no obligation whereby vocabularly. But in so far as this system of notions, without admitting it must needs substitute reconstructed quantitative entities ontological or philosophic for the sen- concepts into its formal texture, and still sible and qualitatively determined objects furnished more without any by observation; it 'subordination' to philosophy or borrowing of its remains an autonomous science with regard to principles, the laws ofmathematical asks of die latter to furnish it, as its climate and conditions of explication: borrowing at will from mathematical methods, it never- existence, with those pre-conceptions of a general order and that sense theless does not constitute a madiematicisation of its of living phenomena. own significance in the universe ofthought ofwhich every science Sciences such as experimental biology'and has need, psychology set out to attain a and also those stimulations ofa heuristic order thanks to which knowledge ofaffective or cognitive or it progresses vegetative life, whose ontological in via inventions, this system of notions, far from raising a indications are doubdess very weak (since sort of being is only considered as a mechanistic pseudo-ontology, is, in a way, in dynamic continuity simple basis of the observable and the typical law of apprehension with the specifically different system of ontological notions of natural *Cp. Eugcnio Rignano, Quest-ce philosophy. que la vie? (Paris, 1926). Indeed it can only build up its autonomy in a truly scienti- 2 I mean by this a condition ofsimple fic authentication, pre-supposed by the explana- way, escape the disorder, the arbitrariness, the conceptual wastage tion and which in itself plays no explanatory part. Such a 'pre-explicatory' condition is very different from the condition as a substitute for causality in question This makes it which was clear how much too narrow Duhem's theory is, which identifies the above (pp. 182-3), which plays an essentially ou&iv to. explanatory part. This latter is regulative ociv6fifvoc with a pure translation of physical data into a system ofmathe- and determining with regard to phenomena (it could be called the conditioning con- matical equations, abstraction having been made of all search for 'causal explication*. dition), die former is a simple state of acts recognised the sciences in the object as bound up with under discussion the mathematical translation of phenomena, however its existence, which could be called the conditioned joins up important it condition. This notion may be, plays a wholly instrumental, not formal, part, and the search for with that ofMeyerson's 'irrational', with this difference, irrational empinological that the very word 'causal' explications (taking the 'causal' in the terms of that re- evokes word the idea of a resistance casting which the reason endeavours to reduce, while this is a of causality which was in question above, p. 182) is preponderant. Yet never- simple case of a datum, which is not explanatory, all by ™eIess they but which is accepted once for ak° have their typical law in the atofeiv ra fauvopevx. This law rules over empiriological analysis, leaving e it to philosophy to establish its ontological value. whole empiriological kingdom, whether it be empirio-metric or schematic; in Un the question of finality in e biology, sec my discussion Gagnehin, 'La '0rmer as with Elie 1 > we have seen, it is applied to a rational process which is at once a nnaiite en biologie (printed in Questions disputes). hylomorphism 1 "' Simikr studies on tnms ' and ^ aci°n °f physical data and the search for 'causal explications' animism are in preparation, T V l? in which I hope into the (which give to be able to go more deeply rise to a prolific crop of physico-mathematical rational beings), ep. note, philosophy ofthe living organism '

THE DEGREES OF 240 RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE OUR NATURE 241 which dog the sciences ofliving nature, and experimental psychology contact with certain ideas which rightly belong to natural philosophy, particular, on the supposition in the minds of those at work phenomenological in it of" for example the intuition of 'the organic' and con- powerful philosophical discipline, at once logical and critical. Claudel It i f ceptions (to which on the one hand and Wasmann, Erick Becher this reason that biologists to-day are beginning to realise that while riv- and Vialleton on the other have come independently) of biological ing an ever larger space to the physico-chemical and energetic beyond strictly useful analyst finality as going dispositions in virtue of an enti- of living phenomena, biology can only rightly progress by expressly tative superabundance and, as it were, ostentation. breaking with the mechanistic theory. This reaction against the scientific conceptions admired by the nine-

teenth century is highly significant It is perhaps the beginning of a veri- table renewal. But it can only be efficacious and THE ANTI-MECHANISTIC REACTION IN BIOLOGY enduring ifit maintains the essential distinction between objective fields which cannot be con- Driesch's studies in Entwickhngsphysiologie have from this point of fused without injury to the mind, and if a sort of prolific irrationalism, view considerable historical importance.1 Following Driesch, under the which only wishes to escape and to reduce every intellectual discipline, influence it may be of Bergson, or of Scheler, or of the ph'enomeno- does not one day make us regret the inhuman stoicism ofa soulless logical school, or psy- of aristotelico-thomist philosophy, biologists famous chology and a lifeless biology, the 'purifications and macerations' in for their experimental researches have undertaken the enterprise of whose name such sciences demanded of their initiates 'halfoftheir intel- rehabilitating concepts such as those of 'the organic', 'life', 'immanent 1 lectual and moral goods.' The grand error of such science has been the activity', even 'the soul*, words, which the science of last century desire to protect itself against the intelligence; in the endeavour to keep felt a very virtue in avoiding and removing. They no longer fear it out it has risked dying of asphyxia. But the re-entry of the intelli- philosophical conceptions, or August Krogh and Rimy Collin's insis- gence into science is an event which will not lack its dangers. tence on the necessity 2 of 'the work of the spirit' in science, or to point It is obvious that this is a danger which the intelligence alone out the accord can between their conceptions and the thought ofsome philo- avert. Only good philosophy can take the place sopher, of bad. (But good or even that of a poet of genius like 3 Claudel. If Claudel, apro- philosophy, for all that, is a much more difficult task than its simu- pos of the auto-determination of living forms, speaks of 'notes, which lacra.) will play themselves in extending the ringers in all directions', Uexkfill At this point we can observe the insufficiency of the phenomenolo- writes similarly: 'every organism is a melody which sings to itself.' Buy- gical method, as of bergsonian irrationalism. intui- tendijk Phenomenological opposes erklaren and verstehen, the analytic and mechanistic re- tion, unlike the bergsonian, is of an intellectual order; but in basing it- duction and the synthetic intellection of living things, material explan- self from the outset on a form of reflective thought which rejects the ation and comprehension: and he vivifies his experimental researches by thing (die trans-objective subject), and as a result applying itself to the H have already pointed out the importance published in pure of these studies in an essay description of the essence-phenomenon, which (contrary to its isho, 'Nfovitalismcen AUemagne etlc Darwinisme '(Revue de phii, Oct. 1910), and nature) it isolates a in the preface to the French from extramental being, and so shutting itself up in translation of Driesch's book (Paris. 1921). noetic atomism 'August Krogh, comparable to the cartesian pluralism of 'simple na- 'The Progress of Physiology", an opening of address delivered at the tures the Thirteenth^International (fragments of evidence), and refusing to recognise the primary Physiological Congress, Boston, Aug. 1929 («* Tlie Amer.Journal Physiology, value of Oct. 1929) of transcendental being in which all our notions are resolved and rounded *" mdy biolo- on truths known as such, phenomenological intuition sticks E J" J" Buytmdijk and Hans Andre", 'La valeur i-lt^v^f. ! ^

PaUl ClaUde1 ' '' ^ tLe 4th C"hier de Phi,0S0P hie de h mm E£ 1930 'Rdmy Collin, Preface to the 4th Cahier de Philosophle de la nature.

°- . M.D.K. THE DEGREES OF 243 RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 243 halfway, neither able to overcome an empiricism of the intelkV natural that the initiators who have won M It is back the value of its which in being a priori remains none the less radical, nor to build u objects for biology, like Driesch or Buytendijk, should be preoccupied veritable metaphysical ontology, 1 or philosophy ofnature. In philosophy as well as their the lackof with natural own science; we know that these such apprehension and a rational resolution in the principles of a ohil pre-occupations have finally led Driesch to devote himselfto philosophy sophical knowledge of being, this intuition can only find a use this union of two 'formalities' for th alone. But in one thinking 'subject' real in the phenomenological sciences (it is from the point ofview not cause us to forget their distinction; of its should a distinction which is effect on the practice of the scientist that it interests us here); and important, as ther fundamentally much in the interests of philosophy as of while recovering, in fact, an interest in the extra-mental thing, a science. This is I realistic those of why have insisted on the existence (at least as value, an efficacy which this does not have for the philosopher as requisite) such theoretically of an 'autonomous' experimental biology as dis- it remains without any adequate control, and exposed to all the dan- tinct from the philosophy of the living organism; in other words, on gers of the arbitrary, as does the (metaphorical) analogical process which the existence of an empiriological analysis, not only physico-chemical, immediately rises from it and endlessly increases. but also rightly and irreducibly biological, of the world ofliving bodies, Rich in invention, able to free and feed the intellect, a precious instru- which should not be confounded with the ontological investigation ment of renewal and discovery, it is in viajudicii that this method is proper to natural philosophy: this double empiriological analysis, at deficient. And no clear-cut distinction between the ontological and the once physico-chemical and strictly biological (the former being subor- empiriological, natural philosophy and experimental science, being pos- dinate to the latter) constituting experimental biology' as opposed to sible where there is a lack of an autonomous' ontology, of a natural the 'philosophy of nature' (in this case, of living nature), with which it philosophy existing for itself, the phenomenological method, in the act remains in continuity. The work ofscientists like Heidenhamn, Brachet, of delivering biology from the mechanistic tyranny risks the introduc- 1 Cuenot, Remy Collin, Hans Andre and Emil Rohde, alike attest that tion into it of concepts which are valid as such for natural philosophy an analysis which is at once rigorously empiriological and stricdy bio- but valueless for science, and often also without value for the philosophy logical has not only a possible existence. ofnature. Finally, the very deliverance ofwhich I have spoken runs the Specifically distinct from such an analysis, the ontological and philo- risk of being illusory, if, all empiriological knowledge having been sophical knowledge of living things gives it its rational justification. In given over into the hands ofphysico-chemical analysis, all rightly bio- effect it belongs to this latter to destroy the roots of the two illusions of logical perception is found in fact turned over to natural philosophy in- mechanicism and vitalism, understanding this latter word in the abusive vading the field of science; while this the philosophy in its turn runs sense which the history of medical and biological science obliges us to risk of giving place to an intemperate vitalism, the counterfeit of an attach to it. In fact classical medical vitalism is bound up with a concep- authentic ontology of the living, and which that irrational metaphysic tion of life, the counterpart of mechanicism, which, on the one hand, once gave Naturphilosophie a fallacious renown. from the philosophic point of view, has all the defects of dualism (the organism ^Husserl's use is there taken to be an already constituted corporeal substance of the word 'ontology' in his recent publications (notably in his For- mate und Ttanscenientak Logik existing as such, and in the Meditations cartisienms) is entirely equivocal. which is in addition inhabited by a strange principle, This a priori discovery' of the scientific universe starting 'solipsist egology' is I from would like to mention here the important book by Hans Andre*, Urbild wid Ur- not a science of being which is able to take itselfapart empiriological analysis as an- sadie in by dcr Biologie (Munich and treats penetrating manner, other and Berlin, 193 r). He in a most deeper scrutiny of the realist same reality. Despite all his efforts, despite the particularly in the und tendency second and third chapters (Der Kampfder Mathematisierenden which has given rise of to phenomenology, it remains radically incapable MrBiohg.Naturcmschauimgen; DerAusgatig dieses Kampfes in der Gegenwart),some of the furnishing anything but an illusory ii, idealist succedaneum of real. (Cp. supra, chap, problems V r touched on here. The fourth chapter draws from the present state of vege- pp. 120-22.) ' table biology confirmations of the greatest interest. 244 TH£ DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE NATURE 245 vital spirit or vital energy), and which, on die other, is repugnant to proper light, in the results th rterpreting them in its own of experimental rightful claims of scientific analysis, in the sense that it posits beside th science in their integrity. physico-chemical life means of other principles of a specifically vit 1 that a particularly important In another way I hold truth results from order which contradict physico-chemical laws and quarrel with the the empiriology and ontology of the that critical analysis of sensible to for possession. In such a conception the vital has nothing in itself except which this chapter has been devoted. It is that the more and more clear what is abstracted from the physico-chemical, and it will thus be more differentiation between knowledge of an ontological and of a physico- and more reduced in the degree to which the physico-chemical study of mathematical type is not simply a contingent fact, due to particular his- phenomena progresses. torical circumstances, but one that corresponds to a necessary law of the The authentic conception of the organism is no less opposed to vitalism • growth of speculative thought; and in effect constitutes one of the most so understood than to mechanicism—the 'arnmist' or 'hylomorphist' authentic marks of the progress, in the morphology of knowledge, conception, for which the principle of life is the formal principle itself, which thought has accomplished in the course ofmodern times, and one in the aristotelian sense of the word, the substantial 'act' or entelechy ofwhich both reflective and critical philosophy must take cognisance. of the living body, so that the energetic and the psychic, matter and soul, It has been pointed out that the ancients, although they were clearly make up one sole and same being, which exists, with all its constitut- aware, in certain privileged fields, ofthe methods o£scientiae mediae, had ing determinations and structures, physico-chemical and vegetative, or nevertheless a tendency in fact to subject all knowledge ofnature to the sensitive or intellective, only by the soul. Thus the vital is not juxta- laws of ontology and philosophy. A similar and inverse error—all the posed, but rather superimposed on the physico-chemical, and a rightly more grave in that it does not arise from a flaw in the apprehension of biological experimental analysis is by so much more requisitive in the fact, but from conscious theory—consists in only allowing as legitimate degree to which the physico-chemical analysis of the phenomena life of apprehension, at least in the knowledge ofnature, empiriological know- advances. ledge dressed up in some other name. This was the error of the positiv-

ists, who gave over to it, if the phrase may be allowed, the whole exten-

sion of the universe of thought. It has been committed again, though in CONCERNING THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PHILOSOPHY OF THE a new fashion, of metaphysics, by those PROGRESS OF THE SCIENCES IN MODERN TIMES and this time in the very name philosophers who in the knowledge of nature keep only empiriometric It follows from these considerations that if natural philosophy re- explanations, and, holding the sciences of life as worth nothing, wish ceives the experimental sciences, as I pointed out above, like an em- to find in mathematical physico-mathematical knowledge the piriological body, and it is in a different way in the case of sciences of the unique type of all rational activity (when not purely reflective) worthy physical type and in that of sciences of a biological one. In the first case,

of the name. . where the resolution of concepts is of an empiriometric order, it needs It is impossible to avoid applying the tide retrograde, and indeed pre- to separate, in so far as is possible, in the results ofsuch science, what is copernican, to the attitude these philosophers. The arbitrary command deductive explication of from the mathematical forms by which these facts ofa metaphysic 'sweet and total renunciation' are established: which constitutes itselfby a in the latter, it can enter into continuity with the direct ofbeing and the return to the positions ofthe most line of apprehension; object obliges them to whereas widi the rational beings constructed by naive epistemological this time for the benefit of physico-mathematical monism, proclaimed theory it can only know a secondary continuity that form farthest remove from the grasp in the line of knowledge which is at the of images or myths. In the resolution second case, where the inter- of the real in itself. This false philosophy ofscientific progress thus of concepts is of an empirico-schematic order, it can find a basis, in- dirts itself from discerning the profound meaning of the copernican THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF SENSIBLE 246 KNOWLEDGE OUR NATURE 247 revolution; it misunderstands the admirable organic diversity in the play which escape by their substance a complete mathematicisation; and do the intellect manifested either in the heart of methods of work, which, of science itself or in the justice to their in the degree to which they distinction drawn between science and philosophy their autonomy, cover by four centuries of further affirm a widening range of the scientific scientific development. it would be completely field. In effect arbitrary to refuse the rank of that remains of the reason in such philosophy All is reduced to the em- authentic forms of apprehension meriting the attention of the phil- ployment of mathematics and what I have called here the empirio- ' osopher to biology and the other sciences of the same epistemological 1 metric use of the intelligence. This is, if I may put it so, a rationalism type, which contribute more and more importantly, and perhaps one which has retired from active business, and which is endeavouring to day preponderantly, to the progress of speculative thought. carry on life as a rentier, which can in fact only draw its subsistence from the reflective supplies of the works of the ancient reason But what I have wished to point out is that the principles of a realist noetic, as they have been exhibited in this book, give space in their system of know- ledge for the rightful methods and just appreciations of the 'reason' of this nominalist rationalism, and recognise their value within certain defined limits, while at the same time marking their insufficiency as making up the being of all thought.

Perhaps there is an indication of the truth of a doctrine of integral power in the positive elements which are found in systems invoking other principles. In any case it seems that a true philosophy of the pro- gress of the physical and mathematical sciences during the modem period, precisely because it appertains to it to disengage by critical re- flection the spiritual values with which they are pregnant, must needs recognise in this progress a sign not of its reduction and diminution, but of its completion and a growth in the organic structure and differ- entiation of thought. It must also show on the one hand the incom- patibility between this mathematic and empiriometric progress and knowledge of the oncological type which is proper to philosophy, and on the other, a respect for the nature of those experimental sciences

J It would be possible to show that this must be the logical end for an intellectualist nominalism, which endeavours to mask with extreme idealism that residue of sensual- ism which the refusal to recognise an original power in the intelligence of perceiving intelligible essences or natures, and even more generally, the objects whatever they may be which correspond to its rightful conditions of spirituality, inevitably leaves at the basis ofthought. This residue ofsensualism will be there, whatever one does; which is why they can only recognise apart from mathematical apprehension, that form of knowledge which I have called empiriometric—a less noble title certainly, but more exact than one which produces a dissatisfaction with the name of'reason'. METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 249

let us say by way of definition, subjects which are in in a concept— some themselves' or dianoetic 1 degree knowable 'in by intellection. These are

corporeal things, which falling within the orbit of the senses can also come under the light of the agent-intellect, and so allow their essence abstraction, at least in so far as to be grasped by some determination of apparent in its inteUigibihty. CHAPTER IV being is To an intelligence that makes use of the senses it is appropriate that\

METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE there should correspond as its naturally proportionate object essences plunged in the sensible. This is why the scholastics say that the essences of I. DIANOETIC AND PERINOETTC INTELLECTION corporeal things are the connatural object of our powers ofintellection. I have dealt at such length with the question of natural philosophy in Sunk in the ocean of the transobjective intelligible, our intelligence relation to the sciences, because the restoration of the philosophy of illuminates material things in order to disclose the hidden structure, nature appears to me to answer a profound intention implicit in the and actualise in so far as it can the inteUigibihty which they hold in modern mind, and because the critical realism of St. Thomas seems to potentia. And by discourse it is unceasingly carried on to new actuations me alone capable of fulfilling this intent without causing any injury of inteUigibihty. either to the experimental sciences or their methods of procedure, By the very fact that it takes its rise from sensory knowledge dia- rather, on the contrary, to their benefit. noetic inteUection cannot in any way know immediately and 'in them- theory The of intellectual knowledge sketched in chapter ii, allows us selves' the essences of corporeal things. It is not a vision of essences, a to understand how, according to the principles of Thomas Aquinas, we knowledge which at one stroke plunges to the heart, the core of being, can have two complementary forms of knowledge of one and the same like the non-discursive knowledge of the Angels, or the perfect and reality, that is, the world of motion and sensible nature: the sciences and unclouded knowledge of God (or like the knowledge which Descartes natural philosophy. believed received clear and distinct ideas from thought and under- It also allows us to understand how, above natural philosophy, can standing). We may say that is not a 'central' but a 'radial' knowledge, and should rise the world of metaphysical knowledge. which goes inward from without, only reaching the centre by starting - According to the terminology which I have thought it convenient to fiom the circumference; it attains the essence, but by the signs, as St. adopt, the cis-objective subject attains, in order to intentionally become 2 Thomas said, which manifest it, and which are its properties. The hunt j them, things in themselves, or transobjective subjects posited in extra- for definitions runs through the tangle of experience. It is after we have/ mental existence, in constituting them as objects, or positing them— by experienced in ourselves what the reason is, and after we have recognised means of the concept or proffered presentative form—in existence as a I understand by this (in opposition to 'ananoetic' knowledge or knowledge by 'known', in esse objective seu cognito. This at once cis-objective subject is analogy on the one hand, and on the other to 'perinoetic' knowledge or by substi- spiritual and corporeal, it has senses and an intellect, tute-signs) that mode of intellection in which the intelligible constituent of a thing is I have called the objectivied transobjective intelligible that infinite (transfinite) in itself (or ifnot in itself at least by a sign which manifests it, by a property in assembly of subjects the strict sense of the desire to evoke the Stdvota (reason- which are subject to its intelligible grasp or which word). It is not at all in the ing faculty) designate an in- can give that I have chosen the term 'dianoetic', but in order to themselves to it as objects: I subjects mean by that very precisely tellection which attains to the nature or essence itself through the sensible. whose essence or primary intelligible constituent can in itself (though St. Thomas form. Cp. In II Analyt., maybe only calls the properties the signs of the essential in its most universal characteristics) object for it become an ok u cna xii. > P- lect. 13, n. 7, and Zigliara's commentary. 248 250 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 251 in the possession ofthis faculty die principalissime property ofhuman b However full of mystery and surprise the mathematic world thereby ing, that we may discern and can expound in a definition nevertheless, thanks to those reserves the nature of remains for the mind, which I have its being; by no other means could we ever achieve (constructively) discovering or pointed out, entities are there conceived by themselves separating the virtualities included in diis definition. intelligible constituents. It is obvious from this that or by their to take It is moreover to proper distinguish two modes of dianoetic intelligence as the intellectual type and rule leads in- intellec- the mathematical tion, according as this bears on substantial natures and the realities which evitably to Spinozianism, notably to the spinozist conception of sub- are the object of philosophy, or on mathematic entities (which, onto- stance, which is then regarded as known or manifested by its essence logically considered, and in as much as they are entia realia, are acci- (not by its accidents), or 'known by itself'. dentals). In the first case, the essence is, as I havejust recalled, essences, is certainly known by In this matter of substantial J. de Tonquedec in its accidents; in the second, it is known, so to speak, on the level, by its the right when he points out, in opposition to Rousselot, that 'when it intelligible constitution itself, in so far at least as tins is manifested by is a question ofthinking of the substance, even in the most rudimentary means of signs constructible in imaginative intuition. Here arises, brist- fashion, we never "clearly stop at the accidents": this would be contra- ling with all its difficulties, the problem of mathematical intellection. dictory. We always look towards something which is beyond them. Mathematical essences are not grasped intuitively from within, which But, on the other hand, there is never a moment when the mind, leaving would be the case with an angelici not human, mathematics: no more the accidents behind, "passes over" and "discovers" the naked substance. are they perceived from without, which would be the case with acci- It is in remaining attached to the accidental that it finds the means to see dents arising from them, as operation emanates from the active potency beyond. . . . The mind always transcends the accidents, but it is while and the substance; nor are they created 1 ' by the human mind, in which basing itselfupon them. case they would only be the translation of its nature and laws. We can But it would be to fall into the contrary excess to conclude from this say that they are recognised and as it were deciphered by way of a con- that we 'do not attain' substantial natures. On the contrary, and in virtue struction starting from elements which have been abstractively detached of this very doctrine, it is necessary to say that we attain by dianoetic from experience: this construction ofintelligible constituents, which re- intellection—where it is possible and in the degree to which it is pos- quires or presupposes in itself some form of construction in imaginative sible—to substantial natures 'by and through those very manifestations intuition, being a re-construction with regard to those mathematical en- of them which are their accidents'. How could they not be 'attained' tities which are essences properly so called (possibly real beings), and a since they are 'made manifest'? How could they not be 'seen' since in construction with regard to those which are rational beings founded on 'remaining attached to the accident' the mind 'finds the means to see be- these essences. Thus the mind finds itself faced by an objective world yond'? By their properties these natures are thus attained in themselves, which has its own proper mind, consistency in independence of the i.e. in their formal, intelligible constitution itself; the accidental forms based ultimately on the divine intellection and and essence themselves, being, in such cases, also known in themselves, by their effects. which nevertheless it deciphers deductively as though a priori. Such their essence, and Toilsome as it is, this knowledge of things, not by but in a form of intellection is still 'dianoetic' comprehensive or ex- this normally (not dianoetic intellection is not always accorded to us and haustive) in the sense that the by more essence is not there grasped intuitively stops, except in the world of humanity, at those traits which are itself (i.e. not by means ofa com- have non-abstractive intuition which would universal than specific. In the universe of the sensibly real, as we pletely penetrate in one stroke), (thanks to a philosophy of but rather constructively seen, we must content ourselves, below the range of the construction ofnotions otherwise indirecdy, manifest able to be manifest, at least nature, with a knowledge by signs—no longer signs which make to the imagination, which is like attained). an 'outside' by which it is l Critique h connaissance, p. 355- J. de Tonqu&kc, La fe 252 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 253

essential differences, but signs which substitute below (and every time when for conciseness the themselves for th be considered phrase 1 and are known in their place. This knowledge doubtless by signs' is used) and which are known in place o/the natures bears on tli 'knowledge essence, and embraces it from without, but as though blindly, witho themselves, in such a case inaccessible in their formal constituents (peri- the discerning 1 power of either the essence in itself or its intellection). properties in noetic the ontological sense of the word: a peripheral or 'circumferential' This is indeed an important problem, to which it is much to be de- knowledge, which can be called perinoetk, ofwhich students would devote their attention, what I have called sired that modern gathering to- the empiriometric and empirico-schematic analysis of observable gether what the ancients have said of the hierarchy of accidental forms, realities is an example. Whether it be in the mineral, elucidating the distinction the vegetable or and metaphysically (which in that case should animal worlds, the immense variety ofcorporeal natures inferior to man not remain metaphorical) between the 'accidents' which are more or refuse to surrender, to our discovery their ultimate specific determina- less 'profound' or 'intimate' and 'exterior' or 'superficial'. tions. It is clear that in the one case we should find ourselves in the presence

A SCHOLASTIC DIGHESSION of characteristics rich in explication (from rationale, docibile, risibile, etc., are deductible); in the other before sterile ones, void of import: but that Thus a capital distinction imposes itself on the mind between the is only a sign of the differentiation which is in question. It is the theory knowledge of (substantial) essences by 'signs' or the accidents (proper- of the proper accident and the general accident which is, for me, the ties) which manifest them, at least in their most universal features {ctia- core of the difficulty. When the rnind lays hold on a property in the noetic intellection), and the knowledge of them by the 'signs' which will strict and philosophical (ontological) sense of the word, it attains to a

'There is a curious instance of such substitutes for essential differences, these purely difference of being, an accidental form is grasped in its intelligibility, descriptive signs of empiriological 'properties' in the following passage, which at a and, by it, the essence (as human nature by rationality, or animal nature first reading can very easily be misunderstood: 'Secundum quod natura alicujus rei ex ejus by sensitivity): this is what happens in dianoetic intellection. But on proprietatibus et effectibus cognoscere possumus, sic earn nomine possumus sig- . nificare. Unde, quia substantiam lapidis ex ejus proprietate cognoscere possumus other occasions the properties in the strict sense of the word remain in- secundum seipsaro, sciendo quid est lapis, hoc nomen, lapis, ipsam lapidis naturam, accessible; it is sheaves of sensible accidents (general accidents), which secundum quod in se est, significat: significat enim dcfinitionem lapidis, per quam are grasped exclusively in so far as they are observable or measur- scimus quid est lapidis.' (Sum. theol, i, 1 3 , 8, ad. 2.) St. Thomas does not here claim that we can be in possession able, which take their place (such as the signalising 'properties', density, of the quidditative definition of the stone; as is proved by the fact that the 'property' of which he is speaking (cp. the body of the article) is of atomic weight, temperature offusion, ofevaporation, spectrum ofhigh laedere pedem. Supposing that this etymology is valid, it is still only a case of a whole descriptive property, hinnihile (or a wholly empiric sign, which has only the worth of a nominal 'The definition of man as animal rationale and of a horse as animal an definition. Cp. De Veritate, ungulate hoofs), or a dog as animal latrans 4, 1, ad. 8 : 'Quia differentiae essentiales sunt nobis ignotae, mammiferous perissodactyl with undivided quandoque utimur (or as a habens abundaniiam accidentibus vel effectibus loco earum, ut VHlMetaph, (vii, lect. 12) toothed carnivorous, etc., mammal), of a lion as animal dicitur; secundum audaciae have the same « hoc nominamus rem; et sic illud quod loco differentiae essenrialis (or as a carnivorous five-toed mammal with curved claw, etc.) surnirur, est a quo logical essential diver- imponitur ab effectu, qui est laedere pedem; et hoc non oportet esse structure. They reveal, from a critical or noetic standpoint, an pnncipaliter sity, etc., belong to significatum per nomen, sed illud loco cujus hoc ponitur.' This passage of which is far from being elucidated by the fact that hinnibik, latrans, the Be Veritate very the specific the scale of differ- exactly defines what I have here called perinoetic knowledge. If degree, rationale and irrationale to the generic degree, of moreover, even after ences: for rationale is a specific one, which scientific investigation, the quod quid est of the stone is not dis- 1. irrationale is indeed a generic difference, but covered by us, joined definition ofman it is not because it transcends our powers ofknowledge, rather because with animal constitutes a species atoma; 2. it is possible to give a it does not reach to their himself (e.g. from another quidditative de- level; we can then circumscribe it thanks to signs of the same animalgressibile bipes) which differs as much kind as the 'property' finition generic degree (e.g. here in question, only better chosen. The name, stone, indeed, as animal hinnihile, etc.; 3. differences belonging to the signifies the nature ofthe gKssibik or constituents ofthe quiddky as lirtle as stone as it is in itself, but without that nature being discovered 'ungulate', etc.) can reveal the formal to us; it signifies it as limnibile, a thing to be known, not as thing known. etc. (Cp. infra, p. 256, note 1). 254 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 255 frequency, etc., which serve to distinguish a body in chemistry) Th nology (and of all terminologies). But I am convinced that the distinc- signalising characteristics receive the name of 'properties' ' expresses are founded but its bea tions which it on reason, and made entirely neces- is as wholly different and as little philosophic (ontological) developments as that of th sary by the modern of the experimental sciences, whose chemical use of the word 'substance'. They are at once 1 exterior signs and mode ofconception differs essentially from that ofphilosophy. masks of the veritable (ontological) properties; they are empiriological ones, substitutes for the properties rightly so called. The mind cannot HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND CORPOREAL NATURES decode the intelligible in the sensible; it uses die sensible to circumscribe Is there not an element of bitter reproach in the fact that, while an intelligible nucleus which evades it. Then we say that having the form is too corporeal things as its sunk in matter to fall within the grasp of the essences of connatural object, our mind suffers, our intellect. It is impossible to attain by such properties in any faced with them, from such serious defects that it is reduced to contenting degree whatsoever to the substantial section its nature in itself or in its formal itself, in one vast of knowledge ofnature, with that imperfect constituents: it is known by signs which J do not. manifest it, but hide it. The passages from St. Thomas which can be cited with regard to this question are This is what happens in perinoetic confined generally to the affirmation of the general principle intellection. that substantial essences of things and their proper differences are hidden from us, and that we need, in order Finally we can say that every (instrumental) sign reveals in conceal- to attain to the essence, to make use of differences grasped from the accidents ('In rebus ing and conceals in revealing. In the case enim sensibilibus etiam ipsae differentiae essentiales nobis ignotae sunt, unde of dianoetic intellection it is significan- a case of signs tur per differentias accidentales, quae ex essentialibus oriuntur, sicut causa significant which reveal more than they hide: in that of perinoetic per suum effectum' (De Ente et Essentia, c. 6.) . 'Formae substantial per seipsa sunt ig- intellection, of signs which hide more than they reveal. notae; sed innotescunt nobis per accidentia propria. Frequenter enim differentiae sub- In a further definition of our terminology, I would say diat in dia- stantiales ab accidentibus sumuntur, loco formarum substantialium quae per hujus- noetic intellection substantial modi accidentia innotescunt; sicut bipes et gressibile et hujusmodi; et sic etiam sensibile natures are in some degree known in et rationale themselves, ponuntur differentiae substantiales. (De Spirit, Creaturis, a. 11, ad. 3.) Cp. by signs which are their own accidents, properties in the philo- Sum. tlieol, i, 29, 1, ad. 3, etc. Writing at a time when there was as yet little differentia- sophical sense of the word (as to these properties, they are known by tion between the experimental sciences and natural philosophy, it is understandable other accidents which are their workings). In perinoetic intellection, how St. Thomas was content to stop at these very general statements. substances Nevertheless other texts can classified and their properties are known by signs and in signs. be in two different categories, according to whether they relate rather to accidental differences which leave concealed essential ones By a latitude which is authorised by the indigence ofhuman language, {vide the passages quoted supra, p. 215, note 1, and p. 252, note I, in particular the one and every danger of a false cartesian or spinozist interpretation being from the commentary, In Metapk, book vii, Iect. 12, where St. Thomas opposes these ruled out, 1 I hold that it is licit to say that in dianoetic intellection sub- differences per accidens to those per se) or as they rather relate to differences which, stantial while wholly belonging to the (predicamental) accident, are an intelligible manifesta- essences are in some degree 'discovered' to the mind, not cer- tion of essential differences, knowledge of the latter: 'Quia tainly and led the mind to the 'purely', nor from within (that was the error of Descartes' abso- pnncipia essentialia rerum sunt nobis ignota, ideo oportet quod utamur differentiis ac- lute intellectualism), but discovered by their outsides (the accidents them- cidentalibus in designatione essentialium: bipes enim non est essentiale, sed ponitur in selves not being designatione cogni- known from within, which would be to know them essentialis. Et per eas, scilicet per differentias accidentales, devenitnus in tionem essentialium.' in their derivation (In De Anima, book i, lect. 1). 'Quia substantiales rerum differentiae from the substance, but by their operations). In say- sunt nobis ignotae, loco earum mterdum definientes accidentalibus utuntur, secundum ing that in dianoetic intellection they are attained 'openly', I mean in no quod ipsa designant vel notificant essentiam, ut proprii effectus notificant causam; unde sen- sense to say that they sibile, are attained 'purely' or by the attributes which are secundum quod est differentia constitutiva animalis, non sumitur a sensu prout the very constituents nominat potentiam, essentiam, a qua tabs potenria of the substance, but that they are manifested by sed prout nominat ipsam animae fliit; their et similiter est de ratione, vel de eo quod est habens mentem.' (De Verilate, 10, r, proper accidents. I am conscious of the imperfection of this termi- a d. theol, I, 6) Cp. 3, De Pot, 9, 2, ad. 5; In Sent., dist. 3, q. I, ad. 6; Sum. 77, 1, a Cp. supra, chap, i, ad. pp. 41-3. T,I-II, 49, 2, ad. 3. 256 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 257 have called intellection which I 'perinoetic'? If we reflect on known, progressively this oar can be scientifically deploying the possibilities of dox, we are led to understand first of all that for a human intellect in th dianoetic intellection by the very radical impetus of its nature, and the state ofnature, or rather of primitive culture, the natural ordination re- habitudes which perfect it. But though for the specific detail of the infra- ferred to above is verified on an entirely other plane than that of didac human world it must needs fall back on those empiriological substitutes tic diought, to which the philosopher, by a sort ofprofessional habitude' ofwhich I have spoken, in truth its most exacdy proportionate object in is always tempted to attach himself. The behaviour of savages with re! order of the sensibly real is man himself and . the world of his properties gard to the river, the forest, the animals which they hunt or fly from which he presents. Mind turns towards mind; the purely spiritual to their extraordinarily developed consciousness of differential character- istics in the concrete implies intellectual an discernment which, entirely practical and absorbed in the senses as it is, is yet very precise and exact of 'what are' these natural beings with which they have to deal. It is in this humble and totally pre-scientific way, which, however enfeebled it may be by civilised life, nevertheless remains primal and fundamental, that the human intellect first reaches the nature ofcorporeal things. We find its significant equivalent in the knowledge a of peasant of the ways S OBJECTIVE. ,' TRANS-- INTELLIGIBLE,

i of the land, or of the skilled worker ofhis craft and his tools. i \

To make use of a capital \ distinction of Cajetan, we can.say that it is a SE.IN§ *s different BEIN(| \ thing to know things 'quidditatively' and to know 'a quiddity'. Thomists teach that the human intelligence has for its connatural object PURE SPIRIT. the essence or quiddity of corporeal things, they have never said that it should always know this object^quidditatively'. That is a perfection of apprehension which can only be realised, and is only realised, within cer- tain narrow limits. The humblest form ofhuman knowledge, that gene- Fig. 7. ral and inherited knowledge which the is implied by language and nominal purely spiritual; the spirit involved in the senses to the spirit which 1 definitions deals with quiddities, but in the informs most imperfect fashion and a body. Our intelligence, which is naturally, by the fact of its the least quidditative, like a needle in a botde ofhay. union with the body, directed outwards and towards the natures of this If it is a question of the human intelligence as cultivated and formed world, needs to accomplish that grand, that precious, admirable, vigor- the by intellectual virtues, it is borne which ous towards corporeal essences encircling movement which is the knowledge ofthe world—which is ultimately deceptive, whether philosophically or experimentally—in or- 'It is with regard to this general human intelligence, not that of scientists, that St. der to arrive Thomas, in exemplifying at man and the soul; then, by a double movement, it pene- his logic, candidly takes the quiddity ofa stone as designated by the property trates within, of laedere peiem, or that of a dog by the property of barking. To take so as to become conscious of spiritual things and under- him to task for this would stand show an entire misunderstanding and also the sin ofpedantry. the works of man, by reflective and practical philosophy, ethics, These are questions of an entirely external signalisation of the quiddity which is not die science of culture, ; and it soars upward to perceive the attained in itself. These nominal definitions precede all science, and are prerequisites of tilings any motion of intellectual which are of God, passing on into metaphysics. Such is its natural search; but it is at once more humble and more certain to choose them as trajectory, uluminations for a logical exposition rather than quidditative defini- by reason of which the figure of Socrates stands forever tions, which are more perfect, but can also suffer the inconvenience ofnot existing. in honour at our cross-roads. THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL 2 5 8 KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 259

But let us return to the nature ofcorporeal things. The universe it. What is primarily known, of the which the mind discovers and in which its sensibly real is, we know, with double value at once ontological thought is resolved for the intellect, is being. and every object of But noth- only the first stage, or the area ofleast empiriological, abstraction, of to it extrinsically to differentiate it, for all its differen- the ing can be added these natures. knowledge which we have of A second area ofintelligibi- its depths, as some one or other tiations issue from own of its modes, lity is that of the mathematical preter-real, where the mind escapes into proffered to the mind by another concept: now that special mode of be- a world ofentities grasped first of all in natural bodies, but which to another of being, are at ing which is opposed mode which one subject has once purified and reconstructed, and on which other entities, indifferent- and another has not, and by which the infinite multiplicity of essences real or 'rational' are endlessly constructed; a world which ly gives us the which share in being is exhibited (thus, in the movement ofour thought, sensibly real, but for which we have to sacrifice the order of existence. the conceptual object 'being' absorbs into itself both genus and species): This is the reason why those philosophies which are committed to geo- now a mode co-extensive with being, which everysubject has which has metry from the outset are vowed to idealism. being, and which as a result constitutes like it a transcendental object of But there is a third area ofintelligibility, which enables us to pass be- 1 thought : these are then the functions of being as such, passiones entis yond the sensible without renouncing existence, and which thus intro- (thus being is crossed with itselfin the transcendentals). duces us into what is more real than sensible reality, or into that on which *Cp. De Veritate, i, I : 'Sicut in demonstrabilibus oportet fieri reductionem in aliqua that very reality is founded. It is the area, immediately successive to that principia per sc intellcctui nota, ita invesdgando quid est unumquodque; alias utro- ofthe sensibly real, of the trans-sensible or metaphysics. bique in infinitum iretur, et sic periret omnino scicntia et cognitio rerum. Illud autem quod primo intellectus concipit quasi notissimum, et in quo omnes con-

cepdones resolvit, est ens, ut Avicenna dick in principio Metaphysicae suae (lib. i, c.

ix). Unde oportet quod omnes aliae conceptiones intellectus accipiantur ex additione n. METAPHYSICAL INTELLIGIBILITY ad ens. Actually things, when they become the objects of our knowledge, do Sed end non potest addi aliquid quasi extranea natura per modum quo differentia additur generi, vel accidens subjecto, quia quaelibet natura essentialiter est ens; unde not only surrender to us, either in itself or in some empiriological suc- etiam probat Philosophus in iii. Metaphys. (com. 1), quod ens noa potest esse genus, cedaneum, their determined, specific or generic nature. Before knowing sed secundum hoc aliqua dicuntur addere supra ens, in quantum exprimunt ipsius that Peter is a man I have already arrived at the idea that he is some- moduin, qui nomine ipsius entis non exprimitur. Quod dupliciter contigit: uno modo ut modus expressus sitaliquis specialh modus thing, is a being. And this intelligible object, 'being', is not the parti- ends, sunt enim diversi modi essendi, et juxta hos modos accipiuntur diversa rerum cular privilege of any one of those classes of things which the logician genera; substantia enim non addit supra ens aliquam differentiam, quae significet ali- calls species, genus, or category. It is universally communicable, it is quam naturam superadditam end, sed nomine sebstantiae exprimitur quidam specialis found everywhere: everywhere itself and everywhere varying, we are modus essendi, scilicet per se ens; et ita est in aliis generibus. Alio modo ita quod modus expressus sit modus generaliter consequens omne ens; et hie unable to think without positing it in our minds; it saturates all things. It modus dupliciter accipi potest: uno modo secundum quod consequitur omne ens in se; is what the scholastics called a transcendental object of thought. St. alio modo secundum quod consequitur unumquodque ens in ordine aliud. the Thomas has briefly described in the first article of the De Veritate Si primo modo, hoc dicitur, quia exprimit in ente aliquid affirmative dictum abso- lute dicitur; et double movement of resorption and transgression proper to being as a quod possit accipi in omni ente, nisi essentia ejus, secundum quam esse sic in imponitur hoc nomen res, quod in hoc differt ab ente, secundum Avicennam conceptual object, which is as much opposed to a pure monism like that principio Metaphys., quod ens sumitur ab actu essendi, sed nomen rei exprimit quid- of Hegel as a pure pluralism like that of for being is a prim- est Descartes: oitatem sive essentiam ends. Negatio autem, quae est consequens omne ens absolute, ordial and general conceptual object (contrary to the cartesian simple indivisio; et hanc exprimit hoc nomen unum: nihil est ahum unum quam ens indivisum. Si autem modus secundo modo, scilicet secundum ordinem unius est natures) which (contrary to the hypostasized idea of Hegel) is at once entis accipiatur alteram, altero; hoc potest esse dupliciter. Uno modo secundum divisionem unius ab and from the beginning subjects in essentially diverse in the diverse sicut ens « hoc exprimit hoc nomen aliquid, dicitur enim aliquid quasi aliud quid; unde 26o THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 2d I Among these transcendental a trinity detaches itself: Being itself dividual, but trans-specific, trans-generic, trans-categorical—as though relation to the mind, which is alone able to then, in face being with let loose bird an in opening a little shoot one a greater than the world. Let the (ontological) True, i.e. being as equal amplitude the expression of conceptual object a sur-universal a us call such a The scholastics called it thought from whence it emanates, and as intelligible in itself in so far analogic, i.e. realised in diverse manners but according to similar pro- exactly as it is: and the (metaphysical) Good, i.e. being as the end in portions in the diverse subjects where it is found. It differs, even as a con- which love can delight itself, and as apt in stirring desire in exacdy so ceptual object, essentially from the universals, not only because it has far as it is. Thus we see at once the value and the imperfection of our a vaster amplitude, but also and first of all, and this is the most impor- knowledge and, above all, of our idea of being itself with regard to tant point of all, because it is not like them purely and simply one and what is: the first intelligible 'formality* by which what is becomes an the same in the mind (i.e. monovalent) ; it is polyvalent, it includes an object for us, which is attained in the concept of being, imbues all actual multiplicity ; the bird ofmy image ofa moment ago is also a flock. is capable of all that is. And nevertheless it is attained reality, in the Let us try to comprehend the proper mystery of these transcendental concept of being as already distinct (by a rational distinction) from objects. When looking at a man I think,' he is a being' or 'he exists', I transcendental formalities (attained by the ideas of the one, the the true, grasp a certain determined being, finite, perishable, fleshly, spiritual, etc.) which in what is are identical with it. the good, subject to time, and, M. Heidegger would say, to anguish, and an exis- compared specific essences to the whole numbers; as Aristode an tence similarly determined: but the analogic object 'being', 'existence' so added unity constitutes a new number, so every specific difference thought by me overruns this analogue so that it will also be found—in- constitutes a new essence. One could compare the transcendentals to trinsically and righdy—in analogues which differ from man in their very transfinite unities of equal potency. The transfinite unity of equal being and manner of existence. All that differentiates a man from a shell, has the same potency as that of the whole numbers; being, numbers and vice versa, is a matter of being; if there are electrons, an electron is a scale itselfto that the three united. or the true, or the good, has an equal in of finite being, corporeal and perishable, subject to time, but not to an- Already by perception of the specific or generic nature, the intellect guish; if there are angels, an angel is a finite being, incorporeal and attains in an individual thing more than this in itself, a conceptual ob- above time; what divides all these beings one from another is that same ject which is universal and communicable to all individual things of the being which I find in each of them—variously. It suffices for me to di- same species or the same kind, and which is called univocal, because, rect my attention on being for me to see that it is once one and multiple: though surrendered to the a plurality of transobjective subjects mind by it would he purely and simply one if its differentiations were not at the

to its is simply one and the and restored these in judgments, it purely and same time itself, in other words, if the analogic presented to the spirit same in the mind. in multis, it is invariant without multiplicity Unum an made a complete abstraction of its analogues; if I could think of being commun- actually realised in many, and positing thereby among them a without having immediately present in my mind (whether my atten- ity ofessence. But transcendentals we touch on a in the perception of the tion is aware of the fact or not is completely accidental) the essentially nature greater than itself, is only trans-in- a conceptual object which not different ways in which this conceptual object is realised outside the

ab aliis mind. It would if it did not transcend its dicitur unum, in quantum est indivisum in se, ita dicitur aliquid, in quantum est be purely and simply multiple quidem non divisum. Mo modo secundum convenientiam unius ends ad aliud; et hoc differentiations, in other words, if the analogic presented to the mind autem potest esse nisi accipiatur aliquid quod natum est convenire cum omni ente. Hoc made no sort of abstraction of its analogues: in which case the word 'be- &* est anima, quae quodammodo est omnia, sicut dicitur in iii. De Anima (text. 37j- ing' pieces: appetitum would be entirely ambiguous, and my diought would fall in anima autem est vis cognitiva et appctitiva. Convenientiam vero ends ad appe- I would is green, but exprimit hoc nomen bonum, ut in principio Ethic, dicitur: Botium est quod omnia not be able to think: Peter is a man, or this colour tunt. Convenientiam vero cntis ad intctlectum exprimit hoc nomen vcrum' only to gasp incoherendy. 262 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 263

concept ofbeing (and it is the same for all the conceptual object agree with transobjective subjects other The transcendental con- univocal cepts, essentially sur-universal or analogic, of that analogy those in which it was originally grasped. It agrees intrinsically and which the than call 'analogy ofrightful proportionality', (ie. not metaphorically) with all the subjects to which it is attri- scholastics and which alone oc- righdy intrinsically and actually because it is primarily and by its essence analogous: from the cupies us here) is then multiple—in so far as butable, it incompletely makes abstraction of its analogues, instance in which it is laid hold of by the mind in a subject it carries only and that, in dif- first possibility of its realisation according to its proper significance ferentiation, from the universal concepts, it includes a diversity which in it the infinite hiatus, is the scholastic phrase) in subjects which differ totally and can be essential and allows of an abysmal distinctions in Iformaliter, their essence from that particular one. the way in which it is realised in things; and it is one in a certain relation absolutely in

it abstraction its objects are trans-sensible, since, though realised in the sensible in so far as makes incomplete of analogues, and that it is Such to the mind as detached from them without becoming conceivable apart from them, where we first of all grasp them, they proffer themselves as of realisation in as though drawn, without attaining to it, towards a pure and simple transcending every genus and category, and capable other essence than those in which they were appre- unity which could alone present to the mind, if the latter could see it in subjects of a wholly

is remarkable that the first object which our mind itself—and without concepts,—a reality which would be at once itself hended. It extremely

all things. say that the 1 attains to in things, being—which cannot deceive us because being the first and (We can concept of being demands that its brings place should be taken by God clearly seen, that it should vanish in the it cannot be enclosedin any construction built up in the mind, which bears itselfthe sign that beatific vision.) We say that it is one in a unity of proportionality, in the possibility ofits defective composition— on bebgsofanotherorderthanthatofthesensibleareconceivableandpossible. the being, man, having his existence as a man as the being, shell, has its possibility. But existence as a shell, and as the being, angel, its existence as an angel. It thus I grant that this is a case of an entirely undetermined can only signifies not precisely an object, but a plurality of objects of which one what determined incorporal subject is positively possible? We ab actu adposse. Do cannot be posited before die mind without bringing with it, implicidy, know such ifwe know that it exists, thus concluding created spirits, un- all the others, because all are bound together in a certain community by such incorporeal subjects exist—human souls, pure the data the similitude of the relations which they sustain with diverse ends. created Being by itself? It is by a reasoning process starting from which existence that we are able to 'Sur-universaT or 'polyvalent', a transcendental conceptual object is are given us by the facts of sensible only unum tn multis as a variable including an actual multiplicity, and know them. Since intelligence it is clear that which is realised in many without positing the fact of any community being is the first object grasped by the it is not first all other object that it is known. ofessence between them. It is not analogous in the way in which a meta- of in the mirror of any as a generic phor, but extrinsically and improperly, instandy makes an originally It is attained in sensible tilings by dianoetic intellection: disclose J or specific nature is known in itself by the properties which It goes without saying that I am only speaking here of a claim which is ineffective. adequate ob- its essential difference, in the analogic (analogum analogans) John of St. Thomas explains (Curs, ikeol., i, P. q. 12, disp. 12, a. 2) that the die same way ject Dcus first ofthe created intellect includes in its fullness God himself seen by his essence, is known in itself by that of its analogues [analoga analogata) which seen dare visits contitietur intra latituJinem objecti adaequati intellects creati. But God clearly fall within the grasp of the senses: and our power of abstractive percep- —a wholly supernatural object with regard to which the created intelligence has only tion it as a means, to grasp attain to overpasses this analogue itself which serves an obediential potency—is above everything that the created intelligence can The in its it is only one of the possible by its natural powers alone and the concept ofbeing; he is seen without concepts. transcendence the analogic, of which amplitude of the 'adequate itself, thus sur- which, in- object' of the created intelligence, i.e. being realisations. There is thus an intellectual perception of being our passes all the resources that the use of the concept of being, the instrument of from cluded in all our intellectual acts, commands in fact all our thought natural have knowledge, offers to the intelligence; in the beatific vision the latter will the abstraction from the 'passed away'. beginning, and which, disengaged as itself by OF RATIONAL 264 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 265 trans-sensible, constitutes our primordial philosophical different ways of being there are essentially intuition, "with- utely and absolutely it -would no more be possible for us to of causing; to understand the out which acquire the science different ways word cause only of metaphysical realities than for a man born blind to causes for example, either in order to subject all of acquire that of mechanical things to a intuition the principles or in a contrary recoil against colours. In this metaphysical of identity: being universal determinism the value of the

all is is is not causality, is to misunderstand this analogy, is not not-being, being what — only known in actu exer- principle of and to strip off metaphysical thought. virtue cito and as an ineluctable necessity for thought, its ontological necessity the possibility of By ofthe essential charac- itself is seen—the first law of being is not a logical, but an ontological ter and analogic immediacy of the supra-universal object on which it

this is of identity is at the same time the (meta-logical) principle; and why, when transferred into the bears, the axiom axiom of the irredu-

being; if each being is what it is, logical order, where it becomes the principle of non-contradiction: non cible diversities of it is not what the est affirmare et negate simul—it is also the first law of the mind. others are. This is what is not seen by those philosophers who, following And it is this principle that it from similar intuitions bearing on the primary aspects of being (and Parmenides, demand of draw all things into the ab- provoked in the mind by some sensible example) that the other meta- solute one. Far from making all things identical it dwells in our minds physical axioms proceed, truths known as such by all, or at least by the because it maintains the identity of each, is the guardian and protector wise. Many, it is true, who lay claim to deal in philosophy flatter them- of universal multiplicity. And if it obliges our intelligence to affirm the selves by putting these axioms in doubt, without even perceiving that transcendent One, it is because that multiplicity itself demands it to they are cutting off the branch on which they are sitting; they only save its own existence. prove that such intuitions are irreplaceable; you either have them or In a sense there is no greater poverty than that of being as being: to not; reasoning presupposes them; it can lead thither by illuminating perceive it we must cast away every sensible and particular covering. In the meaning of terms, it cannot supply their place. another sense it is the most consistent and most steadfast of notions; in

First principles are intellectually seen, in an entirely other way than all that we may know there is nothing which does not depend on it.

that of empiric authentification. I do not see a subject in which a pre- This steadfastness is lost sight of by those who take being for univocal, 1 the most pure. It dicate is shut up as in a box; I see that the intelligible constitution of one and who make of it a genus, at once the vastest and nothingness, and even hardly of these objects ofthought cannot exist if the other is not posited as im- would then be, as Hegel saw, on the rim of discernible contrary, because it is analogic plying or implied by it; this is not a simple affirmation as of that of a from nothingness. On the

it is a consistent differentiated object thought on which science fact known by the senses; it is the intellection of a necessity. Thus the and of in a panlogism first principles impose themselves absolutely, by force of the notion of can take its stand, without thereby hypertrophying itself which destroys all being itself. Their authority is so independent, and so rooted in the pure essences.

fact is a manna with litde savour for intelligible, they so little belong to a simple inductive generalisation or The remains that being as being those Descartes had already de- to a priori forms destined to subsume the sensible, that sensible appear- obsessed by the garlic of experience. cided that it for once in his life considered the first ances are in a way disconcerted by them and only fit themselves with an was sufficient to have truths to consecrate a few hours in the ill grace to illustrate the fashion in which they rule over things; I affirm on which physics is founded, and year to thus already reduced to providing ajusti- the principle of identity and then look at my face in a mirror: already it metaphysics, which was fication numerous philosophers have has aged, it is no longer the same. for science. Since Hume and Kant, an ^eing as being, the object of the metaphysician who grasps it by virtue of Finally, the first principles are analogic like being itself. Every contin- analogical abstractio formalis, with the essentially various intelligible consistency ofits gent being has a polyvalent cause, but the object of thought, 'cause', is grasped by a simple comprehension, must also be clearly distinguished from being as like the object of and absol- thought, 'being'. As there are essentially ahstractio totalis as the most universal of the logical categories. METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 267 266 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE universal as known in the most general and so least deter- refused all rightful intelligibility to existence, seeing in it only an empty rid of the things; it is «'•«• oftlie cneric categories ofnatural a wholly concept, or a pure case of sensible position, or a pragmatic sentiment. mined way, g the world of the supra-universal, the world of transcen- It is difficult to think of a more radical error, or one more offensive to other world, are so disengaged, not as categories which require the intelligence. Not only has the notion of existence (and that of being, dental objects which completion progressive differentiations which come as it were since being is what can or does exist) an intelligible content which is for their offering a sphere of intelligibility having its ulti- absolutely primordial: if existence in act does not offer to the apprehen- from without, but as and able to realise itself outside the mind sion of the mind any other content than existence as signified or repre- mate determinations in itself which do not fall within the grasp of the senses sented (so that from the notion of an All-Perfect having necessarily in individual subjects all the orders and differentiations of the world of ex- existence to the number of his perfections I cannot conclude that this nor are subject to metaphysics is a perfect knowledge, a true science. All-Perfect must needs effectively exist), on the other hand, existence as perience. This is why Aristotle studied the categories in logic, in as represented is a wholly other thing for the mind than non-existence: Not widiout reason of these furnishes the first instruments of appre- there is much more in a hundred existing thalers than in a hundred pos- much as the knowledge into the science of things. If metaphysics studies sible ones. But still more, existence is the super-excellent perfection, and hension, introduces us etc., if natural philosophy studies corporeal is like the seal and stamp of every other perfection, if it is true that one substance, quality, relation, passion, etc., it is from another point of existing demi-thaler is worth more than a hundred thalers which are substance, quantity, action and determinations of being as being or of simply possible, and a live dog than a dead lion: doubtless it does not say view, in as much as these are the (in the last case, as we have seen, apprehension more for itself than a p ositio extra nihil, but it is the position extra nihil of mobile and sensible being order if the knowledge of the experimental this or ofthat, and to set outside nothingness a glance or a rose, a man or is only complete in its own soul, in the degree all is to that of philosophy). The human an angel, is something essentially diverse, since it is the actuation of . sciences added activities in themselves entirely the perfections of each of these essentially diverse subjects. Varying in to which it is a spirit, and is capable of subsistence, is a metaphysical itself and admitting all the degrees of ontological intensity, in accord immaterial, as of an entirely immaterial 1 frontiers ofnatural philosophy and with the essences which receive it, existence, if anywhere it is found in a object. Anthropology is thus on the achieves its metaphysical pure state, without an essence distinct from that which receives it, i.e. if metaphysics, and by it natural philosophy wisdom contains in itself reflective a being exists whose essence is to exist, must there be identical with a crown. The sphere of metaphysical thought and being (the critique), bottomless and infinite abyss ofabsolute reality and perfection. knowledge on the relations between in the strict sense of the word), Being disengaged as such by ahstractio formalis, being with its tran- knowledge of being as being (ontology God in so far as either of these is scendental properties and the cleavage which it presents through the the knowledge of pure spirits and of or natural theology). whole extent of things,1 constitutes the rightful object of metaphysics. accessible by reason alone (pneumatology rousing from rises above time; in It is not a case of those supreme forms, like the categories, where the Like mathematics, metaphysics experiment- intelligibility than that of the mind only attains to the first outlines of the objects of knowledge (the things another universe of grasps aworld ofeternal truths vahd natures of things) which are only completed in the specific degree, and sciences (and ofnatural philosophy) , it realisation, but for all possible so belong to a wholly incomplete form of knowledge in so far as it is a not for some one moment ofcontingent order to establish the it has no need, in knowledge of the real. The object of metaphysics is not in the least existence. Unlike natural philosophy

natural phUosophy and meta- lM ver- that it is a hybrid between Ilk scientia est maxime intellectualis.quae circa principia maxime universalia n do not mean by this philosophy and so w communion potentia section of natural satur. Quae quidem sunt ens, et ca quae consequuntur ens, ut unum et multa, physics, but that it is the highest et actus." St. Thomas, in Metaph., proccmium. with metaphysics. KNOWLEDGE 268 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL 269

superior to time, to find its end in reaches up to them, separated from our mind in the very these truths which are the verifica- grasp which unlike mathematics, in the establishing unites it with them. A paradox which is due to the fact that tions of the senses. But, of these ct which existing or possibly existing in an object which another subject has rendered pre- truths it always sees before it subjects. In they are attained abstraction of the order of existence. intelligence, and which, being in itself one of the analogues, brief, it does not make The mathe- sent to our 1 analogic, makes us pass through it to those other matical preter-real does not imply matter in its notions or definitions, one of the values ofan to in themselves. Thus the divine per- but when taking on a form it can only exist {if it can exist) in matter. analogues which we do not attain in the perfections of created being, which by The metaphysical trans-sensible, being transcendental and polyvalent fections are attained by us makes us pass on uncreated being, whom no (analogic) is not only free of matter in its notions or definitions, but can the analogy of being attain to himself. also exist without it. This is why the order of existence is enracinated in mind spirit whatsoever can metaphysics issues,2 the knowledge of the objects of metaphysics. To allow objects which had only rational I call this universe in which deciphering the invisible being would be unworthy of the science ofbeing as such. If, moreover, which implies a ceaseless recourse to an art of 1 certainly because it is unintelligible as I pointed out before, metaphysics descends to the existence in act of in the visible, the trans-intelligible: not sphere of absolute intelligibility), nor the things of time and ascends to the existence in act of tilings outside in itself (on the contrary it is the because, being out of proportion with time, it is not only that existence in act is die super-excellent sign of the that it is unintelligible to us; but dianoetic or experimental intrinsic possibility of existing, it is also and above all because existence our human intellect, it is not intelligible by to our powers ofknowledge: it itself is, as I said, the seal and stamp of all perfection, and cannot re- means, in other words, is not connatural eyes, like those of nocturnal main outside the sphere ofthe highest knowledge ofbeing. is only intelligible to us by analogy. Our the interposition birds by daylight, can only discern this purest light by this transintel- of the obscuring things of this world. To penetrate into THE METAPHYSICAL TRANS-INTELLIGIBLE AND ANANOETIC J that the transfotelligible analogue is It is by means of the transcendental analogic INTELLECTION intelligence. See on this point known in the analogue which is proportionate to our thhbgie dog- of M. T.-L. Penido, Le RSk it I'andcgk en If an analogic intelligible is the object of dianoetic intellection, it is not the admirable comments matique, Paris, 1931. the same for those of its analogues which do not at first come within our considered in the inferior analogues *rhe subject ofmetaphysics is the analogic being primordially grasp, and which are known by the intermediation of the subject to the ten predica- where we in fact apprehend it, created and material being the latter as in a mirror, by ofunity and mulopUoty, pot- apprehended analogue. They are known in tions (it is there that being appears to us with its features it dianoeacally) this is that we attain to ; virtue of the similitude which it has ofthem; a knowledge by mirrors or ency and act, etc., and it is by such analogues same trans-sensible intelligible. But the what in this present study I have called the by analogy, which we can call ananoetic intellection. Strictly speaking sdencewMchhassuA things for «%wi bears afc^^ not subject to analogues the transobjective subjects in which these are realised are {i.e. for us), i.e. the higher issues in what is here called the transintelligible considerare substantias our intelligible grasp, do not surrender themselves to us as objects; it is not of being. 'Unde oportet quod ad eamdem scientiam pertincat solum ut subjectum . . ipsum separatas scientia . . . considerat . essence or intelligible constitution which is objectified for us by means et ens commune. . . . Iste causas et passiones quaenmus, ens commune. enim est subjectum in scientia, cujus they are known Hoc of our presentative forms and our concepts; neverdieless Namcognitio causarumalicujus gene- non autem ipsae causae alicujus generis quaesiti. intrinsically and righdy designated, constituted as objects ofintellection Quamvis autem subjectum hujus ris, est finis ad quern consideratio scientiae peningit. materia secun- his quae sunt separata a but at a distance and not 'in themselves': the ray of intellectual light scientiae sit ens commune, dicitur tamen too de separan dicuntur, non solum dum esse et secundum esse et rationem which readies them has been refracted or reflected, and diey always re- rationem. Quia intellectuales substantias*& ilia quae possunt, sicut Deus et our nunquam in materia esse main above the knowledge which we have of them, superior to commune. Hoc tamen non conon- etiam ilia quae possunt sine materia esse, sicut ens 1 prcemium.j (St. Thomas, In Mteph, See supra, chap, i, p. 70. geret, si a materia secundum esse dependent.* METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 270 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 271

being known in itself. It is, moreover, highly remarkablethat ligible is the deepest desire of our intelligence; from the belongs to it beginning it call the privileged title science instinct that only there can it come to rest. what the moderns by of can only (dia- knows by And according to more precious joy in noetically in mathematics, perinoeticaUy in physico-mathematical ap- Aristode, it has a greater, guessing obscurely in the fragment that world than in prehension) constitute itself in the highest degree of rationality by poorest fashion some of clearly possessing in 1 making use, as we saw above, of a prolific crop of ideal constructions the most perfect fashion what is on our own level. The intellect thirsts philosophy is absorbed is and rational beings, while wholly with real be- for the things that are divine. What unpardonable in Descartes is his and is only constrained to have recourse to the artifices of ideality having preferred to this effort and this stripping, a comfortable installa- ing, (primarily in the form of rational distinctions founded in re) in the tion in the world of clear ideas: that he so preferred the ease of the section of metaphysics (the plane of the transintelligible). understanding to the dignity of its object (and the spiritual perfection of ananoetic possible to distinguish three degrees or stages in the ananoeticintel- that very understanding). It is things superior to man. The two first belong to metaphysics; What I have called dianoetic intellection is thus seen as held between lection of third is supernatural. an intellection which is imperfect by reason of the oncological imper- the

It is impossible to say that the idea that pure spirits can exist implies a fection and sub-inteUigibuity of the realities to which it is applied (peri- contradiction: for the notions of the spirit, of knowledge, of love, far noetic intellection) and one which is imperfect by reason of the too implying existence in matter, rather imply as such immateriality. great ontological perfection and the super-intelligibility of the realities from the fact that pure spirits exist we have indeed (leaving aside the certi- which it knows (ananoetic intellection). On either side of dianoetic re- Of furnished revelation) well-founded indications in the natural gistration these two imperfections in a way correspond to one another, tudes by order: ourselves are spirits, substantially united with matter, ex- but their rightful conditions, their forms are entirely different. Perinoet- we periencing in ourselves the life of the spirit, and aware that in us this ic intellection stops at the surface, at substitutes for the essence, neverthe- life is at an inferior and sickly degree. What is more reasonable than the less the means which it employs are full of riches, and give the under- thought that such life, which cannot issue from the energies of the vis- standing the maximum of self-content (not without a certain final bit- ible world, in the invisible world in higher degrees, which terness) and, thanks to their incessantly increasing technical perfection, can be known are more conformable to the consistency and vigour expressed in the lay open to it an unceasing advance in the more and more detailed idea of the spirit? If the course of earthly events is subject to a providen- knowledge of the bearing of those essences which it does not grasp in tial government which at each instant is capable of the most delicate themselves, but as though 'blindly', and which remain for it a connatur- modification (I referring to the natural order in itself, leaving on one al object. Ananoetic intellection uses weakly means, which give the un- am side the question ofmiracles) so that at the prayer ofa free creature the con- derstanding very little self-content (it is from its object that its joy sick can be . stellation of causes which prepare for the death of some man comes), and which renders it only the more conscious the more it sen- litde by litde diverted, is it not reasonable to think that the world of knows of the disproportion between it and what it would know; never- the action of sible causalities is not closed upon itself, but rather open to theless, thanks to the analogy of being and the transcendentals which pro- invisible assistants, by which become perceptible, in the course and serve it as instruments, this intellection, however imperfect and preca- philosophical gress of time, the free decrees ofmotionless eternity? This rious it may be, yet bears on the essence of its object, enigmatically natural reason alone, a high that correspondence gives, with regard to the attained in other natures which reflect it and without anything Again, theoretic probability to the existence of these 'separated forms'. 1De part, animal, 'quantum- i, 5. 'De rebus nobilissimis', says St. Thomas in his rum, despite their re- certain sensible facts, which it is permissible to examine, cumque imperfecta Gent., cognitio maximam perfectionem animae confert'. (Contra demonology, lative rarity, in the biographies of the saints, in treatises of .

METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 272 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 273 in angel clairvoyance, etc., or circumscribed by them an as in man (we know equally in the annals of spiritualism and of seem to exhibit in limited example that essence and existence, substance and potencies, the the empiric world the traces, as irrefutable as diey are disconcerting, of for in- and the will are really distinct in both). We can say that the anal- such existence. tellect 1 employed is an inclusive or circumscriptive analogy. Even when, moreover, such things are held as simply possible, meta- ogy here It goes without saying that this is not the case in our knowledge ofGod. physics is not thereby dispensed from a consideration of the laws which what way— an instinctive uprush in the knowledge ofcommon they may exhibit. He who has never meditated on the angels will never In by by an explicit demonstration in the case of metaphysical know- be a perfect metaphysician. The Treatise on the Angels is a theological sense, ledge does the rational movement proceed by which the existence of one, where St. Thomas bases himself on revealed truths. But it virtually — imposes itself with an exact certitude on our intelligence? To contains a purely metaphysical treatment of the ontological structure of God that God is—already and in that very knowledge our mind is immaterial subsistents, and the natural life of the spirit when detached know subject to the absolute transcendence of a reality to which ananoetic in- from the chminutions ofour empirical world. only attains in knowing that it is surpassed on every side. The knowledge which we can so acquire of pure created spirits be- tellection Let us try to retrace, in the course of one of its typical trajectories, longs to the first degree of ananoetic intellection or by analogy. The this movement of the reason. The philosopher thinks, he grasps reflec- transobjective subject dominates the knowledge which we have of it, tively his act of thought; it is a reality of a certain quality or ontological and only becomes an object for us in the objectification of other sub- 1 value, whose existence hie et nunc is to him indubitable. Even if he has jects which lie within our grasp transcendentally considered; but never- never read Pascal, he will know that myriads of solar systems are less theless the higher analogue thus attained does not overrun the analogic than the least thought which knows a blade of grass and knows that it concept which apprehends it, the transcendental scale of the concept of less, two only are knows; I say not in setting this as a common measure between spirit is sufficient to include that of the pure created spirit. Not comparative terms, rather is it a question on the contrary of two in- notions such as those of substance, essence, existence, knowledge, appe- a (univocal) significance commeasurable orders, but as two orders without common tition, etc., realised in the angel formally or in their proper measure which can be compared in their (analogical) participation in (although eminendy or in a way which transcends our mode of signi- 2 being. fication), but the reality which they signify being finite, is contained, This philosopher knows also that his thought, a mystery of vitality x non scitur quid est. See In scholastic terms, its quiddity escapes us, cte forma separata with regard to the world of bodies, is at the same time in itself a mys-

infra, pp. 282-3. tery of debility. Not only is it subject to error, subject to time, to for- in itself, 2 these notions as a is which they make known It is not contained by dung getfulness, to sleep, to distractions and languors, but in its very struc- in which to nor, afortiori, as a thing which could be 'comprehended' by us, in the sense between ture it suffers conditions of servitude which are almost unworthy of comprehend' implies to exhaust, or full adequation (cp. Sum. theol, i, 12, 7) which they thought; it is not transparent to itself, it breaks against objects which re- the knowledge and the known. It is contained by these notions as a thing to 'comprehend it make known analogically—and, a fortiori, without our being able main dark to it, it must needs divide, recompose, reconstruct, elabo- con- in the exhaustive sense of the word—but which does not surpass the analogical rate logically data which is not logical, but real (his eyes have no need of nothing which cept which we make of it for ourselves. In the absolute sense there is logic, they have only need to open) we can veritably 'comprehend' here on earth: we comprehend that 2 and 2 n*i should add but we do not exhaust the intelligibility of this property in numbers. I of the pure created with regam to ^hese precisions with regard to our analogical knowledge that this is due to the weakness of our discursive intelligence—even language, the doc- incomprehensibihty spirits is, I am convinced, in line with, though put in very different things at the lowest level of intelligibility; on the other hand, the trine intelligentiae sint a intelli- expounded by Cajetan, JrtDe Bitter Essentia, c.vi,q. 15 (Num of God comes from die infinite height of the object with regard to all created nobis quidditative cognoscibiles in hoc vita). gence, even under the conditions of the beatific vision (cp. Sum, theol, ibia.j. 8 M.D.K, ,

METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 275 274 THE DEGREES has experimented in the non-sufficiency in itself of his has of this servitude, nhilosopher Finally, by the consciousness that he the philo- experienced the 'insertion' in it of the thought: he has nowise creative sopher biows that thought taken in itself and in its pure and formal line depends, but he cannot think ofthis non-sufficiency activity on which it holds exigencies of a transcendental order, whose ultimate end he can without knowing that his thought depends an- itself ofhis thought on determine. He has kept in mind the true lesson of modern idealism, in other—not only on the material conditions which limit it here on earth, understanding how this latter, born from the reproachful sense that on something unknown from which it holds its very actuality and human thought may not be pure thought, is in itself a marvellous wit- but 1 as thought, and which is therefore Thought or supra-thought. This absolutely pure its being ness to the privileges of pure thought. thought is in me with me my act of thought, in so far as it has absolutely self-sufEcient: for He causes his object, absolutely spontaneous, it to in which my thought (and would it still be my . • Thought of a thing, but of the very act being. . exist is to think, and to think not of will only be a moment? Then it would share in the weakness it receives anything, but thought) thought: if it has things, it is not because be- of my thought and in multiplicity, and it would be also necessary to cause it makes them. this that it is caused, is not self-sufficient Effect in itself of an- that he is not thought himself. He say of It is thus clear to our philosopher other thought? I do not know if this supposition has a meaning, in any But if he has it without being it he must is not thought, he has thought. series is certainly not impossible in itself, but here an in- himself: a cause? The principle of case an infinite receive it from something other than is not possible, since it is a reason of being for which sensible but from neces- finite regression causality does not rise from a cutting-up of the are in search, and an 'infinite series' is exacdy 'not a reason of being' the moment that there is a we sities intuitively grasped in being; from (each term turns endlessly back on another, in postulating this reason of for its existence, other- diversity of things, each does not suffice in itself 1 must therefore be a thought which will be Thought, (even when we have never being). There wise it would be all, therefore it is necessary conscious of muscular sprmgingfrommechanicism), they reduce themselves to the spatio-temporal condition, seen one ball in collision with another, or been a network ofdeterminations with which this is bound up, which onanotherwithoutwhichitcouldnotbeand ofa phenomenon, or effort, etc.), that it depend profoundly remodelled as to make the is only an analogue of the concept of cause so 2 In this case it can be said that our It is evidently in which it finds its rightful sufficiency. use of the word very nearly an equivocation. (See supra, pp. 182-3.) the word which is in question here, but its full onto- been exactly not the 'cause' in these senses of result of modern idealism has , »It is a highly remarkable thing that the 'theomorphism' of thought. Philo- logical meaning. the symmetrical reverse of anthropomorphism: a intermediary a mode of imaginative 1 it is employed, the consideration of sophers, recognising the existence of God, attributed to him in Whatever the way in which in the line of ere- fashion by St. Thomas than it is by Aristotle. In thought the perfections of the created carried to their maximum causes is used in an entirely other reasoning to lead to the not risen to the degree of Aristotle's the series subordinate causes enters into the cted perfections; they anthropomorphised God, since they had system of the metaphy- idealists rose (frequently cosmic degrees, whose structure absorbs abstraction requisite for veritable analogy. In revenge the Prime Mover by a hierarchy of an auxi- abstraction, and it is the Thomas this series only enters in fact as -without realising what they were doing) to that degree of sical presentation of the real; with St. case it cannot the created) of thought liary to make the fact visible that in any analogic perfection (analogically common to the uncreated and means which is only employed series does not 'Thought' in general (in carry as a result the structure of this causal which they carry to a pure state, but in working in terms of on this process to infinity, and the lead will be expli- arc speaking of interest fact the Pure Act to whom these ways fact on human thought) without knowing that in reality they metaphysics, for in (leaving out things admits ofno intermediary [Sum. thought of God the Creator. They thus reach a notion of thought which citly known as the creator, and the creation of image of is only ap- Thomas shared Aristotle's of count the numerous confusions, inevitable under such conditions) theol, i, 45, 5). Thus, from the beginning, if St. line, free of true God; they the the other hand, from the first propriate to the divine thought, although they do not recognise the physical universe, his metaphysic is on spheres causality the hierarchy of intermediary 'theomorphise' Thought in general. that image. With regard to creative de causality (cp. E. Gilson, L Esprit de- plays no part, all things being equally open to this on. us is so little frThe 'cause' whose (ontological) conception so imposes itself : created causal- - conservation of things, where with h philosophic mediivak, i, c. iv). As to the experience that it is only rived from an anthropomorphicschematisation of ^ better than that of Aristotle ities have the physical universe fits in the causes o their part, our image of eulty and on condition of a considerable diminution that we discover it with doctrine (Sum. theol, i, 104, 2). the philosop y St. Thomas' metaphysical common experience. As to the 'causes' of scientific experience (and of OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 276 THE DEGREES METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 277

the first cause of my thought, and from which and which will be which divides him from all is crossed by ananoetic intellection; but its stuff or any material causality relation such as that which has of it makes use in that every the analogous concepts which avow very use their has been excluded—a cause comprehending with regard to my thought impotence to enclose or delimit the reality which they thus describe. the entire being of my thought, and absolutely in its pure efficiency Ut omne genu fiectatur. They can only make God known in falling on very essence from it (which thus really remains my separated by its their knees before him. this very absolute uncaused Thought which causes in and thought). It is May I be permitted to point out what delicacy, what filial fear shines have already indistinctly seen the rightful 1 with me my act of thought. I through that very word, paths, used by St. Thomas? They are proofs, which has in itself its existence and its conditions of such a thought, demonstrations. But when our business is with things proportionate privileges are those of an existing reality. object. I now know that its with or connatural to our intelligence, demonstration, which, while existence, he is pure act, and thus infinitely Absolutely self-sufficient for being entirely submissive to the object, also in a way subjects the ob- exists I deduce his infinite perfections from his perfect: knowing that he ject to our grasp, to our means of verification, which measure, which sophism that Kant claims that such a deduc- aseity. It is by a palpable delimit, which define it. It takes hold of the object, grasps it, manipu- the used by Descartes and tion rests implicitly on lates and judges it. This is all the more obvious when the question is one ruins with it: for it is by no means in the iden- St. Anselm, and falls in of more material procedure. And perhaps Scholastics, who have inher- total-perfection that the ontological argu- tification of existence a se and ited the high conception of a chaste science, whose very rigour and to deduce its real existence from the ment consists, but in the claim strict intellectuality came from a religious respect, an exigence of purity first all know and by another way simple idea of total perfection. If I of before being (and their mission is to maintain this like a sacred good), thought) that being a se (starting from a fact such as the existence of my forget sometimes to what a point the terms of science, of demonstra- without the slightest recourse to exists, I am evidently led to conclude, tion, of proof, are charged with materialism in our modern usage, since notion of aseity includes that of the ontological argument, that, as the thought turned before all to the domination of sensible nature, so that a se who exists is effectively total-perfection (and vice versa), this being to 'verify' only evokes the idea of methods of measurement and the ap-

all-perfect. paratus of a laboratory. In a just refusal of this degraded terminology It has led to the necessity And the purport of this course of reasoning? they thus risk insufficiently explaining their own. But in any case they polyvalent conceptual object: ofbringing to a pure state the analogic and know that to demonstrate the existence of God is not to subject him to as absolute Thought thought. And the higher analogue thus attained our grasp, nor to define or lay hold on him, nor to manipulate anything but is not only thought, infinitely surpasses the idea of thought, since it other than ideas which are inadequate to such an object, nor to judge the transcendental or- being in itself, and every perfection issuing from anything except our rightful and radical dependence. The process by simplicity, It is what is der; and since it is all this in absolute unity and which the reason demonstrates that God is puts the reason itselfin an at- infinitely more. signified by the analogic concept of thought, that—and titude ofnatural adoration and intellectual admiration. univocal series, a first St. Thomas' paths do not end in the first of a All has changed since the cartesian clear ideas, which dismissed into beings: greater, high- enter cause which is like other causes, a being like other thin air all ananoetic intellection and knowledge by analogy. To concept of being. er, more perfect, but like them circumscribed by the by the intelligence into a mystery has become since then a contradic- Edouard Le Roy is a will This is why the criticism ofthem formulated by M. tion in terms. If the cartesian reason, wholly suspended from God, any common mea- submit it- veritable ignoratio elenchi. They lead to a first without not treat of God as a thing made subject to it, it must needs separated, iso- to the sure with the second or all the subsequent series, to a first self to him with closed eyes, and only open them when it turns of nature infinite abyss of difference Getit. i I2;iii 39- lated in infinite transcendence; the ^p.Sum.theol. i, 2,2; De Pot., 7, 3; Contra METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 279 27 8 THE DEGREES intelligibles, we cannot think loffues) these analogic of them without consideration of the created and the finite, and it is in tins sense that (junking, at the same time as of what they signify, of the distinct out- Descartes never treated of die infinite except as subject to it'. This is the have in the things where we originally lay lines which they hold on source of that great and seeming holy flight which precipitated him them: we can only think ofbeing as distinct from knowing, ofknowing downward to earthly things. After him the same reason—which only loving: but if we have comprehended the nature as distinct from of knows in judging according to its own measure—is applied by Male- ananoetic intellection, we know that there are two tilings, which are in- branche and Leibnitz to the justification of God: natural theology took on separable for us, distinct in themselves: what is signified by the analogic the name o£theodicy, and set to work to comprehend the ways ofGod in and polyvalent concept, and the mode of our perception, limited to the order to render them acceptable, thus religiously preparing the way for inferior, material and created analogue. This significance belongs to the atheism. All tilings are well done for it is He who hath done them, says divine analogue, belongs to him even before it applies to creatures and the christian reason. It is He who has made them because it is well done more properly than to them: in itself the name ofbeing belongs to God and I know why, also it is difficult to think how to do them better, says before being applied to things. The mode of perception in no sense materialised and corrupt scholasticism which Leibnitzian optimism. A 1 applies to him, not only, as in the case of the angels, because this mode would have seemed not only impious but absurd to a Thomas Aquinas. applies exclusively to a material analogue, while the higher analogue is

spiritual, but much more generally and radically, because it applies ex- m. THE DIVINE NAMES clusively to a created analogue while the higher analogue is uncreated. ananoetic or Our knowledge of God does not only proceed from Our way ofconceiving being is totally deficient with regard to God. uncontain- analogical intellection. It must be added that this analogy is All this comes back to saying that not only can we conceive ofnoth-

is dis- ing, uncircumsaiptive. ing except as delimited (it is the same for being itself, in so far as it describe by the limit In what I have called the transintelligible, the deity (let us tinguished from its determinations), but more, that sometimes ipsissimum notions such that name the divine essence as considered in itself, the belongs to the very significance itself, this is the case in angelic essence above applied to God divine) is infinitely more above the angels than the as those of the body, of movement, etc., which cannot be perfections virtualiter- the body. The concepts and names which describe those except metaphorically (perfections of this kind are in God intrinsically of con- which belong to the transcendental order belong to him eminenter), sometimes the limit only comes from our manner in pieces, or transcendental order, and in their rightful sense; they do not vanish, do not fly ceiving, as is the case in notions which belong to the realis- 2 knowledge, goodness lose their proper significance when applied to God. But although and which can rightly be applied to God. Being, enclose ing themselves far better in God than in tilings, they neither 1 et scilicet ipsas per- and un- 'In nominibus vero quae Deo attribuimus, duo est considerare nor delimit the divine reality, they leave it uncontained significandi. Quan- fecdones signiflcatas, ut bonitatem, vitam et hujusmodi; et modum inferior ana- circumscribed.1 Because we receive from creatures (their competunt Deo, et tum igitur ad id quod significant hujusmodi nomina, proprie dicitur, sig- prius de eo dicuntur. Quantum vero ad ^Sic igitur, cum aliquod nomen ad perfectionem pcrtinens de creatura magis proprie quam ipsis creaturis, et per significant ab aliis: puta Deo: habent enim modum nificat illam perfectionem ut disrinctam secundum rationem disrinctionis mbduni significandi, non proprie dicuntur de dutinc- This distinction of the signification and cum hoc nomen sapiens de homine dicitur, sigruficamus aliquam perfectionem hunc qui creaturis compear.' [Ibil, i, 13, 3-) Sed cum thomist doctrine of the Divine Names; it is tam ab essentia homirds, et a potenria et ab esse ipsius, et omnibus hujusmodi. the modus significandi dominates the whole essentia v a. and most of all, a, 2; hoc nomen de Deo dirimus.non intendimus significare aliquid distinctum ab everywhere in St. Thomas. Cp. In I Sent., dist. 22, q. I, 1, Cajetan s com- quodammo o Essentia, c. vi (and q. 13 of potentia esse ipsius. Et sic, cum hoc nomen sapiens de homine dicitur, Contra Gent., i, 30; De. Pot., 7, 5; De Ente et de Deo,^ se circumscribit et comprehendit rem significatam: non autem cum dicitur mentary), etc. signification- relinquit rem significatam ut incomprehensam, et excedentcm nominis a Cp. Sum. theol, i, 13, 3, ad. 1 and 3. em.' (Sum. theol., i, 13, 5.) 280 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 2gl

i.e. as what is can be subject to the principle ofidentity 'as are in Godfortnaliter-eminenter, signified by these concepts not that God to the Styx or not perish), but in a 1 if that principle is a law of being as such, to (which remain and do mode not only—as has been the fates'. But which all that creatable things are subject, it is (in the ontological said of the angels—superior to by which being, knowledge and created or order, in primarily God is, in the very essence goodness are in the things where I grasp them, but so much superior viajuclicii) because and the thought has, like all the eternal truths, its that these intelligibles lose there the delimitations which distinguish in which this axiom root and its found-

I, in myself, knowledge of God is subject to it, God in himself is not them and without which cannot conceive of them {but ation; our so it his rightful necessity; without which they can exist, since they are analogic, and their delimi- subject, he renders necessary by in such a way annihilate the truth and necessity of principle tations belong to their created analogues). All the divine perfections are that in order to the of strictly identical in God. The word being, when I say it of God, con- identity, it would first of all be necessary to annihilate the divine essence. tinues to signify being and does not signify, does not bring to my mind For our knowledge, which starts from below, the divine being is one of

1 concept ofbeing, which precedes it. In itself it is the either goodness or knowledge, and nevertheless the being of God is his the analogues of the knowledge and his goodness, his mercy and his justice. divine Being which comes first, giving a basis to the intelligibility of an-

Thus the deity is above everything which circumscribes the idea of alogous being, and infinitely transcending all created or creatable being. being;2 the idea of being, when held by itself like a platonic archetype, The divine essence, constituted as an object for us, not in itself, but remains infinitely inferior to God. Nevertheless God is very, self-subsis- by the objectivation of created subjects (considered in their perfections things tent Being, ipsum esse per se subsistens; the name He who is is pre-eminent- of a transcendental order), is attained and known in which at 2 degree to which ly his rightful name; the concept of being passes over into God with all once resemble and infinitely differ from it. In the very its intelligibility, and the law of being as being, the principle of identity Physics, two things identical to a third are necessarily identical with one another, when continues to verify itselfin God, or rather begins to verify itselfin him:3 their identity with this third belongs at once to the real and notional orders, but not

when it is accompanied by a difference in these notions (in his quae sunt idem re et ra- differunt rationes). St. *Cp. Sum. theol. i, 1 3, 4.: 'Hujusmodi nomina dicta de Deo, non sunt synonyma'. tione, sicut tunica et indumentum; non autem in his quae Thomas does not mean to say here, as at first sight it would seem, that no difference as *Cp. Cajetan, In 1, 39, 1, n. 7: 'Res divina prior est ente et omnibus differentiis ejus, to and either of the other two; one could .' notion should exist between the third time est enim super ens et super unum. . . St. Thomas writes against the Platonists, In lib. it then object, taking up again Auriol's argument, that this would destroy the whole Causis, leer. 6: 'Causa prima est supra ens, inquantum est esse infinitum;' the esse infi- theory of the syllogism, since in every proposition the subject and the predicate are nitum infinitely transcends in itself what would be the idea of being in the impossible only notionally different. As Cajetan points out, he wishes to say that the two extremes hypothesis that the latter subsisted according to the platonic conception. other need to be identical in what makes their notion identical with the middle, in s In the treatise on the Trinity, St. that however profound the depths oportet eadem Thomas shows Words by the very reason of their identification with the middle. 'Non of the mystery the principle of identity is never in default. Let us remember that this medio; id est quod medio identificari inter se, secundum id in quo non identificantur principle in no wise consists in a simple reiteration the logical term, but that distinct the one of same non est ratio identificationis ipsi medio.' The divine Persons are really it expresses the extramental coherence being all its analogical degrees; in God absolute reality of with from the others by reason of their relative opposition; but by reason of it refers to a transcendent and infini te esse, to the deity itself, whose plenitude necessi- absolute reality, and each is really identical with the divine essence, each has the same tates a parte rei our rational distinctions, and which contains emmentissime et formatter them. by reason ofthe absolute reality there is no distinction between the totality of all perfection and the relations of the Trinity (Cajetan, In I, 39, 1); and or Saturn, and to sub- ^It is in effect to talk of God as though he were some Jupiter because the divine essence is thus 'virtually multiple' a real distinction can intervene, by independent of him.' (Des- ject him to Styx and the fates, to say that these truths are the fact of the relative opposition, between the hypostases which from the point of independent of him. but cartes, letter to Mersenne. 15th April, 1530.) They are not view of their absolute perfections rational distinction. only differ from the essence by a on his free they depend distinct from his intellection, not article, on his essence in so far as it is Cp. Sum. tlieol, i, 28, 3, ad. 1 (and of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, on the same John iv. will, but his Le Songe de Descartes, chap. disp. essence, creative will. Cp. Maritain, 12, a. 3 ): In God the subsistent relations are really identical with the divine J. ! immateriales translatas vocat from which they only differ by a rational distinction, and nevertheless they really 'Unde simihtudinem rerum sensibilium ad substantias the In Boet. de Tnn., q. 6, a. 3. differ from one another; because, 'as the Philosopher says in the Third Book of Dionysus, UCael Hier., dissimilcs similationes.' St. Thomas, 282 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 283

to us, our concepts, while remaining themselves, in that essence, but which they make it known are which is certainly comprised we cannot con-

abyss; in God they lose their significance, without it is, attribute; and that a absorbed into its our ceive otherwise than which we predicate is at- to our mode of conceiving. being able to know how, according The tributed to God is in itself a result of our inadequate manner of con- attained to our metaphysical 1 divine essence is thus rightly by knowledge, ceiving, for in him there is no duality of subject and predicate: to know penetrated; it is known, but its mystery remains in- absolutely vision. but without being him as he is should be an simple tact, uncontaminated. In the very degree to which we know it, it escapes Indeed the highly formal language of St. Thomas has here the precise our grasp, infinitely overflows our knowledge. 'Quamcumque formam technical sense of the Peripatetic School, and it would be a total mis- intellectus concipiat, Deus subterfugit illam per suam eminentiam,* says understanding to think that scire de aliquo an sit or quia est consists exclu- 1 St. Thomas, echoing St. Augustine and . sively in its bearing on judgments of existence with no knowledge of

The very Doctor who asked "What is God?' in the first awakening of what the thing is. To translate scire quia est accurately into modern terms explaining and detailing the divine the order or perspective his intelligence, who never ceased it is necessary to say, in the first case, to know in perfections, and whose own particular task was to lead the human soul of a simple affirmation of fact, in the second, to know in the order or 2 to some intelligence of the mysteries of the deity, affirms that here be- perspective of the reason of being, or of explication. All knowledge low we cannot know God as he is in himself, nos non scimus de Deo quid which does not attain to the essence in itoe//"belongs to scire quia est. In ap- assures us est, and may only know him in that apprehension which of prehending a thing not in its own essence, but in what relates to its exis-

his existence; quamvis tnaneat ignotum quid est, scitur tamen quia est. tence, in apprehending it, not in the perspective of its reason of being for- Previous comments have given us in advance the sense of these but only in that of fact, it always attains in an imperfect manner to what or existence); it mulas, in which it would be vain to seek for a shadow of agnosticism the thing is (if not, it would not know how to posit its

semi-agnosticism. The first does not mean: 'We do not know what God includes a certain diminished knowledge of the essence, known, not in intrin- is,' in the sense that we do not know what predicates should be itself in dianoetic intellection, but in another thing. signified, sically and in their proper meaning attributed to God; for we know by Thus in a nominal definition, it is already the thing which is that God is as in empirio- certain knowledge, more certain than that of mathematics, although in a way which is highly confused and imperfect: simple, one, good, omniscient, all-powerful, free We are more cer- logical knowledge where the essence of corporeal things is attained, hearts. more, tain of the divine perfections than of the beating of our own but blindly, in the signs which are like a succedaneum of it. Much sense that which in their This formula means that 'we do not know what is God', in the when we know God by means of created perfections, in stamp in the we do not attain to the quiddity of God in itself, we do not know very essence, in their most intimate and radical depth, to essence, not what the Godhead itself consists; for in attributing any predicate heart of things a likeness to God, do we know the divine perfection which is assuredly im- God, it is not in its formally grasped essence as such, but a certainly in itself, sicuti est, nor by a real definition of an analogy possible, but very truly and very certainly, by virtue l ita criam imper- In I Sent., dist. 22, I, a. I, 'Sicut Deum imperfecte cognoscimus, is rightly q. which, uncircumscriptive, attains to what takes up while being wholly fecte norainamus, quasi balburiendo, ut dicit Gregorius.' (Ibid.) St. Thomas so allows us to assign—in the subterfugit formam in- and intrinsically found in that essence, and and explains the same formula in De Pot., 7, 5, ad. 13 : 'Deus quo according to our mode tellectus nostri quasi omnem formam intellectus nostri cxcedens; non autem ita place of an impossible real definition—what is, intellectus noster secundum intelligibilem Deo assimilctur. divine essence. The nullam formam of conceiving, the formal constituting factor of the nos- est non solum exeedit 'Deus potior omni nostra locutione et omni cognitione et thus prevent the divine mentem inviolable secrecy of the Godhead does not tram cognitionem et locutionem, sed universaliter collocatur super omnem Div. Nom-> 1 ad. De Pot, 7, 4- etiam angelicam et super omnem substandam,' St. Thomas says agab (In Cp. Sum. theol, i, 13, 12, 2; 2 sa nature, 5th edit., p. 5"- c. I.lect. 3). See R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son existence et e

METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 285 284 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE Subsistence presupposes a (substantial) nature which is individual and in itself, but because essence being known by us, not it communicates a nature or essence, singular (i.e. having, in the line of its ultimate point of created participation ofitself to what is not it—this word, 'participation', actuation and determination); and what it righdy signifies, in as much the ontological order the same thing as is expressed 1 expressing in in the creation its final achievement, is as it finds in the order of that this noetic order by the word 'analogy'. And the more close is the know- nature, by the fact that it is endowed with subsistence, cannot communi- ledge, the more it witnesses to the transcendence. A formula of endo- cate with any other substantial nature in the very act of existing; it is, chemist quietly writes on a sheet thermic reaction which the of paper in itselfwith if one may say so, absolutely enclosed regard to existence. and arranges with his pen announces a vertiginous conflagration; in say- My personality exists before acting; and it possesses its existence, like itself', or 'in there is no real distinction ing, 'Subsistent Being Him be- is its nature, in an incommunicable way which absolutely its own. Not tween essence and existence', the metaphysician unseeingly describes that only is its nature singular, but it so possesses the existence which actu- sacred abyss before which the angels fall trembling with love and terror. ates it that it desires single possession, unshared with any other. The divine nature remains veiled, hidden from our metaphysical gaze, Ifin all things that are not God essence is really distinct from existence, it is in itself, attained in things, ungraspable not objectified in what in to act, it and is found in the same relation to existence as that ofpotency itself. And yet, thanks to ananoetic intellection, it constitutes the object is nevertheless clear that the act of existing does not achieve the essence of completely stable knowledge, of a science which contemplates and in the line of the essence itself, since it is of another order (it declares the draws out determinations in it which only imply negation in our mode position extra nihil of the essence entirely constituted in its line). In or- of conceiving. Loyally leaving intact its absolute Simplicity, and precise- der that the existence which it receives should be Us essence, actuate it as ly because we are loyal to the point ofmisconception, we introduce into righdy belonging to it and unable to actuate another at the same time, it perfection and such another, it all our rational distinctions: such a first all another kind is therefore necessary that the nature receive of science of simple intelligence and science of vision, antecedent and con- of achievement or termination, a metaphysical mode thanks to which it multiplicity sequent will, determining and permissive decrees. . . . The to will face existence as a closed whole, as a subject which appropriates of these rational distinctions, requisite because of the very eminence of about itself the act of existing which it receives. This is that subsistence, the reality to be made known, attests only the humility of such a form imposes it- which there has been so much dispute, the notion of which of apprehension. It is not the divine Simplicity which is divided, only genius self the moment one has grasped the bearing of the intuition of together with our concepts which we adapt and twist and bend, so that its intelligible de- by which St. Thomas saw in the essence itself with all them our intellects may bend and work, so as to know the Almighty terminations a potency with regard to the act of existing. according to the mode ofour poverty. stamp of its unity. Subsistence is for the nature like the ontological its body is not a When this nature is complete (a soul separated from to take itself in hand person), above all when it is able to possess itself, THE NAME OF PERSON

1 that other substantial nature The finite created subsistence of Peter signifies no A person is a centre of liberty, which confronts tilings, the universe, and into the uncreated order, can share with him in the act of existing. If one passes over them by intelli- God, talks with another person, communicates with signifies that it can share th nature : the uncreated and infinite subsistence of the divine belongs or the gence and affection. complex as it is, is not already itself. Each The notion of personality, act ofexisting with nothing which is not itselfor which which is substantial with the same common existence primarily to the ontological order. It is a metaphysical and Divine Persons is God, and thus each exists sub- things and thus the uncreated psychological and the uncreated essence itself. God is eminendy all perfection which opens out in die operative order in with divine 'terminate' and cause to exist sistence ofthe Word, since it is infinite, can moral values. hypostarically assumed. existence a finite nature (without its own subsistence) subsistence. The first metaphysical root of personality is what is called METAPHYSICAL 286 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE 287 the other the personality of the true by the intellect and the will, in short, when it relates to the spiritual In the one as in God is destroyed. a nature is called that the god of immanence, be it the naive order, then the subsistence of such personality. It is obvious immanence of the senile and rehashed Such, in the vocabulary of the Schoolmen, is the metaphysical notion the old pantheists or immanence of modern a personal god, lost as he is, either in of personality: it is this notion of which we all make use (like M. idealism, cannot be things or in the philosophers. the other Jourdain's prose) when we say that every man has a personality, is a per- thought of professors and On hand, the idea of too humanly understood and son, endowed with free will. But in subjects which are corporeal as divine transcendence, when insufficiently at first sight equally incompatible well as spiritual, and who share one specific nature, so that die personal- transcendentally, seems with per- high above all things and all the concepts ity ofany one implies his individuarion by matter, and which are dark to sonality: immense, which themselves, and whose rightful condition is mobility, this metaphysical we employ to name him, how can he be a person, one who says 'I' as we have at once forgotten the bearing of ananoetic root, hidden in the depth of being, is only made manifest by a slow self- do? In speaking so we conquest, achieved in the course of time. Man must gain his personality intellection and the real meaning of personality; we are still dominated representing the divine eminence and in thinking of like his liberty, and it is dearly bought. He is not a person in the order by images, both in virtues person. of action; he is only causa stti if his rational energies and and his the concept ofa gather his soul into their hands—anima All that the latter includes of the laborious and the limited, all that is at l0Ve and the Spirit of God— of re-working over a poverty-stricken mea in tnanibus meis semper—and into the hands of God. They give a face once indigent and complicated, current notion of the word personality to the torrent of multiplicity of which he is the stream-bed, freely seal centre and narrow plans, the anthropomorphic charge which weighs it him with the ontological seal of his radical unity. In this sense one itself, the whole weight of the describes in man the high-point knows true personality and liberty, another knows diem not. The per- down (and how can that surprise us? It the the link in us between personality and sonality (in metaphysical contradiction) is subject to many checks in ofhumanity) uniquely belongs to condition. must free the psychological and moral order. It runs the risk of contamination by the individuation, and thus to our material We

its grasp its transcendental value and misfortunes of material individuality, by its lyings and cheatings, word personality from this matrix to oppositions, its ontological characteristics which I have sig- vanities, its complexes, its narrownesses, its hereditary ananoetic force. The great is individuation: individuation by mat- habitual regime ofrivalries and contradictions. For the same man who nalised remain: individuality (not also one of characteristic of bodily things), unity and integrity, a person, and subsists with all the subsistence of his soul, is ter is exclusively a liberty, the possession of the self by the a species and dust in the wind. subsistence, intelligence, will, could Thomas, 'signifies what is most per- The great truths weigh heavily on the shoulders of men. One self. 'The notion, person,' says St. tran- 1 of the possible nature of angelic say that India has not known how to bear the idea of the divine fect in nature.' Dream for a moment to an created subject, but each includes in his scendence, as if an intense sense of the solitude of God had led her personality! Such a one is still a ruin- regard to God, he is infinite in a-cosmic metaphysic which, in a despairing circle, runs the risk of sole self a specific essence; finite with having subsistent above time, a mirror of God ing in its turn this same transcendence. On the other hand, by comparison with us; immutably him- wide-ex- and personality transparent to itself, who knows felt too keenly that there is nothing, if one may put it so, so of the universe, a knows all striking self expresses his very substance and who tended as the divinity (for we cannot make a step without in the word which the and whose liberty knows against the manifestation of an attribute of the Creator), so that in things in the depths of his self-consciousness, pure spirits, resonant saturated only it is these myriads, of universe there is nothing rightly profane, but all is sacred and unconfined acts; among the adoration intelligible communications and with the signs of God, the Graeco-Roman world fell into the from the height to the depth with of creatures and into Stoic or Neo-platonic pantheism. ^Sum. theol, i, 27, 3. DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL 288 THE KNOWLEDGE 289 interchange ofspeech unconfincd by sounds, that the concept ofperson- reception in existence in essences in the angels, by distinct from it). We in the amplitude and purity of its trans-intelligible 1 ality begins to show know that the divine transcendence is that of an absolute subject (on analogues. condition that we take away in the notion of a subject all passivity and as one escapes from images in thinking of In reality, as soon the receptivity, and leave only the significance of a reality in itself and for one sees that it necessarily and absolutely requires divine transcendence, itself—whose transobjective profundity is so immense that even the

personality is the very seal of transcendence, lacking it, personality. This blessed spirits who see it will never comprehend it); the superexcellent perfections, however high above our thought the ocean of infinite we subject, separated absolutely by its very infinity from all others, cre- would not achieve separated existence, and recognise them as being, ated or creatable, whose unending multiplication could never add one place to that urge for an endless over-passing, transcendence would give comma to the perfection which He already is (with their creation there the already experienced, which the Modernists sub- a passing beyond would be beings, not more being) . attests the inexhaustibility of our stitute for it, and which only own Knowing that he is thus truly and really transcendent in his essence, spiritual becoming which is ours. If God lacked nature or the indefinite we know also that he is immanent in all things by his immensity, more participation of the divine attributes would personality, the universal intimate to them than their own selves, in order ceaselessly to give them self-sufficiency which has no need of never be united in an absolute being and movement; we know that all mutability being on the side of of divinity would never be things, the resplendent warp and woof things, not of the pure Act, who alone specifies his science and his love, metaphor! That personality woven in one. O treachery inherent in absolutely nothing would have been changed in him if he had not cre- its rightful condition in the should be a core, a synthesis of many, is ated things, and yet he knows and really loves them since they fall as pure simplicity. creature, but in its uncreated analogue it is a contingent terms attained in fact, but not as specifying objects, under absolute integrity of nature, In the Pure Act there is absolute unity, the very knowledge by which he knows himself, the love by which in its ultimate degree), absolute individuality (i.e. perfection of nature he loves himself, the will by which he necessarily wills his goodness.

is identical with the essence: since subsistence there is subsistence which By this, it seems, we are given a chance of glimpsing how the evil and since gives to the essence the power of self-appropriating existence, which he permits—which supposes the existent creature and its existence, these three terms are ab- the divine essence is precisely its own voluntary deficiency, which is in itself only a bankruptcy of the good and, in solutely identical in God. In him thought is in its pure state, for its cause, the which is due—can be known by God without having God possession of the self necessary consequence, love and liberty; there is creature having the primary initiative in the line of evil, as God in the intellection and his by the self in its pure state, since his existence is his line of good. And we can also on the other hand dimly see how his love intelligence and by love. Thus he not only exists and knows himself by of his creatures to the point of making them enter, as other than him- for to exist is thus his natural to love as do created minds: uncreated Spirit, him self, having that community of life with him which is his un- selfknowledge. friends, into that unchanging love which he bears to himselfand demonstratively that the divine essence sub- profound a charac- Thus metaphysics knows changingjoy—'Enter into thejoy ofyour Lord'—is so holds by revelation that revelation to sists in itself, as infinite personality (and faith teristic of the Godhead that there was need of the christian distinct it subsists thus in three Subsistences or Personalities, really caritas est. tell us it like the proper name of God : Deus other, essence; so that in the intelligible subject one from the but not from the divine So it is that integral realism first knows things, perfect community transintelligible godhead there is at once a trinity of persons and subsisting outside the mind, in order to mount to the nature, because there is personal. and without any sharing of the same individual cause of things, infinitely transcendent and sovereignly even, as perfect personality widiout individuation, not is infinite subjectivity. any shadow of 'In that sense we can allow Kierkegaard's saying that God RATIONAL o THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 29 291 personality is what is at once farthest from This sovereign us—the tidpation with his very deity and his inward life, and make of us his mere manhood—and inflexible infinite confronting my what is nearest friends. Purity has a face, a voice, has set to us, since incomprehensible me before that I may speak to him and he respond. The light it to confront it, of THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE AND stamped upon us. 'What is man that THE WAY OF IGNORANCE his countenance has been thou dost thou set thy heart upon him? our concept of being, shouldst magnify him? or why Thou Since and our concepts of all the perfections be- and thou provest him suddenly. to the transcendental order, visitest him early in the morning How longing cannot be freed from the limita- me, nor suffer me to swallow down my spitde? tions which belong to them, not in regard long dost thou not spare to what is signified, but as to have made me and fashioned me wholly and now their mode of conception and signification, . Thy hands while being itself and its ... But yet I will speak to the Almighty, and transcendental analogues lack wouldst thou destroy me! in God these limitations, it is clear (St.

God. . . . Who would grant me a hearer, that the Thomas, echoing the whole tradition of 1 I desire to reason with wisdom, repeats it incessandy), and he himself that judgeth would write that apophatic theology, Almighty may hear my desire; . which knows God by the mode ofnegation or shoulder, and put it about me as a ignorance, a book- that I may carry it on my knows him better than cataphatic theology, which proceeds Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind and said: by that ofaffirmation and science. crown? . . . Then the up sentences in unskilful words? Gird up Nevertheless this implies an essential condition, 'Who is this that wrappeth that this apophatic or answer thou me.'1 All mysticism negative theology should thy loins like a man: I will ask thee and not be that of a pure and simple ignorance, is addressed to an anonymous interlocutor with- but of an ignorance which knows, in which lies its mystery. is a dialogue, one that If not, the fact. Though still un- atheist out personality avows itself a deception by that who says 'There is no God' would be possessed of an equal wis- the Holy Ghost, metaphysics dom with St. Paul. able to name the Father, the Son and Not knowing how to write because one does not in a recognition of the divine know the alphabet, should find its natural and necessary end and being unable to write because the Summa it betrays itself, it is un- which Personality. If it does not do so, it lacks its aim, you have composed now seems to you only straw; to ignore the the sapientes hujus rules of art forgivable. This is what St. Paul, when he condemned because you cannot learn them or to ignore them because away in their own you can use mundi, called 'keeping truth captive' and 'fainting them at your pleasure, to hold oneself below reason be- cause one is thoughts'. not yet born into rational life, or above reason because one of creation has a mean- has entered into Since God is sovereignly personal, the notion contemplation, are two different forms of behaviour intelligence and liberty, of all things which must not be confounded. In nostras cognitionis Deum tan- ing; he is the absolute cause, by his finem to mar the order auam ignotum which are not him; the notion of sin has a meaning: cognoscimus, at the end ofour knowledge we know God as free- 2 self-government of unknown, says St. it is then above all', by which the nature of what is demands the Thomas, quoting Dionysus. 'For wills and necessarily loves: he adds, 'that the the most perfect knowledge of God, when wills is to wound God himself in what he mind has wills and created it is known that is everything that can apprehended justice, and in what he wills and freely loves: things his essence above be them, an order in this present thus, the very fact that in itself (and since they are there is a justice which concerns state of our life. And by law, the positive the Godhead remains unknown, there is a greater knowledge than ever which is required of them by nature, and which revelation has a mean- divine or human, can achieve); the notion of 1 Cp. In I. Sent., disc. ad. 1 (the expression is still more pointed in De he chooses; 22, q. 1. a. 2, can speak to us, by human instruments which ing: he ffl-> 7, S, ad. 2, and in Sum. theol, i, 13, 3, ad. 2, and 12, ad. 1); Contra Cent., i, 30; enter into par- w, the notion of grace has a meaning: he can make us 49, and numerous other texts.

1-3- ^ob, vii, 17-9; x, 8; xiii, 3; xxxi, 31-6; xxxviii, "Myst.Theolos.ci. .

METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 293 DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 202 THE behind of cataphatic not yet a leaving theology, a passing over into a 1 tanquam ignotus cognoscitur. It is not that he remains of God even as he is,' higher kind of wisdom, in as much as these truths are only known, not by us, is known in himself, as unknown to us, but that he is known re- experienced, only spoken of, not lived. 2 (natural theology) in maining unknown. be the first philosophy the order ofpurely rational knowledge, or, would be nodiing, since order ofreason elevated by faith, theologia per modum doctr'mae seu A purely conceptual apophatic theology this in the cognitionis. the Summa the via negationis seu remotionis is systematically advances by the method of ignorance in or- Thus in employed con- negative knowledge only jointly with the via excessusscu eminentiae in the building up ofsacred doctrine. In par- the limited method of concepts. There is indeed an der to pass beyond ticular—in conformity with that methodological principle that, in the imperfect know- phrase, which explains its varying for- element of equivocation in the ledge of the essence or quid implied by all science set in the simple perspective of fact suspense on the dividing line of the rational and the [quia est), what, in the case ofmaterial substances, is knowledge by some proximate or tunes; it holds us in remote genus and by certain characteristic accidents becomes, in the case ofimmaterial and can hold a different sense as seen from the one side or the mystical, substances, knowledge by negation or by the way of causality and eminence (cp. In Boet. the via ncgationis announces that God is like no cre- other. In as much as de Trin., q. r, a. 2, and above all q. 6, a. 3)—Q. 3 and 11 of the ParsPrima, which treat of metaphysical or ordinary theological the things 'quae ad divinam substantiam pertinent' (q. 14, proem.), are placed prim- ated thing, it is one of the ways of in as much as theologia negativa arily under the sign of the via negationis ('quia de Deo scire non possumus quid sit, sed apprehension at its highest point. But quid non sit, non possumus considerate de Deo quomodo sit, sed potius quomodo non of a higher order (and that constitutes a form of knowledge, a wisdom sit,' q. 3, proem. ; 'et tunc de substantia ejus erit propria consideratio, cum cognoscetur theology as when it is distinguished from distinctus. tamen erit perfecta cognitio, quia cognoscetur quid is certainly what is meant ut ab omnibus Non non mystical experience or it is noth- in se sit', Contra Cent., i, 14; see also iii, while in questions 14-28, which treat ofthe being theology of another kind), it is 39); pertinent ad operationem ipsius' proem.), after the doctrine ofana- order to experience mystically in that things 'quae (q. 14, ing. It establishes itself in logy has been expressly disengaged (q. 12-13), it is the via causalitatis and the via emi- cataphatic theology knows in divine things mode without modes what nentiae which appear the most (without, certainly, excluding the via negationis, for in

ignorance which is the crown of the via negationis is, as I have from the outside, in that reserve of reality these three are connected, cp. DePot., q. 7, a. 5, and the * in God there is recalled above, the highest). communicable knowledge of these things. To say that negationis. The nor muta- Two classes ofreferences are found in St. Thomas in regard to the via composition nor imperfection, neither limitation, neither first belongs to the method of negation used, as we have seen, in the theology which fair, is not is not beautiful as things are Trin. bility, nor multiplicity, that God St. Thomas calls per modum cognitionis (i, 1, 6, ad. 3). Cp. for example, In Boet. de formu- scien- still to be occupied with the 2, a. 2, ad. 2) :'Hoc ipsum quod scimus de Deo quid non est, suppler in divina as things are, loves not as we love, is (q. tia per quid est distinguitur res ab aliis, ita per 3 happen in any science), is locum cognitionis quid est; quia sicut lation of theses (although negatively, as may hoc scitur quid non est;' and again, Contra Gent, i, 14. Thomas, In ignotum quid est, scitur tamen quia est.' St. i'Et sic quamvis mancat The other relates to knowledge by ignorance considered as constituting the highest Bex*. Je Trin., q. I, I, a. 2, ad. I. kind of wisdom, in other words to apophatic or negative theology in so far as this non„*,«J,_,aaae- intellcctus noster divinam substantiam Cp De Pot., 7, 5, ad. 14: 'Ex quo signifies a knowledge higher than that of cataphatic theology. Apophatic or negative intellcctum excedens, et in est Dei substantia remanet nostrum theology quat, hoc ipsum quod theology is then identified with mystical theology and thus (since mystical de Deo quoa est ultimum cognitionis humanae ignoratur; et propter hoc illud is of God per modum inclina- a nobis quod itself identical with the pad divina) with knowledge est, omne ipsum nescire, in quantum cognoscit, illud quod Deus for example, /;* sciat se Deum tionis or the wisdom of the Holy Ghost (i, 1, 6, ad. 3; ii-ii,45.2)- Cp. execdere.' Cp. also De Veritate, 2, 1, ad. 9- cited supra, 292; and de eo inteUigimus, Boet. de Trin., q. r, a. 2, ad. 1, and Div. Norn., c. vii, lect. 4, p. quid sit. . . nos ignorare de Deo nostrae cognitionis in *'Hoc ipsum est Deus cognosces, quod nos scimus also Contra Gent., iii, 49: 'Et hoc est ultimum et perfectissimum profunditate aivinae illuminatur ab ipsa Theologia (c. ii) quod Deo quasi Et sic cognosces Deum in tali statu cognitionis hac vita, unde Dionysus dicit in libro de Mystica esse sup intelligamus Deum quid non sit cognosa- sapientiae, quam perscrutari non possumus. Quod etiam ignoto conjungimur. Quod quidem contingit dum de Deo possumus, ex incompre hujus sublimissimae cogni- omnia, non solum quae sunt, sed etiam quae apprehendere mus quid vero sit, penitus mance incognitum. Unde et ad vu., lee 4- In Div. Norn., c. . xx, quod acccssit ad sibili profunditate divinae sapientiae provenit nobis.' Ibil, tionis ignorantiam dempnstrandam, de Moyse dicitur (Exod. 21) these nc ad en cfl%mem«;i2H(iew/Dei«;'andagak,'QuandobDeumprocedimusperviamremotionis, »The pkase 'apophatic theology', if it is used to designate S ™ secundum quod but strictly cp- ^ primo negamus ab corporalia; et sccundo etiam intellectualia, tions, then relates to the via ncgationis, which is opposed eo ""^"^yinethe in intellectu the doctrine of inveniuntur sapicntia; et tunc remanet tantum via eminetitiae, these two ways being alike at once implied by in creaturis, ut bonitas et apprehension, wiucn names, and both making part ofone and the same discursive 7 294 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 295

only a meaning when it is further revelation than the Apophatic theology has more than cataphat- The contemplative knows no theologian, the (as a mode of knowledge); it is not its double, it should covers is no more extensive; his knowledge is only ic theology not field which he more its divine. be substituted for it; it stands upon shoulders, it knows the same things, penetrating, more unitative, more There is no supematurally

because it simply denies is attained contemplation only better. It is negative, not what the other accessible object which by which is not affirms, but because it attains more by affirmation of negation, i.e. more spoken of by dogmatic formulas infallibly and with a perfect ex-

than by communicable enunciations, because it experiences by the mode actitude and absolute truth. But in its way of attaining exacdy what ignorance the reality which the other affirms and can never affirm dogmatic formulas, in its way of apprehension, mystical of is taught in can raised sufficingly. If an ignorant shepherdess be to such wisdom, it is theology is higher than its speculative brother.

true that she is ignorant of metaphysics and theology, not that she is an If the wholly apophatic theology of Philo of Alexandria did not re- faith reality ignorant; she has faith, and by she grasps in their divine source solve itself into a pure agnosticism, it is because in it implied a ca-

those truths which theologians disclose in the sweat of their brows. And taphatic theology against which, dazzled by the divine transcendence,

if she is ignorant of cataphatic theology, there are others in the Church Philo unwisely turned, in order to destroy as unworthy of the divine

who are wise in it. In itself, on the ladder ofapprehension, this theology the ground on which he stood, without seeing that he was destroying in is a step which comes before contemplation and should lead thither, the same stroke the affirmation of transcendence itself. In the course of nostro, quia est, et nihil amplius: indc est sicut in quadam condone. Ad ultimum that admirable progress to which it has been constrained by revealed autem etiam hoc ipsum esse, secundum quod est in creaturis, ab ipso removemus; dogma, and which began in the first centuries, to reach in Thomas Aqui- tunc remanet in quadam. tenebra ignorantiae, secundum quod ignorantiam, quan- et to nas its perfect doctrinal formulation, christian philosophy has grown tum ad statum viae pertinet, optime Deo conjungimur, ut dicit Dionysus, et haec that pantheism and agnosticism can only est quaedem caligo, in qua Deus habitare diritur.' In I Sent., dist. 8, q. I, a. i, ad. 4. understand more and more This last passage is full ofvery obvious echoes of Dionysus, and could lead one to be- both be struck down because a knowledge of the affirmative and prepo- Thomas, lieve in a dialectic ascension leading in itself to the divina caligo. In reality, for St. it is sitional order is possible, courageous in the very degree to which there is only here an appearance ofdialectic, i.e. the rational movementwhich successive- humble, speculatively valid and rigorously true, but at the same time ly posits these various negations certainly corresponds to an intellectual consciousness which can signify in a right- which accompanies and justifies it, which bases on reason for the contemplative the ananoetic and inevitably deficient in mode, the connaturalky of 1 present-day movement of his contemplation: but this takes place by virtue of ful sense what is in God. Certainly no advantage lies in a love, not by virtue of a dialectic. I believe it was already so, though much less clearly, philosophies, retrogression, as is the desire of certain so-called modernist for pseudo-Dionysus himself, close as was to neo-platonism and endowed with who he expense to Phuo's position. apophatic theology which ascends at the a wholly neo-platonic culture, thought out in terms ofneo-platonic conceptualisation An his- 'as if', or regarded as ap- a doctrinal substance which in reality is much more Pauline than neo-platonic. In of the cataphatic, which is reduced to a simple and the Mystical soars. torical fact, I am led to believe that the author of the Divine Names proximate, will vanish in smoke in the same degree to which it Theology his use neo-platonic ter- could believe himselfa good platonist, and twisted to which are found H.e. not metaphorically, but making known to us the perfections minology in order to express an experience in reality incompatible with it. A sort of formally and intrinsically in God. Cp. p. 304 and M. T. L. Penido, op. tit. tutelary displacement of terminology was thus produced, thanks to which negative quod ex hoc patet pre- "'Intellectus negationis semper fundatur in aliqua affirmatione: theology, in the christian sense of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, in fact, I believe, humanis aliquid quia omnis negativa per affirmativam probatur; unde nisi intellectus vailed (in actu exercito) in the pseudo-Dionysus, despite his outward marks of neo- autem cognosceret, si de Deo affirmative cognoscerct, nihil de Deo posset negare. Non platonism which are so marked, and incontestably prevailed in the Fathers, even in the Thomas, De Pot.,7, S} <¥ con- nihil quod de Deo dicit, de eo verificaretur affirmative.' St. use of certain platonic formulas, until christian thought, having become fully de Deo It is al- possunt vere formari . expressly (/» Sum. theol, i, 13, 12: 'Propositiones affirmarivae scious of itself, could with St. Thomas, then with St. John of the Cross, signified and the mode ofsig- specu- ways the same principle (the distinction between what is actu signato) build up from this negative theology or wisdom ofthe Holy Ghost a affirmari de Deo et negan: aflir- the es- nifying) which applies: 'Possunt hujusmodi nomina et lative and practical science, freed from all neo-platonic contamination, where propter significant modum. Dionysus, mari quidem propter nominis rationem, ncgari vero sential part played by the connaturalky of charity (hardly indicated by {Contra Divine Names, manifest. Cent., i, 30.) c, iv, St. Thomas, led. 4, 9-1 1) is fully recognised and made METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 297 296 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE purely on the object, which is here entirely of the rational But why was it that the Alexandrian School were led despite them- depends sometimes as tending towards an end immanent in philosophy, selves to leave only a negative dieology? Because, being absolute intel- order), intervenes in it in order to constitute its proper object and to lcctualists, they desired an intellectual knowledge of God of which the which the first case the very purity of philosophy as such seems, very mode should be divine, not human, and wished at the same time specify it. In in the eyes of the unphilosophical, to run the risk of concealing that this supreme and apophatic knowledge should remain in the intel- above all and the efficacy of this urgency; but at least there is a pure and lectual mode, should be a philosophy. And it is impossible to have at one die value contemplation to which it may bear the soul beyond itself. and the same time a philosophy which to be true must enunciate, and a authentic case, the very confusion suffered by philosophy makes philosophy which in being true destroys enunciation; the one cancels In the second and sensible the presence within it of this urgency; and it out the other. Thus, and as an effect ofthis same absolute intellectualism, more manifest beautiful witness which is given to eternal aspirations which, the tendency to reject or depreciate affirmative theology was for them is this too to fall and at whatever price, cause the metaphysician bound up with the mortal equivocation of the neo-platonic apophasis, in their very and the sages of old India. But it is in nothingness- which claimed to be mystical, and at the same time remained metaphysi- revere Plotinus if higher the end as simply natural—that this issues; or, at least, cal, a dialectic ascension to ecstasy. The same ambiguity reappears in his- taking whether they come from the angels or from grace, it tory with every return to neo-platonism. Nicholas ofCusa extended one influences enter in, deception will play a great part. • still a confusion, in which hand to pseudo-Dionysus and the great mystics of the Middle Ages, but is indubitably the other to Boehme and Hegel. The phrase apophatic theology then describes an intellectual super-knowledge raised about yes and no, where THE SUPER-ANALOGY OF FAITH contraries are identified, in place of the reality of apophatic theology apophatic theology) is If mystical contemplation {or the veritable which is 'mystical theology' itself, the contemplation in charity of the importance neces- essentially supernatural, a new principle of capital saints. of metaphysics and that sarily here supervenes, between the domain This contemplation is essentially supernatural. As I hope to show in supernatural life. of contemplation: theological faith, the root of all the next chapter, there is no natural mystical contemplation. But, in a cataphatically, making known And this faith itself must first advance much more general sense, it is possible to have a natural spirituality, enunciations the Godhead to us in communicable which belongs to the natural love of God: because this natural love the mysteries of too gready anticipa- before raising us to such experience. Without does not suffice to make God effectively loved above all things, nor indicate here a third ting the substance of later chapters, I would only to the connaturalisation of the soul with the deity, it cannot lead to which must here be of degree of analogical or ananoetic intellection mystical contemplation righdy so called; but it can inspire the desire to signalised. that unknown union which in fact that contemplation is alone able to himself, the divine In effect it is himself, as he is known realise. God object to himself-to himself as transintelligible as he is in himself and Whether it is directed towards God known or misknown, loved himself to our grasp who is the and to the blessed-in as much as he gives God or at least desired as the supreme truth of which we know not our being able to lay hold attained by faith: but without meanwhile name, such a motion, such a mystical urge animates all great philo- and by himself an object does of him, without his becoming in himself sophy—I say, ex parte subjecti: because no man is a philosopher, ifhe the object of our blessed see. He is only sometimes it for us, not seen as the not love the absolute and wish to be united with it. But speculum or as in a minor-ftr philo- understanding in the ananoetic mode animates philosophy as tending towards an end which transcends knowledge of God has already latter aenigmate-o( which die metaphysical sophy, and which does not intervene in its specification (for this METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 98 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 299 ends,1 and remains conceptual and human in regard to the cre- furnished an example, i.e. by the objectification of other subjects which it objects through which it passes. These created analogues form part which fall within the reach of our senses and are in themselves intel- ated

earthly and human world : what is more earthly than a father ligible to us, and whose attributes have in the Godhead their sovereign of our most What notion is more common, more heavy with human analogue. and his son? than that of buying back? Thus the super-analogy of faith is But a capital difference with metaphysical knowledge here inter- echoes, than that of metaphysics, it wears the livery of poverty. venes: for metaphysical knowledge of God it is in the heart of the intel- more humble from God it attains to divine secrets which metaphysics ligible that our intellect, having discovered the ananoetk value of being But we know Once shown by revelation as likenesses to what is hid- and the objects which belong to the transcendental order, rises, thanks to does not know. the mind perceives that things like paternity and filiation these, to the divine analogue. On the contrary in the knowledge of faith den in God, referred to the transcendental order, have an analogical value of it is in the very heart of the divine transintelligible, in the depth of the can be proportionality. The names of Father, Son and Holy Ghost are Godhead itself that the whole process ofknowledge starts in order to re- rightful metaphorical, they describe (without all the time containing or cir- turn thither, that it makes, by the free generosity of God, choice, in the not what the divine persons formally and intrinsically are. intelligible universe which falls under our senses, of objects and con- cumscribing) is not a metaphor, and intrinsically and formally cepts ofwhich God alone knows that they are analogical signs ofwhat The word redemption livery expresses the work accomplished by the Son of God. Under the is hidden in him, and of which he makes use to speak of himself to us in superanalogy of faith hides a supernatural vigour, by it our language. No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, of poverty the that in 1 attain in darkness to the Godhead itself, the divine essence in who is in the bosom ofthe Father, he hath declared him. That the notions of we participate naturally, and as no created perfection generation and sonship, or of three having one nature, or ofa coming in which no creature can to our reason. the flesh and a personal union with human nature, or ofcreaturely parti- can in itselfshow it order to make us attain to the intimacy of cipation and of brotherly love with the creature, could have a value in It should be added that in only make use of the notions whose ananoetic value the very order of the deity itself and in regard to the inward life of God, God it does not no- speak disengages for us: it also makes use of we should never in any way have known if God himself had not re- revelation itself so to as such, and tions which cannot be in themselves transcendentalised vealed it. as a result as it is by revelation, remains The analogical instrument put in our hands wherewith to attain God whose ananoetic value, assured Creed itselfdo we concealed in metaphorical analogy: in the Apostles' by such notions is not only an uncircumscriptive analogy: it is a revealed a poverty not right hand of the Father'? The whole analogy, the proxy or substitute of vision, what we may call a super- say 'and sitteth at the revelation: all the imagery of of the tongue of men is thus redeemed by analogy. The mode ofconception ofsignification is as deficient here as in Canticle Canticles are the inspired Scriptures, all the symbols of the of that of the metaphysical analogy; but what is signified revealed, i.e. — does be said even of faith that it »It is because it does not see this object that it must stripped of the veils which belong to our natural knowledge, but left revelationem elevemur ad aUquod not know God quidditativcly. 'Quamvis enim per he cog- or shown under other veils is this time the Godhead as such, God as tamen ad hoc quod alio modo — cognoscendum, quod alias esset nobis ignotum, non impossible est our Cael Hier., dicit, quod sees himself, and who gives himself to us—in darkness and without noscamus nisi per sensibilia; wide Dionysus, I veia- tircumvelatum vanetate sacrorum laying hands on him, for not see him. (Indeed the divine essence, nobis aliter superlucere divuium radium, nisi we do in substanaas non sufficit ad ducendum or minum. Via autem quae est per sensibilia, which surpasses every concept, could only be intellectually possessed quod formae immatcnaies supernaWrales secundum cognitionem quid est. Et sic restat, rat- ananoetic est, sive natural grasped if it is seen itself an cognitione an 1 by and without concepts.) Such noa sunt nobis notac cognitione quid est. sed solum similitudines revelationc quae est per knowledge is thus supra-rational with regard to the uncreated object in ione ex effectibus creaturarum, sive ctiam ex sensibilibus sumptas.' Thomas, In Boet. de Tritt., q. 6, a. 3. xJohn,i,i8. St. 300 THE DEGREES OF RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE 301 the uncreated thus admitted to bear witness to Glory. Indeed, as Dion- infallibly, if these enunciations and notions did should they teach not in ysus points out, terms of the lowest extraction furnish the best im- analogical mode signify exactly those things which a (superanalogical) ages, because they hazard less than the more noble the risk of forgetting understand by this how it is that faith attains to the are in God? We the divine transcendence. St. Thomas quotes this passage from Dion- enunciations which are rigorously true, but yet from deity, and that in ysus, in the article in the Summa where he explains that sacred doctrine had dianks to the analogical process implicit in afar at a distance, i.e., the right to use bodily metaphors. All these metaphorical terms truly notions and enunciations. In order to become wis- the very use of these make known—although improperly when taken literally—the inward- dom and contemplation, the knowledge of faith must, by a divine ness of God, because they conceal an authentic ananoetic significance and yet always in a trans-lumi- grace of inspiration and illumination— (an analogy of rightful proportionality), which appears when we have which will remain as long as God is not seen in him- 1 nous obscurity, recourse to other names, although it is too rich for any name to suffice experi- self—cease to advance/rom afar and at a distance, i.e. must become to express its plentitude: so that in the same text of the Bible, says St. limited mental and advance apophatically, in freeing itself from the Thomas following St. Augustine, there may be numerous literal concepts, not by an intellectual knowledge which transcends 2 mode of senses. Thus considered in its maximum amplitude, by which it even that are divine which tastes yes and no, but by a passion for those things comprehends sacred metaphors, the superanalogy extends its confines and touches in the No the infinite profundity of the Yes. to the point where one might christen it the parabolic analogy. The para- bole in fact is a metaphorical analogy which conceals, and in this very fact lies its mystery, an analogy of a rightful proportionality, assignable

and expressible in itself, but inexhaustible and so superabundandy

crowded with meaning that the sense is always more than any expres- 3 sion of it.

It is written that God made for Adam and Eve in their exile gar-

ments of skin. He has alike made for us, by means of his prophets, then of his incarnate Son and his Church, clothing woven of words and of notions to hide the nakedness of our exiled minds, until we see him.

So it is that faith must necessarily proceed cataphatically since it com-

municates to us, in virtue of the testimony of the First Truth, i.e. by the infallible veracity of God's revelation, and thanks to the propounding

of the Church, the knowledge of what is hidden in the depths of the

Godhead. How shall they understand if they are not taught? And how should they be taught if not by enunciations and notions? And how

1 'Ea quae in uno loco scripturae traduntur sub metaphoris, in aliis locis expressius

exponuntur.' Sum. tlieol, i, i, 9.

'I&uf., a. 10. which 'Unlike the myth, which signifies fictionally certain traits ofthe creature, but metaphorical with regard to divine things has in itself only an entirely undetermined value, and holds in itselfno rightful assignable analogy ofproportionality. PART TWO THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Chapter V. Mystical Experience and Philosophy

Chapter VI. Concerning Augustinian Wisdom

Chapter VII. St. John of the Cross, the Practician of Contem- plation CHAPTER V

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

I. THE THREE FORMS OF WISDOM

plain It should be made from the outset and once and for all that the 'mystical words experience' are used here in no more or less vague sense {covering all manner of phenomena of a more or less mysterious and preternatural character, or even simply religious feeling), but in that of the experimental 1 knowledge ofthe deep things ofGod, the passion of divine things which leads the soul through a succession ofstates and trans- formations until in the depths of its own being it knows the touch of divinity and 'feels the life ofGod'.2

On the other hand, the highest degree of the inferior borders on the superior: and if, in using the word philosophy, it is above all neces- sary to think of the philosophy of nature when studying the relations between experimental science and philosophy, here, in this present chapter, in speaking of philosophy it is ofmetaphysics we should think first ofall.

It is fitting, indeed fundamental, to distinguish three degrees of wis- dom in the rightful meaning of the word; wisdom being denned as a

St. Thomas in describing the pati divina speaks sometimes of 'quasi-experience', sometimes of 'experience'. (Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Revue Thontiste: Nov.-Dec, 1928, pp. 469-72; A. Gardeil, ibid. May-June, 1929, p. 272,) This quasi is there to pre- serve the privileges of the divine transcendence: it in no way diminishes what is pro- perly experimental for us in infused contemplation. It is clear that an absolutely im- mediate and therefore perfectly experienced knowledge of God is reserved for the beatific state. But on this side of that end a knowledge truly, however imperfectly, "^mediate may making all the neces- begin in this life (see infra, p. 3 22, n. 3 ) ; which, sary reservations, as P. Gardeil has pointed out, permits as fiec a use of the words 'ex- penence' and 'experimental' as served heretofore for aJohn of St. Thomas. a St.John ofdie Cross, The Living Flame of Love, str. 1, v. 1. u M.D.K. 303 306 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 307 supreme form ofknowledge having a universal object and object of thought which reaches proceedin already an beyond the visible and itself from first principles. The first and least elevated form is the mind to conceive of a zone of being freed metaphvsic 1 constrains from the limi- knowledge, the highest science of the purely rational or natural sensory and to seek in that region orde tations of the for the reasons of all the This, rising above the world of visible things for which it seeks native position in regard to the ulti- rest. Thus our the being of objects on the mate rationality, recognises by reasoning the existence of ourselves is like God, as the same plane with some bait, some allure, which forces us first cause and author of nature. So God, his existence and perfections to rise to a superior plane. From the point ofview of speculative know- his unity, his simplicity, the real and absolute distinction between him ledge, as from that of ethics, we must agree with Aristode in saying and the world, may be known by reasons drawn from created things— that human nature exacdy by what is essential in it, that is to say the 1 rots fwfwtv —rising by die chain of causality to the first Principle of Vovs, demands ofus an ascension above the human. 2 all being. Metaphysics cannot of itself attain to the divine essence: neverthe- The knowledge of God thus obtained by the reason constitutes that less it may righdy know God, in the divided mirror of those transcen- prime philosophy, metaphysics, or what Aristotle called natural theo- dental perfections which are analogically common to the uncreated and logy'. It is ananoetic knowledge or knowledge by analogy, which is by the creation; and as it lays hold, in the imperfect manner native to no means to be confused with metaphorical knowledge. It makes use limited things, on those realities which, in their pure fullness and over- for the knowledge of God of those notions which we seek for in things, flowing the limits of all our concepts, pre-exist in the incomprehensible and which we, because of this, in as much as they are realised in created simplicity ofthe Infinite. things, conceive as limitations, but which in themselves, in their signi- Above this wisdom of the natural order, metaphysics or natural theo- ficance, imply neither limitation nor imperfection, and which can logy, stands the science of revealed mysteries, theology properly so therefore be applied in a rightful sense to the Uncreated as well as to the called: which rationally develops, in the discursive manner which is of creation. A light of knowledge broken in the prism of creation, but our nature, the truths virtually comprised in the deposit of revelation. veritable for all that. Proceeding according to the method and sequences of reason but rooted St. Thomas, is it necessary to say? never regarded the human intel- in faith, from which it receives its principles, the rightful light of theo- ligence as in itself limited to sensory knowledge, to which could be logy, drawn from the science of God, is not that of reason alone but of added illusory in prolongation a metaphorical perception of spiritual reason illuminated by faith. By this very reason its certitude in itself is and invisible realities. This contemptuous interpretation, which is oc- higher than that of metaphysics. casionally put forward, represents a radical misinterpretation of his Theology has for object1 not God as witnessed to by creatures, Deity thought. If our intelligence, in as much as it is human, is primarily or- as the first cause or author of the natural order, but God in the very dinated to the perception of being made concrete in sensible diings, it is mystery of his essence and inward life, inaccessible by reason alone; also, just in the degree to which it is intelligent, ordinated with being not God known in those things which reason discovers he has ana- in its fullness, and the perception of being drawn from material things is logically in common with other beings, but God in the absolute of his own being, belongs to him alone, deltas ut sic as the 1 in that which St. Paul, Rom. i, 20. theologians say: the God who will be known face to face in the beatific 2 It is known that this point has at the been the object of a definition by the Church vision. Vatican Council, later made still more precise by Pius X: 'Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, i, 20) account of naturali rationis lumine per ea quae facta sunt (cp. Rom. % order to avoid unnecessary verbal complication, I have here taken no hoc est, per visibilia creationis cognosci, the objectiim ofa opera, tanquam causam per effectus, certo the distinction established by the scholastics between the subjectum and adeoque ,' demonstrari etiam posse. a. (Vives, 1). . . science. Cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q. I. disp. 2, 11 308 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 309 Deity as such, he who is above all being and all conceivable perfec- symbols of language But it is in the and through the medium of hu- tion, God considered according to his own essence and his inward lif that this communication ' thoughts is made. else 1 man How indeed could sub rations suae propriae quidditatis, so to speak, the inwardness, the s €(mv.' In that creditae, but from the side of the means or signs which serve the believing vision the divine ipsissimum will be apprehended as in itself it is. 1 soul, ex parte credentis. Faith, the craving here below for that vision, the beginning of eternal We see here a certain return to the method ofknowledge by analogy, life, knows the same object without seeing, by means of an infallible ad- in the degree to which revelation makes use ofhuman terms. It does not hesion given in our obscurity and uncertainty to those things which the determine the prime form of the object known, for the essential con- very Truth has revealed ofitself. A virtue essentially supernatural, supra- tent is God, not known as in metaphysics by analogy with the creation, rational, because its formal motive, Veritas prima revclans, is itself essen- but in die depth of his selfhood. But it reappears just in the degree to tially supernatural, faith also knows, in die very imperfect manner which such signs and terms present that object to our awareness. To ex- which is alone possible for die communication to mankind of the trea- press the mystery ofthe Trinity it is necessary to make use of the ideas of sure of revelation, that which God and the blessed see in God. In its ad- Father and Son and Spirit, of generation and procession, ofnature and herence to the testimony of the primal Truth, it reaches to the in- up person, notions already supplied to us by the creation, and which God wardness, the selfhood of God, Deum secundum propriam quidditatem,6 himself, speaking by his Son who is in his bosom and by the Church, though unseen. This is the object which is the end of faith, the thing tern primam tendit ut in objectum; et sic nihil prohibet veritatem primam esse fidei ob- 6 before which it stays, it where is fixed by revelation. jectam, quamvis sit complexorum.' It is because the end of faith is thus the quiddity of

God himself, secundum seipsum and in his indivisibility, that it is necessary to say that Cajetan, In Sum. tlieol 1,1, j: 'Dcus secundum jpsam of St. rationem deitatis.' John reason alone (unpossessed of even implicit faith), though it may know certain truths Thomas, Curs, theol, in i, P. q. r, disp. 2, a. n. in the very 11, 4. (Vives, B. 1.). God, of the natural order implicit in the truths of faith, such as the existence and unity of nature ofLis deity, sub ratione deitatis, is the prime faith object of the beatific vision, of God, cannot thereby by any means or in any fashion attain to the object of faith. 'Quia and of theology, as also of infused wisdom. All also the these, at the same time, have ut Phil, dicit DC Metaph., in simplicibus defectus cognitionis est solum in non atting- creation for object, but all in reference to God, and dius only as a secondary. endo totaliter.' (Sum. theol. ii-ii, 2, 2, ad. 3.) *St. Thomas also uses the expression secundum ii-ii, 1, 2. rei creditae; quad in se est. Cp.r Sum. theol. ^Objectum fide dupliciter considerari potest: uno modo ex parte ipsius ad. 3; 8,2. et sic objectum fidei est aliquid incomplexum, scilicet res ipsa, de qua fides habetur. s ICor.xiii,i2. Alio modo ex parte credentis; et secundum hoc obiectum fidei aliquid complexum

which guards and explains die words of the Son, degree ofreality which it has attained, it knows God in his has gathered together in the essence, in dogmatic enunciations: analogical concepts according to the nature of his essence. In other words, the super-ana- made use of by th or light of faith, lumen infitsumfidei, which is something offaith accommodates to our weakness a mode ofknowledgewhose more 'formal' dian logy they, more secredy and vitally supernatural, (veritas prima revelans) is absolutely above us. to reach after the inward- formal rule Thus there is ness ofGod. for faith an astonishing disproportion, dislocation, if I may dare to

It is important, as has between the end knowledge, the reality made been pointed out at the end of the preceding speak so, of known which chapter, to distinguish clearly between this in the very nature of his inwardness, in his most holy and indi- use ofanalogy in the domain is God of faith and in that of metaphysics. It is a essence, revealed by the witness of the primal Truth, and the capital difference which can- visible not be stressed too often. In the case knowledge which remains proportionate to our nature.1 for- of metaphysics analogy constitutes mode of A the very form and rule of knowledge. God is object which is essentially superhuman, a mode of knowledge not attained either in his mal selfhood or his incommunicable is essentially human, here lies the reason why faith, even as nature, in the indivisibility ofhis most which we pure passing, perpetually strives to overpass her and simple essence, but only as he is manifested in the changeable noted just now in own man- but unlike metaphysics, she will always hold in truthful reflections, the analogical participations, which are shown ner ofknowledge; why, her tq us by the things proportionate soul, at least at its root, the unconditioned desire of mystical contem- to our reason. We do not attain to his essence, the word, that contemplation which only to that which is told by created things as they themselves plation in the exact meaning of herself, her speak to our intelligence. Thus, not only is the manner of knowledge abides in its own sphere and to which faith by by own but, 2 human, even more, the very object which is set before the mind and powers, cannot attain. constitutes the thus faith, known on the testimony of the Pri- end ofknowledge (sub rationeprimi entis) is only grasped, The God known by so to definitions, believed in but not speak, in the degree to which he condescends to the human reason, mal Truth and by means of dogmatic as seen from the standpoint of 'vir- showing himself in the mirror ofsensuous things and by the analogy of seen, is also the object of theology, 1 things which reason being. Metaphysics stands on the summit of the created world and tual revelation', as it is called, that is to say, those the principles of formal revelation. from there towards the invisible point where all the perfections of illuminated by faith draws from of the creation This is enter into any long discussion of the nature converge, that inaccessible end which it can only know as not the place to that purest necessary to affirm that it is something light is broken in the multiplicity of its perfections. At that theological wisdom. It is only point application of the philosophical method to faith is at home, dwelling in the heart V the Increate; only God quite distinct from a simple has laid monstrous conception, which would his hand over her eyes. And it is by the images of those created the matter of revelation: truly a things which she 1 i, 18. Here the prime form remembers from the earth below that she shows forth This is so because faith is a revealed knowledge. St. John, knowledge, but to Him his mystery. under which the object is known belongs not to our manner of are forms itself. Thus both faith and theology Faith who has revealed and to his knowledge in attains to Deity as it is, but unseen, and without other power of blessed. ofknowledge inferior to the knowledge ofGod and ofthe apprehension than by analogy has with those created things which God a ad hoc quod homo ordine- Cp. St. Thomas, De Veritate, 14, 2. 'Unde oportet quod chosen for our instruction. It in eo qui repromittitur. cannot, by these ananoetic means, know tur in'bonum vitae aeternae, quaedem inchoatio ipsius fiat the divine patet Joan, xvii, 3: Haec est essence in itself, scire tantum de Deo quia est? and yet already, Vita autem aeterna consistit in plena Dei cognitione, ut oportet hujusmodi cogmaoms su- vita aeterna ut cognoseant te solum Deum verum. Unde Just as, in all . IlM. ad. r. knowledge acquired by principle haec est per fidem. . our own proper powers, die formal pematuralis aliquam inchoationem in nobis fieri; et . itself by yitae. which the object is conceived manner of quasi torius spiritual of as an object is itself relative to our '(Fides) est prima inchoatio et fundamentum quoddam knowing and in the tides same degree as it. n. 9- (Vive^t. to. p. 28): John of St. Thomas. Cm. theol, ii-ii, q. 1, disp. 2, a. 1, qua quietatur. "Cp. chap, iv, pp. 282-3, 298. importat norum quemdam intellectus ad visionem in 312 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 313 the substance submit of revelation to purely human up: God Himself as seen or observation and To sum quidditatively known is the ob- subordinate theological knowledge to philosophy.1 There is no scien ject of the vision of the blessed. God himself, believed in and formally or knowledge which does not meet in the soul with a faith. proportionate in- revealed, is the object of God himself believed in and virtually re- tellectual virtue, a light ofdiscernment proper to its object. When that vealed is the object of theology. object is those depths which are divinely revealed, inaccessible by the It has been said that over and above metaphysical wisdom stands the- light of reason, the responsive light in the soul cannot be only that of ological wisdom. Above theological wisdom again there stands infused philosophy, but must be proportionate to its object, the light of super- wisdom, what is also called mystical theology, which consists in know- natural faith where it takes over and directs both the natural movement ing the essentially supernatural object of faith, God as he is in himself, of reason and its native manner of knowledge. Theology then is not in a manner in itselfsuperhuman and supernatural. In the profound words of the simple application of natural reasoning and philosophy to the sub- pseudo-Dionysus, here it is necessary not only to apprehend but to en- stance of revelation, but the elucidation the of substance of revelation dure those things which are divine. It is to know God by experience, by a faith vitally united with reason, progressing by reason, armed with when all creatures are silenced and all representations dissolved, in a philosophy. This is why, far from subserviating theology to itself, manner ofknowledge proportionate, in as far as may be possible in this philosophy is rightly the 'servant' oftheology, and is fitted to the service world below, to the end for which it seeks. For this faith alone will not of its master. Theology is under no obligations to philosophy and is suffice; it must be made perfect by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the gift at liberty to choose among philosophical doctrines whichever will ofknowledge and above all ofwisdom. It is this mystical experience of a serve best in its hands as the instrument of truth. And when a theo- supernatural order whose conditions we are now called upon to study. logian loses the theological virtue of faith, he may keep indeed all the machinery, the intellectual paraphernalia of his craft, but they will be only dead matter in his mind: H. SANCTIFYING GRACE he has lost his rightful light; he is no more a theologian than a dead corpse is a live man. In seeking righdy to define the mutual relations of mystical experi- ence and philosophy and for the more particular consideration of the THE BEATIFIC VISION seen in his essence experience of a natural order is possible, it (sicutiest) problem whether mystical 'with the gifts of Holy Ghost God is necessary to begin by an examination of that supernatural mystical (mystical wisdom) experienced \ witnessed In his authenti- proper experience which is witnessed to by all the saints and whose to life study in no empiric or ex- faith- alone city is indubitable, and also to conduct our formally revealed by the (sub ratione ternal fashion, scientifically and on a firm foundation. For this it is Primal deitatis). but and reason and ter- virtually revealedj Truth strictly necessary to have recourse to theology, for the processes

. (theological wisdom) insufficient in j minology of philosophical thought alone are essentially to commence reason regard to a supernatural object. This is why it is necessary ( God (metaphysical from St. Thomas and his most wisdom) considered as thi with a theological exposition, drawn shown by his J mystical and super- First Cause faithful interpreters; and where, in order to treat of effects (sub ratione to intrinsic prin- natural experience either scientifically or according "' primientis). at , to those nearer ciples, proceeding from the first and radical elements J certain points. Cp. my Songe de Descartes, chap. hand, it all to consider briefly 3 . On the relations between theology and faith, see is necessary first of also F. Martin-Sola, 'L'Evolution experience, that is to homogene du dogme catholique, Fribourg, 1904. First, the primary ontological conditions of this THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL 314 KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 31 5 say, sanctifying grace and the inhabitation ofthe three Divine Persons in us here below according to the planted in manner of nature or as a the soul; then, in the sequence of exercise and operation, the manner in of that full flower which is radical principle— the beatific vision. The first which this experience takes place its and conditions, that is to say, the gift of love, given without claim or merit, it is a new spiritual nature gifts the of Holy Ghost and the connatural awareness of supernatural grafted into die very essence of our soul, which asks as its due to see charity. God even as he sees. As our thinking nature has as proportionate The whole theology of sanctifying grace is founded on the words of object the being of things material as ourselves, as angelic nature has St. Peter: grace makes us participants of the divine nature, consortes for proportionate object spiritual essences, this spiritual supernatural 1 iivinae nahirae. How can we be thus made gods by participation, re- principle has for its connatural object the supernatural Subsistence; ceive the communication of what belongs to God alone? How can a makes us proportionate in the depths of our nature to an object finite subject participateformally in the nature ofthe Infinite? which is essentially divine. And if without doubt it will only flower The Thomists answer: it is by right of'relation to the object that the soul in the fullness of the vision which is its end, it flourishes here below is so made infinite. A formal participation in the divine which would in supernatural charity, which is 'on earth as it is in heaven, in however be impossible if it meant to have the deity as our essence (that what is imperfect a manner; for of its nature it seeks that vision and only not divine should have the divine for its essence is a rank absurdity), is proceeds from faith in the degree to which faith is the ambassador of possible in that it means to have the divine for object: that what is 1 not the vision of beatitude. And with and through charity, its inseparable God should be raised, in the depths of its nature and in the energies dominion, this new nature develops in us a complete organism ofsuper- which precede its operations, so that it has God as the object of its in- natural energies, the ofhope and faith, the gifts ofthe telligence and its love, God as he is in himself, is impossible by the Holy Ghost, the infused moral virtues, which establish our 'conversa- force nature of alone, but not an absolute impossibility. Grace super- tion which is in heaven'. naturally confers on us the intrinsic power of laying hold of the Pure This is how grace, while it leaves us—in our order of being—wholly Act as our object; a new root of spiritual action which gives us as 2 our and infinitely distant from the Pure Act, is in the order of spiritual specific and proper object the divine essence in itself.2 operations and of relation to the object a formal participation in the In the intuitive vision of the divine essence the beatified creature will divine nature. A seed of God: semen Dei? This is nothing metaphorical, receive— and with no shadow of pantheism—infinitely than the more or simply moral: but a 'physical' reality, in the word of the theologians, most audacious pantheism has ever dreamed: the infinite and transcen- nothing diat is to say, ontological, the most solid of realities, than which dent God himself, not that miserable totem-god tangled in matter and radical trans- can be more positive or efficient. It is at the point of this Egging himself forth by our efforts imagined by pantheism and the God, and figuration, which renders us in truth the adopted sons of philosophies of becoming, but the true God, eternally self-sufficient, in- that we must makes us live modo aeterno, in the very life of the Eternal, finitely blessed in the trinity of the Three Persons—in this vision the distinction be- place ourselves to have any not too imperfect idea of that creature becomes the very God himself, not in the order substance, very heart of the of tween the natural and supernatural orders which is the but in that of that immaterial union which fashions the intellectual idea of grace any back- Catholic faith. If we hold a sufficiendy high act.

^-a- n ' 28 - . Sanctifying upJolm of St. Thomas, iM,i-n,q.7^<&P- 3- grace is an inherent quality, the vital germ or rich seed— with re- a Fourth Lateran Council, precisely l This h the sense of the definition of the 6et«s kowwvoI

sliding into naturalism becomes impossible. Some, like Doubtless by our very nature as reasonable Leibnitz, more or beings we are capable ofan less confound the kingdom ofgrace with that of spiritual approximation to the divine essence as our object of vision. beings. This is But we are a capital error. grace, it is die only so ordinated by quality of grace so to shape us, radi- There is a spiritual, metaphysical order itself, proximately the light superior to external nature cally by by of glory. And this is entirely where not only the metaphysician but the poet The capacity for this may live, above all the supernatural. proportion lies in the obediential mechanism and laws of the material world. With this potency of our souls with regard to the First Agent. order all that is hidden in the deepest recesses our supernatural of personality is connected, the free- In any operation two activities are united, but not in of moral activity, the dom motions of the will in as much as they are juxtaposition: nature does not begin from below what grace completes self-contained in the mind: as such it is part above; from the beginning nature only acts as no of this universe (that is from grace has raised it why the angels do not naturally the secret 1 and grace shared in the know ofhearts ), it rises above up. Ifnature performance of supernatural acts, in the created world, the sensible in in and the supra-sensible both, precisely as the vision of God heaven, an act of theological virtue here on an arte/actum, a art. work of But this world of spirits and of liberty, far earth, then there would be brought in an element of mechanical addi- from including in itselfa formal participation in deity, is rather the sum- tion. No: it is precisely because our natural powers of action are in mit ofnature, in the general sense ofwhat has its own proper consistence themselves in a condition of docility and potentiality with regard to in so far as that can be said ofsomething other than God, and it remains, God that supernatural acts rise out of the depths of our nature, from the in as much as it is not freely raised above itself, an entirely natural world. heart ofour soul and our faculties, but only as they have been raised up by There is still an infinite distance between this order and the order of grace, as they have been drawn on by infused qualities toward possibi- grace, grace which is above not only the world of the senses, but the lities which are entirely inaccessible to our nature in itself. whole creation and potencies of creation of nature, all the natural exer- cises of our liberty. Supernatural charity is infinitely more above the THE INHABITATION OF THE THREE PERSONS OF THE TRINITY highest created mind than that mind is above its body: the smallest IN THE SOUL child's act of faith or love is something incomparably more precious, The effect ofour elevation to a state of grace is a new form of the pre- vigorous, more more efficacious, incomparably surpasses the most re- sence of God widiin us, what the theologians call the coming of the splendent natural act of the highest of all the angels. Pascal's famous three Divine Persons and the inhabitation ofthe Trinity in the soul. phrase about the three orders expresses an elementary truth of Christian- our nature, at the God is present in us, at the most intimate heart of ity. Bonumgratiae mitts majus est, quam bonum naturae tortus universi2 very core of our being, by his immensity, his infinite effect, for at each The theological reasons for this fundamental truth have been indi- an- instant he us with our action and our being. But it is quite cated. endows Grace ordinates us to the vision of the divine essence, of Deity which is in ques- other matter than this general and common presence itself, which is above all being, whereas by nature we are ordinated peculiar to a soul in the state tion here. It is that special presence which is only to the knowledge of things in general and the being of sensible God's gene- of grace.1 presence without doubt presupposes things. This special aliquo; It quod novo modo exisrit in is obvious what danger lies in the slightest confusion between these ^Divinae Personae convenit mitti, secundum autem horum est nisi dari quod habetur ab aliquo. Neucrum two formal objects. It would autem, secundum be to risk confounding our natural intel- communis modus quo JLJeus secundum gratiam gratum facientem. Est enim unus lect with our knowledge in grace. presentiam: sicut causa in ettecn- est in omnibus rebus per essenriam, potentiam et est ^p. John of St Thomas. istum autem modum communem, Curs, theol, i, P. q. 58, disp. 22, a. 3. (Vives, t. iv.) bus parricipantibus bonitatem ipsius. Super 2 qua Deus dicitur esse sicut cog- St. Thomas, Sum. theol, unus specialis, creaturae rationali, in i-ii, 113, 9, ad. 2 . qui convenit THE DEGREES 31 8 OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 3I9 ral presence and without it would be impossible, but in itself, in its own ter in the present, to be reserved wholly for the future life. Carissiml, proper exigency, it implies a real and physical (ontological) 1 presence of nuncfilii Dei sumus, says St. John: here and now we are already the sons God within us. God. 'Do you not know that your of members are the temples of the How is this possible? By what reason? By right ofthe object. Ghost, who is within you, Holy whom you have received from God, It is no more by reason of the efficient principle of primary causality and that you are not your own?'2 The beginning of eternal life is here which gives all its being to the soul, but by reason of that end to which and now. This life begins here on earth, it should grow in us unceasing- the soul is directed, redirected, converted, ordered, the object of its the dissolution of our bodies, ly till so as to fully realise by mystical ex- knowledge and its it love—be added at once, for this is the heart of the perience and infused contemplation, as much as is possible here below, question, not in any generalised sense oflove and knowledge, no, but a night our faith, in the of 'when it hath not yet appeared what we shall fruitful, an experiencing love1 and a knowledge which bring us into 3 exacdy that possession of be', God for which sanctifying grace is es- possession of God, unite us with him not at a distance, but in truth. For sentially ordered. if the Three Divine Persons give themselves to us it is so that we may Thus mystical experience and infused contemplation are seen as the possess them, that they be ours? The gift of God is ofsuch a nature that normal end, the rightful life of grace, one might even say are that high- we are given, in the words of St. Thomas, the free enjoyment of the est point towards which all human life is directed: for, in this world at Three Persons. How could this possibly be if they were not really, on- once fallen and redeemed, where grace presses in on every side, all hu- tologically present, giving themselves to us, within us? man experience leads towards the christian life, just as all men belong by Doubtless it is only in the future life and in the beatific vision that man right to Christ, the head of the human race: and the christian life it- will enjoy this perfect possession. But God does not give himselfto us as selfaspires and leads towards the life ofmystical experience. the object ofour fruition in order that this gift should remain a dead let- nitium cognoscente, et amantem in amante. Mt quia cognoscendo et amando creatura THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST ranonalis sua operatione attingit ad ipsum Deum: secundum istum specialem modum Deus non solum dicitur est in creatura rationali, sed dam habitare in ea sicut in Sanctifying grace and the indwelling of God in the soul in a state templo suo. Sic igitur nullus alius effectus potest esse ratio quod divina Persona sit of grace: these are the ontological bases, the first principles of mystical novo modo in rationali creatura, nisi gratia gratum faciens. Unde, secundum solam experience. gratiam gratum facientem mittitur et procedit temporaliter Persona divina. Similiter, ilium solum habere dicimur, What are the secondary principles, in other words, how is it realised? quo libere possumus uti vel frui. Habere autem potes- tatem fruendi divina Persona est solum secundum gratiam St. gratum facientem.' iii, theol, i, P. S, disp. 8, a. 6. (Vives, book Thomas, ^John, 2. Cp. John of St. Thomas, Curs, q. Sum. theol, i, 3. 43, illius dici- ii) : 'Hie autem est unio fruitionis inchoata, et imperfecta. Vere tamen rarione This question ofthe presence ofgrace and the indwelling of the Trinity in the soul is tur Deus, non solum communi modo suae immensitatis et contactu operationis esse magnificendy set forth by John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. disp. a. q. 43, 17, 3. in anima, sed per modum inhabitantis, et amid, et conviventis et finis possessi. Nee fVives, book iv.) These pages together with St. Thomas's articles the mission of the quia in- on solum hoc intelligitur fieri in gloria, sed etiam hie quando datur gratia; turn divine Persons represent the essential doctrinal source. Cp. A. Gardeil, La Structure de visibles missio Personarum, per quam Spiritus Sanctus personaliter datur, et non solum lame etl experience mystique, vol. ii, . pp. 74-7,5; , 238 . Garrigou-Lagrange, in gratia, vel aliquod pp 56f ^J R dona ejus, non solum fit in gloria, seel etiam quando fit sanctificatio L Habitation de la Sainte Trinite et l'expdrience ' mystique' in Revue thethomiste Nov.- etiam I Cor- t speciale augmentum (ut dicit div. Thomas, q. 43. a - 6)> n™ 1°** Dec., 1928, pp. ct seq: f" 449 Sanctus habitat in vobis, 16-17, ubi dicit Apostolus: Templutn De! estis, et Spiritus a 'Novo modo effiarur Deus. Loquitur ergo Apo- Deus praesens mediante gratia ut objectum experimental- statim: si quis autem templutn Dei violaverit, iisperiet ilium ner patriae. cognoscibile et fruibile intra animam.' stolus de violari, qui est status viae et non John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q. 43. statu in quo potest hoc templum * disp. 17, a. 3. s St.Paul,ICor.vi,i9. *St. Thomas: In I Sent, dist. 14, q. 2, a. 2, ad. 2. 8 IJohn! be. cit. 320 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY characteristics this experience Two of strike us first of all in a theolo- rational powers, such as the theological virtues, which are divine in their gical analysis such as this. In the first case, it is knowledge of a super- object. We are like children who have been endowed with a super- human kind: second, it is a manner ofknowledge by connaturality. natural art, a pencil wherewith to write on the sky. It is necessary It is a superhuman and supernatural manner of knowledge. that The na- God himself should put his hand over ours to guide our trembling tural human manner ofknowledge (natural, mutatis mutandis, even to the lines.) angels), consists in knowing by ideas or concepts, and then, in what con- Mystical experience then is knowledge in a superhuman manner, cerns the things of God, by analogy from those created things whence which presupposes a special inspiration from God, which is given are drawn the measure and manner by the of significance of our concepts. gifts of the Holy Ghost, at least by those which are most concerned This is with why faith, though it attains to the knowledge of God in himself our knowledge, the infused gifts ofknowledge and ofwisdom. and in his inward life, secundum suam propriam quidditatem, only does so at a distance and remains an intermediate knowledge, enigmatical, in the words of St. Paul, in the sense CONNATURAL KNOWLEDGE that faith has to make use of the formal means proportionate to our means of natural Mystical experience has a second knowledge, con- characteristic : it is knowledge by cepts and conceptual formulas, analogical, or at best superanalogical connaturality.

notions. 1 There are two methods, says St. Thomas, ofjudging, for example, in In order to know God no longer at a distance, in as much as it is pos- those things which concern chastity: either we may have in our intelli- sible in this life, to overshoot the natural human method of concepts gence that moral science which creates in us an intellectual proportion (and so, as St. John of the Cross so often insists, to abandon all distinct with the truths concerning chastity, and which when it is consulted re- conceptions, all clear knowledge1 ) not only is there need of some direc- sponds in pure observation of its object. Or we may have the desire for tion from above, but specifically of a principle of superior objective the virtue of chastity incorporated in, rooted in our faculties, grown direction, in other words, the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost. into our bones, which desire enables us to reply, no longer in the Mystical experience is a knowledge which is supernaturally inspired. manner of external knowledge, but by instinct, by our immediate in-

On the other hand, if it is true that mystical experience is in line clination, by our co-naturedness (connaturality) with chastity. with the normal development of the life of grace, there must be in the Face to face with God we have no other means of surpassing know- soul in a state of grace filaments delicately sensitive to the breath of ledge by concepts than our connatural knowledge, our 'co-naissance', as heaven, in scholastic language, 3 permanent dispositions or habitus, which Claudel has called it, our co-nativity with him. assure the possibility, the normal right, of the achievement of this in- What is it in us can make us radically connatural with God? Sancti- spired knowledge. Such are the gifts of the Holy Ghost, whose particu- fying grace, by which we are made consortes divinae naturae. And what lar office is to render the soul exquisitely sensible to divine inspiration. is it in us which brings out into action, makes flower this connaturality (All the more so, that, as St. Thomas teaches, in a much more general rooted in us? Supernatural charity. We are co-natured with God by manner these gifts are themselves 8 love, but which necessary for the christian life, since charity. Charity, which is not the name for any kind of reason alone cannot hold be a sufficient first principle for the use of super- presupposes sanctifying grace, whose dominion it is, and which lays good- on God, really present within us, by the gift ofhis h l lmow God at knows him as j£j* ° once m at a dista ani tb*b «n only be realised ff ^ ™ as in m the beaofic vision. ness, companion. More, charity wins to God Meanwhile, the darkness will grow in proportion as the our friend, our eternal dtstance diminishes. St. John ofthe Cross, Cant., str. i, second redaction. cp.i, r, ad. 3. 2 Hbil ii-ii, 45. 2: 6, Sum.theol.,i-ii,6S,2. aP. Claudel, UArtPottiquc. 322 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY himself he is, in the inwardness of his life which is our . God, but it is God himselfwhom of we experience in our love. Charity loves God in and by and with God.1 'It is by virtue of the gift the very of God', writes John of St. Thomas', *and in To go more deeply into the points which have here been gathered the union of experiencing love that mystical wisdom attains to divine from such theologians as John of St. Thomas and Joseph of the Holy things, which that love makes more at one with us, 2 more immediately Spirit, would imply a long development. Here a brief summary must touched and tasted, and enables us to see that what is so felt by the suffice. affec- tions is higher and more excellent than any consideration ofthe cognos- The things of God having been so intimately joined with our nature 1 citive virtues.' And again: 'Faith attains to God while remaining at a made ours, bred into our bones by the love ofsupernatural charity, the certain distance, in so much as faith is 'the substance of things not seen', property of the gift of wisdom is to make use of this love, this infused but charity attains to God in himself, intimately united to that which is charity, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, so that it may pro- hidden from faith, And thus though faith rules over both love and its gress in scholastic language from the objective means of knowledge to union with God in as much as it is faith which 3 proposes their object, yet the objectum quo, in such a manner that we not only experience our love in another way, by virtue of this union by which the soul takes an 2 Cp. the passage of St. Thomas quoted infra, and also immediate hold on God, the intelligence is raised p. 334, chapter vii, pp. by this affective experi- 394-8, infra. ence to a point where it may judge of divine things in a higher manner *Cp. Joseph of the Holy Spirit, Cursus theologicae mystico-scholasticae, than is possible ed. nova, to the obscurity of faith, because it penetrates to and Bruges, 1925 et seq. knows those more hidden things which faith itself cannot make manifest, s 'Et sic affecrus transit in conditionem objecti.' John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i-ii, ever finding there more to love and to taste of in love: and the more q. 68-70, disp. 18, a. 4,n. n. love experiences these things which are hidden the more highly does it Under the special inspiration ofthe Holy Spirit the soul so passes from the side ofthe judge of divine things, a special instinct 2 object, or enters into an objective condition, not to be itself the object known, but by of the Holy Spirit.' rather to be the means of knowledge or objectum quo (cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Per- A precious passage which demonstrates how mystical wisdom judges fection chrttienne et contemplation, 6th edit. vol. ii; Revue thomiste, Nov.-Dec, 1928, pp. the things of God by an affective experience which bears it onto those 3-6; A. Gardeil, Structure, 46 vol. ii, p. 248; Revue thomiste, May-June, 1929, pp. 272-3). I of the Cross What have here called objectum quo is neither charity nor wisdom taken as habitus, John {he. tit.), since these created effects are no longer there like a quod in. which, as in but the feeling actually experienced by the soul, the actual effects which serve as an a mirror, a certain likeness to God may be read, but only as a quo or means actual ofattaining to himself. medium ofknowledge under the illumination ofthe Holy Ghost. So God is still God This is not an absolutely immediate knowledge (only the beatific vision is known by his effects (necessarily so in so much as he is not seen in his essence), but these that), but it is knowledge truly ifimperfectlyimmediate, without pass- effects are ing through no longer the things or objects already known to the soul by which it rises any created quod in order to reach the divine; so that God is attained, not in the ananoetic only without manner ofhuman knowledge, where God is known by his shoulders, the reasoning whereby a substance is known per accidens, but touched and in the obscurely words of St. John of the Cross (Cant. str. 32, 19. See also chap, vii, infra); they experienced: what the mystics in speaking of the highest stages of experi- are like the ence and union 'a sub- touches ofconnaturality which are felt under the light of the Spirit, and by have described as 'substantial touches' and as meeting ofnaked which stances, the things of God are experienced in themselves. Briefly, the objective inter- that is to say, the soul and the divine' (St. John ofthe Cross, see infra, chap. vii). mediary is there neither Ifit is necessary to be still precise, say that infused love and the touches an infused idea nor a principle ofinference, it is the actual in- more we may fused love which has of connaturality themselves 'formal signs' or the pure in quo passed under the illumination ofthe Spirit into the' condition ofan here spoken of are not in objectum quo, by which ofintellection like the that, under the illumination ofthe Holy Ghost, they and in which the contact between God and the soul is felt: concept, but 'Spintus testimonium are able to formal sign, but in a knowledge which reddit spiritui nostrum per effectum amorisfdelis, quem in nobis play a part comparable to that ofthe facit' (St. is wholly unites the soul to a hidden God, Thomas, In Ep. ad Rom., viii, 16). When the soul has become nothing but obscure, experimental and apophatic, which love, when nothing quasi ignoto. in the soul presents an obstacle to the light of the Holy Spirit or snys in self-consciousness, it J becomes wholly a means ofperceiving God by means ofa John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol., i-ii, q. 68-70, disp. 18, a. 4, n. 9, and 5. In the French certain spiritual touch and savour. So that even translation, instead of being known by his effects chap, iv, pp. 1 3 8-9 and 1 42. according to a superhuman manner God 1$ known immediately or 'by his face' sayi St. ,

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND 324 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY 325 fruition in God which mystical tilings which arc hidden from faith. It is in the very degree to which the experimental wisdom seeks to realise divine reality is hidden from us—transcendently beyond the grasp ofany here below. created idea—that this secret wisdom knows its experience. Truly thou art a hidden God, the God of our salvation: all the more die living and FIDES ILLUSTRATA DONIS saving God in that thou art hidden! The soul cherishes these shadows of It is obvious that this is an experience, if the word experience signifies faith because it knows that they are fecund, because it knows, it feels that the knowledge of an object as present, where the soul takes the impress in them can it intimately taste, know by experience the only depths of of an action exercised upon it, and perceives by reason of this submis- our God. This is the theological root of the doctrine of St. of John the sion. It is a vital, a free, a meritorious operation, but one in which the 'Seek him by faith and by love, and like a blind man these Cross: two soul does not move itself (in as much as 'to move oneself' is to perform guides will lead thee by roads thou canst not know into the secrecy of an act by virtue of an anterior act), but where it is moved and put into is hidden from thee if thou doest not hide God. ... He thyself like Him immanent activity solely by the work of the grace of God, as the living and to feel Him. If a wishes in order to know Him man to find some- instrument of the Holy Spirit, which raises it to a higher direction in the he must enter into the secrecy of its hiding thing hidden place to find it, suspension of its human manner of action: which is why the mystics de-

he finds it he is hidden as it is. . . . Always thou must and when know scribe it as a passivity or non-action. This experience can be called im- .'x hidden and serve his hiddenness in hiding thyself. . . that he is mediate in the sense that it makes use ofno intermediary images, drawn Thus, finally, it is the connaturality ofcharity ofwhich the inspiration from creatures, since it goes beyond the method of concepts and anal- the Spirit makes use so that judge of the things of of we may God under a ogies. But it is not immediate in the sense that it is not the vision of the direction above, a formal reason: in that 1 his from by new such a way we at- divine essence and God is still, as St. Theresa teaches us, known by tain, in the obscurity of faith, not only to an entirely supernatural ob- affections and in the effects, i.e. by the effects which he produces in the ject, the ipsissimum divine as such, as does theological faith, but also to very roots of the powers of the soul, and which are like some touch or manner ofknowledge which is in itself superhuman supernatural. 2 a and taste which is spiritually known in the darkness offaith.

soul »Cp. her Autobiography, chap, xxvii, 'By the effects which God produces in the Illustre quiddam cernimus, 'the presence of God we understand that he is there.' St. Theresa is speaking here of Quod nesciatjinem pati. ..? prayer and quietude which is often felt by those who are favoured with the union of Christ. But the and which she opposes to the intellectual vision of the humanity of It must be clearly understood that what I speaking of here is not deity, on the condition am words are applicable to all the degrees ofmystical experience of the there is no question of a perfect experience, that is reserved for the kingdom of die blessed, but that it is clearly remembered that in the highest degrees of the Cause, but an immediate knowledge the commencement of that experience, which can never be fully or slightest inference from the effects to the Cause in the effects. wholly achieved in this life; union how charity, by virtue of its affective <%>• ! Curs, dieol, i, P. q- 43. Cp. p. 322, n. 3, supra. Also, John of St. Thomas, with dwelling in Ghost, in God our souls, under the motion of the Holy experimentaliter senator, eaamsi 17, a. 3, n. 13 and 17: 'Sicut contactus animae quo experiences and possessively suprarational quae corpus reddit vwum et knows near at hand—by the sua substantia non videatur, est informatio et animatio, conjunc- experimentaliter, et ut objectum perception of the gift of wisdom—God made present in the soul as a aoimatum, ita contactus Dei quo sentitur operation* intimae, quo tum, etiam antequam videatur intuitive in se, est contactus gift, as the object of experience and possible fruition. It is the dedication manifestos, eo quod imcttoeps operatur intra cor, ita ut sentiatur et experimentaliter written in the this datur earns heart of the very nature of sanctifying grace itself; cognitio experimental docet nos

actual distinct use ofsuch conceptual formulas What then has become of concepts? They have not been obliterated truth! I mean the as a for- that would be contrary to the very nature of our knowing—it obliterates in a certain way, not by sight intelligence, which has mal means of but love, that distance from its object need of them to be. They are still there. But all distinct concepts have by the experience of which is die silent, are So, as of the Holy Spirit has shown,1 grown asleep, as the Apostles slept on the Mount of Olives. state of faith alone. Joseph it is the confused in attaining its object by a new formal modality And concepts which intervene, and which may remain faith itself which— due wholly and knowledge, and of which it is incapable by unperceived, only play a purely material part. I would say indeed to the gifts of wisdom 2 that if mystical experience passes savorous and penetrating, and makes us ad- through them, it is not by way of the itself—is rendered more a superhuman manner to its ultimate formal means of knowledge which regulates and measures our know- here in a purer, more perfect, ob- ing, it is which the conceptual formulas are the sign, without being measured by them, as conditions which are re- ject, to that divine reality of unity of the spirit: Qui adliaeret quired on the part of the subject, and that is why they may be so con- and which is there possessed in the 3 fused, so indistinct, as little discernible as one will: the formal means Domino, unus spiritus est. and the look for mystical experience outside the law of mystical knowledge come from elsewhere. It is the con- It is a disastrous illusion to naturality possibility of a mystical experience of charity as it is guided by the Holy Spirit which plays the bounds of faith, to imagine the formal part. faith illuminated by the gifts of the The proper light ofinfused contemplation is the ardour of a freed from theological faith. Living love which experience, and to recall the royal words of bums in the night. This is why this supreme wisdom, this Spirit is the very core of this supernatural philosophical commentary will ever be knowledge of love, which, says St. John of the Cross, we St. John of the Cross, which no 1 proportionate way to the mysti- may compare to 'a warm light', is described as a renunciation ofknow- able to efface, it is die single direct and ledge and an ignorance, 'a ray ofdarkness for the mind', in the words of cal union. Dionysus the Areopagite. An apophatic or negative' contemplation, we OF CERTAIN PROBLEMS HI. A TRANSITION TO THE CONSIDERATION may add, which unites us experimentally to die God hidden from and theological considerations, they are It is necessary to insist on these superior to all our knowledge, Deo ignoto. Finally, we see how mystical talking about in speaking the unique method of knowing what one is wisdom, feeling andsuffering bylove those things to which faith attains in approaching any new prob- of the experience of divine things. Before concealment, enables us to judge and to estimate in a higher and richer • lems certain explanations are necessary. manner thanwe can know by faith, but does not discover any other object the for man in the pure and simple, There is only one spirituality ofknowledge than that offaith. Mystical experience perfects faith in the spirituality, that which is given mode absolute sense of the word: supernatural of knowing, not in the thing known. Indeed, could it go ren- how our whole life into love, by the Holy Ghost, and which translates beyond faith faith when is at the centre, possessed in itself ofknowledge Curs. proxlme elidens divmam conterapkrionem.' of the inward I'fides illnsn donis est habitus and hidden life of God? It is the God of faith who is ex- u.dtep. I3,q.i,sect. 3,11.15. perienced theol.tnystico-schol.,t. here on earth by his reverberation, his soul the Aposd implanting in the says that the faith of -St. Thomas (Hi, SS, a. ad. 1) «"£**££ by love, the God of the beatific vision will at and sees.'. . .Icco^pta^^g who be once seen Christ mjU,«faft. a faith which tasted in the life of the world to come: for mystical experience is the W^inaihersense.afdthwMchis^ ofcheeyes.butbythesupernaturalHghtofcheg^ beginning here on earth of the experience ofour homeland ofheaven. mdmnatmht, of love .. * tion Ghost using the savour ? ™£ Whenin the of die Holy ££ X act ofinfused contemplation the gift ofwisdom, under the that by the gift ^yn^^^^co.m^^^^^^^^^. action of God, delivers faith from the ana- human mode ofconcepts and asitwerei fl«i^.^R.Ga^^ logy— do I not say from conceptual formulas which express the revealed tion, 6th edit. v. 2. . I Cor. vi. I7-, 1 s Kvptm ev mefya eW, Seem/«,chap.vii,p.4i7. <5 Be KoXXAnevos t£ 328 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 329 den it entirely spiritual. It is in this sense that St. Paul logician: speaks of th mathematician and the we can also find it in the work of the spiritual man in opposition to the 'carnal', the animal or physical marf practical intelligence, for the will like the intellect is a spiritual faculty to everything which is not the of order ofholiness. 'For the neither liberty sensual man and there can be nor virtue without some spirituality: al- perceiveth not these things that are ofthe Spirit of God; for it is foolish- ready it is there, like some secret principle of animation, in the humblest ness to him, and he cannot understand: because it is spiritually examined" efforts of the peasant or the artisan to impose the form of reason on But the spiritual man judgeth all things and he himself is judged by no earthly things. But it is in the moral life of metaphysics or poetry (of the man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may musician or any other the creators instruct poet or the of offorms), when man is him? But we have the mind of Christ.'1 touched by an inspiration which, whether it directs him to rise upward it Why is so I have already endeavoured to explain: 1 'The animal or or to sink downward, remains or may remain nevertheless in the natural natural man receives by his senses everything which comes 8 to him order, that this natural spirituality is rightly seen. In its highest degree it from without: he gathers his ideas from them by means of intellectual shows itselfas bound up with that natural love of God which is inscribed activity. Reason, which transcends the senses, works nevertheless in in the heart of our being, but which—without grace and supernatural their stockyard. Even the highest philosophy remains a tributary of charity—cannotestablishits single dominion overourwill; and this is why their materialism. it resembles a strange reflection, a strange homesickness for the spiritual 'This is why mystical language knows only two terms: life according plenitude of those whom St. Paul calls 'perfect* or 'the sons of God'. to the senses and life in the spirit: those who sleep in their sensuality and I would hold in particular, as has been pointed out in the last chapter, those who watch in the Spirit. Because we have only two sources- the that a mystical inspiration traverses all great metaphysics: it would ap- senses and the Spirit ofGod. pear, and we will return to this point later on, that a definite—but in- 'Man has a spiritual soul, but it informs a body. Reason cannot suffice effective—desire to know the first Cause in its essence is like a secret to fire bring us into a wholly spiritual life. Man's sole authentic spirituality is bound ] up with the grace ofthe a I would like to reproduce a Holy Ghost' -this applies to spiritual- here note from my RJponse a Jean Cocteau (pp. 58-9}: ity in the pure and simple meaning Aristotle, or rather the author of Ethics to Eudemes, has written, It will be asked per- of the word, that fills and takes hold haps if it is a man's good genius which of the entire being. makes him desire what he should and when he should. Without thinking, deliberating or taking counsel, he is able to rliinV and to But the mark of spirituality may be wish for imprinted on only some part of what will suit him best. What is the cause of this unless it is a man's good our being or genius? our life, on some one But what is this good fortune in itself and how does it come that it holds these aspect or from a certain side. This is happy inspirations? already spirituality a This comes back to asking what is the supreme principle of the of kind. In this sense there exists a natural spirituality motions of ofthe soul? Now it is manifest that God, who is the origin of the universe, is multiple degrees and of various kinds, by which the soul also that human of our souls. All things are moved by him, who is himself present in us. ... bears witness to its proper essence. The origin We find it in the exercise of the ofreason is not reason, but something higher. But what is higher than rea- speculative son intelligence: weighed and intelligence if not God? This is why the ancients said, Happy are those who down as it is by other things, there is a without spiritual element deliberating are moved to do well. This does not come from their will, but in the work of the scholar and the philosopher, of the from a principle which is present in them, which is superior to their intellect and their pixels Sivriv XpioroO fop*. St Paul, I Cor. ii, will 14-16 — Some even by divine inspiration foresee the future.' COmmetlt oa sa «j* <«ct: '. . In omnibus ille habet, The old remLt^Tt \ ™ . qui recte se philosophers are not alone in recognising this special movement of God in the natural order, the theologians do so also. Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange in La Vie J Vlgikm °- enim ^cte judi«t er se vigilare dormire; spirituelk.Jvly, sed dorSr ^ et alium 1923, p. 419. On this problem of natural spirituality, cp. the forthcoming book by Charles Du ^^^"Pinmakhomojudicarenon potest, sicutnec vigilans a dormiente.' Bos, - Dm spirituel dans admirable and J ¥antan' Dk Vordre littiraire, of which the first chapters of an . %«• Chronic h Roseau d'Or, 1928 penetrating quality have already appeared in Vigile (1930-3 1). THE DEGREES OF 330 SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 331 in die heart of the metaphysician. He does not know what he this 'natural contemplation' so desi When is cultivated by minds in quest of the philosopher as such cannot even have an idea of the beatific perfection and makes vision of spiritual use of those natural means of a moral and what God has prepared for those that love him. This desire is order which contemplation nativd ascetic righdy so called normally presup- mystical. ' understandable poses, it is why the discernment of the difference may On the other hand there is—if takes one the word contemplation difficult, despite the diversity in become in their essential natures and the its widest sense, as meaning a form ofconcentrated meditation— possession of various means of there is judgment. We are well aware, for ex- a natural contemplation', which, said Albcrtus Magnus, 'is for ample, of the difference between the per- animal and vegetable species, but in a fection of him who contemplates, and which remains in the intellect" given instance the biologist may know considerable hesitation between without 'passing on into the heart by love'. Contemplatio Philosophorum the two. Let us only here remark that this 'contemplation of the philo- est propter perfectbnem contemplantis, et ideo sistit in intellect, sophers' in a pure state et ita finis remains as the highest point of that rational and eorum in hoc est cognitio intellects. Sed contemplatio Sanctorum est discursive activity which is propter righdy human, but whose stability is al- amorem ipsius, scilicet contemplati Dei: idcirco, non sistit in ultimo ways precarious, for nature is fine in in- always pressing us on. It soars, but it can- tellect per cognitionem, sed transit ad affectum per amorem?- rest. It has not neither that inert passivity of those subnormal states due The "contemplation ofdie philosophers', ifit does not progress to temperament, into the sickness or imagination (which is a sort of pseudo- heart by love— that is to say, for it is necessary to take these words in the contemplation which rests but cannot soar), nor the supernatural pas- strictest sense, if it does not itself proceed by the steps of love, sivity 'the gressibus of contemplation of die saints', which is in reality the most amoris, and does not proceed by the very quality of the union of love incomparably profound activity, and which produces in the soul a (which would suppose the love ofsupernatural charity)— unique may neverthe- suppleness and self-mastery. That contemplation at once soars less be united with a natural love of the contemplated object, be filled and reposes: et volabo et requiescam. with a fondness for it, which gives it the colour of an affective and ex- perimental experience. It is in itself an entirely different thing from mystical experience properly IS THERE AN AUTHENTIC MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE NATURAL ORDER? so called, where distance is overpassed and which attains not only an object intellectually contemplated and affec- Thus we have admitted on the one hand the existence of a natural tionately coloured by reason ofits conformity to the desires of the mind, spirituality' (taking the word spiritual in a relative sense) and on the butlayshold onareality which is loved with passion, penetrated through other that of a natural contemplation' (the word contemplation being and through with the fire of the love used in a loose with which it enflames the soul, and inaccurate sense). We have admitted that there is a and with which the soul is united. natural There, as we have seen, it is the con- mystical desire or natural aspiration towards mystical contempla- naturality oflove which, under tion; the illumination and special inspiration and that there is (in the large sense ofthe word) a certain natural con- of the Holy Spirit, is the formal means ofknowledge. Still, in regard to templation, not in itself mystical, which can neverdieless be made use of the exterior and outwardly visible signs by which outsiders judge of by this mystical desire. these things, certain extrinsic resemblances may be found between die The ground being so cleared, we are confronted by another and two conditions. much more relevant question: i.e. Is there a mystical contemplation of a natural order? Is adf ert there a mystical experience in the natural order? Evi- fVeo,chip . be. After ? for a time having attributed this precious little boT denuy, if t "inasm one gives to the words 'mystical experience' a vague sense, in- now on« again recognises Albertus Magnus as its a,.rW r rul l Scheebcn

one way or ^um. theol, i, i-ii, > another this would be 6, p. 5: and 109, 3. to confound what is absolutely ^The V, Ev omnibus propertogracewithwhatisnatureandoftheorderofnature. church defined this point against Baius. Cp. the Bull of Pius "fflictlonibus. u h

THE DEGREES OF 334 SUPER-RATIONAL MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY 335 can be connaturalised to the supernatural without bein R oursel^ of God is incapable of our rightful connaturalisation with divine na^ahsciOrJythethcologicdvirmeofcharitv.beiurS love ^ and so of procuring a knowledge of God by connaturality, SUper" things a naturallove, can make us connatural * with God. ( i) It „linn or mystical experience ofthe deep things of God. Without doubt, man being made, in die natural order, in the image attaxns to God as the object oflove really present in us by ofhis Creator, we can very X of9/ and resemblance well admit—if, at least, we andasthefriendin whose life and beatitude we mayshawSpf^ assume as hypothesis the standpoint of the state of pure or integral na- ing from supernatural faith which however obscurely and at aSf ture, where we would be able to love God as the author of our being attams to God according to his essence, and not consS tW effectively above all by our simple natural powers—we can well admit nosauve vn-tues are to reaching its object by means of natural love of God, which is ^^^ledge.firp^^bythemktheW.brSrconceptual Z that this supposed as loving God in an ef- fective fashion, may create an active similitude, a form of natural sym- Wg object as it » exists in itself, charity already nere bdoTkv pathy with God in so far as he may be attained to by creatures. From God W^jy and in s' himself^ faith cannot know him); it ZsGod which would follow an affective complaisance towards the rationally known object and even, under a special inspiration of the natural order, judgments on the divine perfections by the processes of inclination and The natural love of God has none of these characteristics. Even sup- instinct. This would produce a very high analogy with the mystical experi- effectively love God above all, this love, which proceeds fiJJ" ence, but which, no more than any other analogy, cannot be taken for ^ce as creatures infinitely distant from the Pure Act, whi ZZt b the thing itself. For it implies no rightful experience of the divine reality

present within us, no passion for God suffered in the soul, no felt contact

with God, but a knowledge which is always essentially at a distance, Y anal0glCaI fa^fcdge where knov£ TZ X God is only however determined by affection. And this feeling or natural sympathy 31 bd ^Tentt^XGotT^r y rigk °f fc of which we have spoken cannot be called a true connaturality with C 1S S k" ° '™ asVtranscendental God: at least, if we are not to confuse all words in one, the words mys- goodeood-i„lT3i? u i. ^ „ . „ much v ht Ae suprcme ^ subs stent Gq tical experience must be reserved for what is a formal and not only vir- tual 1 participation in the divine nature, i.e. participation in God in as much as he is God and not by example of created things.

But, most of all, this state ofpure or integral nature does not exist: in g iUmmm »»»«*»<« ' Deo conjungit, spiritual* amoris.' Jl/i a d. . vinculo 3 fact, the possibility ofloving God the author ofour being effectively and S A rigbt&AfrienJship between ,„J ^ j • above all things m™ d not by our natural powers has simply not been given to us. cannot exist without m™!? ?° " Possiblc ™ «*« na^^ order and 11 The De duri (S^^ticensis, xii, hypothesis is a fiction and is without any relevance to our real state. CW/tote, disp * Curs, theol, t. i £ S t tV ^^ ^oo^ad.i;^,^^^ Nevertheless the rough outline of this natural resemblance of the way of the natural love of God to mystical experience remains possible: in S d ,1C su deiry !*•** reme Good but his andinwardVe P . in his Godhead, in fact dbt Go^ l this love, for all that it remains incapable of making us effectively ly ° JCCt.°fsu eraatu<*I attained to by charity P beatitude and is immediate- 'Natur V co prefer God to all and intense, and quod est &&io non potest attingcre things else, can yet be both profound objectum beatitudinf. Deum, secundum S* proutreadlti 4,7. " nipsum SpeS etchar m.//«p/.,ii-ii, This itas.'5M is why no virtual participation in the divine nature suffices to create a rightful friendship between man and God. (Cp. Salm., he. (it.). 336 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 337 have effect, if not in our life, at least in the realm of our 2 speculative Massignon1 and Asin Palacios on Islam, the contemporary '" study ofHas- pirations: it can create in the soul this outline of resemblance 3 and *t the personal testimony of a sidism, and Father Wallace or Mukerji* to this which raises to a purer and higher degree of inspiration and natural Hindu spirituality, or still more the works ofpresent-day ethnographers spirituality the various natural analogies to contemplation which we truths which are contained in a confused form in these two first. shall consider at a later stage, other Cp. the study by the Rev. Fr. Schulte, Fides Inplicita, Pustet, Regensburg and Rome. An adult can only bejustified by some manner ofbeliefin the redemption worked THIRD by OBJECTION This faith in Christ the Redeemer allows Christ. of three different degrees or states: the mysteries the There are mystical schools among explicit beliefin of Incarnation and Redemption such as we Chris- Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hin- idea a mediator dus, etc. claim tians know; the of between God and men; and finally the conviction Their to mystical experience does not rest on theologi- has foreseen that God in his mercy in some manner the salvation of the human race. cal faith. There is therefore a natural mystical experience. those St. Thomas, speaking of who lived before the coming of Christ and who are One thing is certain: if we so encounter following the voice of their cases of authentic mystical saved by conscience, writes, 'Although they lacked an ex- experience, these cases result from divine plicit faith (in a Mediator), they had nevertheless implicit faith in the divine providence, grace and from infused con- believing that God would save men by some means pleasing to him.' (Sum. templation, more or less modified in theol., ii-ii, their typical forms by special con- 2, 7, ad. 3.) Thus to believe that God will save by those means which are pleasing to ditions of development, existing outside the affluence of is sacramental him to possess an implicit faith in Christ the Redeemer. It is difficult to sustain the grace and the visible radiation the 1 idea that the conditions are different for those of revealed truth. Everything leads who, living after the coming of Christ, us to think that such cases have never heard of him. (Elisee de la Nativite\ L'ExpSrience mystique d'Ibn 'Arabi est- do exist, for we know that the unbaptized, elk surttaturelle? Etudes Carm^litaines, Oct. 1931.) though they lack the seal of unity and cannot participate by virtue of The teaching of the Church should be remembered here: 'Deus omnipotens omnes the Church in the proper work of the Church, which is the continuity of homines sine exceptione vult salvosfieri (I Tim. 2, 4), licet non omnes salventur; Chris- redemption, may nevertheless tus Jesus D. N., sicut nullus receive without knowing it that super- homo est, fuit vel erit, cujus natura in illo assumpta non natural life which fuerit, ita nullus est, fuit vel erit, pro quo passus non fuerit; licet non omnes passionis is the divine life-blood in the veins of the Church and .' ejus mysterio redimantur. . . (First Council of Chiersy. the direction oftheSpiritwhich Cp. Council ofTrent.) Bas- guides the Church; may belong invisibly ing herself on the words of St. Paul, that Christ died for all men (II Cor. v, ij), the to the Church of Christ, and have sanctifying grace and so theological Church has condemned the following propositions: 'Semi-pelagianum est dicere, faith and the infused virtues.2 Christum pro omnibus omnino hominibus From this point ofviewworks like thoseof mortuum est et sanguinem fudisse:' 'Chris- tus dedit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem Deo, non pro solis electis, sed pro *A man who has not omni- been given a good as a birthright values it the more because he bus et solisJidelibus-' 'Pagani, Has had to Judaei, haeretici aliique hujus generis nullum omnino ac- win it for himself. Many of us Christians could from this point of view ' cipiunt aJesu Christo influxum 'Extra Ecclesiam nulla conceditur gratia.' take lessons in fidelity from these infidels. But the very degree ofthe prestige in which J contemplate is held by the L Massignon, La Passion d'Al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour-al-Hallaj, martyr mystique 4e ; spiritually-minded in paribus infidelium and the resources which they dispky in translating 1'Islam, 2 vols. Paris, 1922; 'Le i'lA-HaUa},' asiatique, and considering what they have obtained, particul- Diwan Journal Jan-.Mar. 1931. ar^ where the faculty for with Al-Hallaj, the hero of the al- poetic expression exceeds the experience, may deceive us primary work of Louis Massignon, Ayn al-Qudat in our estimate of the stage which Hamadani, a mystic of the same lineage, whose Sakwa pub- they have reached. On the other hand, the whole may be connected, was pHyaolop which prepares lished by M. for and accompanies contemplation (without speaking of M.J. Benabdeljali (Journal asiatique.J3a.-M.s1. 1930). accidental guts which are frequently suspect), in these cases where the human search Miguel Asin Palacios, El Islam cristianizido, estudio del 'sufismo' a trove's de las obras de is stretched to its uttermost, may stand out in particular relief. Ifthese observations are Abenarabi de Murcia, Madrid, 193 1 . The case ofIbn-Arabi appears to call for much more °£lMa must be ' "" i reg« bytkt^»^ cismepar la route deslndes, Brussels, 1921. MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 338 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 339

precious 1 However difficult it may seem, die discernment of these authentic on primitive prayer, give us the most confirmations offact. And not impossible, at least in the order of probability. these are only the first explorations in a difficult and complicated region. cases is The criticism expressions and evidence, the study of their analogies with and corre- But it is of no syncretism that we are thinking, and something very of comparative spondence to the witness of the saints can help us; and no love which dis- different from a phenomenalistic mysticism, occupied in a man of himself is without its indications, however effacing its essential object and reducing all spiritual things to the mater- possesses fugitive be, when it penetrates the whole being with the desire ial plane. What is desired is a theological comparative mysticism, which they may to be and to be with God, that desire of two aspects of which would seek to discriminate among and deepen the righdy spiritual dissolved one without the other. values and recognise the passage of God, who leaves no spot without cannot exist the other hand, a large harvest of doubtful or apocryphal cases his witness. Only such a comparative mysticism would be in the posi- On take is appears only too probable when we into account the fact that tion to discern and preserve everywhere what authentic, because it intense meditation and concentration more or less would refer all likenesses to a known face, instead ofpeopling the world states of privileged, less forced, present an external resemblance with a series of vain images which resemble nothing and which anni- more or may to supernatu- and that what may be called the hilate one another, or the endeavour to create a supposititious image by ral contemplation, 'physics' of the in- terior life with all its train ofphenomena ('the weakness ofecstasy', in the piling all the disparate elements in one confusion. Because there is a Hildegarde), may be roused purely natural flock the Shepherd who leads it is also the guide of those 'other sheep' wordsof St. by causes as well who without knowing him have also received of his plenitude and who as by higher influences. In those instances where that natural or philo- in question have not yet heard his voice. Because she has received the deposit of re- sophical 'contemplation' which was above plays a con-

is that it continues in a single velation in its integrity the Church permits us to honour wheresoever siderable part, it seldom or pure state.

they may be the scattered fragments of that revelation. The saints who Where it is not assisted and raised above itself by actual graces, particu- belong to the visible Church enable us to recognise their far-offbrothers larly where its 'realisation' is most passionately sought and lacks at the

control dogma, can it fail to ex- who are ignorant ofher and who belong to her invisibly: St. John of the same time the disciplining of how be Cross enables us to do justice to Ramakrishna.2 The perfect imitator of posed to corruptions and illusions, to the lower influences ofbodily con- influences are yet Christ; the apostle Paul is the leader of all the truly spiritual men ofall the ditions and of the imagination, and to higher which

world, in whatsoever country they may have been born, and just as the of the natural or preternatural order, which are not divine and may in-

virtuous man is the measure ofall human things3 so in this supreme son of deed be perverse? 4 these the spirit all authentic mystical life finds its exemplar and its measure. This problem of the relations between the human mind and

1 other separated is with particular sharpness in re- Cp. L. Massignon (supra), and also infra, chap. vii;J. Mare"chal, Etudes sur la psycho- intelligences presented logic Jes mystiques, vol. i (1924); O. Lacombe, Orient et Occident, Etudes carme'litaines, lation to diose regions where the 'too great love ofGod' has not been re- Apr. 1931. And the works ofRudolf Otto, Heiler, Maison-Dursel, M. Horten, etc. E P. vealed and where nevertheless a heroic desire of spirituality may come *I do not at all ignore the dubious elements in the earthly destiny ofa Ramakrishna, to light. It is not only a question of those frauds and deceptions of the whose own personality appears to exhibit the features of a veracious contemplative, and with regard fallen spirits which menace the reasoning animal seeking to escape from to whose school and his continuators there is need of considerable re- serve; elements which are the less surprising in the lack of the maternal succour of the the mediocrity of his nature. We cannot exclude the idea that certain visible Church. ascetic efforts, certain sequestrations of die soul in itself, in non-christ- *Aristotle, Nie. Ethics, book x, chap. v. ian regions, may tend in fact (on die side of die subject) to a mental Both Deissmann (Pauhs, 1911) and Evelyn Underbill (The Mystic Way, iojr) re- commerce as such, which is the same in the good cognise this with the angelic nature pre-eminent and universal importance of St. Paul. (Cp. N. Arseniev, Das ends 'ganz anien' in ier Mystik, and the evil angels; and that these dispute, for their own ulterior Philoscphia perennis, v. ii, pp. 1043 et seq.) EXPERIENCE SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL AND PHILOSOPHY 341 340 THE DEGREES OF in its essence it is. At the same time the possession of this immaterial human reason, which the waters of the which are proper to themselves, con- have been joined by less pure currents care which St. Thomas took to original spring and tributaries. vivium with the human soul. The refute of the Vedantas is more apparent than real, others on the possibility for If the pantheism endured theories ofAvempace, Averroes and man the 1 desired, and seems to be produced most of all by the lack world of pure spirits by intellec- rather than of of an immediate achievement of the technique, if the immense mystical effort which runs through 1 point this temptation may prove seduc- conceptual tual intuition, shows to what brings clearly into play those natural aspirations for hypothetical case which I have suggested Hindu thought tive to philosophers. In this contemplation which seem to prefigure it in the natural order, it conceded to perfect however, the human spirit might find that had this at- processes ofasceticism and intuition which prepare its resting seeing the pure spirits and sharing the natural traction, not so much in a desire of metaphysic which looks for and prepares for it the per- receive their assistance in being carried place, and a — their beatitude, but in order to temptation for those who seek to conquer by their own efforts it might imitate in some fashion, manent to a superhuman contemplation, where runs through all this thought, thinking but quite another night than a supernatural gift, which of ofa in a suspension of knowledge, in a night pure abolition as the absolute is cloud about Tabor, choice of a supreme despair or good, an that of infused contemplation and the luminous of the Supreme. unequivocal sign of the fact that where infused contemplation has not their manner of self-knowledge and knowledge 2 grace it cannot be arrived at by natural means. The in- how a certain kind of intel- been given by If it is so, we can more easily understand remains: either an authentic and supernatural mys- 'realisation' by means of evitable alternative lectual mysticism, which seeks for ecstasy or adventitious but accidental which can tical experience (which may be overlayed by asceticism and an entirely metaphysical dialectic, and of we does not unite with divine or in various elements) or a natural contemplation which find examples among the Neoplatonists and the Gnostics natural ex- into the unity reality: though the two may be variously commingled: no oriental schools of thought, may achieve that absorption form of perience of the depths of God is to be found. ofwhich Porphyry speaks apropos of his master, and so reach a higher intel- superhuman state which seems due to the collusion of a infinitely far such world: but it is equally comprehensible how lectual DOES METAPHYSICS ITSELF REQUIRE A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE? angelic metaphysical ecstasy, where the human mind brushes against an requires to be examined: can a mystical experience indeed must al- A new question abyss, is from any interpenetration of divine things, and of divine reality be incorporated in any fashion in philosophy or meta- most inevitably find its end in pantheism. philosophical intellect is in a con- In regard to physics? (or rather, supposing that the It remains that the authentic forms precede the others. depend dition to overpass the method of concepts, would it in itself be capable the sacred traditions of India I would hold that die Upanishads philosophical in- contemplative of such an experience? or, on the contrary, since the originally, in the first case, less on a philosophy than on a meta- telligence, reduced solely to the conceptual process, would be by its na- source, and on a powerful intuition, which is more mystical than enterprise, in the degree to not this, ture incapable ofcompleting its metaphysical physical, of the transcendence of the Supreme. Neti! Neti! It is has been ! du Vedanta (Coll. des Questions Disputes), Paris, it is not that! The tragedy has been that this contemplation Cp. R. P. Dandoy, L'Ontotogie one 1932. continued into a luxiant, hypertrophic rationalistic discussion, a to In order to avoid any misunderstanding arising from a dubious use of words, it is which has never been able to disentangle its proper form according words natural and supernatural are being work of the perhaps not unnecessary to recall here that the the laws of philosophy and metaphysics, like any odier lessenccl used in the sense of (see pp. 314-17. *P«0> noc "* &* Hinduism, according to l 'Aliqualem sense allowed by some, notably by certain interpreters of Sum. contra Gent, book iii, chaps. 41-j. Cp. also Sum. thcol. i-ii, 3, 7: 'supernatural' to every- angelor- which 'natural' is applied to sensible and empiric nature and autem beatkudinem imperfcctam nihil prohibit attendi in contemplatione thing which transcends that nature. um, et etiam altiorem, quara in considerationc scicntiarum speculativarum. MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 343 342 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

its abstractive power, its object. which it has made, by own which it has an absolute need of the mystical experience to attain its ob- world, carrying the rational instrument to the highest degree ject and fulfd its line ofdevelopment, in order to become wisdom, does It is only by recourse to the most strictly intellectual purification, in having it in itself demand to be completed by this experience?). In other words, of demonstrations, that we may come to sure determinations in does the wisdom towards which the metaphysical effort tends require of abstract that is least open to order of knowledge which is precisely which itselfa mystical experience, apati divina? this Once again the answer must be in the negative. experiencing. necessarily imply the denial of the existence of all meta- This mystical experience which would be required by metaphysical Does this experience? I do not think so, at least in a real meaning of the effort would necessarily be either natural or supernatural. We have al- physical views of Berg- (and here I am in agreement with certain of the M. ready seen that there is no rightfully described divine experience of a word nature, can Being as we are spirits in the highest part of our we natural order. To affirm the possibility of such an experience would be son). remaining on an experience of the things of the spirit even while to compromise radically the distinction between nature and grace. have only plane. It is so that. we may know experimentally not Would the mystical experience which would be required by meta- the natural arrive at a cer- existence of the soul and ofour free will, but may also physical effort be ofa supernatural order, that ofinfused contemplation? the obscure and experimental perception of the liberty of the spirit This experience certainly exists, but to incorporate it in philosophy, to tain the whole material universe, within us and its transcendence in regard to regard it as in itself demanded by metaphysical effort, is once again to literature1 of the noth- even (as is notable in much contemporary ) make a confusion between the orders ofnature and grace, by making an and Again, a truth of the ingness immanent in everything which is created. essentially supernatural knowledge a requisite or constituting co-prin- under sensible natural order, such as the basic reality of being hidden ciple ofan essentially natural form ofknowledge. phenomena or the existence of the First Cause, may under the influ- The dilemma is brutal. I know ofno way of escaping from it, despite immediate actual grace reach the intensity of an intuition, of any of the intermediate degrees which may be observed between meta- ence of revelation something evidence; the intellect can receive like a sudden physical knowledge and infused contemplation. abstraction— which has been the proper object of the third degree of Such intermediary degrees exist without doubt. When anyone thinks witness: 'Before being the words of a very intimate friend of mine are that philosophy itself postulates a mystical experience of divine things it experienced a sudden in- received into the faith,' she said to me, 'I often is because we have classified as mystical experiences, making use of the original prin- tuition of the reality of my own being, of the profound, word mystical in an improper sense, states which, though not yet right- a powerful intuition, ciple which divided me from nothingness. It was ly mystical, are yet beyond the limits of metaphysical science and its which first gave me whose force was positively frightening to me, and natural demands. But it is clear that the existence of these intermediary 3 better, at the any knowledge pf a metaphysical absolute.' Or even conditions denotes no intrinsic necessity in the nature of philosophy by will suddenly know in sight of a blade of grass, of a windmill, the soul which it must end in mystical contemplation. and that there is a an instant that these things are not only themselves Metaphysics belongs in itself to the domain of the diird degree of ab- Claudel (see Correspond*™ de iFor letters ofJacques Riviere to Paul straction, die world of being as such and of pure immateriality. Under example in the of Jacques Riviire etPaul Claudel, Plon, 1927). pain of risking the value ofour faculties ofknowledge and the power Richter in his Autobiography: 'One >A similar experience is mentioned byJean-Paul the ananoetic process natural know- left- in itself, which is essential to our on the doorstep, looking to my morning, while I was still a child, I was standing a ledge of (as of belief), to me from heaven, like God in dogmatic definitions and the formulas hand, towards the woodpile, when suddenly there came never Ids pro- let), which since then has it is certainly necessary to admit that the intelligence, by its own flash of lightning, the idea: I am on I (Ich bin ein for all. that me; as though I saw myself as a self once and per and exclusively intellectual means, can take cognisance of 344 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 345

to quote the same friend again, 'all creatures admit, in accord with the Carmelite theologians and Fr. God. 'Suddenly', seemed to we may no other office the existence of this acquired contemplation, appear as symbols to me, to have than to show forth the Garrigou-Lagrange, of Creator.' which the prayer of active recollection described by St. Theresa in Way Perfection appears to be the highest point. But far from being integrally part of or necessarily requisite to the chapter xviii of The of this contemplation, which is supernatural in science of metaphysics, these forms of metaphysical experience or intui- But it can be seen that the virtue of faith from which it proceeds, and tion, whether they are ofan exclusively natural order or are supernatural its object and by natural in its and so definition in their means of production, are all outside the proper sphere of that which nevertheless remains mode, by science, and may even, without its proper regulation, however true they alien from the passivity which is proper to the supernatural mode this side may be in themselves, give rise to the most fundamentally false inter- of the gifts, cannot be called mystical, and remains on of pretations. Far from being the exclusive property of the metaphysician, that experience where the soul truly endures those things which are no discipline is without such privileges and indeed they are far most fre- divine. revelation, quently encountered by poets. Let us not forget that it is supremely un- On the other hand, bearing as it does on the mysteries of metaphysical science, reasonable to make use of what is accidental to judge a thing in itself. Be- it is absolutely apart from and above, not only cause God filled Beseleel and Ooliab with a spirit ofwisdom and under- but the whole order of the truths which are as such accessible by standing that they might make works of sculpture and of art, for the reason. graving of stones and the carving of wood, for the weaving of patterns In consequence it offers no more indication of any necessity imma-

1 its limits and inte- in rare purple, in glowing scarlet, in velvet and fine linen, is no proof nent in the nature of metaphysics for it to overflow that these arts in themselves demand a mystical communication. Be- grate itself in mystical experience. There are—and these will be the ob- activity cause St. Theresa received in supernatural prayer the infused know- ject of our final consideration—living relations, in the synergic philosophy, but without ledge of the presence ofGod in all things in his creative immensity is no of the soul, between mystical experience and Philosophy considered in proof that this metaphysical truth, which is in itself accessible by reason any transfusion, any mixing of their natures. itself require a alone, demands for its understanding a mystical experience. Because all the exigencies of its own nature and essence does not are discoverable be- the pagan philosophers exhibit themselves as incapable of setting out mystical experience. The intermediary states which metaphysical science, in a clear light the idea of creation does not prove that that idea is in- tween the two are outside the proper sphere of their object, as in the accessible by philosophical reasoning and postulates in itself the light of whether they are essentially so by and through modum, by the man- revelation. Because for certain people the form of metaphysical ex- case of the prayer of acquired contemplation, or per in the case of certain ex- perience which I have described may give support at certain points to ner in which knowledge is given to the soul, as

the rightful science of metaphysics is not in the least a proof that that periences ofmetaphysical intuition. science needs in itselfto be completed by such intuitions in order to exist in itself as a perfectly certain method of knowledge and to attain an ANALOGIES OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE effectual knowledge ofbeing. THE NATURAL things in the superna- Another of these intermediary degrees between metaphysical specu- If there is only a rightful experience of divine lation and the natural order (as has been infused contemplation is furnished by what is called acquired tural order, nevertheless do we not find in the natural love ofGod) contemplation, which is like the fruit of the exercise of meditation. already pointed out with regard to the effects of this experience? As- Without entering into the controversies which this notion has aroused, modes of knowledge which are like analogies of

1 metaphysical intuition which Exod. xxxv, 30-35. suredly. Those forms of experience and ,

346 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 347 question are an example. Further, have just been in and in a much necessary to consider matters of moral activity. Knowledge by con- more general fashion, all forms of natural knowledge by intuition and naturality has a place also in the activity of the artist, in the worlds of sympathy, or connaturality, supply a more or less by distant analogy art and poetry. mystical experience. only to aesthetic contemplation, which at once of I am not referring

Where do we find at every instant in the natural order this know- places us in connivance with its object, and in which one can often see, ledge by inclination? In the immense domain ofthose judgments which and not widiout reason, a far-off image on an inferior plane of mystical 1 are concerned with action, of practical judgments. It is a domain par contemplation. excellence of knowledge by connaturality, which necessarily intervenes The point in question is the virtue of art itself. If in the natural order . in all prudential judgments, where the object being singular and contin- there is any man who has an understanding with, who, if I may dare to gent the intellect needs to judge in conformity with the rectitude of the use the words, has entered into a sort of metaphysical complicity with

it is the poet, will. Let me recall my quotation from Aristode, the virtuous man is the God as the Cause of all being, it is not the philosopher, measure ofall human acts; hejudges of them according to the inclination he who in his own human manner is also a creator, and whose art, in of his virtue: according to the classic example which he uses and which the words of Dante, is 'the grandchild of God'. 'Il faut ignorer son art', is taken over by St. Thomas, the chaste man judges by inclination in writes Claudel, 'pour trouver au Votre quelque defaut'. The poet is those things which concern chastity, in consulting his own inward lean- more prepared than any other to understand the things that are above, in dis- ing. These are certainly judgments with an intellectual value, and St. to know those forms ofmetaphysical experience which have been the spirit, in Thomas is on his guard against any disregard for diem (on the con- cussion. His aim is to create something which gives joy to offers a trary, he makes them the particular instrument of our moral life), but which shines the radiance of a form; he gazes into things and which, connected as they are with the practical intellect, interpene- witness, tremulous as it may be, to the spirituality which fills them; he mystery, which comes trated by the will and the appetite, remain alien to the speculative mode is connaturalised, not to God himself, but to the invisible powers ofscience and ofphilosophy. from God and is scattered through all things, of those

* It should be noted that the moral virtues—and even the first natural which play through the universe. 'pure poetry', is outline of these virtues in us—create in the soul a certain affinity with Prayer, sanctity, mystical experience—poetry, even and dangerous na- the spiritual order, in the most indeterminate sense of the words, and, none of these things. But it is their most beautiful 2 which are scat- feebly it is true, can also incline the intelligence and the instinctive tural symbol. And because it responds to the allusions reference to grace, judgments in favour of the great trudis of natural religion. This is one tered through all nature and because nature itself is a of, an obscure desire of the notable ingredients in the philosophy of Rousseau: a disposi- it gives us, widiout our knowing it, a presentiment tion towards these truths, an aspiration for metaphysical knowledge. two cases. Before ^he psychological process nevertheless is quite different in the It is clear for all that that in this far from expectation we are very connaturalised with its ob- the beautifiil object, we perceive the beauty before being the knowledge of, the possession of a sure determination into sympathy with it, a sym- means of ject, and it is this perception indeed which makes us enter for, these knowledge. (Cp. Mantain, problems of primary philosophy. Furthermore, these judg- pathy which on its own side will determine a form of J. is the connaturality Art and Scholasticism, While in mystical experience it ments are only capable of certitude on the supposition of their being note 55). which causes the perception. in reality more or less conscious apperceptions of common sense or a necessary to make, in For this aspect of poetry, and for the distinction which it is of the spontaneous intelligence, a rational which are in themselves of art as such and poetry, making use of the most accurate sense of the words, between order. and my Rtponse a Jean cp. my essay on 'The Frontiers ofPoetry' {Art and Scholasticism) But it is not is only in the region of the practical intelligence that it Cocteau, 1926. SUPER-RATIONAL EXPERIENCE 348 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL AND PHILOSOPHY 349 for, supernatural life. Someone who has never written a poem, but who The Song of Songs, St. Paul's teaching of the great mystery of the is said to one day, 'I do not the Church under the figure marriage, yet a true poet, me think it can be possible union of Christ and of lead us to atheist.' But he did not for all and woman an image, which to be a poet and an that imagine because see in the love of man may be impure but of this that poetry must needs be an integral part ofphilosophy. which always retains some impress ofits original nobleness and its meta- Finally, to bring these considerations to an end, we must not forget physical dignity, the image of a love which is better and essentially holy.

earth nevertheless it is the most obvious and most natural of all the natural analogies of mysti- There is no more powerful thing on : only a simple cal contemplation, the one which mystical language uses as its current image, a weak and rather inconsistent image, of that which it signifies. the force its similitude that tongue: human love, with its trials and its joys, the profound and hid- If the image is so borne on by of no creature den experience of another which it produces—even in its most mortal can ever be truly loved without that infinite exigence wherein human madness, for divine things are so lofty and transcendent that sometimes love sacrifices itself, how can the trials and interchanges of this love, the it is only in the negative correspondences of sin that they are able to mutual gift which it demands and unceasingly demands of the whole

1 ' show forth their analogies. personality, fail to present the directest of all analogies to the trials and

1 interchanges ofmystical love? It is remarkable that the more innocent the An analogy is a delicate thing and difficult to manage. The danger always exists of using for the things which are taking an analogy between essentially distinct and even infinitely distant terms (as in soul is the less it seems to hesitate before

the case where one analogue is formally divine by participation and the other may be divine a symbolic language of which in the human order it has no subject to sin) for a natural continuity or tendency: to which danger Plato and experience. numerous heretical mystics are witness. Actually it is necessary to point out from this point of view the defects of a certain kind of literature which usurps the name of THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN METAPHYSICS AND MYSTICISM mystical and which risks compromising the best efforts of the art of to-day, efforts distinguish absolutely, as we which are difficult enough in themselves. 'There is only one love', a certain reverend A final question remains: in order to Father wrote some years ago, captivated by the lofty sentiments and the dialectic of have done, between mystical experience and metaphysics, is it necessary the Symposium. 'It is with the same heart that we love God and man; the object varies, to all organic relation between them? but suppress the moving principle, the feelings are the same (I speak oflove, not ofdebauchery). Certainly not. There are vital relations between them. It is advanta- ,Takc a human love, cleanse it from all its ugliness, from all its insufficiency, idealise it to the their nature point ofthe ineffable, extend it to the infinite, fill it with grace: if you bring to bear geous to affirm these relations and to endeavour to make such a passion on the sole Being who can fulfil it, have the love the mystics.' you of more precise. They imply at the same time (1) an ineffectual aspiration, [Translator's note.—M. Maritain is probably referring to the work of the Ahbi reason of subject, in (2) a dependence of fact, in the subject and by Bremond, as also in his reference to 'pure poetry' supra.) This idealism mystical experience. is as false as it is ambitious. If 'the object varies' and if 'grace informs it', metaphysics with regard to is it not obvious itself, and that the love specified by a divine object and proceeding from sanctify- One might say that, without the power of attaining it by ing grace is intrinsically different from human love, the one being supernatural quoad meta- without it being necessary for its own proper achievement, substamiam, the other being natural: the one being purely spiritual, the other composed experience. Let what I am say- of flesh and spirit physics aspires in some way to mystical like man himself? 'Refer such a passion to the sole Being, etc. ..." is a phrase which, truly, means nothing re- platonise about or is an error: for either this idealised passion from the tempests of the world, have something better to do than to mains natural in its essence, and then it effectually this vale of tears, at cannot attain to God as an object Eros. The less protected life oflaymen, who have to batde through loved above all, it cannot be brought to bear mys- on God, so as to constitute an authentic least assures for them a surer experience ofcertain themes. tical love. Or better still, it is supernatural so is Otherwise our poor psy- in its essence (the love of charity) and The love ofcharity may inform and vitalise profane love. not brought to bear on God because it seeks and acci- is God who makes it specific, and it is he it chological mechanisms would have to find a place for numerous interferences first of all and above all. It is with the same his beloved, between the two loves. It heart that a man loves God and dental collusions, notably in certain cases ofdubious mystics, certainly: but not with the same love. difference between them: the is therefore all the more necessary to mark the essential I would pay tribute to essence the generous intentions criticising. is a love a more sublime ofthe author whom I am former is not in any way a 'sublimation of the latter, it of But I am obliged to add that religious under three vows analogically. vows, happily cut off by the where the features ofprofane love may be discovered anew SUPER-RATIONAL EXPERIENCE 350 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL AND PHILOSOPHY 351

understood. have found that metaphysics in a man, it does not procure this ing be clearly We does not in venes and flowers him vision here on itself require mystical foretaste, its proxy, which is infused itself postulate, does not in experience in order to earth, but a contemplation; which species, effectively to grasp the intelligibly real, exist in its own or to ar- know the First Cause in itself' is in fact or materially {identice) the same thing as that calls 'to see the deity face to face' or 'as he is'. The rive at that perfection of certitude which it needs by reason of its own which theology philosopher as such, to the use of the unaided powers of his reason, does not know this, because he essence. But it is a general law that the lower—without quitting limited its this identity. has no idea ofthe second term of own nature and its specific limits—tends always towards the higher and His desire to know the first cause in itself is a desire produced by and deriving from continuity with it: supremum attingit produced, but entirely spontaneous, seeks to enter into infimi ad infimum the nature ofthe intellect, instinctive, unconsidered provoked by a knowledge of that first source which supremi. We can now add, which in no way contradicts the previous beforehand, and precedes all re- flection on the means for realisation of such a desire. On reflection it will appear to him thesis, but only completes it, that metaphysics naturally engenders in the that as conditional (or even, when he perceives no simply human or natural process of soul an inclination, which it has not the power to fulfil, a confused and knowledge is capable of attaining to God himself, he mayjudge that it is unrealisable: aspires to a nirvana indeterminate desire for a superior knowledge, which is only authen- is not the way in which Hindu thought witness at once to this natural desire for the knowledge of God in himself and to the renunciation by the in- tically realised in mystical experience, in the contemplation of the saints. tellect ofso seeing him?) How does this happen? Firsdy because there are many problems, par- Thus the desire of nature to see the First Cause is conditional in so far as it is simply are destiny ticularly those which concerned with the ofman and with the natural. This is why, if man had been placed in the order of pure nature, or if in fart conduct of the universe, which metaphysics can posit but cannot solve, the means ofachieving the vision of the divine essence were lacking, this natural desire would find itself frustrated—or only satisfied by inferior substitutes which procure a or only solves imperfecdy, and whose solution, given us by faith, is only relative and fleeting beatitude—without thereby any violation ofthe principle offinal- seen in its truth and its fittingness by the light ofinfused contemplation. ity, which protests against any desire ofan unconditional nature being in vain.

Again, because metaphysics, like all other human sciences, leaves us But when once man is raised to the supernatural order, he knows on the one hand the first Cause in itself is the same thing as to see face to face unsatisfied. Directed as it is towards the first cause and filled by nature that the desire to know the God offaith; and on the other—being assured by faith that he can attain to absolute with the desire of perfecdy knowing it, it is natural that metaphysics beatitude—his natural desire to attain to the first Cause in itself, perfected by grace and should us desire conditional, for all make —with an ineffectual and but the supernatural desire of the beatific vision, becomes by the same act unconditional. He (it be- that real, desire—to see the cause as it is in itself: die desire to contem- then understands that if the natural desire to see the first Cause cannot be satisfied 1 ing an obediential power and a means of elevation to an order which is above every- plate the essence ofGod. This thirst it cannot slake. When grace super- thing natural), the principle of finality would be violated, because this desire, which J In the first case the as the far as object of my desire is God as I know him (by reasoning) first is conditional in regard to nature alone, is in fact, for him, unconditional, in so cause beings, and to 'as- of whom I transfer, as though from without, in virtue of the grace has perfected it with a supernatural desire. cendant' analogy which is proper in him- tlieol, i-ii, to metaphysics, the denomination 'known This view is, I believe, in accord with the arguments of St. Thomas, Sum. self or in his essence' taken from by me, seeing the other created things which are so known 3, 8, and i, 12, 1. St. Thomas only demonstrates the possibility for man of without knowing or com- if how this is possible in the case ofCod; and remaining in a state of divine essence, because without this possibility the natural desire would be in vain, as a

plete indetermination as to the is known at- nature ofsuch knowledge. Briefly, it is God who theologian, not simply as a philosopher, and in presupposing the possibility ofman's to me by his effects whom I desire this beatitude to know in himself. taining perfect or absolute beatitude (of which faith alone assures us, for In the second case, it is essence diat I ii-ii, ad. 2, God who is known to me according to his proper is above nature, beatitude excedit omnem naturam creatam, i-ii, 5, 7, also 4, 7, desire to know in himself. faith) en- The object ofmy desire is the God whom I know (by and therefore reason alone can only supply arguments of suitability), and then in secundum suam propriam quidditatem (and able to give supernatural desire in Trinity), and whom I know as visaging a natural desire which is rendered unconditional by the himself to me even as he is the object the divine of an incom- faith. And so, quamvis of knowledge itself, by grace which perfects it and which proceeds from the knowledge of prehensible communication of essence can ilium consequi, sed which revelation has assured me the divine homo naturaliter mclinetur infinem ultimum, non tamen potest naturaliter the be formal end, and whose 'supra-analogy' among cre- de Trin., 6..a. 4, ad. produced by faith, in search solum per gratiam, et hoc est propter eminentiam illiusfinis. (InBoet. q. ated things for a means wherewith to describe see God in his i-ii, ^d ii-ii, 2, 3; it, tells me that it is to S.) See also Sum. theol, i-ii, 114, 2. Cp. Sum. theol, i, 12, 4; 5. 1 5; essence even as I am seen by him. Compend. theol, De Veritare, q. 8, a. 1, 2, 3; Sum. contra Gent., iii, 48, 50-2. 57. 6y, The Christian, who has an idea that 'to of the mystery of the beatific vision, knows cap. 104-5. DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND 352 THE KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY 353 metaphysics knowledge, such as fulfils the highest aspirations of but of which metaphysics jects of philosophical the existence of die transcen- to the first 1 can have no idea, and by which it remains astonished: crucified wisdom dent first cause, and even principles of the reason, by how the light of the highest which is foolishness to the wisdom ofpure reason. much more must wisdom, the mystical experi- metaphysics runs the divine things, assist and purify the philosophical Lacking supernatural gifts, danger of trusting to ence of intellect! St. for infused himself is a supereminent example of this truth. some more or less fallacious substitute contemplation to di- Thomas And ifit is true intellect is so feeble by nature, so rect its aspirations for knowledge by pure awareness and the intuitive that the human debilitated by the heri- Finally, original sin, that it cannot attain to a complete possession of the absolute. we can say that the intellect, in as tage of philosophical wis- mingled with error without much as it is a perfection of a transcendental order, realised in varying dom that is not the succours of grace, one

in fact that metaphysics can only be kept in its degrees on the ascending scale of minds, tends in an impotent desire to can hold purity among are surpass those specific conditions which belong to it in human being, men if metaphysicians comforted at times from on high by the ex- those things which are divine. where it is at the lowest stage. And it is by this that we can understand perience of

the thomist distinctions is the existence of that nostalgia for a higher contemplation to which, in The significance of sometimes misunder- three the vast reaches of human history, so many schools of philosophy bear stood. I have said that the forms ofwisdom, metaphysics, theology witness. and mysticism, are really distinct, because they are formally different correspond to specifically distinct degrees On the other hand, it is very clear, when we consider the subject and objects and ofillumination. It

these three forms wisdom as such is its synergic activity, that formal discontinuity does not destroy the soli- is the proper nature of of which here wisdom, having a specific object the darity of the living being. There is a profound solidarity in the soul in a in consideration. Metaphysical of state ofgrace between supernatural and human energies. "Without doubt natural order, does not carry in itself, ratione sui ipsius, any intrinsic or mystical contemplation, but only an ineffectual as- mystical experience is entirely independent ofphilosophy, marvellously necessary claim on piration regard to it: does not require, for the exigencies ofits overleaps it; without doubt it is not usually among philosophers that the with own great contemplatives are found. But, to consider things in the concrete, proper essence, any other cognoscitive energies than those ofthe natural reason. metaphysics itself, for all that it is not itself dependent on mystical ex- But must not forget that it exists in a subject, in a human soul. perience, finds in us, just because it is inferior to it, a certain dependence we but fallen nature, on this experience. And this subject is not itself in a state ofpure nature, of wisdom ofan essen- But how? Because the virtues which perfect our intelligence are like or in a state of grace. In fact, metaphysical wisdom, among us without being so many ordered and united lights, are themselves in a hierarchy and tially natural order, cannot be constructed soiled errors avoid all the accidents which menace it, unless some in solidarity, the lower supported and fortified in its proper place by the with or help from on high, coming from habitual or actual grace, come to the higher. In the same way, says John of St.' Thomas, as the lower angels assistance for our nature is weak and has been are illuminated by the higher angels they are fortified by them in their of the natural reason: grace within one to own rightful intellectual light.1 wounded. It is not sufficient to have the gifts of avoid be going too far! But a con- Thus metaphysical wisdom, in regard to the truths which are proper metaphysical error: that, alas, would case) without it, dition may necessary (morally necessary in the present to the truths which are demonstrable by reason alone, is fortified by be being the state of nature in' which we find supernatural faith and by theology. And if the lights of faith and of by that sufficient. If, given achieved by man and can main- speculative theology bring to the philosopher greater power, greater ourselves, metaphysical wisdom can be tain in the straight path of a higher perfection and certitude in his act ofpurely rational adhesion to the ob- itself widiout defect, or at least

l a. (n. and a. (vol. i). Curs. theol, ii-ii, "Cp. John of St, Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q. 1, disp. 2, 6 17) 9 q. i. disp. 2, a. r, n. 24 (Vives, vol. vii). DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 354 THE 3J5 supernatural energies of grace have into some inferior science, tradition, it is because the at certain need to be initiated such as mathematics for to the aid ofthe deal moments, in one way or another, come reason. example, when he would with certain questions. He ou

1 a better illumination, a passage upward into the wis- r to be consoled by iSee for this question the study by R. F, Mare"chal, 'Science empirique et psychologie

the other sur la psychologie des Mystiques.vol i, dom of the saints. Without speaking of differences between religieuse* (Etudes 1914), and the articles by Roland Dalbiez, 'Unc nouvelle interpretation de St. Jean de la Croix* (Vie Spirituelle, 1928: the conceptions of Thomism and that of M. Blondel, the conflict be- i 'The integral interpretation ofmystical experience must be theological or it cannot be', sharply delimited by the following point: a certain tween the two is also M. Dalbiez writes very justly) : the writings of R. P. Benoit Lavaud on 'Psycho- explains the exigencies spiritual dynamism which the one by and essen- logie independante et priere chretienne' (Revue thomiste, 1929) and on 'Les Problemes and the other by the de la vie mystique' (Vie spirituelle, June, 1931). tial needs of knowledge and philosophy, conditions The pages of this book were already in the hands of the printers when M. Henri of the subject and the synergy in it of specifically distinct intellectual Bergson's Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion was published. It illustrates in its 1 virtues. own way what I have said in this chapter, and have already treated at somewhat great- endeavoured to disputees, The fact remains that if, as I have already demon- erlengthin my Questions v. swpw.note 2. Since everything that is human inter- 2 ests the philosopher, it is eminently fitting that he should meditate on whatis at the very strate elsewhere, we properly distinguish the nature of philosophy and heart of humanity, the mystical life and sanctity. But, while all the time keeping to his affirm at same time that philo- its state in the subject, we have to the n own proper standpoint and his own rightfulmeans ofprocedure, he must then have re- depends intrinsically sophy in itself is a purely rational knowledge, and course, because ofthe intrinsic exigencies ofsuch an object, to the information of the- only on principles of the natural order, and that it can only find the re- i ology; its scientific powers are alone competent to deal with such a theme: for the reality which he is studying in this case is not purely natural and is moved by prin- quisite human conditions for its full development in truth when it ciples which are superior to reason alone. If the unbelieving philosopher cannot admit under the heaven offaith. grows these principles and in consequence the theological science which is founded on them, is the Finally, let it be noted that if it is true that mystical wisdom his information will inevitably be deficient.

This is not the place for a full examination ofa book in which appear, together with highest point of the life of the soul, where both knowledge and love and that serene elevation of thought, that scrupulous attention to experience, that happy bear their noblest fruits, it is equally certain that the philosopher 1 subtilty which we admire in M. Bergson's work, the same refusal to depart from a radi- the greatest advantage, even for their own the metaphysician will find I cal empiricism and that 'ontological bankruptcy* (G. Marcel) with which one must re- can proper object, in the study of so transcendent an activity. But they proach his philosophy. I must limit myselfto a few briefremarks on the theme which is the concern of this chapter. My aim is not to criticise a courageous mind which, in only rightfully do so when they have recourse to the light of theology, spite oj its philosophical appearance, in fact, due to its fidelity to its inward light, pur- the in- which is alone proportionate to such an object. It is a scandal to sues a purely spiritual trajectory; but the need for truth demands nevertheless the point- psycholo- telligence and a profound offence to the sense of order to see ing out ofcertain discordances. psychological gists and sociologists, or even philosophers and metaphysicians, seizing M. Bergson has no difficulty in transcending the schemes of a vulgar phenomenalism and in exhibiting the great mystics, whose 'intellectual robustness' he hold of mystical experience in order to judge of its nature by their light, admires, as souls who have achieved a life which is in some way superhuman; his book has has in other words, to systematically misunderstand it. The philosopher pages on this theme which are particularly moving, which show more than deferential attention, almost an affectionate emotion with regard to a reality which he feels as its tin being so limited the conflict, as I have previously pointed out, loses none of present and effectual. interpretation which he himself proposes (and in or But the total gravity: for in philosophy the reasons by which a conclusion is reached are quite as, which, in the absence of the proper instruments for a veracious analysis, one must be even more, important than the conclusion itself. (Cp. Maritain, Reflexions sur I intel- J. grateful for so many apt observations ex communions) in itself shows that philosophy, ligence, p. 86.) true in so far as it ignores die mystery of grace and of the Cross, cannot attain to the

pbibsophie is possible to *De k chr/tiennc (Coll. des Questions Disputes) Paris, 1933. nature of the mystical life, even when it pays honour to its good faith. It 356 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE EXPERIENCE AND MYSTICAL PHILOSOPHY 357 ask whether M. Bcrgson's attempt, in as much as it is bound up with the system of Criatrice, does not where in consequence 'it matters litde if Christ is described either as ideas put forward in L'Evolution become in spite of all men', and a everything an His philosophical doctrine which dissolves all endeavour to reduce the spiritual to the biological, a biology, I admit, or not' (p. 256). ontological values, made so trans- man in the regions of metaphysics, morals and religion, of that it is conceived as the creative source of the universe, abandonment almost all the cendental but which remains his properly intellectual and rational certitudes, his fundamental omission of the always biological, in the sense in which that word applies to the stages oflife order of which are experience presupposes the naturally and supernaturally characterised above all by the organic and the psychical, where life fact that mystical known manifests itself in that it is nothing if it is not an adhesion to the its immanent activity is in ofits object, and subsistent Truth, the animation of matter and consequence essentially bound reality will lure his theology into a form of fundamental , conditions of transitory action and productivity. It is thus against his where up with the true that on this side distinctions matter the least. supernatural life most important of the world of grace and of human spirituality can only transcend the an estimate of mysticism it is best to listen to the mystics themselves, the biological sphere in a more or less imperfect manner. If in forming which has plainly succeeded is 'that of the great experience the mystics, and if the only mysticism christian If we believe in the of why should we refuse to accept their is unreasonable to reject their evidence on what is to them more say that they are united to their mystics' (p. 243), it testimony to the end? When they source as the life of important than their life, and to fail to listen to them when they affirm that mystical their life, they are thinking of no elan vital or any anonymous creative urge, which experience, far from having a content which we may regard as independent ofrevealed one can only conceive of as personal under the influence of a burst of enthusiasm or perfect blossoming of that faith: which then certainly causes faith (p. 268), is only the emotion; it is towards the depths of a supreme personality in the fullest sense of the the philosopher to ask certain meta-philosophical questions and direct himselftowards word that they cry out that they are turned, it is to the deity itselfthat they adhere, the superior sources, but ought he not to love the truth more even than philosophy itself infinite 'fullness* ofbeing and ofperfections, to a sovereignly subsistent Other, ofwhom, as has been set out in this chapter, and its 'autocracy'? He will so be led to recognise, before 'negatively* proving that he is above all names and all thought, they know al- that all authentic mysticism which has developed in non-christian countries, and which ready with all the fullness of certitude, the existence and the name. Far from being un- finds in the contemplation of the saints who grow endlessly in the Church its achieved interested in such a question, they know perfectly, they do not cease from testifying, exemplar, should be regarded as a fruit of the same supernatural life, that supernatural that the source to which they are united is 'the transcendent cause of all things'. They life which Christ, sovereignly generous in his gifts, communicates to those souls of declare (and it is here that M. Bergson's book results, to say the least of it, in an equi- good will who do not visibly belong to his flock. vocal position) that it is to no pure endless extension, nojoy of the creative urge finally Cp. Etienne Borne, Spirituality bergsonienne et spirituality chrfoknne, Etudes carmeli- released from all termination, but exactly, on the contrary, to an infinite end that their taines, Oct. 1932; M. T. L. Penido, Dieu dans le bergsonisme (Questions Disput&s). will and their love is directed; and the prodigious impulse which animates them has its meaning and its existence only in the degree to which, it brings them to this final End, where they are fixed in an unfailing life. They testify that their joy is not their joy, but the joy of their Saviour, and that it is crucified: they witness that their experience of divine things is founded on and proportionate to their faith, that it is inseparable from the doctrines wherein the primal Truth has made himself known to them, and ifit is ob- scure and won by love, it is nevertheless a sovereign knowledge, the intelligence being nourished in this 'unknowingness' by its most noble object. They testify that ifmystical contemplation overflows into action (for the wisdom of the saints is not purely theo- retic like that ofthe philosophers, it is also practical and the regulation oflife according to the divine rule, Sum. theol., ii-ii, 19, 7, and this is in fact the sign of the superiority ofchristian mysticism), nevertheless its 'last stage* is not 'to sink into an abyss ofaction' and 'an irresistible urge which sweeps onward to unimaginably vast enterprises*. For the action of the great christian mystics, for example the Apostles and the founders of the Orders, is never anything but an overflow from their contemplation, whose pri- macy if only appears the more clearly as the divine union is the more perfect. Besides, their love es- extends itself to 'the infinite' ofhumanity, it is because it is first of all and sentially directed to God in Three Persons and to the personality of their neighbour. Finally it is of forbidden to us to attribute to any elan vital marching to the conquest the world what or springs essentially from divine grace and is superior to all created creatable nature.

M. Bergson has of . taken up a standpoint from which, as he says, he 'sees the divinity :

CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 359

of the angels, and it is with their tranquil and powerful he is a friend for us the secrets of divinity and reveals us to our- eaze that he lights up who can only be faithful, chaste, a crystal-clear foun- selves. He is the son waters of divine wisdom ceaselessly accumulate; a mind tain where the centuries and teach all minds. made to lighten down the delicate and difficult task, paradoxical even, to com- It is not only a CHAPTER VI Thomas, it seems at first impossible. The in- pare St. Augustine and St renounce its most normal procedure of comparison, the CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM tellect has to placed confronted on the same process by which two things are and coincidences and deviations. A TYPICAL PROBLEM plane and in the same light, the search for must needs transport itself to another plane and seek another illumi- If we would make apparent, by a particular example, the nature ofthe It non-coincidence that unity nation, where it is exacdy in those points of problems which may present themselves in the order of the most secret are both worth exacdy as will be perceived. Concordism and discorctism dimension of the spirit, of that mysterious 'depth* in which the spirit optical error. little and proceed from the same turns back upon itself and towards that which it contains, differentia- and of Aquinas with On the one hand the originality of Augustine ting its operations no longer according to objective degrees of abstrac- attitudes and their regard to each other is irreducible; their intellectual tion and intelligibility, but by the very liberty of its standpoints and its will not coincide. On systems, if one reduces St. Augustine to a system, rightful finality, the history of western thought presents to our atten- the one and of the other the other hand, there is between the wisdom of tion no more striking case than the reciprocal situation of St. Augustine unity. How is not only an accord and a harmony, but a fundamental and St. Thomas. into those controversies this antinomy to be resolved? Without entering A bishop of the fourth-fifth century, a scholastic of the thirteenth what is to which divide the specialists, I would endeavour to indicate not only are their epochs, their controversies, their intellectual circum- my eyes the basis of the solution. stances entirely different, so also are their tasks. The one is a fisher of par principe et demon- 'Le cceur a son ordre, l'esprit a le sien, qui est men, the other an architect of truths. One is the begetter, the dis- Saint Paul ont I'ordre de stration, le cceur en a un autre. . . Jesus-Christ, coverer of christian doctrine, holding it, fighting for it in opposition to ^chauffer, non instruire. Saint la charite, non de l'esprit, car ils voulaient the wisdom of this world: the other perfects it, consolidates it for and by dans la digression Augustin de meme. Cet ordre consiste principalement itself. One is the source, the other the fruit. montrer toujours/1 sur chaque point, qu'on rapporte a la fin pour le Their vocation, their witness is different. The dwelling-place of the but it suggests the This view of Pascal's needs to be made more precise, one is in the heart of our humanity, everything in diat heart is known point of view, of lumen. essential point: a difference of order, of formal to him, and it is with the voice of the depths, the abyss of the soul, that hearts ofmen, he wished to Christ not only wished to kindle a fire in the he speaks when he would witness to the supreme truth: even on the the divine revelation ttself. instruct them: but in the order, the light of purest heights of his theology we recognise that tone. He is a prodigal of the gift of prophecy in its St. Paul is in the order and the illumination son, a lover, a convert, a man saved from the deadliest errors of the mind are too exalted to deign highest and holiest form. The one and the other and of the flesh, instructed in, filled with evil, before the experience of order of chanty; and it he to philosophise. St. Augustine is alike in the grace reared him up to the height where he lays hold on those things teaches and in order by philosophises abundandy, it is by love that he that are divine; a man made to be a leader of men and a shepherd of 1Pascal, Pensies. souls, from one generation to another. The other lives in the intellect, 358 DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 361 3 6o THE the City of God there are defined and differing one and die same movement to move a human being both practically infused. In functions:

end. this can be will be teaching office of St. Thomas, universal as a theological discipline, is and towards its final How considered k a the moment. not that, yet more universal and supra-technical, of an Augustine.

intelligence— to is here necessary to recollect that the wisdom of the saints, which St. Thomas is in the order of put work by love, in It divine things by loving inclination or connaturality, pursuit of love, but conducting his work in the rarefied atmosphere of judges of compassio connaturalitas, and by virtue of union with God,1 presupposes objective exigencies (which only seem cold to those who do not love sive not but charity; that it is experimental, that it is not only specu- the truth). It is in the order ofand by the light of theological science and only faith, also practical, proceeding from union with God and directing ofphilosophy that he teaches us: in a discipline proceeding according to lative but the mode ofpure knowledge. our activity towards that union, ruling human life by divine laws; fin- 2 ally, that it may make use of both discourse and argument. Imagine

this wisdom, no longer ineffably concentrated on the passion of divine

THE GIFT OF WISDOM MAKING USE OF DISCOURSE diings, as is the case in mystical contemplation, but royally overflowing knowledge: not in the endeavour to express lyrically, What then is the true source of Augustine's teaching? I would make in communicable the Cross, or ifI may say (with no play upon words) bold to say that this source is die highest of all, die wisdom of the Holy as does a St. John of

• as a Berulle, mystical experience itself, but in order to Ghost. I have said that he teaches by love. Why is this, if not because oratorically, does over all the field of the intelligible and join in all the play of the he teaches us in the order and light of die gift of wisdom? It is that extend making use of all the natural instruments of knowledge wisdom which furnishes his point of view, it is from there that his rational powers, that towards both nature and the reason, but thoughts rush forth to surround all diings and ceaselessly lead them with that respect, courtesy hardihood, that sovereign loyalty back to their centre. In the period of his philosophical intemperance, in also that confidence, that ease, that which belong to the true spiritual liberty: such is the wisdom of an his wanderings among the sects and the systems, it is this that he is Augustine (and, generally, ofall the Fathers). The wisdom which is ignorandy seeking. It is from grace alone that he won it, and without more instinctive and spontaneous—for the doubt one could descry from that point of view a progressive affirma- common to all Christians, doubly faithful has received alike of the Holy Ghost tion and growth in his thought with his conversion. It is in the degree least intelligent of the proportions, righdy fatherly and epis- to which he teaches by the full virtue of the unction which he has and its gifts—reaches its supreme great spiritual shepherds. The science of received diat he holds all the force of this wisdom. copal, in the wisdom of these (that its condition as a specialised discipline When I say that the point of origin of the teaching of St. Augustine, theology, not yet set apart in Scholastics) is found there contained in its less high than that of the teaching of St. Paul, and a fortiori than that of was the great work of the age of technical study had not yet Christ, is higher than that of St. Thomas (whose teaching proceeds ac- source, in a state of immanence. (The cording to the human and rational mode, and is much more perfect in trans, by Raissa Mari- *Cp. John of St. Thomas, The Gifts ofthe Holy Ghost (French it), let no one think because of this that St. Thomas himselfwas lacking tain, 1930). in this infused wisdom; he 2 knowledge, for all that possessed it superabundandy, just as he was John of St. Thomas teaches that the gifts of wisdom and not always come without^dis- superabundandy possessed of mystical graces. Aquinas had need of it to they arc not discursive in themselves, nevertheless do the are natural to man and the gifts of achieve his work as course: (1) because investigation and reasoning a theologian: but his work in itselfis, stricdy speak- in the infused know- Holy Ghost do not destroy but perfect nature; (2) because even ing, in the field of theology treated as a science (and in philosophy), and the comparison of ledge of Christ St. Thomas admits the possibility of discussion which are which indubitably forms ofwisdom and, in terms not ordinarily know within us a light but in the human mode, (iii, q. 11, a. 5); (3) because we do supra. as much as they teaches without comparisons.' Ibid., he. cit., are technical processes, inferior to die wisdom which is us truths without words and DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL 362 THE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 363

theology is the first and greatest technical begun, and process of the •wisdom; and no one has a clearer sense of the superiority, the heavenly supreme wisdom conquered all things, christian world.) The appropri- transcendence of that gift, of the divine mastery with which it makes

all, drew them all into its universal current: all the spoils it ated of Egypt, use of whatsoever instruments will, than the great Doctor of Grace philosophy. Let it be said, in order to all the treasures of draw a clear himself. What has an absolute primacy .what illuminates, discerns, com- things, that these treasures are here boundary about these the instrument, mands,' rules, measures, what gives a right ofjurisdiction over all things, in so far as it is distinguished not precisely oftheology from philosophi- spiritualis judicat omnia, what exults in the breast of the christian like neither them as yet explicit cal science (which were of in their essential the waters of paradise which spring up to nourish and renew all the the natures), but of infused wisdom, of wisdom of the Holy Ghost, earth and all knowledge, is the gift of the Spirit in the power oflove. A which dominates and absorbs them, and which is bound up with faith human instrument, which is certainly not mediocre, but which is im- and charity. perfect, awkward and dangerous, and to direct it the most perfecdy en- Thus we can see in its plenitude the mission of the Fathers of the dowed hand, sensitive and holy, intelligent and wise, powerful, prudent Church. 'The Fathers and the theologians', the phrase which recurs con- and sagacious, the irresistible light of the superhuman Spirit—this is the standy sacred doctrine, denotes offices the christian Plato. in manuals of two which are en- . admirable paradox of the wisdom of tirely distinct. Theology is found among the theologians in its rightful Can we not see (and who is there perceived it better than St.Thom- such an instru- nature as a specialised science, having for its light that of reason ele- as?) die living sense of this wisdom, the end for which universe of the christian vated by faith. Theology as it is found in the Fathers is in a higher condi- ment is used by such a mind? It is the pure mountain-tops tion; its light is the light of the gift ofwisdom making use of reasons; it truths, the eternal depths which are shown to us, those instrument in any ma- proceeds like doctrine from the light of sanctifying grace. It is holy where theology has its rise. To consider such an through it, is to learning. There will always be new Doctors in the Church. The age of terial fashion, separated from the spirit which moves to reduce St. the Fathers is definitely closed, the age of that outpouring of the gifts of mix ourselves up in an endless quarrel, in a vain effort for the dis- the Spirit which was necessary for the birthpangs, the education of the Augustine to neo-Platonism, or in a Hteral-minded search

Church. And what is most relevant in the Fathers is the purity of the cords between him and St. Thomas. be regarded as a sign of genius, waters of this impetuous flood of the Spirit, certainly more so than the What is truly remarkable and should sureness, the supernatur- actual texture of each of the stones, broken from the old rock of phil- ofthe holy genius ofAugustine, is the instinctive in close dependence on osophy, which that torrent sweeps along with it in its tide. al tact with which, while all the time remaining cannot say so much for Plotinus in philosophy, he himself evades (one pitfalls of Platonism, sometimes by all his disciples) the most dangerous THE PLATONIC REASON AND THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT (as when he makes the a magnificent rectification of his Greek masters The philosophy sometimes by of which St. Augustine made use (one of the great- world of divine ideas out of die platonic exemplars), est religious torn the platonic equipment philosophies of die world) is incontcstably deficient, leaving unresolved those questions for which by force from the ultimate dying soul and its origin), some- defences and spiritual fructification of provides no key (as in the questions of the paganism, the system state which is pathetic, ofneo-Platonism. (He took it as he found it. And times leaving unachieved, in an indeterminate reserve, who is there who can read 1 But with at once of promise and of Plotinus -without gratitude? ). because it is full of expectation, full which ne Augustine this philosophy gift of of illumination) is an instrument in the hands of the those great doctrines (such as his doctrine into grave disposal, without falling ^Plotinus inter could not with the equipment at his philosophiae professores cum Platone princeps', St. Thomas quotes the phrase ofMacrobius highest point of exactitude. {Sum. theol., i-ii, 61, 5, sed contra). error, have brought to the AUGUSTINIAN 364 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING WISDOM 365 the distinction of the three forms ofwisdom, But what is most important, and is the central point ofthis briefstudy excluding metaphysical, and infused, which St. Thomas was later to establish, but is not the platonic instrument of which St. Augustine made use, but theological ignoring it, for he only thought of opposing christian his wisdom in itself, in as much as it is, as I have said, the gift ofwisdom entirely wisdom use discourse. This notion allows us to to the false wisdom of the pagan philosophers), it is clear that St. making of comprehend how it Augustine in fact centres his whole idea of wisdom on thej^dsdomgar is that St. Augustine makes constant use ofphilosophy, and yet is in no is that which is infused. It is towards it, deriving from way the inventor of a philosophical system; how so many defects in no excellence^vfhich. whole flood of his thought returns and gathers in all his way affect his light; how he is set above philosophy, above even theolo- it,^hat the It is in this that he sees profane and sacred science (in so much gical science in the exact sense of the word, and how he covers the thoughts. science the aspect of science is found) receive participation: whole field of theology, of philosophy, and the science of practical as in sacred it they should be in the christian soul. morals. It accords, I believe, with the admirable doctrine of wisdom they are subordinate to as which St, Augustine himself has left to us, and which has been com- pletely incorporated—with the requisite explications and differentia- THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF AUGUSTINE S TEACHING tions—in the thomist synthesis. the teaching of St. Augustine and When he shows how^science, in as The essential difference between I much as it is distinguished from is one ofpoint ofview and of perspective. In the one wisdom (the supreme science), is the work of the lower reason and of that of St. Thomas standpoint of theological wisdom in the strict sense ofthe word, knowledge in the twilight ofcreated things, is always first ofall directed case, the that of infused wisdom. One seeks for essences, the other is towards the labour of action, while wisdom is the work of the higher in the other, on to the experience of Him who is loved. I have said that the reason and ofknowledge in the light ofdivine things, directed first of all drawn is the gift of wisdom making use of discourse. towards the repose ofcontemplation^ when he formulates the great law, wisdom of St. Augustine qualities of the gift ofwisdom recognised whjchjforninates overall civilisations, of the inevitable choice between When we recall the particular / theologians,1 shall understand the true point of view of St. wisdom and science, for alTthe riches of the latter.good as they^are in— by the we of his doctrine, without speaking of the w jhjmselyes and neceKary^re^sju^Jjalanc^ bythe poverty ofwisdomT Augustine, and the character his style, or that supra-technical spontaneity of s.Qjk-^. to choose them as an end is the crime ofcovetousness and avarice; marvellous savour of \ : baptismal wisdom2 of the a deadly turning towards which I spoke, thanks to which that instinctive perishable goods! when,' with"an"incomp_ that christians is reflected in him. We shall comprehend power ofpsychological analysis, he describes the economy_ofscience and common run of //.& mearmg^gr^jhjr^jdsdom—ii^jva^' wisdom in holy souls, it is clear that St. Augustine (without certainly to him tru^j>hilosophy— towardTeternal beatitu3e,_and the' true philosopherJsjJoverofjT^d^ H know that in enumerating the gifts of the Holy Ghost, first St. Thomas had at 3 jy_Ghost. is the wisdom of the Ho We~ characterised {Sum. theol, vfruiphilosophus amaiorDei: it i-li, 68, 4) the gift ofscience as the perfecting ofthe practical difference intellect, and the gift perfectly jknowing the essential ofwisdom as perfecting the speculative intellect: he so adheres in shall comprehend how, while /— the most literal fashion to the opinion conclusions drawn from of St. Augustine. Later (ii-ii, 8, 6), he recog- between purely rational knowledge and the nised that the gifts of science and wisdom are both speculative and practical, as is faith dreamed ofsystematically distinguishing itself: the the principles offaith, he never gift of wisdom in particular judging experimentally from the truths of faith he drew out no chart of intel- the side of the divine realities; philosophical from theological discipline: the gift of science, from the side of created things. But reason these two positions are not its fruition in God the incompatible. AsJohn of St. Thomas has pointed out (he. lectual arrangement; he spurred on towards at. a. n. 7, 8), although the wisdom of the saints may well be at once speculative and l* 1 practical JJ yet it predominates in speculation, (French trans, chap. iv). while the gift of science, because it pro- *Cp. John of St. Thomas, op. cil. "US Fcdorainatcs "' b Poetical knowledge, though it also be " may 3*> Oft Dei, viii, I. ""cd? "John of St. Thomas, op, cil. -

SUPER-RATIONAL 366 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 367

shall understand how, like illuminated by faith. We while more sensitive Ghost and by its gifts, is the supernatural achievement of that move- values dignity dian any other man to the true and of speculation, while ment of introversion which is proper to all spirits. It is this point, in all truly rejecting with all his being (and without die capacity to conceive that concerns God and the soul, which is the centre of gravity for St. of any such thing) what fifteen centuries later a disgraceful period was Augustine's doctrine. If we lose sight of it, the profound meaning of his this to know as philosophical pragmatism, ardent lover of the intelli- teaching escapes us. This is the principle and origin ofall his teaching, and

this centre circles its gence was able to play with entire liberty with a sort of pragmatism in even when it is far away from and in own natural living fact—that of eternal salvation, which is integral in his wisdom— atmosphere, it is characterised by an indescribable flavour of the experi- becausej-infused wisdom roceeds from charity—the movement of mental, at once delicious and living: a far-off participation in, hope for, ^/^J-f. p the x, '"•" will towards its final end. promise of the supreme joy. That is why all metaphysical objects and

— ^ui~the~docrrine~of St. Augustine faith precedes and universally pre- v their purely intelligible constraints, while he guards himself from deny- re- '' pares the intelligence. Crede ut intelligas. Why should it be astonishing ing them or in the least reducing their value, while he knows and ,ti.,.v., efficacy, only present themselves to .WJ„ that the intelligence in question is the knowledge ofinfused wisdom ex^ veres, even more than Pascal, their resonance, the vibra- , IT- ^_tendedover_aUjhe ppssibk him in the degree to which they are filled with the the existence of God, with- presupposes theplogicalj'aith as well as theological charity. It is abso- .tions of the soul; why the rational proof of ea quae sunt and by the lutely essential to the wisdom of St. Augustine to proceed from faith, out ever ceasing with him to proceed per facta starts from experience, this time a purely -• because it tends from its source towards the experimental union with way of causality, also for him truths of the reason God. Equally St. Augustine knows from experience that in order to re- natural one, the experience of those immutable :.,? 1 cover the integrity of its natural vigour, even in the region of those which light up our changing minds. philosophical formula- truths which are accessible by the demonstrations of reason, the woun- As to the soul's knowledge of itself, if, in the 1 and in certain psychological theories ded reason of the sinner needs to be healed by gratia sanans, And it is tion ofhis thought upon this point, of sensation) St. Augustine in our actual movement towards the primal Truth that he seeks to connected with it (in particular his theory defended with difficulty, guide and to instruct us. clearly yields to platonic forms which are only and al- the fact remains that what he saw before all, and that infallibly, . He inculcates into us the fact that the soul can only find God by a re- remote participation with, in reflection of, turn and a progress ad intus, in withdrawing from all things and from ways in a certain more or less which is divine, is the nature and the senses, in preparation for an ascension within. He wishes to be united an experience of an order of things which the soul is radically (but in the profoundest depths ofthe heart with Him who dwells there as in a privileges of spirit in the human soul, by its sub- the body) intelligible to itself by temple and in whom alone the heart can find rest, not the God of the not in the state of union with material things by immersing them in its philosophers and the wise men, who may be attained without faith, not stance, and may only know that here on for St. Thomas to specify even the God of the theologians, who may be attained widiout charity, own light It will be sufficient bring, here as every- but the earth the soul knows itself through its acts to God of the saints, the Life of our life who gives himself to us only Augustine dirough grace and from the sensible world has in in love. *J« as the proof of the existence of God value: 'Ecce sunt caelum et In mystically experiencing most (from whom Pascal greatly deviated on this point) its M God the soul experiences also, in the eoarn quoa variantur. . . Clamant hidden terra, clamant quod facta sunt; mutantur enim atque . point of its sanctified activity, spirit. Tins Dormne, teasa its own nature as a est ipsa evidentia. Tu ergo, se ipse non fecerint. . . . Et vox dicentium double qui es, sunt enim. experience, produced Holy es, bona sunt enim; by the special inspiration of the ea qui pulcher es, pulchra sunt enim; qui bonus eorum, quo com- sunt, sicut tu conditor ^Quamvis Nee ita pulchra sunt, nee ita bona sunt, nee ita enim nisi aliquid intelligat, ipsa fide nemo possit credere in Deum: tamen xi, chap. 9.; parato sunt, nee sunt.' (Confessions, qua credit sanatur, ut intelligat 1 nee pulchra sunt, nee bona amphora. Enar. in Psalm, cxvui, 18, n. 3. SUPER-RATIONAL CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 368 THE DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE ^ of his researches in the specific light of purely where else, the doctrine to its final point. Indubitably, in order to con- object rational specula- It is a higher wisdom which has given birth to those strain men to see the things that are indeed above them, St. Augustine at tion. metaphysical intuitions in which his teaching is so rich. first flew too high: but when fully acquired the substance ofhis psycho- finally recall that such wisdom contains in itself, logy enters completely and easily, as Pere Gardeil has admirably demon- Let us in its source eminenter, what among the scholastics is divided and strated,1 into the system of aristotelian notions revivified and, if I may and separately de- theological and philosophical discipline; or, dare to say so, augustinianised by the Angel of the Schools. Mystical fined as more precisely and things with the greatest possible accuracy, wisdom may be called in some sort the activating agent, the catalys- to delimit let us recall that wisdom contains philosophy in a virtually-eminent ing instrument of augustinian introspection, thanks to which it appears such a manner and in a formally-eminent manner (for in using a lumen as the most marvellous instrument of spiritual observation. In the theology higher theologians, in being more than theologians, exact degree to which St. Augustine's psychology never leaves sight than that ofthe the Fathers and righdy theological work); we shall so understand of the concrete, and his moral science even less so perhaps than his did truly that the St. Augustine differs from that of St. Thomas psychology, it progresses in an entirely other manner than that of the teaching of not only in the habitus of knowledge; it differs also analytical psychology of St. Thomas. point ofview and by its condition. a condition of formation and specific actualisation, the condition In all this we are in a region very different from that of metaphysical Here, technique in their proper nature: there, a condition knowledge: a region which would be inferior to metaphysics if it were of sciences and of fecundity, of a supra-technical wisdom obscuring these only that ofpractical knowledge or psychology, but which it is entirely transcendent condition erroneous to characterise as such; a region which in reality transcends sciences in its pre-eminence: a which, in comparison with the theology, is a condition of virtuality. In all metaphysics, for it is rightly the royal domain of infused wisdom, the sciences of philosophy and prelude to the beatific vision, the return of man to the loving contem- ways, to transfer the teaching of St. Augustine, with all its proper and philosophical plation of the three Persons of the uncreated Trinity dwelling in us by exclusively augustinian characteristics, on to the plane of them, is to distort and to destroy grace. It is so possible to say with Windelband that the philosophical systems, in order to make it one among as the animals which live in the uttermost doctrine of St. Augustine is a metaphysic of the inward life, or with it. It is shattered and scattered are dragged out into the open air, are shat- M. Gilson that it is a metaphysic of conversion, on condition that we depths of the sea, when they terrestrial animals naturally breathe. add that this doctrine is no metaphysic in the proper sense of the word. tered by the pressure of the air which equivocal nature of the word Augusti- The phrases of Windelband and M. Gilson are alike all the more il- It is wise to observe also the of St. Augustine in- luminating in the degree to which one grasps the fundamental im- nianism, which when used to describe the thought a system. In this sense it propriety, in this case, of the term 'metaphysic'. evitably suggests by its impersonality the idea of Augustine never professed Augus- St. Augustine's doctrine is then, definitely, essentially, and in its very is not a paradox to maintain that St. ? There have been, method religious. He does not despise, he in no way lessens the value of tinianism. One might add, Which indeed, sometimes hostile forms of Augustinian- scientific research into the nature of things (whether it is a question of as many different and metaphysics or the ism as there have been augustinian philosophers. sciences of observation) ; he is too great a lover of Plato not to see the universe as a great family ofessences, not to make use DIFFERENTIATIONS OF at every moment of metaphysical concepts. But he only uses them ob- AUGUSTINIANISM AND THE TECHNICAL CHRISTIAN THOUGHT liquely and for quite other ends. If he studies the nature of primary mat- what it is renders contes- ter, it is under the action of grace. On no occasion does he consider the The foregoing considerations make clear the historians of 1 A. Gardeil, table the all those philosophers whom La Structure ie I' Sine el 1'experience mystique, 1927. position of M.D.K. DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN 370 THE WISDOM 371 Indeed this contention implies philosophy classify as Augustinian. on the Augustine, with only the weapons ofAugustine, a complete systematis- ignorance of its own limits: to part ofphilosophy a remarkable demand ation of philosophy and theology. A St. was able to re- Augustine is to claim for philosophy, a philosophical system from St. cover the high inspiration of St. Augustine, a ray from his wisdom, he reality as ifit were seen by its light, what proceeds in from the light to articulate any scientific work (if indeed he ever tried and failed to do so !). from faith and from charity. of the highest christian wisdom, (Thus It needed the weapons of Aristotle, it needed St. Thomas Aquinas. In St. philosophical Augustinianism seems naturally linked up with an im- Thomas's time scholastic Augustinianism was blocked in an impasse the Cartesian moderate philosophising, which is patent in school, and (and the efforts which it made after St. Thomas only make the fact contemporaries who contemn abstract concealed in certain of our more apparent) ; the means whereby it might become a science and, in

knowledge, but only in order to overestimate to an equal measure the consequence, for any progress, were visibly lacking. St. Thomas alone

modes of apprehension which they would substitute for it.) Whatever was able to rightly establish theological wisdom in its own right and one may have for St. Augustine, whatever new or old truths specific order, to establish theology as a science, in defining by the same we can gather from his treasure, whatever sense of inward reality we stroke the proper domain of philosophy. He alone was able to draw may owe to him, such treatment is a complete betrayal of his spirit and from Augustine, but with the weapons of Aristode, not of Augustine,

of his thought. The Meditations touchant la philosophic premihe resemble scientific theology and the science of christian philosophy—and is it not

the De Trinitate as much as a photographer's dark-room resembles the with the weapons ofphilosophy that theology is elaborated as a science? eye of a poet. The 'engaging and hardy' spiritualism of Descartes, the He alone was able to systematise theologically and philosophically the

cartesian cogito (which is something entirely different from the sifallor wisdom ofAugustine, precisely because he placed this wisdom in the per-

sum), the ontological argument, the theory ofpicture-ideas and thought- spective ofother less lofty but more technically perfect forms ofwisdom,

substance; the theophilosophy of Malebranche, the ontologism, oc- which have their irreplacable part in the economy of the christian intel-

casionalism, the idea of vision in God, far from being in the least even lect, because he had the courage to submit it to the conceptual re-differen-

authentic forms of the world of augustinian spirituality, are only the tiation necessary to change it into itself on the plane ofa new intelligibility.

remains left by its rationalistic disintegration. It is only the ungrateful zeal of archaism which can be astonished that / An analogous process ofjnaterialisation has already been known in the natural progress of thought and of culture implied the necessary theology, when a Jansen transposed into the thin substance of his theo- division of philosophical and theological knowledge from one another,

logical pessimism and hedonism the diaphanous but difficult letter of St. into two special disciplines each with a special technique, not certainly " 'Augustine, his too vivid, too divinely human language concerning grace separated, but distinct, exacdy as subsequendy happened in the natural sense ) and liberty , adamic innocence and fallen nature, the delectations of sciences. Spiritual organisms grow like living bodies. And how can 1 v and those of grace. 1 do not ignore the fact that a theological augustin- heterogeneous functions, each vitally articulate, which respond to the

ianism is possible which will fall neither into the excesses ofjansen nor of diverse specific objects of spiritual activity, not become progressively Luther, nor of those anti-thomist disputants from whom Luther drew explicit in the course of history? The explication achieved by St.

his inspiration. But I hazard that it will be the christian instinct of the Thomas Aquinas at the end of the Middle Ages was absolutely neces- theologian which will keep him in die right line of truth rather than any sary.1 In the face of the universe of truths which are naturally accessible virtue inherent in his principles of theological conceptualisation in J M.-D. Chenu, 'La The"ologie comme science an themselves. Cp. the remarkable study by R. P. et seq. There is for all Xin° siecle*, Archives d'liist. dect. et litt. du moyen age, t. ii, pp. 31 Indeed, mediaeval scholasticism endeavoured in vain to draw from recognise the that no 'rationalism* in the work thus accomplished by St. Thomas. To naturalism. *Cp. N. Del Prado, De Gratia et libero arhitrio (Fribourg), 1907. proper value ofthe reason or ofnature is neither rationalism nor SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 372 THE DEGREES OF 373 of Aristotle. corrects by the reason and of truths rationally detachable from the principles of of the technique He Aristode, he honours Augus- honours his father, and it is with faith, the christian reason must be armed with equal qualities of discern- tine as a son the same piety with which ment and knowledge. It must be able tojudge by demonstration, by the he offers at difficult points (very frequendy certainly) the assistance of energy. Let it be added that the pure light ofobjects and intelligible necessities, that is to say, as a science. his youthful more we exhibit the impor- it Thomas's relation to Aristode and to the With St. Augustine, by the very degree to which is absorbed in the dis- tance of St. Greek and Arabic the cursive movement of a higher wisdom which is not in itself discursive, philosophy on one hand, and on the other to St. Augustine and the christian tradition, the more and with the same theology is still, in relation to its own proper and human mode as a whole stroke we light originality his genius. science, in a state ofimperfection. Widi St. Thomas it is fully established up the astonishing of

it he treats of beatitude or of the Trinity, of eternal law, in its own mode .which is the human mode of the reason; has attained When of the and the gifts, of contemplation,1 of evil, of providence its human state of perfection. A scientific man faced with the doctrines virtues and the foreknowledge, ofpredestination, and generally all of St. Augustine is faced by a world of religious wisdom in which his divine of the matters nothing is apparent than own intelligible universe cannot be made articulate. If he adheres to of sacred theology, more this perfectfidelity_ ' that doctrine in so far as he is a believer his thought is cut in two: pro- of St. Thomas_to St. Augustine in his theological synthesis. Everyone gressing in the world of his own speculative development according to knows that the capital doctrine of their agreement is the doctrine of the exigencies of a purely objective analysis, there according to the grace. It is in St. Thomas that we see, come to their perfect scientific for- affirm tinction movement of love towards the experience which should absorb it. mulation, those essential truths which the dis and union The marvel of thomist wisdom, of the metaphysic of being and of of the naturaland supernatural orders, the sovereign liberty of creative mtrinsicreality vital character within us of the infused causes, is that such a knowledge, placed on the summit ofhuman reason, love, the and Augustine never ceased to proclaim and which knows that it is inferior to the knowledge ofinfused wisdom gifts, truths which the wisdom of

still uncertain. St. . against was When ,- and superior to all else, which only divides in ordertounite, establishes Pelagi'us, but in a language which and divine in the human soul, without any diminution or alteration and with the Thomas teaches the motion of the human free will by grace ; stable and a vital solid- causality, in such a way that the free mode itself of our voluntary acts is ; rigour of a universal objectivity, a coherence

' as arity between the spiritual activities which reach up into heaven and caused by God, and that all their goodness derives at once from God prime cause and us as secondary cause, and that it is only for evil } those which extend over and grow upon earth. from that we are the (deficient) prime cause, when he teaches how liberty (in

the sense of autonomy) is the work of the grace of the Holy Ghost, it is THOMAS AQUINAS THE HEIR OF AUGUSTINE the very voice of S t. Augustine, of S t. Paul, that we hear. motive for this difference) There is a story that at Cologne Master Albert instructed his great It has been pointed out (and we can see the 2 Augustine disciple to always follow Augustine in theology and Aristode in philo- that in the 'at times too literally scriptural' theology of St. and historical meaning sophy. We must see this division less in regard to the particular subjects the notion of nature has a much more concrete St. Thomas is a than their formal aspects. In so far as philosophy and theology them- than that of St. Thomas. 'While the nature explored by intrinsic necessity resists selves contain the aspects at once of science and of wisdom, one might say metaphysically indestructible essence, whose order to leave only that to treat of divine and human things Thomas Aquinas asked Aris- even the corruption of original sin, St. Augustine, in diminishes or tode for his scientific equipment and received from Augustine, and from those graces of which he strips it and the powers which it augustimenne, 1927. the other Fathers and the Bible, the substance of his wisdom. And his fi- ^p. the beautiful book by R. P. F. CaynJ. La Contemplation S mystique, vol. i. delity to the wisdom ofAugustine is even more perfect dian his mastery A. Gardeil, La Structure k I'awe et ?expedience DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN 374 THE WISDOM m ofnature the state in fact resulting explicit in its own perverts, describes by the name from makes more mode and according to its own proper original sin and what in that state may authorise man's hope of escaping perspective the thought ofAugustine. analysis, these two attitudes are not has also included from it. That, in the last dogmati- But St. Thomas in his philosophical synthesis, eyes not a shadow ofdoubt: greater degree cally contradictory there is in my StAugus- and to a much than is often recognised, if not the tine does not exclude St. Thomas in this central point of all christian conceptualist method, at least the essential elements of augustinian philosophy, rather he prepares for him and invokes him; but that the thought.

plan of these two expositions is the same I think it is equally impossible It is this that we may recognise, made precise, developed, brought to 1 to sustain.' 1 share myself this opinion ofM. Gilson's. Nevertheless, it is its perfect point, in that metaphysical masterpiece, the thomist doctrine necessary to add that this difference is purely modal, and that St. Aug- of analogy and the divine names. For St. Augustine there only makes

ustine alio taught as clearly as possible the ontological value of the dis- use of Plotinian terms for the adjustment ofPlotinus to the explicit the- 2 tinction between nature and grace, and that he clearly affirmed this dis- ology demanded by revelation, and he not only teaches that God is im-

tinction even in tfa state of innocence: for to him grace is the root of the mutable, immense, eternal, infinitely simple, that he is all that he has,1

supernatural privileges of Adam, such as corporeal irrimortality, which Truth, Life, Beauty, Wisdom, he knows also that he is personal, 'con- 3 2 3 is therefore supernatural also; it is positively and intrinsically ordained scious ofhimselfand ofhis work', Deus non illiquid nesciensfecit, that he 4 for the beatific vision, which is not due to any created intelligence, even has made all things by his will, causa omnium quae fecit, voluntas ejus est* 5 that of the angels; it is distinct from nature even in the angels (simul and that he is very Being, Ifsum esse subsistens, as St. Thomas will say: 6 5 condens et naturam et largiens gratiam). Here again thomist theology only Deum nihil aliud dicam esse, nisi idipsum esse. The augustinian proofofthe

existence of God is rediscovered equivalendy in the quarta via of St. *E. Gilson, Introduction a I'itude de Saint Augustin, 1929, p. 298. 6 Thomas, sometimes even St. Thomas appears to evoke it in its own 2 Cp. De gratia et libera arbitrio, chap, xiii, n. 25: 'Numquam aatura erit gratia? Nam particular form, 7 despite the fact that the formulation cannot remain the et hoc Pelagiani ausi sunt diccrc, gratiam esse naturam, in qua sic creati sumus, ut

habcamus mentem rationalem, qua intelligere valeamus, facti as imagiaem Dei, ut x 'Quae habet haec et est, et ea omnia unus est' (De Civ. Dei, book xi, chap. 10). As dominemur piscibus maris et volucribus caeli et omnibus pecoribus quae repunt super M. Gilson truly points out, this formula contains the germ of the whole mediaeval tcrram. Sed nonhaec est gratia, quam commendat apostolus perfidemjesu Christi. Hanc doctrine of the non-distinction in God alone of essence and existence (cp. De Trin., enim naturam etiam cum impiis et infidelibus certum est nobis esse communem; gratia book xv, chap. 13). vero per fidemJesu Christi eorum tantummodum est, quorum est ipsa fides.' De prae- 2 Charles Boyer, de Veritidans la phihsophie de St. Augustin (1921), p. 108. dest. sanctorum, chap, v, n. 10: 'Posse habere autem fidem, sicut posse habere caritatem, VUk 3 naturae est hominum; habere autem fidem, quemadmodum habere caritatem, gratiae De Civ. Dei, book xi, chap. 10. fidelium. Ilia atque natura, in qua nobis data est possibilitas habendi fidem, non discer- *Enarr. in Psalm, exxxiv. nit ab homine homincm; ipsa vero fides discernit ab infideli fidelem.' Enarrat. in Ps. s book i, c. 1, n. 2: 'Quae vero proprie xlix: 'Manifestum est ergo, quia homines dixit deos, ex gratia sua deificatos, non de De morihus Ecclesiae, xiv, 24. Cp. De Trinit., de Deo dicuntur, quaeque in nulla crearura inveniuntur, raro ponit scriptura divina; substantia sua natos. . . . Qui autem justificat, ipse deificar, quia justificando filios Dei vos. sicut illud quod dictum est ad Moysen: Ego sum qui sum, et: Qui est, misit me ad facit. Deditemmpotestatemfilios Deifieri (loan, i, 12). Si filii Dei facti sumus, et dii facti and Confess., book xi, chap. 4 sumus; sed hoc gratiae adoptantis, non naturae generantis/ Such texts, together with De Trinit., book v, c. 2, n. 2, (v. supra), virtually contain the whole thomist doctrine of the divine names and of 8 Cp. Garrigou-Lagrange, Communication Rome,' at *La Semaine augustimenne de analogy. 24th Apr. 1930. "Cp. son existence et sa nature, 5th edit., p. 296. 4 R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, Cp. De correptkne et gratia, chap, xi, n. 29: 'Quid ergo? Adam non habuit Dei gra- right- 'In the Gentiles whose importance M. Sestili has tiam? Immo vero habuit magnam, sed disparem.' passage in the Summa contra J. Fundantur enim in ip- ly underlined: ' in aliquo aetemo. h Yeritates intellectae fundantur De Trinit., boob xiv and xv (notably chap. 3), veritatis.' (ii, 84.) sa prima Veritate, sicut in causa universali contentiva omnis *De Civ. Dei, book xii, chap. 9. '

CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 376 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 3T7 only mentioned a few characteristic points. same in his hands (which probably explains why instead of developing I have An infinity of ex- signalise with making allusion to it). amples would be needed to all the augustinian riches it ex professo, he contents himself In effect, which assimilated by the thought of St. Thomas, all by reason of the prime difference between St. Augustine and St. Thom- were the signs of the 1 exhibited, 1 the substitution veneration—down to die most minute details —with which the Angelic as ;.e., as Pere Gardeil has so well of the regarded the authority of St. Augustine. aristotelico-thomist dominant of efficient causality for the augustinian Doctor The more one studies the more one verifies the phrase of Pere dominant of participation— the eternal truths which St. Augustine in- either Doctor Gardeil:' One can the points in which they differ; it is impossible to count those distinctly recognised, not only ofthe value ofideal necessity, but also its count in agree The Dumb Ox had devoured all the illuminating virtue, made him direcdy pass on to God the first Truth which they spiritual sub- the Eagle of Hippo, made him, as much as Aristode, the ? and subsistent Light; while in order to find their supreme truth in this stance of very 2 substance ofhis mind.' Ifwe consider the essential values ofthe thought same first Truth, and so to refer the truth in our mind to a first basis of Augustine in their integrity, it is necessary to say, as I have tried a real order, St. Thomas, who recognised in the acting intellect the active of St. to explain, that the sole metaphysical systematisation of that light of our intelligence, would have needed, I believe (if he had wished here it remains essentially augustinian is exacdy to develop the augustinian proof itself), to pass through this illuminat- thought in which the syn- St. Thomas. ing created cause which we bear with us, in order to trace it back to the thesis of

first Cause in whose virtue it participates. Despite the fundamental difference ofphilosophical key of which we THOMISM AND AUGUSTTNIANISM have spoken, one can say, in accord with the admirable studies of Pere Augustin- Boyer, that by means of a general transposition and the multitudinous How absurd it is to compare the systems ofThomism and

hismelf) ! The one light variations required in consequence, the whole substance ofAugust- ianism (I mean the augustinianism of St. Augustine

is the scientific condition of chris-/ ine's doctrine of truth has passed over into St. Thomas. Finally, it is visible is a system, the other is not. Thomism

•'> that wisdom is ( \-G-J: 'J- that the edifice of aristotelian metaphysics and natural philosophy itself tian wisdom; with die Fathers and with St. Augustine and the river in the plain could only find its achievement in the thomist synthesis thanks to the still in its spring. Between the head-waters the side of thomist wisdom, and as if augustinian cornerstone, that is, thanks to the doctrine of creative Ideas. there is no opposition. It is not by that the perpetual fountain of augus- For it is in God himself, in the creative Ideas which illuniinate the the spring overflowed the river, presided over the Angels before causing things, that the created world has the supreme tinian wisdom reaches us in its purity. This inspiration

it passed into that synthesis, and it principle of its order and of its movement. Augustine not only traced formation of the thomist synthesis, growth, for the doc- the great lines ofa theory ofcreation, his exemplarism brings to the con- should continue to enter into it, to rouse it to fresh Doubdess, after invisible ception of the world which St. Thomas developed a full consistency, a trine of St. Thomas is destined to grow forever. beside the river; they supreme metaphysical hardihood, which the analytical circumspection journeys, tributaries of the spring may spring up are 'augustinian' systems will ;,*-,-. ofAristode had never known. destined to increase its waters. Doubdess they are continue to be elaborated in opposition to thomism; frankly J backwardness in pur- A. Gardeil, La Structure de I'ame et 1'expirience mystique, book ii, append. 2. Pere Gar- only a testimony to the laziness of thomists, their deil there comments on and generalises die thesis set out in the study Gilson, by M. x admits that Moses was It is on the Augustine that St. Thomas saint sole authority of St. 'Pourquoi Thomas a critique' saint Augustin', Archiv. d'Hist. doetr. et litt. du moyctt vision de Dieu ra-bas, transitorily raised to the beatific vision. Cp. B. Lavaud, 'La age, vol. i, 1926-27. In everything particularly concerned with the notions of creation Revue tkomiste, Jan.-Feb., 1929; May-June, 1930. andformation full space must be granted to the comments ofM. Gilson [Introduction h

I'itudede Saint Augustin, p. 258). *A. Gardeil, op. cit. 378 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 379 suing the work of universal assimilation and elucidation so potently be- exacdy because of the high level of their spiritual achievement that the gun by their master. Despite these delays and obstacles that work should Middle Ages were able to accomplish their universal work under the normally continue. Those 'augustinian' philosophers who, in spite of headship of the Fathers and particularly of St. Augustine. Our own the inconsistency of their systematic position, rediscover anything of epoch knows a less liberal spiritual uprush, but has more perfect instru- the intuitive vigour of St. Augustine, who throw light on the value of ments, surer means of verification and technical development. It has an- neglected truths, who extend our knowledge of inward realities, work other work to accomplish. And it is under the headship of the Theolo- widiout knowing it for the philosophy St. of Thomas. gian par excellence that christian thought should set its hand and its ener- The inventive hardihood of St. Augustine, more disposed than was gies to work. the theological prudence of St. Thomas to hazard itself in the zone of If we like—we are at liberty in our use of names—we may call the the probable, sought to gain some knowledge of the actual succession wisdom of St. Augustine, or more generally, christian wisdom, which ,A.t>mr of the events of human history; basing himself on the Bible, St. Augus- is infused wisdom making use of reasons and of discourse, 'christian tine created the philosophy ofhistory, or let us say more exactly (for the philosophy'. This 'philosophy', which essentiallypresupposes faith, char- % iUuminations of faith are here necessary) the wisdom of history, and the ity and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the whole supernatural order, is not ;A/* feeling of irreversible V historical becoming, of the movement and de- that work of the exploration of the nature of things to which the men velopment the u t :-l.,_ of world in the sense of time, is in my opinion one of the to whom we are accustomed to give the name of philosophers are de- &f* '__ most precious jewels in the augustinian heritage. There is a whole domain voted, neither has it the means, since it is raised above the spontaneous '•"here, to be regained from Hegel and to claim for christian wisdom. certitudes of ordinary reason, above judgments by demonstration, and Stimulated by the spirit of St. Augustine, will thomist thought one day in the assigning of reasons of beings those truths which are accessible by be enriched by those conjectures in the matter of the exegesis of history the single voice ofour mind alone. The proper instrument ofphilosophy which reflections on culture always strive to become? The Discours sur is lacking to it. And when that instrument serves our minds it has its Vhistoire universelle might be re-written, and a more modern sequel to specific object, which is the intelligibility of things, it has its own rules The City God of would render great services. and its own proper light, which are those of the natural reason, not of It is important also to comprehend that the state of incompleteness the infused gifts. in which, despite multiple efforts, have some corres- the'school or rather the tentative plans . In order that the names we apply to things may for a school of so-called something augustinian philosophy is seen to remain is not pondence with reality, we ought to call christian philosophy m itself a promise as the of renewal or of progress. In itself such incomplete- which is righdy a philosophy, a wisdom which may define itself ness is 1 much more a sign of imperfectibility. How can an organism perfect work of the reason, perfectum opus rationis, and which finds it- winch cannot even truth—on the consolidate itself hope to grow? It is precisely be- self, on the side of die object, in accord with revealed cause of its consitution energies as a science, with a clearly defined systematic side of the subject, in vital connection with those supernatural equipment, that in the chris- thomism, also itself, but in another sense, incomplete, whose philosophical habitat is distinct, but not detached, is capable of progress revealed truth, it and an endless increase. Far from saying that St tian soul. In order that it should be in accordance with Thomas has done order: then, while everything, it declares that while history endures and suffices that this philosophy should be true in its own continues to bring to rational exigencies", light new problems there will always remain by so all the time exhibiting 'the integral rigour of its much more to do as has a stricdy and purely already been done. while all the time following, not a theological, but Let me recall what was of nature and reason said on an earlier page of the wisdom of the philosophical method, it will display 'a conception Fathers and that of die 2. theologians. It is possible to think that it was x St. Thomas, Sum. theol.,ii-ii, 45. 3 So THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING AUGUSTINIAN WISDOM 381 1 open to the supernatural', confirmed by its own natural gifts, and wished to enter into no doubt which If one presumptuous precisions and seek is not repugnant to the supernatural substance contained in the distinguishes him among them ati, deposit out what one might add that his of revelation. But, by the very fact that the less human subject cannot individual note is a no prodigious blaze of the gift of knowledge1 achieve in their integrity those supreme truths which are naturally than of the gift of wisdom, whence comes his privilege of such pro- knowable without aid from on high, this philosophy penetration, demands that it found supernatural not only of those things which are should be developed, in the subject, in vital connection with faith, which divine, but of the human heart and the inmost psychological recesses of without entering into its immediate texture or serving it as a positive the creature. criterion, performs in regard to it the part of an extrinsic regularising l What is in question is mystical knowledge, which penetrates the creature with a lov- principle, veluti stella rectrix; together with theology which, by making ing light due to the connaturality with divine things produced by charity, and which use ofit as an instrument, corroborates the beatitude tears. St. it; with the wisdom of the Holy corresponds to of Cp. Thomas, Sum. theol., ii-ii, q. 9; John of Thomas, Les Dons du Saint-Esprit, chap. iv. Spirit, which supernaturally comforts it also in the soul of the christian. St.

St. Augustine recalls to us what thomists, when they allow their thomism to weaken within them, are tempted to forget: that christian philosophy demands, for its very conditions of existence, that it should live and spiritualise itselfin contact with the living faith and experience of the christian soul; that it also must enter in its own way into the anguish and the peace of the work of redemption, and that it be forti- fied from on high by contemplation. St. Thomas recalls to us what the

Augustinians seem to forget from the very beginning: that christian philosophy, in itselfand in its intrinsic structure a form ofrational know- ledge, is rigorously independent of all the dispositions of the subject, and must only be ruled by objective necessities and intelligible constraints. What has been said of the wisdom of St. Augustine it is equally neces- sary to say, as I have pointed out, of the wisdom of the other Fathers.

J M. D. Chenu, Bulletin thomiste.Jm., 1928, p. 244. In thus distinguishing what the notion of christian philosophy implies ex parte ohjecti and ex parte subjecti, it appears to me that the truth in the remarks of P. Chenu [be. cit.) and of M. Gilson [op. cit.) can be reconciled. In what concerns the order followed by St. Thomas, it was in so far as he was a theologian, not in so far as he was a christian philosopher, that he followed the theological order. Moreover, in his commentaries on Aristotle, he discovered, in so far as he was a philosopher (and a christian philosopher) the very order of philosophy itself. (For the notion of christian philosophy, see E. Gilson's lecture to the Socie"td fcancaiscde Philosophic (21st Mar., 1931), his two volumes on The Spirit ofMediaeval Philosophy the books by Regis Jolivet, Essaisurles rapports entre la pensie grecaue et lapemiechritimne and (1931) La Pkibsophie chr&tienne et la pensie contemporaine (1932). and my own litde book, De laphibsophie chritienne. On Augustinianism and its most authentic significance, see F. Cayr^, Les Sources d'amour iivin d'apris S. Augustin [mi), particularly the author's introduction) SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 383 fused contemplation. And it continues in heaven, where an affective ex- perience, a sort of taste or touch of God through the gifts of the Holv Ghost accompanies, says John of St. Thomas, and responds again to the beatific vision: so that faith will come to an end, but not the mystical which like charity remains experience, forever—proceeding here from faith and in the world to come from the beatific vision. CHAPTER VII of the Cross I hold St. John the great Doctor of this supreme incom- knowledge as St. SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS, THE PRACTICIAN OF THE municable Thomas Aquinas is the great Doctor of communicable knowledge. CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE supreme And it is in regard to the delicate instructive and so admirably relations between the great Doctor of the I. COMMUNICABLE AND INCOMMUNICABLE KNOWLEDGE the great Light and Doctor of the Night that I wish to examine in this When see face to face we God we shall have an intellectual knowledge chapter some of the aspects of the spiritual teaching of St. John of the

of the divine essence which will be sovereignly clear and limpid; this Cross. knowledge will be nevertheless incommunicable, because the divine For this it is not necessary to consider the historical facts of the influ- essence will,be the immediate actuation ofour intelligence, without any ences which affected the reading or the quotations of St. John of the intermediary species or idea (for no idea, angelic or human, can ade- Cross. Such studies, when they are conducted with intelligence and so- quately represent the divine essence), and it is by means ofideas and con- briety, have an incontestable utility: but in themselves they do not con- cepts that our knowledge is communicable. tribute gready. Above all, if, however sagaciously analysed and cata-

Apart from this absolute and divinely privileged case of the beatific logued under the appropriate headings, the intellectual ingredients vision, which is at once stricdy intellectual and strictly experimental, in- which enter into the composition of the Saint's thought and its syn- tellectual knowledge, in heaven or on earth, is in itself communicable. thesis are merely exhibited in vitrio, botded in a historical retort, they Its mystery is precisely this communicability. It is not communicated primarily result in waste labour. History can give us precious evidence like a material thing, like a piece of money which circulates from hand as to the material conditions in which a man's thought has developed, it to hand. It evidently requires a vital, personal, irreplaceable act, an im- can never operate the synthesis of that thought. St. John of the Cross, manent work of thought on the part of him who receives as of him like St. Thomas, fed his mind from the most diverse sources; he had read 1 who gives; but this is regulated and made specific by those objects St. Gregory and St. Bonaventure, Baconthorp and Michael ofBologna which are precisely transmitted thanks to ideas, and which mean the as much or even more than St. Thomas himself—it may be so: but the same to both parties. question at issue is not whether he had read St. Thomas. The question But side by side with this communicable knowledge, which takes is to know whether the testimony which he brings us, taken in its ob- place by means of ideas, there is another form of knowledge which jective significance, accords, and to what degree it accords, with that of bears on the concrete as such, and which exists by way of experience: St. Thomas, taken also in its objective significance. From this point of an incommunicable knowledge, in which doubtless we can have mas- view it would perhaps almost be better to know that he had read St. ters and guides, but they do not transmit to us the objects themselves of Thomas much less than we know he did, best of all ifhe had never even their thought; what they transmit to us are a multitude of opinions, read a line of him! Then the results ofsuch a confrontation of their two counsels and the rules which we need for obtaining 1 spiritual a knowledge which We know that he recommended the writings of these great masters of the is in itself indescribable. Such knowledge when it bears on God is in- life to his novices. 382 384 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 3 g 5 even more significant. It is the differences part of principles, and that practical doctrines would be ofpoint of the philosophy is not limited, as situation, a knowledge of which is an essential wished to limit it, to ordering, it is a view and of prerequisite Kant knowledge, it knows: but it which I wish first of all to try and know its object veritably and to such a confrontation, indicate here. does not completely, for its object is to be done of which it 1 something knows how it ought to be done; it

II. THE SPECULATIVE AND THE PRACTICAL ORDER Ojxtey.

For this it is first of all necessary to place in evidence a notion which,

ill my opinion, affects the whole field of consideration—the notion of practical knowledge.

In the speculative order the mind, when it considers the universe of existence, rouses from this universe worlds of greater and greater pure- ness of intelligibility, each more and more detached from matter: the world of natural science and of the philosophy of nature, the world of the madiematical sciences, the world of metaphysics. Then, when it re- turns to the world of existence considered as such, and finds its end in 1 the human action which is accomplished in that world, the mind, philo- sophising this time in the practical order, applies itself to know, not only in order to know but in order to act, and to acquire an object which is something practical (an act to be accomplished) ; a knowledge which, pro- ceeding in a practical manner in regard to its proper finalities and in the conditions of the object, remains nevertheless, in regard to the general and fundamental equipment ofknowledge, in a speculative or explicative mode, and which envisages the universe itself of action and operative values from the point of view of reasons of being and the intelligible structures which are immanent in it.

This is what Aristode calls practical philosophy: ethics, economics, politics, etc. One could make many important observations on this practical philosophy, which the modern world so misunderstands: it could be pointed out that, although it has nothing to do with the degrees Fig. 8. of abstraction which are characteristic of the speculative sciences, it tra- however great a part in it is played by verses the whole range ofknowledge, from the sky ofmetaphysics, from constitutes a knowledge which, verification, but which is experience, is only a simple knowledge of which it depends, to the earth of experience, on which indispensably it not 2 also and its a regulative, a normative knowledge. must be based. It could also be pointed out that in this order ends play by essence

1 habetur nisi scientur inquantum operabilia Specuktivum 'solum importat et attingit objectum secundum rationem quidditatis ^De operabilibus perfecta scientia non suae, et sunt.' et seq. eorum quae quiddicatcm consequuntur, ideoque respicit veritatem abstrahendo St. Thomas, Sum. theol, i, 14. i<5 ab exercirio .' collective extendi. . . a and 173-82 of the (John of St. Thomas, Curs, theol, i, P. q. i, disp. 2, a. 10, On this point of capital importance, see pages 130-6 n.5. volume, Clairvoyance de Rome (Edition Spes). M.D.K. JB 3 S6 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 38? The only point which I wish to emphasise here is that this practical cal contemplation, it is from the point ofview philosophy does not suffice to regulate of this science. His action. It knows in a manne teach- is enshrined in doctrinal ing theology, in knowledge in which is still only explicatory, speculative and the speculative theoretic, things which and explicative mode. And if we are seeking have for a sure speculative elu- not only to be elucidated but to be done. It assembles into a scien- cidation of mystical theology, as of other supernatural mysteries, tific system all the knowledge which is necessary to it is to regulate action at a him first and before all that we must address ourselves. distance, that is to say, all the rules of action which are discovered by the intellect as it adapts for practical usage an equipment, a mode of discern- THE PRACTICALLY PRACTICAL SCIENCE ment, which is still in fact typically speculative. The philosopher who But in what concerns the exigencies ofactual practice practical know- is most aware, most competent in discussion of theoretical ethics, may ledge cannot abide at that point. It is like a great flood of intelligibility find himselfdisconcerted before the minutest practical act, and may even which descends as it particularises, as it clasps closer and closer, to the himself lead an immoral life. point contact of very with the concrete and particular act to be accom- Let it be added that if there are two perfecdy distinct types of philo- plished hie et nunc, the indefinite variety of contingent circumstances. In sophical knowledge corresponding to the speculative and practical immediate contact with action, as the immediate regulator of actions, orders, theological knowledge, the on other hand, because of its eleva- the true practical knowledge is no longer what is called a form of tion, embraces at the same time in its unity both orders; there is only one knowledge, a science: for at this point its object is not only a practical theology, which is at once speculative 1 and practical. For in fact man as object to be accomplished, but still more a practical object in its very he acts here on earth, not being that abstract subject, that pure and simple singularity, in its relations with the end wished for by my incommuni- subject of human nature seen by philosophy, but finding himself in cable personality, and this is not the object ofany science. The true prac- concrete conditions which determine and universally affect his nature, tical knowledge as the immediate regulator of action is the virtue of I mean the concrete status of a world fallen and redeemed, it is not any prudence. Prudence judges, it commands what is to be done hie et nunc. practical philosophy (at least in the degree to which this is not in itself And, as we know, this virtue is at once intellectual and moral: it is illuminated by theology), but the practical side of theology which bound up with the moral virtues and necessarily presupposes the recti- holds the right and position to regulate our actions. The demonstration tude of the will. In this region the intellect does not work alone, but which has been made of the still speculative and theoretical manner in in dependence on the will and on the dispositions of the will. It is with which practical philosophy studies its practical object (human acts) re- regard to the direction of the action and the Tightness of the will that its mains equally true with regard 1 to the practical functioning of theology. judgment is true or false. It is still in a speculative manner, and with the pure intelligence, that A question presents itself. Is there not an intermediate zone ofknow- theology considers and regulates human actions. It is, we may say, a ledge between speculatively practical knowledge and prudence? Fol- speculatively practical science. When St. Thomas treats of morality and of lowing the principles of St. Thomas, I affirm that there is—a practical human activity, when he treats of that supreme activity which is mysti- science in the clearest meaning of the term, what we may call practically J Cp. Sum. tiwol., i, i, a. and practical knowledge. It is still a science because, 3 4. As Cajetan has forcibly pointed out, it is not 'in a although much more manner of aggregation', it is by die very indivisibility of its essence that theology is at particularised than moral theology or ethics, though it considers its once and completely formally and eminently speculative and practical. {Cp. John of St. x Cp. Thomas, Curs. J St. Thomas, Sum. theol., i-ii, 58, 5: 'Utrum intellectualis virtus possit esse sine *»I, i, P. . If dh? . 2> a . Ia) : q Ic Js> &f ^ ^^ pccu] ativc morali,' ^ and , ad. ' intellectus practici (in prudentia) accipitur per confor- since 57, 5 3 Verum it treats principally more of divine things than ofhuman acts. For it treats these niitatem ad appetitum Cajetan writes in a particularly important commentary, m the degree to which man rectum.' is ordained by them for a perfect knowledge of God, ia apropos of this article, 'Veritas intellectus speculativi consistit in cognoscere, Veritas which ' eternal beatitude consists.' (St. Thomas, hc.cit. a. 4) autem intellectus also Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, iv, 3. practici in dirigere.' See J. SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 389 3 88 THE DEGREES inclined to think that philosophers have often, and particularly compounded of, has as its proper object, I am cases in detail, it is nevertheless the present time, gravely neglected the importance of these sciences, But it proceeds in its fundamental in the universal and reasons of being. constitute a register ofknowledge quite different from their own. of its notions and which equipment ofknowledge, in the very structure defini- is a science of the practician as such, which is not reducible to odier mode dian that of ethics or theology. There tions, according to a quite in the speculative mode, and whose dignity and importance for the entire knowledge The very method of knowledge is here reversed: mode of are both great in regard to culture: I am not only thinking of those vast does this mean? It implies that what is knowledge is practical. What universes ofknowledge which belong to the various crafts, such as those explain, to resolve a truth, even a practi- significant here is no longer to of the engineer or the doctor, the banker or the architect, die artisan or principles. What signifies is to prepare an cal one, into its reasons and the military commander, in all of which a practical science is incorpor- the action is a concrete thing, action and assign its immediate rules. And ated as well as an art in the rightful meaning of the term: I have also in which must be thought of in its very concretion before being posited as mind that which concerns the moral order, the knowledge of men. In joins together, i.e. in re- being, knowledge here, instead of analysing, many of the great moralists, in for example, it is much itself and its object gard to the fashion in which it establishes between rather a science ofthe practician than that ofthe philosopher that we en- that is already known, all a relation of truth. It gathers together all counter. And it is the same with the great politicians. to organise explications, all principles and reasons of being, but in order We return here to one of the fundamental themes of this book: that correspond to the exigencies of all these from new points ofview, which there are in the very world of the mind itself structural difFerentiations ex- the position of the concrete act, and which are furnished direcdy by and a diversity ofdimensions which it is above all necessary to recognise, characterised perience, whose part is here primordial. It is in this fully and, if we are to escape the gravest errors ofinterpretation, the greatest sense that thomists teach that the practical (practically practical) care must be taken to assign to each type ofthought its exact situation in proceed modo compositive/1 like art or prudence. And as art and sciences are in this form of transcendental topography. The differences which prudence each suppose a rectification of the appetite (in the one case only according to which the 2 question here concern that 'fourth dimension' working ends, in the other, of human ends as such), the in the order of proper ends. mind diversifies its values ofknowledge according to their practical sciences also (because in the line of doing they are identified we From this point of view it seems to me that we are mistaken when action are bound up with pru- with art itself, and in the line of they hu- seek to classify as psychology, as part of the speculative science of measure its conditions), also dential experience and take on in some so man nature, the profound researches and discoveries pursued by 8 dis- imply and presuppose, in order that they may judge truly, right by many great sons of intuition, by Montaigne, Pascal or Nietzsche, the appetite in regard positions of the will and a certain purification of Balzac or Shakespeare or Racine or Baudelaire, by Swift and Meredith, to those ends for which they are concerned. obser- Dostoievsky. These potent observers of mankind are not pure l invades the ]n the practically practical sciences the compositive or 'realising' mode truly moral- vers, neither are they psychologists': they are much more manner than it intimate structure of knowledge, although in much less fundamental With- practicians of the science of manners. does in prudence: the notional instruments, the means of apprehension and judgment, ists, not philosophers, but relations sense of the word, the for- have themselves become fundamentally practical (cp. infra, pp. 400-1), and the out doubt it is not to a science in the integral of truth, on which the fundamental regimentation ofknowledge depends, are no lon- experimental material that mulation of its rules and precepts, but to its aiti- ger of a purely intellectual order: we may say that truth is taken according to the sometimes with very they have above all devoted their energies (and gere—as if founded on the cognoscere. is the dynam- 2 its regulative truths). It Cp. CajetaninSHw. theol, i-ii, 57, 5, ad. 3. (Also Art and Scholasticism.) great deficiencies on die side of s docs actual usage of free- In a lesser degree than prudence however, for it does not belong to them, as it ism of human beings which they have studied, die to the to prudence, to determine the final practicaljudgment hie et nunc, and to lead up last end, so that the will, and die position of man with regard to his imperium. jpo THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 39 i exactitude of their views docs not only depend on the acuteness of their request ofMs spiritual daughters, he is expounding a doctrine, he teaches. vision but also on their ideas of good and evil, on the 1 disposition it is of This doctrine is practical , formulated as a practical science, which their own hearts with regard to the Supreme Good. They bring back an proceeds by creating immediate notions for the regulation of concrete admirable treasure-trove of great psychological richness, but it is by actions. In the writings of St. Theresa, who always refused to be made a means of a practically practical knowledge of human actions, not tech- doctor of, but whose doctrine the Church has glorified, there are a nical psychology. And it is precisely because they are not psychologists number of the descriptive and experimental elements of such a science. but moralists that dicir psychological observation penetrates so infinitely In the writings of St. John of the Cross this science is there, in all its deeper than all the psychological technique of the laboratories and the dimensions, to such a degree that the theorist of sciences could find no colleges. more perfect example of a practical science. For, just as practically prac-

tical knowledge depends on speculatively practical knowledge, the THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF CONTEMPLATION practical science of contemplation depends on moral theology. And St. It is important to comprehend that in regard to that action par ex- John of the Cross is not only a supreme contemplative, he is also a very cellence which is the passion of divine things and the contemplative un- good theologian: which is the reason why this practical science in his ion with God, there is also not only a speculatively practical science hands reaches its perfection. which is that of theology: there is also a practically practical science, This then is the place to ask what are the relations between this prac- winch is not so much occupied with telling us what perfection is but tical science and theology. If we take the word theology in the widest with directing us thither, the science of the practician 2 of souls, of the meaning of the term, sacred doctrine, as embracing the whole organ- masters of spirituality, of the artisans of sanctity, the science which ism ofour knowledge ofthe mysteries, faith itself, theological discourse, broods over our miserable hearts and would bring them at any cost to the gifts of knowledge, counsel and wisdom, then certainly this prac- the possession of their supreme joy. It is in this practical science of con- tical science ofwhich we have been speaking is a part oftheology so de- templation that St. John of the Cross is a master. fined. But if we take theology in the strict sense of the word, as I have Two elements must be distinguished in the works of St. John of the done heretofore, as meaning a virtually revealed science proceeding in Cross: his inspired poems and the commentaries which he wrote upon the speculative mode, it is equally clear that this practical science must them for our instruction. In his poems, written under divine inspiration, and that he said to Madeleine of the through limpid, strophes written in 1578, in the prison of Toledo: lyrical symbols, he recounts, in so far as human lang- Holy Spirit, when she admired the vivid and subde expressions in his poem, 'My uage may express the inexpressible, which is, truth to say, very inade- daughter, sometimes God gave me them, sometimes I myselffound them out.' (Siv., quately, the mystical de Trinite", Etudes carmelitaines, Oct., experience which he has livingly known. There he Obras de S.Juan de la Cruz, vol. i, p. 325: cp. Louis all, as the dreams 1 at all prevent the poem from proceeding first of of nothing but of singing. In his commentaries, 1931.) Which does not written at the God', Saint witnesses in his prologue to Anne ofJesus, from 'the fervour ofthe love of ^et, perhaps, the very fact that he had received the grace and the divine impulsion Spirit and from those inspirations, superior to all human explanations, of the Holy to srag.of his experience already contained in itself the virtual intention (ofwhich he 'which aids our weakness'. himself was ignorant) of teaching the ways of spirituality. Contemplathnemaliistradere 2 which leads to is, in the words of Fr. He himself was perfectly aware of this. He taught 'the right way of the Mother ofGod, the Carmelite vocation, and emin- Carmel, Prologue, Siv., vol. ii, ently that of St. John of the union', el pun cierto camino de la union (Ascent ofMount Cross, These charisma are given adutilitatem aliorum. Thus y the which would be profitable' to souls. function which I have p. 7). He only spoke 'in order to say something remarked on must not be overstressed, nor made too iixed a basxs. Lyrical expression, in (Obscure Night, booki, chap. 7. Silv., ii, p. 386.) the very fact ofits own being, contains in itself, im- plicitly and undefined, the first instant 2 to the word theology a very ofexpansion towards others. Cp. St. Thomas, Sum. theol, i, 1, 1. It is in thus giving em krcdttowMew itself called 'mystical theology by «^g^H./ri^/ «iforAni1eofJesuS,ini584, general meaning that infused contemplation is <:. t? jj j ^ it. joim added at first four, then five, strophes to the original canticle of twenty '

392 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 393 theology. be distinguished from A man may lose charity and remain two must not go so far as a tween the to give to them two specifically 1 theologian (if not eminently yet sufficiendy), even in the case of habitats, for the practical mys- different science which is in question should tical theology, if he has theological faith and can reason well. But— be regarded as a particular development of theological habitude.1 although St. Theresa preferred a learned and not very holy confessor of this digression. I Enough wished only and primarily to make clear to a very holy confessor with litde learning (because she was directed the grounds for that juxtaposition, which it is now possible to make, of less by a confessor than by the Holy Ghost) how could — anyone be St. Thomas and St. John ofthe Cross, in order that we may righdy ob- expert in this way of the Holy Ghost, and recognise practically, relations con- serve dieir one with the other. St. Thomas, as I have said, is the cretely, the paths which lead die soul to infused contemplation, if he supreme Doctor ofdogmatic and moral theology, he is in particular the had himself this no knowledge of experience, which in itself presup- supreme doctor of the speculatively practical science of contemplation poses charity? and union with God. St. John of the Cross is the supreme Doctor of the This science, which is practical not only in its object but in its mode, practically practical science of contemplation and union with God. The which is founded faith on and presupposes the experience of divine one explains and enables us to see, the other guides and leads; the one things, while it uses the principles of theology to guide souls on the in- throws intelligible light over all being, the other leads our liberty ward way, is yet distinct from theology in the strict sense of the term: through all the nights of denudation; on his teaching mission one is a nevertheless it is bound up with it in the closest fashion; for theology, demonstrator, the other a practician, of wisdom. It is from the point even though, when it treats of human acts and of man's journey to his ofview of this practical science that it is essential to observe to compre- final end, it does so in a speculative manner, seeking for reasons and ex- hend the teaching of St. John of the Cross. planatory structures, is for all that eminently practical in a formal sense, and has a like continuity with the sciences which have a more close rule m. THE SENSE OF HUMAN LIFE over action. This practically practical knowledge presupposes speculatively prac- We may therefore definitely conclude that, just as the practical in- tical knowledge. Before examining in its actual practicality the spiritual tellect is an extension of the speculative intellect, but where new prin- doctrine of St. John ofthe Cross, it is necessary first of all to consider the ciples (the dispositions ofthe appetite) necessarily intervene, in the same is impos- way the theological presuppositions of that doctrine. At this point it practical science of the inward way is a practical extension of theology, sible to avoid the realisation of the profound, essential concordance be- into which mystical experience and the gifts of the Holy Ghost tween the thought of St. John ofthe Cross and that ofSt. Thomas—even intervene. And the clear distinction which must be drawn be- all the more striking, the language of J though, and it is this that makes it In itself the theological habit necessarily presupposes theological faith; but, dif- St. of the Cross is in way dependent on that of thomism. I will ferent from the gift of John no wisdom, it docs not necessarily presuppose charity, for it can be substantially present in a sinner. Cp. only indicate here two particularly important points, the first concern- John of St. Thomas, Curs, tlteol, i, P. q. i, disp. z, a. 2 and 8. But that a theologian could be eminent without being comforted by the gift ing the end and the meaning of human life, the second, with regard to ofwisdom and having some experience ofthe realities about which he reasons would 2 theological faith. seem to be impossible. 'Etenim sive docendo sive scribendo hie divina pertractat, prae- clanssimum dat theologis a. n. 17. documentum illius quae inter sensus animi et studia interced- Upjohn of St. Thomas, Curs, tlteol., i, P. q. 1, disp. 2, 10, ere debet necessitudo maxima. human un- Nam, quemadmodum regionem aliquam longinquam "Many other points could be signalised: for example, the dependence of bene habere cognitionem non dicitur qui ejus descriptionem quamvis subrilem cogno- derstanding and discourse in regard to the senses (this notion, which is of aristotelian vent, sed qui aliquamdiu ibidem vixerit, sic elucidates how far his position intimam Dei notifiam sola scientiae per- origin, is fundamental with St. John of the Cross; it vestigatione nullus assequkur, nisi is from any possible etiam cum Deo conjunctissime vivat.' (Pius IX, with regard to the natural activities of our mind and meditation encycl. Studhrum iucem. (Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, creative and sanctifying love: De Revdafwne, chap, i, p. 21.) neo-Platonism): the efficiency ofgrace and the liberty of .

394 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS m For St. John of die Cross, as for St. Thomas and the whole tradition vision and the love of beatitude, beatific and here on earth by faith and of Christianity, the final aim of human life is transformation into love of God by love. The supernatural charity, by which we love God and 1 'to become God by participation ', which is achieved in heaven by the his creatures with a love that is righdy divine, makes us one with God the relation of charity to the gifts of the Ghost and makes us one with him in one spirit. Qui adhaeret Holy and the virtues : the distinction Deo, units spiritus that between presence by immensity, by which God is in all things, and the est. 'The end of all human actions and affections', 1 presence by writes St. Thomas, 'is grace, in •which inhabits souls the just, he the of etc. On this last point (see supra, chap. die love of God, and that is why there is no measure which may rule v) the capital text is in Tlie Ascent ofMount CarmeJ, book ii, chap. v. diis love, but it is the measure and the rule for all Some have endeavoured to make a difficulty the rest, and can never between this text and book ii, chap, xv*

where St. too great. .. . . The interior act of charity John speaks of 'this light which is never absent from the soul', and again when be has final reason, for it is the he writes, 'For then when the natural has failed in the soul which is already given over supreme good of man, which consists in the adherence of the soul to to love, the Divine naturally and supematurally flows into it, for God leaves nothing as the Psalmist says, 'It is good for .' God, me to adhere to God. . . And empty that £11.' he does not This passage, where the word 'naturally' was omitted by the Cross: 'As love is the first St. John of the union of the Father and the Son, so Saint's editors, must obviously be understood in close relation to his general doctrine, 2 and finds its natural commentary in the explanations which he has previous- is the union of the soul with God.'

ly given in chap. v. There he explains that this 'divine light is never absent from the character of Canticle B has not yet been demonstrated, it certainly appears, in the soul* because of God's presence his by immensity, and 'the transformation of the soul present state ofresearch, to be highly probable. into God by love' can only take place when grace makes God present in the soul by But there is another question, which is no less important: that of the source of the the union of resemblance (or as St. Thomas says (i, 8, 3), when the known and the materials from which it was constructed. The hypothesis in question, that with the loved is in him who loves), knows and and it is only because the soul has already shamelessness which was characteristic ofthe period, the compilers rearranged and cor- 'received from God this rebirth and this sonship which surpass all understanding (chap. rected, glozed or altered passages which they considered dangerous, and added, some- v)\ that it can break through the veils and the entanglements of created things and times to enlarge, sometimes to justify in small details their own alterations, is easily establish itself in the nudity of the spirit. This is the essential presupposed condition probable. But the problem affects other materials, which do not come under the cate- for everything that he writes in chap, xv, and this is why, when the soul super- gory of these rearrangements, and which, present in the second Canticle but not in naturalised by grace and 'already given to love' empties itself of 'the natural', the the first, show a full agreement with the thought of the Saint as it is displayed in other Divine fills it immediately, naturally (by 'the substantial union common to all created writings which we know are his, and with so direct an impress of his style that it things' by which it already occupies the soul) and supematurally, in the union of grace seems impossible that they could have been fabricated or set in imitation, 'in the man- and love. ner of St. John of the Cross, an author in any case not at all easy to imitate. The only This doctrine is again considered and expounded in The Spiritual Canticle, second re- psychologically satisfying explanation is that the passages in question consist of frag- daction, str.n. ments from St. John's correspondence and notes of possibly oral instructions on the 1 precious material, Ascent, book ii, chap, v: Canticle. The compilers of Canticle B would thus have saved for us Obscure Night, book ii, chap. 20, Living Flame, str. 1, intemperance of devo- ver. 1, str. 2, ver. 6. Canticle, str. while enclosing it in a work whose production was due to the 27, 38. Cp. 'What God desires is to transform us into gods, and to give us tion. Dom P. Chevalier (in Vie Sphituelle, 1926) has given a typical example ofa simi- by participation what He is by nature. He is like a fire which would convert lar method of procedure with regard to St. Francis of Sales. 'Three ofthe Vrays Entre- all things into fire.' [Translator's Note.—This sentence, quoted from were not Gerardo's edition of the Spiritual tiens (published posthumously by St. Jane-Frances de Chantal, in 1629) Sentences and Maxims by M. Maritain, is not included in the critical English preached, but are taken from sermon manuscripts.' There are no additions 'in the man- trans, of the works of St. John ofthe Cross. See the 'Introduction .' Chevalier, Baruzi, Fr. Louis of the to the Spiritual Maxims' in ner of. . . Such would be, if together with Dom Works of St. John of the Cross, vol. iii.] It is for textual Trinity, regard Canticle as apocryphal, the case for Canticle B. This is why I do not criticism to decide the question between the two redactions of the we B simply throw it Spiritual Canticle. The think it necessary, even if we regard it as a posthumous compilation, to internal arguments hitherto deduced do not, in my opinion, one cites an however impressive aside and disregard it. is necessary, and I think is sufficient, is when they may be, carry as yet die weight of certain demonstration. What that the reader may know The liberty of the wise man instance from it to take care to mention whence it comes, so must also be taken into account; the son ofman is master even of the sabbath, and St. the only probable nature ofits attribution to St. John ofthe Cross. John of the Cross is the master of his own text, and is free seriously to rewrite it in order to The work of P. Gabriel de StcMarie {Etudes carmtlitaines, Apr. 1936) make certain truths clearer, or to disengage new meanings, Chevalier. even at the price of a certain change militates against the negative theory advanced by Dom Philippe of perspective. This is only a possibility, but the rules a of logic demand that it 1 Ca/ir. str. 12. should not be neglected. If, however, the apocryphal Sum. thcol, ii—ii, 27, 6, also ad. 3 396 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT OF THE JOHN CROSS 397 1 It is in charity, St. Thomas says again, that perfection consists: the In the state ofbeatitude it is by intellection that we shall be deified, but perfection ofdivine love is commanded to all, doubtless not as an end to that vision will itself be the supreme effect of love, the grasp by which be immediately attained, but at least as the end to which all should be love lays hold on its supreme good, and it is from the delights of love directed according to their conditions. Estate perfecti: the search for the 1 that that vision will flower. Moreover, here on earth, where we can- perfection of charity, which is die perfection of heaven, is the raison not know God in his essence, but only by his effects, no pure know- d'etre ofour life. The meaning oflife is to be oriented towards the perfec- ledge is able to unite us with God immediately and not at a distance. tion of Love. 'In the evening of this life,' St. John of the Cross will write, love is able so to do. 'God who cannot in this life be known in 2 But 'it is by our love that we shall be judged.' And again: 'Truly we have himself may be loved in himself' and 'immediately', are the profound only been created this love.' 3 for It is our sovereign recompense here on 2 words of the Angelic Doctor. And again, "The love ofcharity bears on earth, for 4 'love is only repaid by love', and 'the soul which loves God 3 an end which is already possessed,' Le. which already, primarily, has does not wish or hope or ask for anything other than the perfection of been given by grace. And what is the witness of the Catholic faith? That 5 love'. Before we see God in heaven as we are seen by him, the supreme God is love, as St. John has announced, on 6 6e6s ayairn, larw. So we accomplishment of our life on earth is to love God 'as much as he loves may understand that if God has many rightful names, ifhe named him- us*. Despite human infirmity that is the condition of those souls who self to Moses as 'I that Am, and if the wisdom of the Greeks knew him have come to the spiritual marriage; who attain in this mortal life— as The Thought of Thought, the Gospel tells us his yet more secret name, in a state ofever accelerating motion and progress—that equality love of showing him to us as subsistent Love. It is in the degree to which he is with God which is found in the blessed in a state of consummation, Love that he transforms us into himself, it is this name which contains with whom heaven and earth are indeed at one. Le amara tanto como es all his secrets for us. These truths over which we summer are the breath amaia. No more potent words have ever been spoken, words which regards beatitude as *St. John ofthe Cross is in full accord with St. Thomas when he illuminate and cut through the darkness of our minds like a sudden consummated by love. (Cp. Canticle, second redaction). lightning doctrine, see Obscure Nigkt, or searchlight, for they reveal in the concrete, in the way of According to St. Thomas (and St. John holds the same the vision which formally and essen- St. book ii, chap. 20, and many other passages), it is John of the Cross, the supreme aim which is accessible here below, act intellection is tially constitutes beatitude (cp. Sum. theol, i-ii, q. 3. »• 4 and 8); the of before the dissolution ofour pitiable flesh: if I may dare so to speak, our is in the will thus that by which the creature possesses God as its sovereign good. But it penultimate end, our accomplished, and beati- reason here on earth and in this perishable and that the immensity ofjoy which is created by such an act is beatitudinis.' (a. fleeting existence itself." tude consummated, 'quia scilicet ipsum gaudium est consummatio 4.) delights ofthe soul which are IntheCa«ticfe,str. 13, StJohn speaks ofthose greatest l Sum. theol., ii-ii, 3. dicen los teologos, que es yet 184, Spiritual Maxims, No. 57 (Eng. trans.). 'en el entendimiento en que consiste la jruidfn, como in which fruition words 'en que consiste la fruici6n , *Cantkk (second redaction), str. 28. 4 a Dios'. If any one proposes these Cant. t sa. 9. fruition in the intelligence and mi consists, in suggestion that it is not thomism to place mutual inclusion ofthe spiritual not in the will, one can reply that it is by reason ofthe *Ibil str. 37. would in intellectu', so that affectus 1 point out here that the Second Canticle itself, even ifit removes faculties, 'quod est in voluntate, est etiam quodammodo nono to the future life the strophes in which principiatum in prindpio, in quo habetur this equality of love is described in all its force animae. . . .sunt in intellectu . . . sicut and fullness, 1 Anima, quod nevertheless affirms its loquendi utitur in in De possibility here on earth; though it may imply the principiati ; 'wide et Philosophus hoc modo equality oflove which In St. John of the begins with spiritual betrothal. the same voluntas (St. Thomas, Sum. theol, i, 87, 4-) «% And these passages are in ratione est'. out as in the authentic first has with reason pointed Canticle. Cross wished simply to recall, as R. Garrigou-Lagrange consKtsin Whether one takes the second the seat of beatitude, which redaction as apocryphal or not, the doctrine of an (Vie Spirituelk, 1930), that the intelligence, equality of love which begins fruition. here on earth and which is the supreme aim of the aspi- seeing God, is in heaven the principle of rations ofthe soul, is essential in St. John ofthe Cross, as is attested, among other confir- *Sum. theol, i-ii, 27, 2; ii-ii, 27, a. mations, by texts in The Living Flame, chap, ix, 12-6. quod jam habetur.* "Ditto, i-ii, 66, 6. 'Amor charitatis est de eo 39S THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS KNOWLEDGE 399

ofhis nostrils for St. John of die Cross. That is why he says, all their purity and dieir force' and that 'There is no us 'truths in it is 'clear and void work which is better or more necessary than this 1 1 of love,' and 'God of errors and natural forms'. 2 makes use ofnothing except love'. That is why the idea that any pure The 'silver waters' ate the propositions or articles of faith. 'In order to knowledge or pure intelligence may be the proportionate means of understand diese words,' explains the Saint, 'we must know that faith union with God seems to him the height of absurdity. to silver because of the propositions That is why he is is compared which it teaches us, the persuaded, togedier with all Christianity, that contemplation is not an truth and substance it involves being compared to gold. This very sub- end in itself, but a means (a superexcellent means and already in union stance which we now believe behind the silver veil of faith, we shall with its end), and that it exists for the union of love with God; and that clearly behold and enjoy hereafter; the gold offaith shall be made mani- it is itself a form of knowledge by love, a 'loving attention to God'. 8 fest But when faith shall have been consummated in the clear vision are here We at the antipodes from any neo-platonic intellectualism. of God, then the substance of faidi, the silver veil being removed, will And we are in the heart of the theology 4 2 of St. Thomas. We are also, it shine like gold.' must be added, exceedingly far from certain modern interpreters of St. Finally 'eyes so much desired' are the very substance of faith, the John of the Cross. If his doctrine is written as a commentary on a can- divine eyes, the divine truths considered in themselves, those living ticle it is because it elucidates the moments of a dialogue of love, where truths which the soul carries in itself, but only in 'an image', because of in the end the lover and the beloved speak with only one voice—truly the veil of faith (and which, we may remark, will be in eternal life not made one in a unity, not of substance but of love: 'Two natures in one only the reality which is seen, but still more righdy eyes by which one spirit and one 5 love.' sees, because it is in themselves that they will be known).

This is exacdy the doctrine which St. Thomas on his side propounds THEOLOGICAL FAITH in the Summa theological when he distinguishes in faith the reality in its The second theological postulate on which I wish to insist is con- ends: God himself in the inwardness of his essence, the same God who cerned with the nature of theological faith. A famous stanza of the proportion- is seen by the blessed—and the mode of knowledge, which is Spiritual Canticle bears precisely on this subject, and John of the Cross ate to our nature, and which only offers us this divine reality in the shape explains it in his commentary in the clearest fashion. of objects which have already been attained by concepts and the names Ofountain crystalline, which are our natural means ofknowledge, and ofwhich God makes use, among If thy silver waters language. by the ministry of his Church, to speak ofhimselfin human Suddenly thou wouldst let flashforth is at The capital importance of this doctrine for mystical theology Those eyes so long desired once apparent. The whole uprush and desire of mysticism, in freeing Whose image I have written on my heart! seize hold itself from the imperfect human mode of multiple ideas, is to The 'crystal fountain' is faith, from whence 'die soul derives all the of of to which we are joined by the light waters of spiritual good', this object, this same reality' and which the Holy all Ghost, the source of proportionate to our living faith, which makes use of those ideas in a manner waters, causes to spring up in us: it is like crystal in that it offers knowledge nature. earth will thus essentially be lCant. Contemplation here on second redaction, str. 28. */J/,/. attaining to the true byfaith, since supernatural faith is alone capable of am°rOSa 3 Di°S Sin es ' ecificar actos '- Liv Ascent, P >»i #«*. «r- 3. Cp. knowledge in a superhuman book lXT life of the divine reality; and it will be *Cp. Sum. theol, ii-ii, 180, 1; i-ii, 68; ii-ii, 45, 2. 2 d 'Cflfjf.str. 11. Ihil ° 1 matrimonio entrc Dios el alma, son dos naturalms en ^j™ y 308-9. ™^runeSpmtuy amor 3 chap, v, deDios.'C^ 3. Cp. supra, pp. str. 27 Sum. theol, ii-ii, 1, 26 and ad. .Cp. ^.conclusion, pp. 447 and45i- 400 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 401 manner, where faith will surpass its natural manner ofknowing, will pro- the concepts themselves in which are elaborated and remodelled, distinct signify gress, on the other side of ideas, to die experience of its object the real and take hold of it, in the way in which, if I may say so, the And how could this be, except by love, which enracinates us in those mind makes intelligible cuts into things. We may say that in the specu- things which are divine, and which, in that form of pure and ineffably lative sciences concepts have their bare value of abstraction and intelli- spiritual consciousness which is given by the Holy Ghost in the action gibility, occupied in an analysis of the real into its ontological (or em- ofits gifts, becomes itselfthe illuminant ofknowledge? piriological) elements; in the practical sciences, on the contrary, they are Such certainly, as I shall stress further at the end of this chapter, is the incorporated into concrete , occupied in composing the means, thought of St. John of the Cross, which is in full accord with thomist dynamic moments, by which the action should come into existence. From theology. How does he continue his commentary on this stanza of the it follows that concepts which which bear the same name in these two Canticle, where the soul aspires to see suddenly appearing those eyes so sciences, and orders of ofwhich one is like the projection ofthe other into much desired, whose image it carries written on its heart? Before the noetic space, will relate another to the real in entirely differing fashion. beatific vision to which it aspires, there is an anticipation, where already Thus it is necessary to mark the different sources of the conceptual those eyes begin to appear. In fact, anotherjoins itselfto thisfirst image of vocabulary of St. John of the Cross and that of scholastic theology: the divine reality which faith has imprinted on the heart, an another which language of St. John of the Cross relates to mystical experience, and to a is the work of love, and in virtue of 'the union of love' it retraces 'so in- practical science. This language of practical science I have just now en- timately and livingly' the face ofthe Beloved in the soul that in fact it is deavoured to characterise. Mystical language, as has been very well in the soul like its very soul, so that 'each lives in the other, and each is 1 shown, is necessarily different from that of philosophy; there hyper- the other, and the two are made one in a transformation of love', ac- bole is not an ornament of rhetoric but a means of expression wbichis cording to the 1 words of St. Paul, 'I live not, but Christ lives in ra.t.' As rigorouslyjecjuired for exactitudes ofmeaning: for in fact it is an effort he has explained at length elsewhere, it is in and by this union oflove— to render intelligible experience itself—and what_an_gxperience, the and always in and by faith—that for St. John of the Cross contempla- most ineffable of ?11 ! Philosophical language wishes above all to define tion touches and feels those things which are divine. reality without feehngjt, mysticaljanguage to define it, as &ough~by"~ 2 feeling what it cannot see. How many errors are avoided by a right 'PRACTICALITY' 1 Cp. IN THE VOCABULARY OF ST. JOHN OP THE CROSS R. Garrigou-Lagrange, L'Amour tie Dicu et la Croix de Jesus, Introduction; and also the Postulatory Letter addressed in the name of the Angelico College by the Rev. We now come to that properly and essentially practical character of Frs. Hugon and Garrigou-Lagrange to the Sovereign Pontiff, 14th June, 1926, in view the doctrine of of St. John of the Cross to which I have called attention obtaining the title of Doctor of the Universal Church for St. John of the Cross from the first. [Anakcta O.D.C. 1926): 'St. Thomas points out (In Isaiam, c. 5, 15) that hyperbole is Here again, rather than proceeding by an endless series of found in would be to examples, Scripture. Mystical style is not scholastic style; the only error we will content ourselves with two which are particularly sig- maintain ... as scholastically true propositions which are only true in mystical lan- nificant, in the one case, the vocabulary of which St. John of the Cross guage where hyperbole is allowed.' makes use, in the 2 other, his doctrine ofemptiness. The mystic says, for example, in endeavouring to express his experience of that

It is important to which is created before God that the creature is nojhing tioimi.g at all. Yes. But these notice first of all that those sciences which I have x expressions have a mystical, not an ontological, significance. Ifwe look for their onto- called practically practical make a wholly do different use ofconcepts than metaphysi- logical basis we will find it formulated by St. Thomas, in a passage whose the speculative or speculatively practical sciences, their se, not only in regard to cal import is immense: 'Prius~enim inest unicuique naturaliter quod convenit sibi in determining ends and alio, sibi autem their manner ofprocedure, but in the very manner quam quod solum ex alio habet! Es7e~autem not habet crcatura nisi ab relicta in se inest sibi nihil quam esse.' (De 1 considerata nihil est: unde"prius naturaliter Cant„ str. n. Aeternitate mwidi.) SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 402 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 403 1 stance and potencies: the question is for him one of the distinction between these two vocabularies! The misfortune of certain degrees of in- wardness of the divine working. And when divine action, mystics, like Echkart, is to have confounded the two together. reaching first 2 substance, touches the faculties of all the in their root and their Yet again, these differences are not accidental, they belong to the exi- depth, and these are so spiritualised that under such a supernatural gencies ofthe specific objects of the conceptual vocabularies in question. contact they to speak, the depth of the soul shine let, so through, then it is I do not say that the passage from the one to the other is impossible; not the acts__ork bare substance which nows by itself, it is emairdvjiyjte I do not say that the formulas of a mystical writer, of a practical doctor, po- 3 tencies that it acts and it knows, by the gifis_andbyjnfu

s '. with mar- operation, to be in a state of sovereign immobility and loving atten- Cp. Cant., str. 13. . . this most subtle and delicate knowledge enters vellous sweetness and delight into the intimate substance ofthe soul'. That is to say, as the tion, which is itself received from God, is not this to do nothing, not Saint almost immediately explains, 'substance stripped ofall accidents and images', and in the ontological, but in the psychological and practical sense of the this knowledge is communicated to 'the intellect called by philosophers passive or passable, word? .' because it receives passively, without work on its part. . . This last phrase (and many suffiriendy out- St. John of the Cross also speaks of certain divine feelings, where the others could be quoted) exhibits the fact that St. John of the Cross soared philosophy, and that he was not excessively troubled by any need for stria soul tastes the savour of eternal life, as experienced in the very substance technical exactitude in these regions. 3 of the soul, inopposition to its.powersjuidjts faculties; and again, that this chapter. Cp. also *Obscure Night, book ii, chap. 23. See the whole last page of it is into the substance ofdiejod^hich is inaccessible by thelenses and substances, that Cant, str. 32. St. John of the Cross speaks there ofa 'meeting ofnaked 'sub- by demons, that the joy of die thecontext is that here again the word Holy_Ghost penetrates.* But tojaytthesoul and the_Divinity\ The context shows on the one hand it is a_ques- clearly shows that it is in no philosophical sense that he so opposes sub- stance' has rather an experimental than a spcculativesense; tion..of aunion.which completely escapes the senses, andofS%es'so_eleyatedlandsub- nothing: on the other, iesoulno . stantial, so much/row the senses cm know ^iving Flame, str. 3. beyond', that that it does not know longer knows God 'by his effects and his works' (St John means *Sum. iheol., ii-ii, 179-80. See also R. and Maritain, Prayer and Intelligence. and whjch Acrerbre make J. God by his effects as by things that have already been known, not intending to treat ^Living Flame, ax. 2, 'Ibid. the mind pass on to the knowledge oftheir cause; he'is manifestly .

404 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS " 405 lutely no sign could be divined even by the angels ofwhat is happening Finally we know diat St. John of the Cross, like the Franciscan in die deepest, most secret places of the heart. authors reading who were the habitual of Carmelite houses of the Reform, Is a further instance needed? What St. John of the Cross calls pure use of the Augustinian makes constant division of the higher faculties faith1 in the nudity of the spirit is truly theological faith, certainly dog- into understanding, memory and will. Indeed, iffrom the point ofview of matic faith, but it is not theological faith isolated, by an ontological an- ontological speculative and analysis the bipartite division into intelligence alysis, in its own species from the other energies of our supernatural 2 and will is alone conformable to reality—from the standpoint of a prac- organism, it is living faith which is at one with the charity that informs 3 tical analysis, which must distinguish the potencies not by their essential it and the gifts which enlighten it, loving faith, the wise and fruitful ontological articulations, but according to die principal concrete modes faith which concretely acts in die life of the holy soul: it is in contrast of the activity of the subject in view of its ends, the Augustinian divi- to die mixture of natural and sensible things that it is called pure faith. sion is better; it is this which conforms with reality, with the reality in Thus St. John of the Cross will s ay that by faidi we love God without 4 question. seeing him; and while a speculative theologian like John of St. Thomas From this standpoint he is admirably placed for distinguishing the rightly affirms that faitfiln itself, thatjsjp say, without the gifts, does three principal functions of the subject taken in its living totality, now as not knowhow to contemplate,^ the mysticalJDoctor will affirm with no it turns towards objects in order to know them in themselves, which less truth that faith alone, that is to sayJaith_concretely taken as I have will be the understanding (which implies, in the concrete lexicon of St. here described it, absorbing into itself both love and the gifts of the Holy John of the Cross, the senses and the imagination, whence the intelli- Ghost, is the immediate and proportionate means of contemplation. 8 gence draws all its ideas); now as the subject turns towards things in the the question here whether in knowledge ofGod 'face to face*, not by his works, a certain degree to it has lived will live, as have interested effect produced by God in the soul itself—infused love—does not serve as a means (quo) which by them and they

ofknowledge. See supra, chap, v, p. 3 22) ; it knows God 'without any other means than it, as they have touched its personal experience, as they compose the

a certain contact with Divinity' (in virtue of the union itself, John of St. Thomas will mass of the past which grows unceasingly, which, as M. Bergson says, say). And that this contact ofsubstance with substance is itself only suffetfd by mrjm presses constantly in on the present in the desire to possess it, which will ofthejtctuation of the potencies th e.Saint has himself pointed out afew lines earlier. The whole of the opening of this passage should be read. Thejwhole question deals be the memory (which implies, from this point ofview, not only know- with a subltantial cohtacTbetweeh tKelouIancl theDiyinity which takes placebecause ledge, but affection and the appetites). Now the subject rums towards thejattcr has fully invaded the potencies, is direcdy attained, nojjfarough an inference things in desire and in love, and in this motion towards them it be- frgmjffecato their C ause, but in virtue of the union itself, the union of love which comes its interior weight, which is the will. This is why almost all mys- perceived and possessed the presence of the divine essence in the substance of the soul. 1 division, which Cp. Ascent Mount Camel, ii, tical authors have good reason to adopt the augustinian of book chap, r ; chap. 23 ; Obscure Night,'hook i, chap.i 1. 2 makes a cor- Cp. Sentences and Maxims: 'Todas las aprehensiones y noticias de cosas sobrenatur- is traditional with them: this is why St. John of the Cross ales no pueden ayudar al amor de Dios tanto cuanto el memor acto de Fe viva y Es- respondence between the diree terms ofthis_diyision and the three theo- peranza, que se hace en desnudez de toto eso.' logical virtues, memory, Faith with the under- s linking Hope with the 'En la otra vida es por medio de la lumbre de gloria, y en esta por medio de lafe is thus able to make the most ilustradisima' standin^randCharity with the wflTHe (Living Flame, str. 3). virtue of hope with the *'. la Fe, profound observations on the relations of the . en la cual amamos a Dios sin cntcnderlc.* Cant. Prologue. 6 Cp. St. memory purification ofthe latter by the former. John of Thomas, Les Dons du Saint-Esprit, French trans, by Raissa Maritain, and on the chap. 1. Cp. supra, the views de- chap, v, p. 3 1 r. But all this implies not the least mcompatibjhty_wi^hi *For this capital point which of the St. John of the Cross never ceased from inculcating, see veloped by sCThomas in the ontological order, on the number R Garrigou-Lagrange, Perfection chitiemxe et contemplation, vol. i; Crisdgono de Jesus remarks faculties in the soul and their specification. Fr. Crisogonojusdy Sacramentado, San Juan de la Cruz, su oka cientifica, 1929. dwell in the will, that Bacondiorp, like St. Thomas Aquinas, made hope SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 40? 406 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE grace achieves But does he not forget that nature, not destroys it? No, and he adds that he knows ofno scholastic who has departed from this better than we. This is the crucial point he knew that far of apparent an- doctrine; so that St. John of the Cross in his method of exposition on between the ontological language of theology and the practical 1 tinomy this point 'has broken with the whole tradition of the Schools.' Cer- St. ofthe Cross and mystical tongue of a John and the Imitation. St. John tainly, from the standpoint of both ontological analysis and scholastic ofthe Cross lifts not a finger against the ontological order, and the per- theology, the idea of situating theological hope in the memory is mani- super-elevation fection, the enrichment, the which nature receives from fesdy indefensible. Are we to believe that St. John of the Cross did not grace; he presupposes this order and all its truths. He preaches neither perceive so patent a point of doctrine, or that he wished to invent on mutilation nor suicide, nor the slightest ontological destruction ofthe this point a new theological theory, he who was never occupied with a most fragmentary filament ofthe wing ofthe smallest gnat. His stand- speculative treatment of such matters? He is not speaking as a scholastic its faculties, a point is not that ofthe structure of our substance and but theologian, but as a practician of the things of the spirit. It is from the point of view on our proprietorship of ourselves, the free use and moral point ofview of die 'practically practical' science ofhuman acts that he exerdse-which-we.make_pf ourjictivity. There he asks for everything. has made so large (and so potendy original) a part ofhis work deal with he wants us to give everything. He preaches a very real death, a 2 There his teaching on memory; and it is there that he shows himself, to- n, a death much more subde and delicate than that of material destructio gether with St. Augustine, as one of those who have penetrated farthest death^vhichisjvitally^activc^and effic^dom,^llyJtastedjind fee, which into the mysterious psychology of the memory. is made passes through the heart of our mosrimmanent activity, which coheresto its most THE DOCTRINE OF EMPTINESS in and by.tb.at activity, which, grows with it, whichi

Since all human means, whatsoever they may be, are inadequate to profound intimacy; tW doesjiot,obhteratejensitivity, k r&f^s_ k ancWendersTt^ the possession of God in the fullness of his life, the best thing the crea- This death does not harden the fibres of the so^, it renders mem ture can do is to abandon itself, exhaust itself, renounce all its rightful more acqudsiteiit us i themrjf &amfonS^mto love. operations, to make itself void. This central thesis of St. John of the supple and spiritualises or apedi- is added to natareliearoof Cross would be absurd if God was not there, supernaturally present in LeTuTremember that grace not penetrates and engrafts into it a divine life, it the soul (and the question is that ofa soul already direcdy called to con- ment to a monument: it faculties, to operate in it those templation), if God was not there on the threshold, desirous of filling raises the soul in its very essence as in its proceed the whole world of grace and all the whole soul, to replace all that it has Ic^wTdiarlcher life, the life of divine 'works, from which by grace. What is the meaning God himself, the torrent of his peace. A mad courage, a heroic confi- our natural faculties as they are elevated principle of all our growth, the initial dence which responds, in the order ofthe spirit itself, to the 'mad' love of this if it is not that the aim of government the head of our interior of the most holy God—such is the basic character ofthe spirituality of all our acts, the principal agent, 1 That is not Spirit of Christ within us? St. John ofthe Cross. 'Nothing, nothing, nothing,Vas he said to Ana de should not be ourselves but the are the pro- dispossession. In as much as we Penalosa, 'till one's very skin and all the rest is lost for Christ.' possible without a radical 1 possession ofthe facul- Crisogono de Jesus Sacramentado, op. cit., 122. Later Fr. Crisogono 2. 'God being in p. (pp. 3301) »Cp. Ascent ofMount Carmel, book iii, chap. rightly notes the into,bm.» a ta practical importance of St. John ofthe Cross's teaching on Hope—as their transformation ™ ties and being their sovereign master by against the quietism Spmt and so which would later develop in France and Spain, and whose errors commands them according to the Holy M who moves md divinely produced m ** the Saint (like Ruysbrocck before him) had already the false mys- distinct, but what is denounced among that the operations (of God and the soul) are not or M tics and illuminati of his time. accordmg to the.word, soul There are divine operations, 2 is from God himself. The reader From taut:***>** modem will find many remarks which the reading of contemporary spirit (I Cor. n, 17). Paul, 'He who is joined to the Lord is one literature such souis will make singularly ape See particularly Ascent Carmel, book iii, Ghost and are drv^and ofMount in union the operations ofthe soul areoftheHoly chap. 4. .

408 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS m prietors of ourselves we shall then be eclipsed. truth grace itself Nothing is more de- In fact and in the which transforms us is the grace of sired by love, since it is the seal ofour union with the and it is in order that God who loves us our crucified Lord, we may share in the work and of our transformation into him. Nothing is more desired by our that is his own, that is, to die for the world, that we are transfigured spiritual nature, since in this perfect spiritual poverty the soul becomes from brightness into brightness. perfectly free, the more profoundly the 'cause of itself'in the degree to Oh, very truly, in the whole of this supernatural work, and from the which it has more fully renounced being the principal cause. But there very first stammerings in us ofthe grace ofconversion, they are very real, is nothing which more strips humanity and empties it of itself, which terribly, if I may put it so, ontologically real, the goods which we must demands more radical purifications and suffering. renounce: is not the most meagre pleasure, in the words of Aristode, This is the _ why practical realisation of the axiom: 'grace perfects na- the metaphysical flower of an act? Certainly they are not meagre the ture and does not destroy it,' is only r< accomplished by means of the agony joys which we must leave for Christ; we should love him litde if for his and death, not ontologically but mystically, of that same nature. 'Let sake we did not quit things which are righdy beautiful and good. And us die the death of the angels', says St. Bernard. In human nature— this is a form ofuniversal destruction, for it is almost as hard, sometimes which is not only wounded since the first sin, but gnawed to the heart by even more hard, to detach ourselves from what we might have had or concupiscence— this death cannot be accomplished without the great would have been able to have than from what we have (that, at least, it tearing up by die roots of^ejught_ofthe_senses and the night of the will remain always true that we have had). This expropriation of our- spirit, without which the grain will perish in the earth. Then we shall selves, of which I spoke a moment ago, is not done without proofs. The not remain alone, then we shall bring forth much fruit. 'In order that torn and twisted limbs of the martyrs, the bloodstained destruction of should God bring the soul to this union in his own way, the sole worthy the great Victim on the cross, show us the way. action is that which unloads and empties the faculties, which makes Meanwhile, what is needed first of all and before all, as I have under- them renounce their naturaljurisdiction and operations, in order that they lined, is that interior stripping, which is itselfbound up with charity, the may receive the infusion and the illumination follows naturally. And ofthe supernatural. ' . } dispossession of oneself: the rest, so to speak, But the law of suffering goes deeper than this. For the soul which has given all the reality of this rest, the ontological whole which God, been already elevated to the transforming union, and which therefore, by his law or his inspiration or his providence, gives us space to re- on the testimony all liberty of the saints, can no more suffer than God Himself, nounce, is definitely only the ontology of a certain usage of our is more than ever, 2 more St. John of the Cross tells us, thirsty for suffering. and our faculties, which gives place to a use which is better and never do works gready to our liking, it be- which are not just and reasonable, but their works alone are always divine. What we are so deprived of matters just and reasonable: the Holy Ghost makes the contrary them know what they ought to know, ig- longs to our flesh. There is not the least mutilation, on nore what they ought to ignore, recall what they ought to remember, with or without love, which is there is an incomparable enrichment, in its sacrifice for forms, forget what they ought to forget, love what they ought to love, and love noth- perfection is incomparably ing which xs not in God. worth more than all, and whose ontological And so all the first movements ofthe faculties ofsuch souls are divine, and it should 1 metaphysical per- not be astonishing that the movements and the workings ofsuch higher. The perfection, not only the moral but the faculties should be divine, since they accomplished, are transformed into the divine being'. 'All the fection of the human creature would never have been m me!lts of *" facuIri in such souls °7 « are divine', says St. John of the Cross. the line 7aii eternal life, is, not only in 'AJJ the first Charity, which has an immediate proportion to movements of nature are good and right', will Jean-Jacques Rousseau absolutely, ontoIogicaUy, write {First of merit being itself, speaking Dialogue). The similarity of these and virtue, but in the line of two sentences gives the measure of that than the highest in- great the metaphysically more perfect chaos which separates christian wisdom from most perfect thing in man: it is its naturalist counterfeit. degree to the LgM inferior in a metaphysical 1Ascent, tellectual virtues here below, it is only book iii, chap. 2. Cp. Living oisp. Flame, str. 2. Thomas, Curs, theol, 1-11, p. 07, 2 of glory which reigns in heaven. Cp. John of St. Cp. Cant., str. See is. infra, Conclusion, 447-ji. pp. I7i a- 3, rm. 25-29. 410 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 4n

' could never have accomplished, if the fairest of the sons of men had and the fellowship ofhis sufferings l And not ower ofhis resurrection, been immolated on the wood of the cross. reflux, the more he despises creatures in the degree to L a marvellous This then is the concrete significance of the theological axiom, to God, or objects of a possible choice against God, which they are rivals Nature is not destroyed, but made perfect by grace. For anyone who has cherishes them in and for Him whom he loves, in the de- the more he heard the words 'Be perfect* nature has no right to count on any more are loved by Him, and truly made, by the love which gree to which diey comfortable 'perfecting'. In the measure in which it does so count, infuses them with goodness, good and worthy to creates all things and etiolating its desires in order to cultivate them in peace, it only achieves 2 to love a being in God and for God—I am speaking here be loved . For diminishing itself in order to suffer less. What is there to complain of? not the love of covetousness—is not to treat of the love of friendship, What do we want more than the Beatitudes? Really what we want is occasion for loving God, that is to say, excus- them as a pure means or not more, but less. This is why St. John of the Cross so ardendy re- in themselves (and in the same moment ing oneself from loving them proaches those who are afraid to suffer for their lack of ambition and is only truly loved if we also love his ceasing* to truly love God, who magnanimity. It is when annihilation and suffering have their fullest this being and treat it as an end, and wish for visible images) ; it is to love yes, this scope, as in the great Doctor of the Night himself, that love and perfec- itself and for itself it merits to be loved, as its good because in tion have also theirs. And a hundredfold reward is promised already from the sovereign love and sover- very merit and thisfinal dignity come here on earth. But on the conditions which have been stated. 'Since I they are both at rest in God, safe eign lovableness of God. In one stroke have established myself in nothingness, I find that nothing is lacking to Not to be detained by the creature from all quarrel and all vicissitude. me.' love which will not fail, planted in the is the creature's guarantee of a So we see by an outstanding example how completely the specula- which pierces it. This is the under- roots of its lovableness by the arrow tive and practical sciences of christian reality are in accord, though they end the saint surrounds with a standing of the paradox whereby in the speak in differing and sometimes apparendy opposed languages. We piety-incomparably more liberal, universal love of friendship and of the can comprehend in the same stroke the error which lies in vitiating the than the possessive love of but also more tender and more happy one by transposing into it the terms of the other, which either produces, passes with tune, all the voluptuary or the miser-^verything which on the one hand, a form ofjansenist or lutheran theology, which teaches he has abandoned weakness and the beauty of things, all that a theolo- the essential corruption ofnature and that grace is its enemy, or, on the philosopher and the He has the right to despise creatures. The other, the theory that perfection is a simple athletic development of the will be a total misunderstand- gian have not that right. Here again there or the Cross. natural faculties which are so crowned by grace, as though Christ had the formulas of a John ing if we Rive a speculative sense to chosen the despises nature thorns in order to leave us the roses. a philosopher who There is no worse philosopher than nothing; one Analogous observations could be made on the theme of that 'con- what is is itself A form of knowledge which despises idealist tempt ofcreatures' professed by the saints. The saint sees practically that mystery than the whole cherry between one's lips holds more the they are nothing by the side of Him whom he loves and the End which of the maxims ot metaphysic. A philosophical misappropriation he has gives the* aR chosen; they can do nothing for him, they are not worth the price them the love which saints! which h* abstracted out of ofhis love. It is the contempt of the lover for all that is not his beloved, creatures are their meaning, leads to the idea that ~^/V^ in this before God case, Love itself. It is nothing for him to give 'all the riches of his their humihation have the right not to love them, and house'.1 'For whom I have suffered die loss of all things and count them 1 St. Paul, Phil, in, 8-10. . ,<,„/ : but as dung, that I may Sunt,c tnea., 1, gain Christ ... that I may know him and the • i :„ rebusr»kn«' (K.dt Thomas,mo 2 creans bomtatem fa r 'Amor Dei est infundcns et Cant. of Cant, viii, 7. 20,2. SAINT OF THE JOHN CROSS 413 412 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE V. MYSTICAL CONTEMPLATION so that we need have no need to render them the honour which is their due. There is one question which is obviously of quite particular impor- Finally, in returning to our semantic this double interrogatory of St. Thomas and St. John of the considerations, we should ob- tance in serve the power which the spirit has of varying the actual Oragain: meaning of ..... , 1st so viel an mir, als mir an ihm gelcgen. its signs according to their proper ends: while Gott speculative language, since Sein "Wesen helfich ihm, wie er das mcine hegen, etc. it is directed to the pure object of the intellect, is essentially ontological, formulas which are manifesdy scandalous if we take them as any kind of philo- practical All and mystical language, because it considers things in relation to sophical, theological or doctrinal enunciations. God cannot annihilate the possibility the acting subject, sees them as incorporated destroying its essence, in it, has by necessity, and of an ant without beginning by for the possibility of things is as the very condition of its in their multiform ability to participate in the divine essence, which is eternally exactitude, dominants which are psycho- only intellection. But he could without a shadow of change in logical and 1 seen by the divine himself affective. Certain mystical formulas, for instance, con- have neither created the universe nor the humanity of Christ, for the effective pro- cerned with the union of the soul with God, which are daring beyond duction ofcreatures out ofnothingness depends on his sovereign liberty. It is the very the point of danger when the possible from the existing creature. understood theologically, receive their right- basis ofSpinozism to fail to distinguish in speaking in this pantheist style, Angelus Silesius was ful meaning when we acknowledge that It is possible for all that that, love has also a language of its own.2 thinking of something very different from pantheism. He assures us so himself in his preface to The Cherulinical Wanderer. It is not necessary to believe him, but it is inter- l< esting to know under what conditions it would be possible so to do. Ifone takes these The dictionary ofthe mystics is not ontological but affective, individual more than phrases not put forward in any order ofbeing or ofintelligibility for the ex- personal. Louis Massignon, 'L'Expenence distichs as mystique et Ies modes de stylisation lit- but in the order of love and in order to express the experience of terarre, {Chronigues,4ih.no.o£Roseaud'Or,i927). planation of objects, the subject, they can seem like the delirium of human words unable to express other- 'It would be foolishness', St. John of the Cross writes himself, 'to think that the that unity of spirit which is known livingly by love. Translated into ontological bnguage oflove and the mystical wise intelligence-and that is what these stanzas are-can the light of the eternal which they pre- be at all explained in words of language and understood in any kind, for the Spirit ofour Lord who helps our weak- case that the soul loved by God and chosen for al- ness—as St. Paul saith— suppose, they would signify in this dwelling in us makes petition for us with groanmgs unutter- and the truth which would able for thatwhich ways is the wealth ofGod and this wealth cannot be lost; we cannotwell understand or grasp so as to be able to make it known. foundation (in For who can correspond to them in the ontological order and which would be their describe what He shows to loving souls in whom He dwells? Who can that the love where- set forth in words the sense in which a real being is the basis of a rational being), is what He makes them feel? and lasdy, who can explain that for which loves himself, they long? with God freely loves the creature is the love with which he necessarily Assuredly no one: not even they themselves. That is why they use figures divine act, and contingence being only on the side of the created end, not on the side ofthe special comparisons and similitudes: they hide somewhat of that which they feel so that supposing the choice from all eternity and the abundance of the which is identical with the divine essence; m Spirit utter secret mysteries rather than express themselves could no more lose its election than God in clear words And if these of such a creature it is entirely true that it similitudes are not received in the simplicity of the loving mind, and in the sense could his existence. in which they are uttered, they will seem to be effusions of folly if the foregoing com- rather than In fact, the language ofJohannes Scheffler is that of Boehme; the language ofreason. ..." Cant. Prologue. that the is at all impossible) ments have a value, it is necessary to admit (which not ^To consider at a once the case most difficult cases, in the one case to defend (supposing indeed that it can be same vocabulary can have different values in two different defended) a problem of particularly thorny affective. A consideration interpretation is presented by Angelas value which is entirely speculative, in the other, wholly Silesius, when he says, for example: that the discernment ot which makes judgment manifesdy difficult; but we know necessary, at least Ich weiss dass these things is not always ohne mich Gott nicht ein Ny kann leben: spirits is a difficult thing; and to judge in Werd hands with doctrines. kh zunicht, er muss von Not den Geist for a philosopher, who has quite enough on his aufgeben. wishes to orthodox as Dr. Seltmann (I know that without me God could The fact remains that if Angelus Silesius is not live for an instant: were I annihilated he would necessarily prove give up the ghost.) (^/W Sfo.w«»J*meMyrf^ in eIve* h"e Or again: the help of paradoxical enunciations which are sometimes Jimi Jl^ case, on^the very their literal appears as an extreme Dass Gott so selig ist meaning; and he so und lebet ohne Vcrlangen which is didac- the centre. Everything Hat er sowohl kingdom of which St. of theCross occupies von mir als ich von ihm empfangen; John SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 415 4 I4 THE DEGREES OF perfected spiritualisation not being possible without an Cross: the question of die nature of mystical contemplation in itself. and more the consciousness, because the spirit is in its heart, the Holy Their teaching on this point is strictly in accord. For the one as for the eness in use of diis loving transformation in God, of this super- other contemplation is an experimental knowledge of love and union. Ghost makes connaturality, as the proper means of a rich and penetrating And it is the principles which have been developed by thomist theolo- natural in its turn makes the love of charity as fully posses- gians, such as John of St. Thomas and Pere Chardon, which give us die knowledge, which is the exact doctrine of as is possible here on earth. This fullest understanding of the incomparable teaching of St. John of the sive and fruitful Cross himself, and it is on this doctrine that he bases him- Cross. St John of the profound, rich, delicately shaded and precise exposi- The doctrine of St. Thomas, to which St. John ofthe Cross himself di- self in the divinely 1 gives of the practical science and the whole life of con- recdy refers, briefly put, is diat charity as it grows greater transforms tions which he 2 Thomas contemplation is the experience us into God, whom it attains to immediately in himself, and that this templation. For him as for St. else is directed. It is not only love, it is that union towards which all tic or conceptually constructed in The CheruhinicaJ Wan&erer makes of this astonishing of mystical knowledge of God can never be with- poem (which the author published in 1756, four years after his conversion, but •which still more hy love. 'The 1 one can truly suppose he had written before that, and which had been for him, love.' 'This science full ofsweetness is — — out love, for it is itself infused by still Protestant, Eke the anticipated avowal of the Catholicism of his while he was a secret science of God, and which spiri- mystical' theology, which is the heart the more so as he already read St. Gertrude, St. Mechtild, St. Bridget and — because it is contemplation. It is most full of sweetness Tauler by predilection) a type ofexpression or stylisation ofmystical experience or its tual men call it, and it is love which renders retrospection, where the profound remodelling due to literary elaboration is carried knowledge by love, love is the master of love to the maximum. And if the manner of this expression belongs essentially to the order 2 produced by love itself, by the supernatural it all so sweet.' It is ofaffection and oflove, it nevertheless exhibits the fact that the mystical experience has of the Three Divine which causes us to enter into the intimacy at the same time undergone to the last limit a translation by speculative preoccupations. ofcharity the movement of the Holy Spirit The most beautiful verses of Angelus Silesius remain cold poetic and didactic jew- Persons, and which, searching under penetrating els; they are not the pure witness plucked from the living heart of the fire. The versifi- roO fcoff,« makes faithboth the deep things of God, ri 0ft? cation St. of the Cross is more technical, but for all that his witness is absol- limitation of the of John delivers it from the and rich, and at the same time utely pure and direct and flaming. Which shows that it is not the simplicity ofthe instru- reason. ment which matters, but that of the spirit which uses it. It was in making use of the human mode ofour . . which alone, in its super- technique prepared by a Garcilaso de la Vega that divine inspiration produced in the And because this love derives from faith, deity, to tbe greatest of all mystical writers the work where words alter least the substance, in- the abyss of human obscurity, joins our intelligence to effable in itself, which enclose. th-tha b they to affirm that fai subsistent supernatural, it is necessary t The case of Angelus Silesius, which has only been cited here in order to bring into chanty which is formed by greater (signalised and have seen, living faith prominence a whole series of problems of spiritual semantics to say, as we pnn- * is the essential studied by Louis Massignon les origines du Ghost in a most remarkable fashion. Cp. Essai sur and illustrated by the gifts of the Holy proportion- lexique technique de la mystique mustdmane, 1922; Le Folklore chez les mystiques musul- unique 'immediate and ciple of mystical experience, the manes, Melanges Reni Basset, 1923 ; op. cit., note 1, supra), verifies, in its very opposition se 'La contempt . . ii, chap. i7 : . to the case ofSt. hazards 12. . book John ofthe Cross, the general law ofhow much more a mystic ate Night, book ii, chap. CP than regains (it itself), may be only in his mode of expression, it may be in his thought el amor.' , , j , infunde en alma por when he allows the taste for human knowledge or discursive speculation to insinuate Prologue, '. . >OL st, 18. CP . the itself either into his incommunicable experience or into the retrospective synthesis of ^^sT^rehshed also, atj but S& by which truths are not only learned, ^ ^ to whicn^ his efforts to express it. Mystical experience stimulates speculation; it has die freedom mystical wisdom notes with an exquisite delicacy that the ofits very substance. bosom o ^^ to the 'and led inwards i ns had the 8grace to be raised d lamDO *Cp. Obscure Night, book ii, chap. technical 17. poses the mind, in the absence of all P^^Wy scholastic theology. 2 intellectual order of See supra, pp. 396-98, St. John of die Cross says the same: 'Porque solo el amor which belong to the purely 3- es el que una yjunta al alma * .supra, .m.*- con Dios', Obscure Night, book ii, chap 18. *St.Paul.ICor.ii,io. C? V SAINT JOHN OF THE 4i6 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CROSS 4I?

tires itself of particular knowledge ate' way, as St. John of die Cross never ofreiterating, to the divine more it empties and of the acts of the un- the greater is the progress of the union. derstanding, understanding in its jour- This is why contemplation itselfis a night, wherein the soul renounces ney to the highest spiritual good. You say that if it understands nothing distinct ideas all formulated cannot be advancing. the the actual use of and of knowledge, over- distincdy it On contrary, I reply, if it did un-

passes the whole mode of concepts, in order to feel the things which are derstand anything distincdy then it would rather be making no progress. faidi, divine in the infused light of by means of love and of all those The reason is that God, towards whom the understanding is journeying, effects which God produces in the soul which is united to him by love. transcends the understanding and is therefore incomprehensible and

Thus it is, in the words of pseudo-Dionysus, 'a ray of darkness for the inaccessible to it; and thus when it is understanding, it is not approach- 2 intelligence'. 'The soldiers of Gideon carried lamps in their hands, ing God, it is rather withdrawing. Therefore the understanding must which they saw not, because they itself1 were "within the pitchers". . . . But withdraw from and walk in faith, believing and not understand- when they broke the pitchers the lamps gave light So faith, ofwhich ing. And in this way the understanding will reach perfection, for by these pitchers were a figure, contains the divine light; and at the end of faith and by no other means comes union with God. . . . Wherefore this 2 mortal life, when the work of faith is over, and the pitchers are since the understanding knows not what God is, it must of necessity broken, the light and glory will of God then shine forth. It is therefore walk towards him in submission, and not by understanding. . . . In the plain that the soul, which would in this life be united with God and com- contemplation of which we are speaking, wherein God, as we have mune immediately with him, must unite itself to him in the cloud said, infuses into the soul, there is no necessity for distinct knowledge, where, according to Solomon, he has promised to dwell: and in that nor for the soul to make any acts of understanding: God in one act obscure air, wherein he was pleased to reveal His secrets to Job; and communicates light and love together, with a loving and supernatural take up the pitchers of Gideon, that it may hold in its hands—that is in knowledge, and which may be called a heat-giving light, which gives the acts of the will—that light which is the union of love, though in the out heat, for that light also enkindles the soul in love; and this is con- obscurity offaith: so that, as soon as the pitcher oflife is broken, it may fused and obscure to the understanding, since it is knowledge of con- see God face to face glory.'3 in templation, which, as St. Dionysus says, is a ray of darkness for the

Say not, therefore: 3 "Oh die soul is making no progress, for it is do- understanding.' ing nothing!" For if it is true that it is doing nothing, then, this by very J One could also comment on this passage from those articles where St. Thomas ex- fact that it is doing nothing, I will now prove to you that it is doing a intellectus plains how the intellect is as it were captivated by faith ('et inde est quod great deal. For if the II Cor. x, understanding is voiding itselfofparticular kinds of credentis dicitur esse captivus, quia tenetur terminis alienis et non propriis, 4 knowledge, 5: In intellectum,' De Veritate, 14, 1)—a captivity which is both natural and spiritual, it is making progress, and the captivitatem reJigentes omnem its voluntati adhaerendo Deo: unde 1 deliverance ('Bonum intellectus est ut subdatur Ascent, book ii, chap. 9. fides dicitur intellectum expedire in quantum sub tali voluntate ipsum captivitat. *'... contemplaci6n, la cual es en esta vida, como dice San Dionisio, rayo de tini- Ui'ii4,3,ad.8). ebla. Cant. str. 13. 2 'Nos non sri- 'No puede saber como es Dios'. Cp. St. Thomas, Sum. theol, i, 2, 1: 3Ascent, book ii, chap. 9. himself. 'Quidquid intellectus mus de Deo quid est,' we cannot know what God is in nostra loquitur minus «'iloj actos de entender/ 'Entender' noster apprehcndit essentia, et quidquid lingua corresponds to the latin inteUigere. It is with the minus quam Dei fallowing texts of The Divine Nantes from St. Thomas: 'Secundum statum quam esse divinum,' writes St. Thomas in his commentary praesentis vitae . . . non possumus inteuigere substantias say of the necessity of void- separatas immateriales (chap, v, lect. i); is as what St. John will secundum seipsum' {i, 88, 1) and 'Per sub- which the same stantias matenales non in faith. possumus perfecte substantias ing oneselfofevery distinct idea in order to unite with God immateriales inteUigere' (i, 88, 2) that one is able to commentate this passage the soul can of St. John of the Cross. iii, further on that 'although Cp. Sum. c. G. 'Living Flame, str. redaction ii. He explains 44- 3, but love without understanding: perform natural acts without understanding, it cannot M.D.K. 2D SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 418 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 4Ip ofhiding, it sometimes so absorbs the soul and Let us re-read the description of contemplation which he gives in The degree carries it away, so distinctly that is 1 that the soul sees it entirely distant from and separated Obscure Night: 'This obscure contemplation is called secret, because it all creatures: so that it seems to it that it is set in a vast and is, as I have said before, that "mystical theology" which theologians call from profound whither no human creature can come, an immense a secret wisdom, and which, says St. Thomas, is infused into the soul by desert, desert ex- inimitably. ... It not only comprehends how mean are love. This is done in a secret, hidden way in which the natural opera- tending all cre- things in comparison to the supreme wisdom and the tions of the intellect and the faculties have no share. And because the ated sense of it sees also how low and curt, in a certain sense how improper, faculties of the soul cannot compass it, it being infused by the Holy God, are

all the words and phrases with which in this life we talk of divine things, Ghost, as the bride says in the Canticles, in an unknown way, we call it how utterly impossible it is by any natural way or means, secret. In truth, it is not the soul only that does not understand how this and however profoundly or learnedly, to understand and see these things as they happens, so is it with everyone else, even the devil. For the Master who are,

it not for the illumination of this mystical theology. . „ . The teaches the soul dwells substantially within it, where neither the devil were way nor the senses nor the natural understanding may come. to God is as secret and hidden from the senses of the soul as the way of one who walks upon the water is from the senses ofthe body, and whose 'It is secret also in the effects which it produces in the soul. For it is not footsteps cannot be known. The footsteps of God in those souls which only secret during the darkness and sharpness of purgation, when this himself, making them great in the union his secret wisdom purifies the soul, but afterwards also, in the illumination, he is drawing to of wisdom,

are alike unknown. . . . This secret wisdom is also called a ladder. . . . when that wisdom is most clearly communicated, it is so secret that it The principal reason for which it is called so is that contemplation is cannot be discerned or described: the soul has no wish to speak of it, and a science of love, that it is a loving knowledge of God which is in- besides, it can discover no way or similitude to describe it by, so as to fused in the soul, and which enlightens the soul and at the same time make known so profound an intelligence, so delicate an infused spiri- kindles it with love in order to raise it step by step unto God its Crea- tual impression. Yea, and if it could have the wish to speak of it, how- soul with God and joins it to ever great were the desire and however many the expressions of which tor. For it is love alone which unites the 1 it use, it Him.' made would remain secret still and all to say. . . . Jeremias, It endeavour to attain such a knowledge ofGod when God had spoken with him, knew not what to say, except "Ah, ah, would be madness to 2 by our powers and their 'rampant procedure'. For such know- ah" Because it cannot be described by words pure contemplation is own it in- thus called secret. ledge is not only supernatural in regard to the virtues which brings 8 to action also in its mode. The soul acts in a way 'There is yet another reason, which is because this mystical wisdom and its object, but above its that of its perfecting in the supernatural has the property of hiding the soul within itself. For beyond the usual own capacity, even in the action order virtues. God, in other words, is here the of the divine infusion which we are speaking of here it is different, be- of the three theological cause God can communicate himself does nothing to one faculty and not to another. And so he can principal Agent. 'God alone is the craftsman, the soul inflame the will by the touch of the ardour of his love, although the understanding understands not: in the same way a man can warm himself at a in which St. John of fire which he does not Obscure Night, chap, xviii. The passages arc innumerable see.' This and similar passages are not in the slightest opposition to the doctrine of St. the Cross so describes contemplation as a loving infused knowledge. Thomas that love universally follows on knowledge. For, on the one hand, St. Thomas ! v. teaches at the same 'modos rateros.' (Living Flame, str. 3 , 3 .) time that the degree oflove is not necessarily proportionate to that man- ofknowledge; on the other, 3 in the soul in the supernatural that when God, as St. John of the Cross says, supematur- 'This loving knowledge ... is received passively ally Flame, str. v. )• Th* u inflames the will without soul' (Living 3 , 3 illuminating the understanding, there is always a pre- ner of God, and not by the natural way of the which « supposed knowledge gifts of the Holy Ghost which is that offaith. the exact doctrine of the 'superhuman mode* of the Obscure on the Sentences. Night, book ii, chaps. 17 and 1 8. expounded by St. Thomas in his Commentary OF SUPER-RATIONAL SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 421 420 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE the to the special 1 such souls by St. John of Cross impulse of the by itself. 'The spiritual directors of must take great care, part ttributed 1 immediately understood. It is this which marks for and realise that die principal agent, the guide, the mover of such tTlv Spirit is

. to , passage from the natural the supernatural mode: 'Blow souls is not themselves, but the Holy Spirit, which ceaselessly cares for ^g garden that the perfumes may flow forth.' And St. John them; they are only the instruments which it uses to bring them to across my the soul does not say 'blow in my garden', but 'across my perfection by faith and the law of God, as the spirit of God has been points out that 2 great difference between these two expressions. The given to each.' 'I therefore point out to the soul that God is in this af- garden'. 'There is a the guide leads the infusion of grace, of the gifts and the virtues in the fair the principal agent; he is who the blind man by the first refers to to a touch of God received by the virtues and the per- hand whither he knows not how to go, that is to say to those spiritual soul- the second, to the soul, and which renews them and stirs things which neither the understanding nor the will nor the memory fections already given send forth an admirable fragrance and can know as they rightly are. The principal care of the soul should be to them in order that they may 2 south wind which reanimates the soul, which put nothing in the way. . . . And that will happen if the soul allows it- sweetness.' The divine self to be led and guided by another blind man, and the blind who may loosens as it stirs the perfume of the virtues in bud. 'By this breath of the lead it from the right way are three: the spiritual director (who 'batters Holy Spirit through the soul, which is the visitation of the love of the 3 away like a blacksmith' and is ignorant of spiritual things), the devil Son of God, He communicates himself to it in a high manner This 1 and the soul itself.' great desire this breath ofthe Holy is why every soul should desire with a

What other formal reason is there for the passivity' of mystic states Spirit to pass through its garden, and that its divine perfumes may than the fact that God is thus (and St. John of the Cross uses the word flow forth.' 3 in the precise sense that it holds in the theory of instrumental causality) A few pages earlier, after having—in an echo of St. Thomas—insisted the cause or principal agent in such a work? Tn this state on no account on the connection of the virtues in charity (their garland is 'bound in must the soul be supposed to meditate or exercise itself in acts, of told such a manner by the thread of love that if it is broken for one all the to seek savour or fervour: this would be to raise up obstacles in the way others are scattered'), 'in the same way', he writes, 'as the wind stirs and of the principal agent who, as I said, is God: secredy and tranquilly he lifts the air on the neck, so the breath of the Holy Ghost stirs and lifts pours into the soul wisdom and loving knowledge, without the specifi- the strong love so that it may fly upward to God: without this divine cation of acts, although often he allows them in the soul for a certain breath, which stirs the faculties to the exercise of divine love, the vir- duration. Nevertheless the soul should be only occupied in loving atten- tues could neither operate nor have effects, although the soul possesses tion to God, without willing any specific acts. It should hold itself, as I 4 spiri- them in itself.' The soul in question here has already come to the said, passive, without having any urge to act, in determination and lov- the Holy tual betrothal, and its virtues are instrumentally moved by ing attention, simple and ingenuous, like one who has his eyes wide 'implored Ghost. When it comes to the spiritual marriage, it will have open 5 in the attention oflove.' and and obtained the breath of the Holy Ghost which is the disposition If God is the principal agent in the work of contemplation, which is 5 has the instrument proper to the perfection of this state'. It is when 'it nevertheless an eminently vital and immanent operation, the essential is able to in perfection the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, as fully as it i LivingFhme 2 t m,i,v.i. /WJ,,str.3,v. or cellars of 3 . Hbil receive them', that the soul 'will possess the seven degrees *m All these pages witness to the ardent pity with which the Saint was inspired by J and the Bride do not The soul cannot receive interior communications 'ifthe Spirit a long experience of the havoc and obstruction caused to souls ignorant and pre- by Produce in it this redaction, str. 17. sumptuous directors. ' ° morion oflove'. Cant, second 2 Aft Ci«.,str.2<5. *IbH 4 Jitf.,str.22. *;/>ii.,str.27. .

SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 423 KNOWLEDGE 422 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL the ones he has chosen that the motions whereby the 1 better than agent and lifts it in a holds in perfection the spirit of fear' which is directs the soul as principal manner love*. In the end, "when it o Jv Spirit gifts'— which it began its ascension to wisdom— supernatural to live a supematuralised life, are the mo- 'the last of the seven by hich is itself 1 St. Thomas says the interior blessings which this silent communica- 'it has in fact the spirit of love in perfection.' same 'But the ri ns of love? he teaches that the gifts grow together, and that 'the gift of fear contemplation impresses upon the soul without its perception when tion and are the secret and is only perfect in a soul if charity and the gift of wisdom perfect in say, inestimable: for they are in fact most of them are, as I 8 this, as in each time that he speaks of knowledge and of wis- the Holy Spirit, whereby he secretly fills the soul it'. In all delicate anointings of takes up and renders classic Tauler's doctrine of the three graces; for it is God who does these things and dom, when he with riches and gifts and signs which are characteristic of the passage to 'the mystic state', St. 1 fiery criticism with which St. John of the he does them like God.* The of the Cross is in full accord with the teaching of thomist theology forcibly insist on discursive meditation John Cross attacks directors who on the gifts of the Holy Ghost and the passage of contemplative souls directors trespass on the domain hinges precisely on the fact that these into the habitual regimen of the gifts. action upon the souls who of the Holy Spirit and rear obstacles to its 8 In his concrete and vivid language, nourished on Scripture, it is as 'the gifts. have already entered into the habitual regimen of its unction the Holy Spirit' that he most frequendy describes the action of the basic fea- of An attentive consideration of these things proves that 8 rigorous manner in which his the gifts. Here again we can observe the spiritual doctrine of St. John of the tures, the prime character of the work exemplifies the proper laws of the vocabulary of a practical explication of the the- Cross, belong more than all else to the practical science. It is not the ontological analysis of the organism of the virtues supernatural essential to ology of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. This is the and the infused gifts which above all interests him, it is their concrete remains ob- which from the beginning to the end St. John of the Cross interplay and the experience of their sweetness; and what words could demand for stinately attached. The whole of his doctrine is a mighty which is 1 the usurpation of charisma of a domain Ca«(., str. 17. An effort has been made to prove from this passage that St. John of the preservation from if he leads the Cross regarded the gift of fear as the highest of the gifts (Bulletin thomiste, May- essentially that of the grace of the virtues and the gifts. And July, 1930). Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange had no difficulty in pointing out (as has subse- it is not by any- souls to the sovereign degree oflove and mystical union, quently been recognised, ibid., May, 1931) that this was a gratuitous attribution to the 3 favours and gratui- shortened, but less certain way of extraordinary Saint of an inadvertence diametrically contrary to all his teaching on wisdom, juge

convivium. iLiving Flame, str. 3 , v. 3 yet and St. ! souls which have not Some have wished to find a disagreement between St. John of the Cross For beginners (that is to say, in thomist phraseology, for to meditate and to make Thomas in the fact that St. John of the Cross reduces the passions to four, and not entered into the habitual regimen of the gifts) 'it is necessary to the eleven principals Seamdae, of St. Thomas. This is to forget the article of the Prima acts and discursive exercises with the imagination'. (Ibid.) where St. Thomas says that the sorrow, hope contemplative life have 25, 4, four enumerated by Boethius—joy, But souls which the Holy Spirit has brought into the and fear are the principals ut cotnpletivae aliarum, gravely injure them in m- — thereby exactly surmounted meditation, and it is possible to str. v. (second redac- 2 sisring to it. See Living, Flame, 3, 3 R. Garrigou-Lagrange, 'Saint Thomas et Saint Jean de la Croix', Vie spirituellc, 1st on forcibly bringing them back Oct., 1930. tion), 3 and R. V.Gim&>*r 8 I agree with P. Garate, followed by M. I'Abbe" Saudreau It is thus possible, on a hasty reading which stays on the words without passing on to R. in The Interior Castle, htm Lagrange, that the shortened way ofwhich St. Theresa speaks their content, to believe that St. John of the Cross refers very little to the gifts. In fact the gratuitous- House, ecstasy (and more generally he speaks ofthem constantly, but not with chap, iii, describes the beginning of the other words ofa speculative theologian. rtnsefconKmpz- ly given not necessarily, accompany Need we be surprised that with the great Doctor of'hidden wisdom' science also should graces) which sometimes, but contemplation, Vie iptrimene, tion. Cp. la vie mystique et la be in disguise? Once again, if we seek to discover in him speculative science using its J. Maritain, 'Question sur Mar. own particular language shall 1923. , . 1 c we condemn ourselves from the outset to misunderstand- ot called to the beatitude ing. The fact that they are It would be no less naive to be astonished that St. Thomas docs not talk the lan- doctrine that all souls, by the very infused contem- guage heaven, to enter here on earth by ofpractical science and that the 'nights' do not figure in his vocabulary. have also a general and common call .

SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 425 424 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE the aim of this growth, dus develop- for salvation. Sanctity is tously given gifts, it is by the normal way of the virtues and die gifts of neCC the organism of supernatural energies re- rich flowering of the Holy Ghost, those gifts which are infused in every soul in a state ^j of m 1 of the soul. It is on this basis that St. John of the 1 j fnr the"» v' salvation grace, because, as St. Thomas expressly teaches in the Summa, they are quirea 101 .... his doctrine; he never ceases inculcating and explaining Cross founds all plation into the first fruits of this beatitude, a doctrine which nowadays unites the best a practical theology of the contempla- teaching is par excellence theologians, is in entire conformity with the teaching of St. John of the Cross. (Cp. it- his

Living Flame, str. v. call is addressed in special 2, 5.) This not a way to those who are as- tive gifts. sisted by extraordinary graces to advance more rapidly (but not without danger) in the way of the spirit; the sole means required are living faith and that organism of the gifts CONTEMPLATIVE PURITY AND NAKEDNESS OF SPIRIT which belongs to every soul in a state of grace, and that ascetic travail of the virtues purity which St. described further to point out how the very with in The Ascent ofMount Camel, in the particular character which they take on I should like in the contemplative life, and which endures for the whole course ofspiritual progress. more rigorously than any other mystic, maintains John of the Cross, From this point of view it ought to be said that he addresses himself to all those who con- transcendence of the sacred and 'hidden wisdom' of infused seek the christian perfection, in whatever particular way: 'To one and all, provided that is a signal over all metaphysical and theological speculations they seek this detachment of the spirit' (Prologue to The Ascent). But it is at a certain templation in Thomas. know what point this path that he addresses them, at a certain stage of advancement. He has un- testimony to his fundamental accord with St. We derlined this himself several on occasions. Cp. Ascent, book i, chap. 1 : 'This first night for particular knowledge or the severity he shows towards all desires (that of the senses) concerns beginners, in the time when God begins to bring tliem into a Witness the admirable pages of The Ascent of state ofcontemplation. .'; taste for revelations. . Ibid., book ii, chap. 6; chap. 7: 'I am speaking now to the in- telligence since the coming of Christ him- of the spiritual man, and particularly to those to whom God has given the Mount Carmel where he explains why, grace of placing them in the state of contemplation (because, as I have said, it is useless. to self, all partial revelations have become them in particular that I now wish to speak), and I will say how it is necessary to di- dispensation, it 'The principal cause why, under the law of the old rect oneselfto God by faith and purify oneselfofcontrary things, and by making one- it was rightful self little, in order to enter the lawful to address these questions to God and why narrow path of obscure contemplation'; Ibid., book iii, was chap. 2: 'This objection would and revelations of have foundation if my teaching was only addressed to for the prophets and the priests to seek for visions beginners. But the doctrine ... which I am teaching is in order to advance further, in- the Gospel God, was that the faith was not yet complete nor the law of to contemplation and ' union with God 'It is needful to say that I am only speak- should be interrogated ing of those souls established. And thus there was need that God which the divine life has already worked upon, which have already been exercised or by visions and re- by meditation (which they have one day laid aside) and by asceticism and that he should speak, it might be by parables, (which they never lay aside), who have been called by their name, ofcommuni- in immediate fash- velations, or by figures and sirnilitudes, or by other means ion^ to contemplation/ (And few arrive at this end, for the union which he preaches cation is heroic and rare'; 'como esta alma habia de salir i hacer un hecho tan heroico y tan raro, que era unirse con .' su Amado divino. . . Obscure Night, book ii, chap. 14). It has Caruzi, op. cit., p. 632, Ht is in this sense (quite a different one from that suggested by been veryjustly pointed out (C. H. Abr&'s de toute la doctrine mystique de Saint de la flatter never, Jean spirit of the Saint, for the Croix, which is totally alien from the doctrine and the Prc&ce, p. vi), 'It would be an extremely dangerous error to apply to all souls, regarded the theopath- even when 'he strains mystical thought to its limit', could have ^differently, torn their first steps in the interior life, the rules which are drawn out by unique condition ot the ic state-which nevertheless remains infinitely rare—as the themysacDoctor.'Tocounselheroic passivity, which is the highest renunciation ofthe doctnne of St. John ot veritable love and God for the soul') that the soul, to those whoneed to work themselves, of the soul for God and who have not been deprived oj'per- by Godof not a doctrine of salvation, but a human mode ofaction, the Cross unites with the doctrine ofsalvation. It is would mean the total ruin of the spiritual life. It is the very the salvation ofthe others, nature of quietism fection (and he very well knew that the perfect co-operate in to place oneself, in a usurpation of divine action, in such a state of to come to perfection adimpkntcs ifit is not necessary passivity. St. John ofthe Cross, like quae desimt vassionum Christi). But Ruysbroeck, was the merciless enemy ofquietism, towards it, in to be turned or orientated and it is to strengthen the defence order to be saved, it is nevertheless necessary against it (particularly against the quietism the thing to of precept, not as a matter or ^.W^thathemsistssomuch ifit is true that the perfection ofcharity falls on the on the authentic signs which mark the to dawn ofmys- each should tend according be immediately realised, but as the end towards which book 1, chttienneet contemplation, Hs conditions. (Cp. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Perfection ^Sum. tlieol, i—ii, 68, 2. chap. 3.) ^ f

426 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 42? 'But the now faith is founded on Christ and the law of the gospel is pass anew through life and through death. Thou shalt not find manifest jdanc to in this era of grace, and there is no need to seek God in this what thou seekest in asking revelations and visions from me. Compre- manner, neither to ask nor that he should speak as heretofore. For all in it well, thou wilt find and more than all that thou seekest giving us hend as he hath done his Son, who is his unique Word, he hath ' already realised and given and known in him spoken all things and at once on this one Work, and there is nothing can In this condemnation of any desire for particular revelations and for be added. This is the meaning of those words of St. Paul to the Hebrews everything which is extra-ordinary in the spiritual life, of any reflection where he seeks to turn them from the ancient way which served under by the soul on the clear and distinct events which may impress it on the law of Moses, and exhorts them to fix their eyes on Christ alone- the spiritual way, in this proscription ofany appropriation of them, this "Multifarium multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus in prophetis- novis- all charismatic communications sime renunciation of however lofty, this diehus istis bcutus est nobis in Filio" (Heb. i, i). God hath now so turning from all sensible and particular things to the pure substance of spoken that nothing remains unspoken; for that which he partially faith, this insistence that the purely spiritual should alone be allowed to revealed to the Prophets he hath now revealed in its wholeness in the soul, St. of the Cross is only applying his general giving us the work in John prin- whole, which is his Son. So he who should seek to ciples, his obstinate intention of not allowing the soul to be stayed for question God, or wish for any vision or revelation, does not only a fool- the briefest instant by anything which is less than God himself. But at ish thong, but offends against God, not having his eyes fixed solely on the same time and by this very fact he maintains mystical contemplation Chnst, without searching for some other thing or some novelty. To such a one in its absolute purity, exempt from all parasitic curiosity, from every de- God could say: I have spoken all by my Word, my Son; fix thine eyes upon sire for the purely human exercise of the intellect—absolutely free from him, for in him have I spoken and revealed all, and thou wilt find all the equipment and paraphernalia of human wisdom. Quoniam non in him more than all thou desirest or askest. For if thou cognovi desirest partial visions, revelations literaturam. or words, fix thine eyes upon him and Aou shalt The most sublime of all wisdoms is a wisdom of the poor; in its very find aU. He is my Voice and my Answer, my Vision and order nakedness. It Revelation, which spoke, answered, of knowledge it is made up of poverty and spiritual made and revealed, when I gave him to is naked : are alike crucified. be thy Brother, thy Master, wisdom, divine joy wisdom andjoy which thy Companion, thy Ransom, thy Ifyou wish to know and we ought to desire to know—turn to meta- 1 descended on — Mol T^ ^.^ .!*« him, with my Spirit, on physics and theology. bel°Ved " ^ S°n * whom r *» well JS I T?,^? Ifyou seek the divine union and would come thither, then you will Y 5) We kid * ' °*« *nd, of teact A ^ ^ ^ seek to which you anSWerS>^and Bhrai know this even better, it will be in the exact degree to aH: harken ^ to *** ** A«e is no mot?"Tt pass unpossession, such self- " t0 IeVed n°r ther beyond knowledge—and in a way ofsuch ' ° *** be made I spoke befit ""»** * iZke before, it> was to promise » expropriation that you can say indeed: / have been reduced to nothing and Christ; and if any asked of me thev there is nothing more that I know. Beyond knowledge? Yes, into love: into the Spirit, the love which is translucid and transpierced with die light of penetrated, saturated with intelligence and wisdom. Now my whole ex- 37 aSked ercise is to love. " me °r a new <*««; <° add ^Sitf it w77 1 If the renunciation of knowledge in any human way is the condition that it is not in t0 of tlris supreme knowledge, it follows as a consequence it is not "* beWd Son bccausc orTlaVkonly lack of faith, F* = from f^ lt Is toTT it that perfection. It is not ask ^ tQ be ^^ ^^ human knowledge can find its rightful St. should seek for lessons John of the Cross, it is from Aristotle that we 428 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 429

in metaphysics; and it is St. John of the Cross himself desire, where it groaned that it was not, longed for with who commands ing its own

this course t that reserve radical obedience of action. For everydiing that is not 1 which springs from of and the sole domain ofcon- 1 nging templation and the union oflove in nakedness before its Author which is enwound in the very heart of spirit, for any question f DOtentiality of regions ofdiought less lofty than this divine mountain-top, being. he charges of its own us to return to the reason. In those clear, the line of distinction assuredly regions he asks us to see: not to Thus the division is perfectly shut our eyes, but to open them: St. the. superhuman mode which proceeds John of Cross wishes us to have drawn, between knowledge in the wide-open and observant eyes. Faith and the knowledge a kind gifts of the Holy Ghost, in under the ruling of the Holy Ghost, and of human making perfect the reason, only clarify the sight. St. pure reason if the question is that of John of the Cross which is regulated by reason: by respects both the order of nature and its limits. Why is it not good to philosophy and metaphysics: by reason elevated by faith if the question askGodconcerningparticular things, why are these indiscreet metaphysics to lead to this supreme contem- interroga- is that oftheology. To ask tories displeasing to God, even when He answers them? Because 'it is plation exhibits the mark of a vast ignorance, of metaphysics as of con- not permitted to any creature to leave those boundaries which God has templation: to regard reason alone as incapable ofmetaphysical thought naturally assigned for its action. God has assigned to man a natural and without the assistance of mystical connaturality is a no less violation of rational space: to seek to transgress these limits is not lawful: and to the essential order of things. St. John ofthe Cross no less than St.Thomas seek to verify and obtain such things by the spiritual path is to trans- protects us from such weakness. And, inversely, whenever mystical gress these natural bounds. The thing is unlawful: God is not pleased authors, forgetting the great discipline ofthe Aposde, sapere sed ad sobrie- thereby, for everything which is unlawful offends Hun* Certainly in the St tatem, concede in some measure to the temptation to speculate, i.e. John ofthe Cross wishes to lead us above tatatc and above the reason: particular into mystical order itself, seek to interrogate their holy wisdom on the supernatural order, into the supra-rational clearness of divine wis- philosophical or problems, to make it leave its own repose and incline to dom and faith. But beyond nature or beyond reason-certainly not: that theological discourse, where reason can only advance haltingly and un- is thelast thing that he could wish; hehas ahorror ofanything irration- certainly towards clarification, or base themselves on interpretations al. The order ofgrace neither abolishes nor violates the limits of nature- which the Cross sees only a diminution and a it raises nature whither are often rash, St. John of nature has itself aspired to come, without know- in this ming- 1 renunciation of the purely divine, and the peril ofillusion Ascent, book ii, chap. 21. mystical night ling, beautiful as it often is in the order of poetry, of the «to this he is the good disciple of the great Reformer of Carmel This horror of for a yet undifferen- ^unreasonable, this profound respect with human lights, lights which can only advance for thenatural order is oSrfS^oSLtt confusion, tiated moment the progress of thought, and which is often a C° nd"Ct WhM WOrk t0 be donc theosophy. ™» M^ted to her by su- leading in its aberration to iUuminism and to ™, 1 ^ forms of inflexible discipline of This purity which I have tried to describe, this for the essential the mind, this profound respect for the distinctions, as in the doctrine connections, of the order established by God, not only the very configura- taught but in the doctrine lived, if I may speak so, in the the most reverential sign of s tion of their sanctity, is the most moving, Ac shou[i be done how to • ** s he k™* pi it in tTLZ ThZ i! St. John ofthe ^ profound, the fundamental accord which unites together SSOr h d e 1 I oughfto set £ ' i£l ' ^™= ™y^S. Voided that Cross and Thomas Aquinas. dejto- l Croix by Pere Bruno A, I wrote before this (Preface to SaintJem h fa witnesses con divergences between Marie, pp. xxi-xxii), 'the accidental and reducible 430 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

firm the veracity oftheir testimony, by showing an accord which is unpremeditated. In-

structed as they both are in the two forms ofwisdom, the acquired and the infused (for the author of The Spiritual Canticle had acquired from his masters at Salamanca and by himselfa solid knowledge oftheology, and the author ofthe Summa Tlieologica lived in the light ofmystical contemplation), but each having an office distinct from that of the other, St. John ofthe Cross and St. Thomas, the one from the point ofview ofmystical

experience, the other from that oftheological science, are both witnesses to the same liv- ing Truth. And because St. John of the Cross never troubled himselfin any way with CONCLUSION the making of a work of scholastic theology, but only with singing what he divinely knew, then ofexpounding in his commentaries the practical science ofthe road which NADA had led to such TODO Y him knowledge (not without reference then, when it was necessary, to scholastic theology); because the movement ofhis practical, concrete, lyrical thought, and of concentration all things, even those with its harvest degree of depth ofpsychological intuitions, is opposed to the methods ofscholastic ex- At a certain from the spirit, appear position; because he never even dreamed, where the differences ofstandpoint brought which in their authentic substance are farthest in their train apparent contradictions in the manner this ofdescription, of explaining these spiritual being. Taking the word 'spiritual' in to take on the aspect of or establishing a correspondence, which for him existed in itself, between his language sort sense, we should rather hold that there is a and that ofspeculation—his fundamental analogical and widest accord with St. Thomas is only the more sig- values nificant; a disciple ofthe best independent of whatever particular scholastic tradition in theology, but ofthe Holy Ghost in of spiritual density, which is contemplation, only writing of 'the experimental science which more in relation to the vital he had lived', his right- may be in question, which implies infinitely ful work was not to continue the teaching of St. Thomas like a commentator, but to work or a period. For good or evil the immaterial confirm this quality of a soul or a teaching livingly as a witness.' This book of Pere Bruno's, with M. Mari- bears each to its appointed tain's Introduction, has been translated is a function of this density into English by E. I. Watkin (published bv weight which 7 the Sheed and Ward, 1936). . region of human history spot, and the nearer this is to the central who have very little greater the gravity in this invisible mass. Thus men a grave destiny and weight in their thought or their actions can fulfil can weigh heavily in the scales oftime. inner ferment rises to the sur- It is far from a good thing when this The fundamental face and there takes on the appearance of inertia. the fact that, taking disequilibrium of the modern world is marked by human life, the spiritual the middle range of culture and the regime of tended to weigh less than density of the truth has for several centuries our own days the inclination that of the false. And one could say that in ofthe balance had effectively changed its significance. his the outward semblance 01 The classical picture of man draped in peace, a equilibrium, an order, a at the foot of the Cross, an earth by the rich and by beatitude of pure nature, the possession of the crown eternal recompenses that mathesis which religion confirms and admir- and the perfection or an this is the He which a robust civilisation world youth of the modern able art had brought us to believe in the that balance; but by demanding endeavoured to redress the reason by the shattering or the christian soul should honour mystery 431 ; TODO Y NADA 432 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 433 man who is baptized who is put to death is a martyr and so also measuring with a human every ! Mighty por- measure, however broken (which however have risen on the far horizon ofour is quite another thing than the divine tents most unhappy Europe measure)—it could only bring op- become the religion of the State is pression instead of glory and bind once atheism condemning everything again the arms of the Cruci- on which is not to its satisfaction; and, ifit is fied earth still making use ofpretexts With this christian for its death-sentences, in fact it is for the crime of rebellion naturalism become normal and conscientiously against this that already practicable, legitimate, honest and negative religion many have been immolated, and the stable, so that authentic Christianity happy tends to pass is coming when a man can die for for impracticable, in any case as hour God; not for the nation nor inhuman—this is the state for in neither for the revolution, which our so-called christian civilisation humanity, nor progress, nor for science, has immobilised itself in the but flesh, in which it has lost all its ancient for God alone. More cynical and more brutal than that momentum of charity. The love education by in- of so many great saints just suffices to anition by which western asphyxiated childhood, prevent the dissolution of the an attentive christian world: but as to the pedagogical surgery is operating upon souls in message which that world has been order to cut away the charged to deliver, it remains image of God; and that image will be unearned, and the cry of the poor reborn for all that: a poor child r bRoes udr invain. believes he is an atheist, who if he loves truly that which he holds for Meanwhile for one cannot escape from the face of goodness, has turned to God without the angels, an inverse pheno- knowing it. ... It is menon has taken place, which is to-day with deep respect that I write here become tangible: in the degree of the Russian people and of the to which the christian world has diluted spiritual tragedy in which they are its substance, in that same de- involved. If such a world of naivete gree the world, the prince of the and violence, powers of this world, has concentrated offaith and abnegation, is given over'to the false miracles of his. It seems as if all the alembics of the the material grandeurs invisible were at work to trans- of the spirit which denies the spirit, this must be mute all human things into the state in some form of quintessence. In art and in of immense spiritual purification. This is not the place to poetry, as in the life of the senses, of vice and of sin, of dreams or of ask whether in the social world, nature, for too long outraged by covet- financeor ofdeath, everywhere the pure ousness spirit, the essential essence, dis- and egotism, is not seeking at any price to find an oudet for engages itself and stinks in our nostrils. The souls of men are subjecting those claims ofjustice which are like her indignant soul. Here we are 3 °f flesh ' t0 an only considering 5T v ^^^ ^ asceticism «* martyrdom the spiritual aspect of things. Once they have been let § d n0t loose ° Want the new of the Holy in history the dark influences are fated to multiply endlessly their GW r^ TTf-WUch^ ™ **"**" and which effects: but how is SSj- 1 l°l a*, while the it possible not to believe that there will appear at the ^"r^^-^^^eorblackdrugsofhisother same time, rising from those depths which have been laid open, when st™sac™. Meanwhile many Christians, who judge their unhappy human nature is so ploughed and harrowed, so stripped to the core, re- CmSeIVeS t0 ^Vhonest succesf prisals of grace, SltS tr' ^ t of divine regenerations, which will perhaps justify, in a ^^^^^P^^&te^oftheMo.tHighbyconsider- manner totally unforeseen, the immense religious hope ofa Dostoievsky PreSUm US S ' aSCeddSm SU ^° erfluous or a P - contempLon peri- Soloviev in Luslous, and the the destiny of their nation? Meanwhile the Church ttf precept 'Be perfect' a work of supererogation prays fighting TheyY are for them lovingly; but the men of this generation, cold as the dead, with the bubbles on the surface of the torrent! indifferent, not certainly to commerce and rapine, but to the soul ofthis equUibriuni f Which ° I ¥<*« at the opening of this formidable bolk^dte ct adventure, do they understand what says to them, as flesh and blood strive to do die work which the bearers ofthe name of the shedd °m Christian ambXch^dmbwmchis led ^- *-> have neglected, do they also comprehend what a degree of to rthe slaughterhouser r? ^ ^ is not the Paschal lamb,and not spiritual density, what an inward ascetic violence Marxism itself, and TODO Y NADA 434 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 435 feeling appears to traverse the entire ne fundamental work of St. the hatred of a world held accursed by history must have had in the in- O sense the almost fthe Cross, the of insupportable and double para- visible universe of the heart of a Lenin for the outward explosion to lohn condition ofman and the works ofGod; the sense ofa be ofsuch a quality? dox ofthe resolute disproportion, of the union of extremes, of annihilation as the condition Meanwhile, on all sides, and even where grace is in disguise, where superabundance, of death as the condition of supreme action: the men do not yet know the true name of the divinity which works within of of the Cross, whereon the mystery of the Incarnation is fulfilled. them, authentic spirituality aspires to reassemble its forces—and the sense sense oflife is not tragic, for tragedy as such has no issue and here world itself presses upon souls and turns them towards the spirit. Cer- His contrary everything hurries and precipitates itself towards a tainly not in a refusal of temporal work—love itself compels us to put on the blessed and radiant end—but superhuman, like beatitude itself, the trans- our hands to the works of time—but in order to begin with the first necessity. If a heart of the living God. But all things take on for him that super- man does not seek first of all for the secret of heroic life, fixed distension of the earth towards heaven which the figures the work he does for the common good will remain oflittle value. natural of El our outward eyes. While in the speculative Ifwe wish to be instructed in the things ofthe spirit the mystical Doc- Greco proffer to wisdom of tor will teach us. He knows the paths ofthe mountain inhabited by God, a St. Thomas Aquinas, where everything is knitted into the height of the mountain which is plenteous in grace, compact of wisdom and of the first Truth, it is unity above all which is discovered to us, explaining goodness: he traces, for ordering, justifying all disparity as Angelico those who have decided 'to pass through this and reconciling, — painted nakedness ofthe spirit', the plan of the ascent ofMount Carmel. 1 the dancing circles of heaven—in the practical wisdom of St. John of

1 the Cross, where everything is knotted up with the greatness of the Thc symbolic design which I have followed in this exposition is the one that is printed as a frontispiece to the first edition ofthe Suhida del Monte Carmelo, Alcala, 1618. human heart, it is first of all disparity which is revealed, so that, van- It is reproduced in Silverio's edition (Obrasdesanjuande la Cruz, Burgos, 1929, vol. ii)! quished by love, it may be led into unity. Christian wisdom can only The first sketch drawn by St. John ofthe Cross for the Carmelites ofBeas, which is re^ truly attain one extreme the other, marrying peace, security, joy, produced in the book by P. by R. Bruno de Je"sus-Marie {op. cit), has been later corrected and completed by the Saint himself (evidence everything which rightly belongs to the state of God, with the agony ofMagdalene ofthe Holy Spirit. Cp. Sil- verio, vol. i). It is this final state ofthe Saint's work which is probably given us by the ofdesire, the sweat ofblood, the death for sin, which are the truth about plate in the first edition, at least with regard to the general arrangement and the text our human state. 'Who will deliver me from this body of death?' says of the legends (which are of primary importance). The neatly arranged steps of the mountain, the trees and the flowers St. Paul; and also, 'For it is not I that live but Christ liveth in me. I can and the coats ofarms are evidence ofthe fact that the drawing has been copied and retouched for the printed edition by a somewhat do all through Him who strengthens me'. heavy-handed professional draughtsman, whose signature, Diego de Astosfecit, figures There are two bad roads and they are broad. There the soul loves it- in the top left-hand comer. Butthis is unimportant from the point ofview ofdoctrine. It self with a proprietary love. way the lost spirit leads to the good might be remarked that Chapter xiii ofthe The of first book of Tlte Ascent tallies with this symbolic representation and agrees best things this the less have I found. I cannot with the second state of the design. (See also of earth. Tlte more I sought book m, chaps. 2 and 15.) The way in which Hoomaert has translated the legends climb the mountain,for I have chosen an evil road. It is the road ofdeath. leaves a good deal to be desired. The road the spirit claims to lead to the goodness ofheaven, Some readers may perhaps be astonished of imperfect that St. John of the Cross had recourse to a graphic satisfactions ofthe representation of spiritual realities. and perhaps it leads thither. But it is seeking there the They forget that, according to Pseudo- Dionysus^twhichuaboveaUrepresentationmaycondescend had mounted by to use the most simple creature. Because I soughtfor them I have them less than ifI images, and farmer that the Saint must have smiled as he drew. Others will find it an the because I did not stick mstanceofa path. I have dallied and I have not mounted so high rather najve assistance to the memory. In truthitis something decidedly to ° the path. It is P Cm bCCn dc Iorabl a road of servitude. ' P y manSkd ^ the meticulous fcfZL*!^acadermc^m ofthe copyist, T^k* passes, almost as if it were butwhichmits&stsmdy (see me drawmg The good road is the way perfection; it Bruno ^sus-Mane.^.df.^) in the workof of has a very pure and most flanks wind the moving quality nothing, between the two hills of egotism over whose .

THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 436 TODO Y NADA 437 two roads suitable for cars. It climbs straight ahead. It is narrow. Quant love can unfold to its fullest dimensions. The knowledge arcta est via! It docs not broaden out until much later. The soul there spiritual it oflove, by which it shares a is the knowledge common life with loves itself as expropriated ofitself, that is to say, with self-hatred, and it asks Spirit; and this knowledge proceeds from love, which by the has torn itself from everything: it has consented to self-loss, decided to the in- experience of God. remit its of God gives The quality of the mind is its spirit—winch is to die—into the hands of him who loves it. stinct could the unity of the spirit This path leads to the land of Carmel, to God perfectly loved in himself inwardness: how which is formed by the oflove between God and the soul not re-echo in and above all tilings. Tlw glory and honour of God dwell alone on this adhesion knowledge? mountain. Thou shall he by so much more as thou hast Contemplation is the experience ofunion, it is by the fusion oflove that willed to be less. This !

is the way ofliberty, the only way ofliberty. feels and lays hold on those things which are divine. Taught by love, 'it I it

The end of the journey is transformation savour', for 'all that is done by love is 1 in God, which is done here is rich in savourous and rich'. In- below grace, 2 by by faith and by love, and which will be achieved in the deed, 'nothing is obtained from God ifnot by love.' To become God by beatific vision. It seeks to 3 go thither where the Son is (he is in the bosom participation is to become love. 'The perfect soul is nothing but love.' of die Father, and is he on the cross); it seeks to become one spirit with To ask this of the most complex and feeble of beings, a prating ani- God. 'God communicates himself to the soul in so far as it is advanced in mal, a glutton who incessantly devours the meagre intelligibility of love, diat is to say, the more its will is conformed with God. When it is visible things and the delights of the moment, of a nature marred, totally conformed and alike, then it is totally united with and trans- pierced through with the lust of evil and concupiscence, whose self- formed into God in a supernatural way.'* This is given to those who 'by conceit debars it from loving! Hurry! Swiftly let him be dug into the grace are reborn', and who have received from God 'that sonship which earth, that he may die, that the juices of the ground may dissolve him: surpasses all intelligence'. 2 if not—he will remain alone, a seed flung on the manureheap of his The soul is like a window, where the light should dwell heart, by nature. and never be delivered ! John of the Cross is pressed for time, he Fortified by grace, ifit removes every obstacle, every stain, every crea- does not want to lose a second. Because he is conscious as no other turely veil, it will become light by participation. 'God then communi- man has ever been of the scale of the chaos which severs these extremes cates his supernatural being in such a way that the soul becomes God which are to be united, he throws up with an unparalleled vividness the himself, and possesses what God himself possesses. . . . What leads to this prodigious dynamism which is implied by the life of a Christian. Those union is not the intellect, or the taste, nor imagination, nor feeling. ladders and escalades which mystical authors so often describe make all It is nothing other than purity and love\» In the end 'die understanding too feeble an image. It is the whole substance which must be in travail, ofsuch a soul is the understanding ofGod, its will is the will of God, its which must groan, which must liquefy itself, in order to leap up into memory the eternal memory of God, and its delights the delights of eternal life. And this must ceaselessly accelerate. God. And the substance of invisible momentum such a soul, while all the while being other Mercy on cour- than the those sentimental beings who, shedding a tear over the substance of God, for it cannot be substantially changed into age which their sins, mm, nevertheless will be required for diem to part forever from is united with him, absorbed into him,' is God by participation. 4 J *™k that it may be more comfortable to believe in God, and that one turns The worth of christian to gain a tranquil berth! contemplation is not only, is not so much that it is a Nothing, the nothing, is the path of St. John of hfeofknowledge^tisabove all that nothing, nothing: this it is a life oflove, the space in winch Cross. not this, I Knowledge and Repose—not this, not that. Joy and Honour— /W,bookii,cl1ap. J . tfta mil ^Living Flame, str. 2, v. 6. 1 Cant., str. 18. Cp. supra, chap, vii, p. 415-

l Cant. Hhil.ia.27. t second redaction, str. 1. 43§ THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE TODO Y NADA nor that. Security and Liberty-not this, not that. Glory and Y m Eniovmn.tn To win to the tasting this, *W ™t~mt ofall, not that. Nothing. Wish not to taste anything. And upon the Mountain—nothing., To come to the possession If the question is ofall, one of transforming a human ' being into love Wish not to bnngmg up of possess anything. km in the manners ofGod, one cannot be astonished a destruens 'the To win to the being winch are required. It is ofall, only too obvious that a dial Wish not to purification in the 1 he anything. manner of Plotinus is radically insufficient: that but" cleaves an intellectual space which in relation to the being of the subi THE MEANS itself ls only a mere OF ESCAPE FROM ALL superficial erosion. The purification^augltt^ FETTERS John of the When any one Cross, and which is thing stays thee accomplished by God, cuts 22 Thou ceasest to plunge into Vety eMds-WSofb the whole. our ^^^eav;suS no^ oZ^°lown, nof! even Tthe For to attain to empty space. All is all in all surrendered, lost: and Plod nn, docs not know that Thou must leave the creature so set behind thee all and all. at naught must r Xrbt no^ng, it, live with W and in it. It dies that And when thou winnest if may b a hold all £££ in of dltiesas^ toactinGodw Guard thyselfand wish nothing. o^e^^or ^--£«££ for For thou if wishestfor aught in the whole Destroying me thou changest 1 ' death to life. Thou keepest notpurely in God thy treasure. *Be ye perfect as your Father ' in Heaven is oerfer-t '

living Flame, str. J, v. 3. Sec also supra, chap. vii.

^Ascent, book iii, chap. 1. TODO Y NADA 440 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 441

to it its infinitude of desire. Give everything, poor men: how the way of divine love: it is one of the sufferings of a Christian, the imicates is to give all than by halves! Everything that we keep is thought that by his deformities—there is hardly anything less gracious much easier it entrails. than 'a saint in embryo', limping cancer gnawing at our with egoism and imperfect virtue—he like a run the risk senses bring two forms of impurity in their train: one which is may of blaspheming divine love among men: unhappy fel- The the life of virtue, and over which the soul triumphs by the low, he knows well enough that only saints are free of the chrysalis, contrary to that only its faculties, of the senses themselves: and the other which is they are gracious and sure. St. John of the Cross has no wish direct use of contemplative union and over which the soul triumphs for cocoons. He repeats untiringly that the excellence of the love of contrary to the God, into which the soul the senses. For the cure of the former the ascesis ofJohn of must be transformed, is the measure of the in surpassing stripping to remedies. 'He used to say that a man could con- which the senses must be subjected. The imperfect spiritu- the Cross knows two ality is first of all the of profane wisdom asks a certain measure of such detachment: quer the vices and acquire virtue in two ways. There what is surprising combating a vice, a in the demand of a divine spiritualisation for one ordinary method and it is less perfect. It Consists in that is so much more radical? acts of the contrary sin or a temptation by the direct opposition of The doctrine of St. John of the Cross is all the more firmly based in virtue. ... the degree to his perfect. which conception of human nature is entirely aristo- 'The second method ... is at once easier, more fruitful and telian. To him man is no pure spirit making use of a body; his natural There the soul fights against and destroys the temptations of the adver- life, even in the world ofthe spirit, the sole use thrusts its roots down into the senses, sary, and raises itself to the most perfect degree ofvirtue, by and is only exercised in the shaping other exer- of images: which is why St. John" ofspiritual acts and motions inspired by love, without any the practician ofhuman souls links together following way. the senses, die work of the cises. How is this possible? He explained it in the reason and discursive meditation. makes it- In regard to the being of God all these 'As soon as the first motion or the first attack ofsome vice are the country ofunlikeness. for some self felt—luxury, anger, impatience or the spirit ofvengeance He does not ask us to destroy the activity virtue, as is done ofthe senses—no more than injury, etc.—do not oppose to it an act of the contrary the Gospel, in speaking of those who have movement of 'made themselves eunuchs in the first way, but immediately resist it by an act or for the kingdom ofGod', prescribes mutilation. lifts the soul to He loved the beauty of spiritual love which opposes itself to the assault and die countryside which helped his prayer; he itself from had an exquisite sensibility; union with God; because in so raising itself the soul absents he was one of the greatest poets of Spain and of the world; to him; and by the he was often this life and is present with God and unites itself depressed; he had a profound tenderness for his of their end brother Francis the poor same fact the vice or temptation and the enemy are defeated mason, and a deep delight in his spiritual children. But soul, in effect, he wishes that in and remain frustrate, knowing not where to strike. The the use of notions as of sensible attractions our lack of possessiveness divinely abstracts it- which "is more where it loves than where it lives" should be absolute. It is to use as though not cannot find making use. Later, on die self from temptation, and the enemy mountam, the flesh and from all will be transfigured. there is Meanwhile it is necessary to escaped. . . Thus begin by where to strike or to wound. ... The soul has . losuig all; that is the rule of the road. In the order ofphysical and which the Angelic mater- born in the soul diat heroic and admirable virtue ial being total renunciation is not possible, and the 1 renunciation of par- Doctor perfecdy purified soul.' ticular called the virtue ofthe possession by the vows of chastity, the poverty and obedience is produced by is the To defeat the second form of impurity which pnvdegeofafewbutintheorderofspiritualreahsation a total renuncia- contemplation with senses and winch hinders union and the love of tion is asked of all who seek after perfection. There emptiness. Inis is only one way out fog night and of creatures, there is only one remedy: ofdie lamentablestruggleofaspiritenracinatedin die flesh, which com- (Silverio, iv. pp. 349-50.) ^Testimony ofEliseus ofthe Martyrs. ,

TODO Y NADA 442 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 443 soul also begins to catch a glimpse purification, wliich is the particular interest of mystical theology, St. empties itself, the of the peace of it into the prayer of quiet, that tiny beginning John of the Cross deals with in the fullest and most complete fashion in God, to enter of infused his doctrine of the Night of the Senses. It is a double night, at once ac- contemplation. 1 senses 'serves to tive and passive, or rather perhaps a twilight, into which those souls This night of the accommodate the senses to the 1 penetrate the call to (the to unite the spirit with God'. those rare who have received contemplation Saint only spirit rather than With souls addresses himself to diese). On the one side the soul exercises itself on whom God sees are not too pusillanimous to be called to higher purifi- its rightful initiative, thinning the taste particular sufferings own down of the senses and the cations, it is complicated by and temptations: such force of dieir attraction, putting the appetites to sleep. the On other souls know sometimes the manifestations of the angel of Satan or th? side, God acts upon the soul and himselfpurifies it with an incomparably spirit spirit of fornication, sometimes the ofblasphemy and that ofverti- greater effectiveness. Widiout this divine decapitation of the passive go, which bar the entrance ofthe Night of the Spirit. Tins also is double, night the soul would never be delivered from those all too visible active and passive. It is as dense, as obscure as the darkness ofmidnight, blots which are imperceptible to it, from the desire for consolations, before the eternal morning of the vision. In the active night ofthe spirit, from the spiritual presumption, sensuality, impatience, avarice, glut- the contemplative soul purifies the understanding by faith, not only by tony, envy and sloth which are the common defects of the appren- dwelling in obscurity widi regard to all creatures, but by the refusal of tices of perfection. In discerning the spiritual realities in the representa- all distinct light, the rejection, while it seeks for God in prayer, of all re- tions of the senses, in rising above phantasms, in beginning to under- presentations of God or of spiritual things: this is what it sets itself to do, stand and to comprehend that the Divine fill will it just in so far as dissimilar the its particular action, the refusal of everything which is to

divine. For no created thing, no graspable thought, no distinct idea, *It is important to comprehend that the active nights treated of in Tlie Ascent of in this life, Mount Carmel and the passive nights treated in The Obscure Night (just as the two boob nothing by which the understanding is able to comprehend comment on the same verses) are two concomitant aspects of one life and one pro- can serve as an immediate means of divine union. The unique means gress. 'In the measure to which on its side the soul advances in negation lack and the faith which which is proper and proportionate to union is pure faith, the of forms, God puts it in possession ofunion, and this he works passively in the soul, as Spirit render we shall tell, with the help is vivified the gifts of the Holy of God, in the passive Night of the soul' (Ascent, book iii, by charity and which chap. The 2). Ascent explains what the soul (which has already passed through medita- penetrating and savourous. Let the soul then concentrate itself in a tion and has been called in immediate fashion to contemplation) must do on its side in God.' 2 The single pure and general act: 'Be still and know that I am this progress, The Obscure Night, what God does on his. Everywhere St. John of the itself of all, Cross soul hope, expropriates demands 'courage and courageous obstinacy' (Spiritual Maxims, Andujar Ms.) of purifies itself alike of memory by the souL in the one case, It purifies the courage to undertake, in the other, courage to endure. leaves everything; but God becomes its whole support. Why did St. John ofthe Cross not treat at the same time these two aspects ofspiritual loves, detaching will by charity, risking for love everything that it progress, and choose to study separately the active and the passive series? The reason to God, even spiritual good, my mind is that the itself from all things which are not correspondence between the various successive moments of these good promises it two co-related series is not of all the fixed, the various moments of the second series can antici- lifting the sacrificial knife over die very pledge pate or retard those of the first according to the good pleasure of the free initiative of has received. God. . of his initiative. This is the other But God also acts Ids side, in the plenitude On hand it is my belief that if one wishes to on co-relate the two series in a contemplation general fashion (ut in phribus), the 'horrible night of the passive nights need to be placed rather further off passive night of the spirit, die in the line the place at of time than the active nights (which prepare and the cross ofJesus, dispose for the passive). which is infused contemplation itself; like (With regard to the third nigh which, is no of he speaks in Tlie Ascent, book i, chap. 2, it is The question once of the beatitudes ofpeace. described in The Spiritual GwfWe-betrothal supreme torments and and spiritual marriage—and in The Liv- but the created f to the spirit, ing Flame.) 1"onger that of accommodating the senses Sps ***• 2- * ^Obscure Night, bk. ii, chap. i. TODO Y NADA 444 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 445 pages, and run moreover the risk of distorting and betraying, spirit to the Uncreated. In this agony of its teaching very substance is the con- an incomparable plenitude and which transcends encounter those of all philosophy. But summation of the of extremes of which the Mystical is essential to indicate the principal moments of the Doctor had terrible an intuition. it spiritual trajectory so The measures of men cease to ao- described by St. John of the Cross. At this point the soul is free; it has ply; in this superhuman atmosphere all perceptions are disconcerted the freedom of the country. It has passed through die take on incomprehensible proportions. light Door. 'And it A divinely pure pierces the in and it goeth out and it hath goeth found rich pastures.' It is inexact obscure and impure soul, it feels persecuted by God as though by a mor- to say any longer that the way has broadened out: the narrow way tal enemy, it no longer knows the slightest foothold, it longs for death the infinite amplitude spiritual ends in of liberty: Here there is no more a diere is no one left who has for it an instant of pity, 'it feels so and so it 1 path. Becausefor thejust there is no law. is.' The divine pulverises it, dissolves its spiritual substance, and ab- 1 This is the exact doctrine of St. Paul. There is sorbs it no longer law for the in a profound and absolute obscurity, as though some animal just man, because he has become more than the law, a had swallowed it alive, king. He is like devoured it in its sombre belly. To remove the great criminals, who have nothing more to lose; he has lost his very human rust which is the centre of the soul, must not die soul be burned soul, hidden in the light of the Trinity. in the fire Love has destroyed and borne like an empty kettle, be destroyed and in some manner anni- him anew, buried and raised him to life hilated, 'since passions and with the great Phoenix of the imperfections have become connatural to it'? the 'Ofsuch souls one Five Wounds. Moved by Spirit of God and become the son of God, could truly say that they go down to hell alive.'2 So do the passive because in him grace has borne its fruit, because he has renounced his purifications of the spirit erase the profound, inveterate personality stains, old as Adam, own human for God he takes on in a manner the personal- which are confounded with our very selves, and that natural rudeness ity of God, 'he goes whither the impulse of the Spirit is to go, thither he which every man contracts by sin', and the actual 2 imperfections goes, and he returns not when he goes.' He announces peace upon the which constitute the flaws of the advanced. Like love and mountain-tops, by it they liquefy the he is disconcerting and unseizable, a bright cloud moved heart. For love is there, it is all the work of love. Stripped, transformed, by a breath; he judges all things, and men may treat him as refuse but transparent, enflamed with love in the darkness; 3 filled with a Mm they cannotjudge. He magnifies God because God has become in supernaturally simple light, pure, general, detached from every intelligible particular— him and by him what God alone can be, and what He wishes to be in the soul has become apt to penetrate all things, even the deep things us, a supreme liberty moving without obstacle another liberty, occu- of God.'" 'In this is found the proper charac- ter of the purified soul, pying it entirely, willing in the man (in effect the man wills only the which has annihilated all particular affections and forms of knowledge. good) everything that He wishes, all that they wish, for the two wills Tasting nothing, comprehending nodiing in par- ticular, holding itself in are no longer practically discernible apart: God and the saint have ex- emptiness, in the obscurity of the darkness, it finds itself framed to penetrate changed hearts. 'Thou knowest not whence it comes nor whither it all, in such a way that it verifies in itself the 4 words of St. Paul: as having goes: so is every man that is born of the Spirit.' nothing yet having all; such beatitude is due to such poverty ofspirit.' 4 *Cp. Rom., x, 4: 'Finis enim legis, Chrisms'; Gal., iii, 24: 'Itaquc lex pedagogus I realise only too ;' well how noster fuit in : ducimini, non estis sub lege'; 23 : 'Adver- rash it is to attempt to synthesize in a few Christo v, 1 8 'Quod si Spiritu sus Domini, ibi libertas;' Rom. ^Obscure Night, hujusmodi non est lex;* II Cor., iii, 17: 'Ubi Spiritus book ii, chap. 5. viii, 14: 'Qui Spiritus Domini aguntur, ii sunt filii Dei.' *Et descendant in internum viventes Ps lv r< r\, t„i „• * • «i kt-i. ' 5 " ° b> xm I(5; 2 ' P J ' 7aa J 3- Obscure Night, bookii, chap. 6. ' EzechieI, i, 12. a St.Paul,ICor.ii,io. "'Spiritualis autemjudical omnia; et ipse a neminejudicatur* (St. Paid, I Cor. ii, 15).

^Obscure Night, book ii, chap. 8. 'John, iii, 8. TODO Y NADA 446 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE U7 what seekest • - Truly then thou for, my soul, and Liberty and spirituality are two strictly correlative terms. Liberty, and all f° r me ask for? All that is is thine and is all for thee."1 gratuitousness, detachment, the evasion from the dominion of the "'f £QCSt thou Divine Wisdom. The unity of life, the endless com- crowd and of opinion, no more ruled lines, no more bonds, no more Divine Silence.

• perpetual festival all sweets of love: where the recovered laws! The only error is to seek these things in the flesh. The law is on f the with wisdom, where in the Kingdom of the Father, the only way of surpassing the law, on the condition that love passes Jieal is drunken soul, • heaven of the deiform the Son drinks with the sons through it. It was by his obedience that Christ achieved. Liberty is not the inward eternal beatitude. Secura mens quasijuge eonvivium? there where is the spirit of poetry, or of mathematics, or the spirit of .U new wine of spirit has been suffidendy profound, when the nourishment and the earth, but where the Holy Spirit is, who sanctifies When the night of the has been sufHciendy dissolved, cupio dissohi et esse and who sacrifices. substance of the soul 'The things that are of God no man knoweth but the 1 made its desire, to he with Thee, becomes sensible and Spirit of God.' tecum, that that

It is the Spirit of which illuminates and vivifies the of peace. In the state which St. John of the Cross God on mountain of felf it is the invasion perfection. The spirit of filial fear, the spirit ofpiety, the spirit betrothal, contemplation becomes luminous. It is the twi- ofknow- calls spiritual ledge, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of the spirit seeing God in his essence, the soul neverthe- power, ofunderstand- light ofmorning. Without

ing, the spirit of wisdom, by the seven gifts with which it touches is all, in transpiercing glances, in a knowledge and less experiences that He animates the soul, it is this spirit which bears the sweetness penetrates to soul to mystical union stripped of all accidentals and images, whose and which loosens in it the sweetness of is not yet complete, for the God: the very marrow of its bones. But the peace of God remain intermittent and the soul remains exposed to Blow across mygarden visitations the terrors of the Devil. That its perfumes may breatheforth! The perfect peace promised by Jesus is given in the transforming The fruits of the Holy Ghost, chastity, continence, modesty, the firm- union or spiritual marriage. 'According to Holy Scripture (Gen. ii, 24), ness of faith, meekness, benignity, kindness, patience, longsuffering, in flesh; in the consummation of marriage the partners become two one peace,joy, the tenderness ofcharity, these are the final and delectable fruits union between in the same way, in the consummation of the spiritual which abound on the heights. The four , inferior to 3 the love.' God and the soul, these two are two natures in one spirit and one gifts, and which stand before wisdom like his servants before a king, are to it The soul then possesses the unlimited rights of a bride, God reveals inscribed on the mountain slopes. On the crest, higher than the gifts, this soul which all his secrets. Terrible and tremendous are the powers of faith, hope and charity, which attain to God, reunite man with his in some manner is entirely God! It participates centre. submissive to the will of And that security, which the soul has now found at one with lib- waters of grief cannot shake it, erty, in the impassibility of the angels, the because before he had said to both: nor this, nor that. Since I be afflict- even is perfect, has ceased to rooted in nothing its contrition for its faults, which myself I find that nothing is lacking to me. He who is seems identified with peace united in the depth ing, the demons dare no longer attack it, it of his being with the life of all life, dwelling within manner like Adam in him by grace, thereby itself. 'In this state of innocence it is in a certain possesses all things. When I wishedfor nothingfor so innocent in the state not what evil was: myself, all is given me without my seeking. of innocence, when he knew nothing evil; it will hear 'Mine are the itself diat it comprehends not evil and deems heavens and mine is the earth, mine are mankind and the just and Spiritual the sinners; the angels are mine and the Mother ofGod, and Maxims and" Sentences (AndujarMS.). all things are mine; and God Himself is mine and for me: for Christ is Proverbs, xv, 15. ." (€mtkk, "• segiin dice San Pablo. . . • . son espfricu amor, ^t. Paul, I Cor. ii, ii. dos naturalezas en un y second redaction, str. 22. Cp. first redaction, srr. 27.) .

TODO Y NADA 448 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 449

all is evil tilings, it will sight that accomplished and decided by speech ofvery see them with its own eyes, and it will clear the very fact of this understand the evil is there; not that because it has no longer in itselfthat prayer.

. when more than one soul inclination towards evil by which it would recognise evil in others.'1 'So . . has entered into the possession prayer, and the Holy Confirmed in grace, it 'is become, as much as earthly life may permit, of this Ghost inspires in them an admirable 2 God by participation'. And all the it is of unanimous ideas converging the time annihilated, perfecdy course on same goal, the force is all is It is a great empty—of that not the truth of God and love. 'Because my heart irresistible. ... misfortune when among a great number has been set on fire, nothing at the head of the my has been changed; and I have been re- of souls apostolate there is not one possessed of this duced to nothingness, and I have known nothing more. Et ego ad nihi- prayer; then, the Saints teach us, a country declines and Providence lum redactus stim, et nescivi.' appears to dispose all things against the good and for the advantage of These things are set forth in Tlte Spiritual Canticle and The Living the evil. . . Flame; in recounting them I have made use of the Saint's own words. 'But how can it be that such a domination belongs to the prayer of At no time has die world lacked holy souls who have known these spiritual marriage when so many millions of saints and angels who are things by experience, and without whom all the goodness of this lower confirmed in grace cannot prevent the devil triumphing over sinners? world would long ago have been dissipated. Their experience echoes that Let us remember that God does all things in order, and that heaven and of St. John of the Cross. I quote (for such documents do not abound) a the Church on earth are different things. In the same way a single star particularly instructive passage from some precious notes on the spiritual holds enough fire to melt all the ice upon earth and yet we endure the marriage, written some fifty years ago by a member of the Society of winter; just as we require a point of contact to move the bar of a lever, Jesus and recendy published. 'The soul in this blessed state', writes Pere so God wills diat all the action of Heaven on earth should have a point 3 Rabussier, 'comes to the habitude of total possession of what it may of contact here on earth; and this point of contact is the saints who are wish in the sight of God, not only for itself, .' but for the greater good still of pursuing their pilgrimage in this life. . . souls In du's conformity of the will, the being in a state of spiritual This contemplative later explains that in the state ofspiritual marriage marriage experiments in this way: when the thought a of desire traverses suffering (die suffering ofprayer, due to divine action, and which hence- his mind, he need only prove it by entering into the heart of this prayer: forward can only exist in communion with the redeeming Passion) can if the desire springs from there it is a clear proof that God wishes it put co-exist with the purest and most unshakable peace.1 Such a soul has into execution; ifnot, the desire vanishes of itself. The habitude of total 'the sovereign beatitude of suffering only at the hands of God'. 'Then possession so engenders litde by little a certitude, greater than any other, suffering penetrates to the very core of the soul, where the prayer of that what God makes desired it will accomplish. Even this future tense spiritual marriage resides, to that central point where the pain of dam- is not wholly exact, for this habitude even leads to the experience and nation is felt by one who is damned. But these great sufferings do not in l Cmnicle second redaction, str. 26. Cp. Living Flame, str. 2, v. 6: 'Finally all the move- any way negative the peace. Yes, even then there is always an essential ments, all the operations and inclinations which the soul previously held from the prin- basis of anew of the infinitely profound ciple and the force ofits natural gladness, for the springing up life, are changed in this union into a divine movement.' Cp. supra, chap, vn, p. 407, note. source of spiritual marriage is always there at will.' % Cant., str. 27. J Cp. St. House, chap. 3. 'The second effect (of *B*v»e d'ascitique etde Theresa, The Interior Castle, Seventh mystique, July, 1927. Pere Rabussier died in 1897. These notes the find their beatitude in had spiritual marriage) is an immense desire to suffer They been wntten out for Mde. Cecile Bruyere, Abbess of Ste. Cecile de Solcsmes, at coming .'; ibid. chap. 4. la the book by Mde. to the help of the Crucified. . . and also Cecile remarkable pages on the suffering son d apres la Samte Bruyere already cited there are some very Ecnture et la tradition mystique. lative to the state ofperfect union. 2 F M.D.K. SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE TODO Y NADA 450 THE DEGREES OF 451

did not experience there that it loves God as if it much even as it is 1 GO WE TOGETHER FURTHER INTO THESE DEPTHS, him.' It is able to die of this 2 loved by desire. It is totally changed into

says St. John of the Cross. Let us enter into that 'concrete density' of love, it can do notliing more, only love: wisdom and mysteries and miracles without number, into the immense Now I no longer have an office, 1 of wisdom and heavenly science' which is the 'profundity mountain of My single occupation is to love. God of which David spoke: Mom Dei, mom pinguis; mons coagulatus. This equality of love, which can only be made definite and consum- 'This may also be understood of the many sufferings into which the soul mate in the future life, has begun already at the time of the 'spiritual be- desires to penetrate, for suffering is the way into the depths of the delect- trothal': 'in calling him brother the soul makes known that equality of able wisdom of God. For the most pure suffering leads to the most inti- ' love which creates a betrothal between them 3 Then the mate and purest knowledge, and in consequence to the purest and high- soul, not letting, in its exchange of love with God, one drop, so to say, of the est joy, because it is the most inward. This is why the soul cannot be grace which has been offered be lost (we others, when a flood is offered content widi a certain measure of suffering, when it says: Let us go to- to us, utilise only a drop), then the bridal soul gives to God measure for gether further into the depths. Job, desiring this suffering, said: 'Who measure, as much of love, at each moment of its progress, as it has re- will grant that my request may come and that God will give me what I ceived in advance and premonition from the eternal look for? That he that hath begun may destroy me, that he may loose Will which wishes

the salvation of all. And now, to that kind of equality which is his hand and cut me off? And that this may be my comfort, that afflict- like a

.' condition or prerequisite disposition, another is added, the privilege of ing me with sorrow, he spare me not. . . Oh, if men would come consummated union. to comprehend that it is impossible to enter into the profoundness and The the wisdom ofthe riches ofGod without entering into the profundity of act of love produced by the soul is finite and measured, like its degree charity; suffering, ofmanifold suffering, and how the soul setteth in this her con- of nevertheless, if the love with which God loves it is equally finite solation and her desire! How the soul which desires all the goodness of and measured in regard to its end (for God does not love all things 4 wisdom desires first of all to sink all its good in the depth of the wood of equally ), in itself and in its substance, ex parte ipsius actus 2 the Cross!' voluntatis, it is infinite, in effect it is with the same eternal and subsistent love The blessed rest of the transformed soul is not the repose of immo- with wliich God loves himself that his creatures are loved by him, bility, for that is not its aim; it is the balance of speed and oftriumphant Cant, second redaction, str. 38. Sec supra, chap, vii, p. 396. desire, whose force accelerates incessantly. The soul wishes to love God 'Living Flame, str. 1, v. 6. as it is loved by him: to equal the divine love is its unique preoccupation. s Cant. str. 27. Cp. str. 15: 'This kiss is the union ofwhich I spoke, in which the soul 'So long as it has not come to this, the soul is unsatisfied; and in the next equals itselfwith God by love. It is this that is meant when the soul says: Who will give life also it would not be {as St. Thomas affirms in opmculo de Beatitudine) me the Belovedfor my brother? Which signifies and implies equality.' 1 Cant. str. 35. *'Cum amare sit velle bonum aliqui, duplici rations potest aliquid magis, vel minus 2 amari. intensus. Et Cant. str. Cp. The Living Uno modo ex parte ipsius actus voluntatis, qui est magis, vel minus , 3 5 . Flame, str. 2, v. j . 'O souls who dream ofa tranquil path sic Deus omnia amat uno et simplici actu volunta- and consolations on the spiritual way, if you but knew your need of being proved, to non magis quacdam aliis amat, quia tis, vult win by suffering this security et semper habente. Alio modo ex parte ipsius boni, quod aliquis and this consolation! If you knew how impossible it is, codem modo se without tribulations, to attain araato. Et sic alio amarc, cui volumus majus bonum, quamvis the end to which the soul aspires, and how it falls back dicimnr aliqucm magis without them, non magis est dicere, quod Deus quaedam aliis you would never seek for consolations, neither from God nor from crea- intensa voluntate. Et hoc modo necesse dictum est, non esset tures ! You magis bonitatis rerum, ut would prefer to carry the Cross, to nail yourselves there, you would ask no amat. Cum cnim amor Dei sit causa other drink than a&quid quam alteri.'(5«Hi. theol, 1, gall and purest vinegar.' alio melius, si Deus not vcllet uni majus bonum, 2(5.3.) TODO Y NADA 452 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 453 amicitiae affectus alicujus simpliciter exit extra se 1 — and why it liquefies as finite and contingent ends (and when they arc beatified it is in his own the amatum in ipso subintrefi—snd heart, ut why it is the cause joy in himself in which they will sharers, intra in gaudium ofeverything be Domini tui). 3 s that the lover does. How then is it possible to equal this infinity ofdivine love? 'The soul sees mystery of the cognitive The union, of the truth, obliges in truth the immensity with which God loves it, she wishes to love him philosophy conceive ofa 'being ofknowledge', and ,'1 to an intentional esse no less perfecdy nor highly. . . This is the particular mystery of the which is not being or that the entitative of nature. The mystery of the betrothal; difficult as it may be to understand and to righdy repeat, it is union of love equally obliges us to conceive of an intentional being 4 based on the formal doctrine of St. John of the Cross. Let me try to dis- of love which, no more than the other, is the entitative being.s engage the principles. m the beatific vision' the created intelligence and the uncreated essence 'He who adheres to God', says St. Paul, 'is one spirit with him'. Qui remain entitatively in- 2 finitely distant, and for all that the soul, in adhaeret Domino, unus spiritus est. From the point ofview of entity there its supernatural activity of knowledge, becomes God according is always a duality, more, an infinite distance between the soul and the to the intentional being ofknow- ledge. In the spiritual marriage the uncreated Love. But there is another order than that of entity, that to created will and uncreated Love re- which St. Paul makes allusion in his words: 'one spirit,' he says, not 'one J'Quia vult amico bonum, et operatur bonum, quasi gerens curam et providentiam single being.' It is the order J ipsius propter of love in so much as it is love, not consi- amicum' (Sum. theol, i-ii, 28, 3.)

dered in its ontological constituents l tlssol, ofessence and existence (in that case Sum. i-ii, 28, 5, ad contr. Hbid. a. 6. it is considered as being), but in the absolute and particular reality pro- «By analogy with the intentional being which proceeds from the mental word I here per to that inter-susceptibility describe as 'intentional' the by which the other in me becomes more immaterial esse which proceeds from the spirit oflove. But it is important to understand than myself. that because ofthe proper function ofthe will, and its me We say that the formal effect oflove is that the beloved im- materiality which is certainly less 3 not pure in itself, but less 'separated* from things, and may be to me as myself, or as another I. If the immaterial activity of entirely turned towards their concrete state (cp. Sum. theol, i, 82, 3), intentionality knowledge is to become another in as much as it is an other, the here plays an entirely im- different part. The intentional being of love is not, like the in- material activity tentional of love is to lose itself in another, in the self of that being of knowledge, an esse in virtue of which one (the knower) becomes other, another (the known), it is an esse to alienate myself in the reality of another,* so that that other be- in virtue of which—an immaterial but wholly dif- ferent process— comes 5 the other (the beloved), spiritually present in the one (the lover) more me than myself. This is why love is 'ecstatic'—in amore by right ofweight or impulsion, becomes for him another self.

This is what ^Cant., str. 37. *St.Paul,ICor.,vi,i7. St. Thomas indicates when he says: 'Processio verbi attenditur secun- dum actionem intelligibilem. Secundum autem operationem voluntatis invenitur in Cum aliquis amat aliquem amore amicitiae (it is only this love which is in question nobis quacdam alia processio, scilicet processio amoris, secundum quam amatum est here) vult ci bonum, sicut et sibi vult bonum; unde apprehendit eum alteram se, in- m amante: sicut per conceptionem verbi res dicta vel intellecta est in intelligente.' quantum scilicet vult ei bonum, sicut et sibi ipsi, et inde est, quod amicus dicitur esse [Sunt, theol, i, 27, 3.) alter ipse; et Augustus dicit in IV Confess.: Bene qmdam dixit Ae amico suo, dimidium There is therefore a certain immaterial being proper to the union oflove by which emmae meat. {Sum. theol, i-ii, 28, 1. Cp. Ibid. ad. 2: 'Amans se habet ad amatum, in the beloved is in the loving will, as there is a certain immaterial being proper to the cog- amore amicitiae, ut ad seipsum.') nitive union, by which the known is in the knowing intellect: here a presence by the 3 Perf dtur er hoc. quod cognitum wotte of similitude, a presence by . ''P P unitur cognoscenti secundum suam and where the knower becomes the known; there similituainem;^ j sed amor fecit, quod *e ipsa res, quae amatur, amanti aliquo modo uniatur, mode of impulsion and morion, and where the beloved becomes the principle of ut dictum est: unde amor est magis unitivus, action, magnificently quam cognirio.' (Ibid, i-ii, 28, 1, ad. the 'weight' of the lover (ibid. a. The great thomists have Cp. 3. 4). J. Maritain, Inflexions sur Vintelligence, deepened pp. 125-7.) and developed the questions concerned with the being ofknowledge; fecund

'This is principles Curs. Phil, Phil Not., i, what St. Thomas calls 'complacentia can also be found in them (cp. John of St. Thomas, amati interius radicata* (ibid, a. 2). P- And again: 1- 3<*-8, disp. *5. »• 3. 4 Amatum continetur in 13 De Fine: Curs, theol, i, P. 27, disp. 12, ad. 7, and qq. amante inquantum est impressum in aflkru ejus q. perquamdamcompkeentiam' ^d S) for a similar intentional being oflove and the spira- (iW., a. 2. ad. 1). elaboration concerning the "on oflove. But this elaboration awaits performance. \ TODO Y NADA 454 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 455 1 of God by the union of love.' Thus, following the teaching main entitatively infinitely distant, and yet the soul, in its supernatural session and witness of the Saint, it is necessary to recognise, before the activity oflove, loses or alienates itselfin God become in the being or ac- the ultimate ofhuman life, fixed for eternity by the beatific vision, a tuality oflove more it than it itself, the principle and agent ofall its opera- end sort ofanti- that glory in time itself, a tions. All has been said by the Saint himselfin that golden sentence which cipation of possession of God here below takes place by love. Love outstrips the I have already quoted: 'they are two natures in one spirit and love ofGod.'1 which intellect; aicurrit Petro 3 'In this state . . . And is it not already here in time as in eternity? the soul cannot make acts unless the Holy Spirit move it cltius. The payment

thereto. because this all its 2 die intellect will only receive in the future life, And of acts are divine . . . and the more they which because it can only proceed from God the more they are its own, for God performs them in transform the soul into God when it sees him, after the separation ofthe it 3 and by it, the soul giving its will and its consent.' But it is not only soul and the body—love can receive here and now, because to change the moving and efficient action of God on the soul which must be con- the soul into God it only needs to love him, but to love him to the de- sidered here. If the divine action so flowers in the soul with no obstacle gree that divides the soul from itself. arising from the nothingness of the creature, it is in the same time and by This transformation then, according to St. John of the Cross, takes the same action, in the order of formal causality, that the soul is trans- place by love and in line with what I have called the intentional being of formed into God: not—as we have already seen apropos of 'It is 3 sanctifying love. love alone which joins and unites the soul with God. . . . It is grace and the inhabitation of God in the 4 soul —by any entitative change love which unites the soul to God; and the more the soul leaps up the of its being into the being and substance of deity, and no more in a steps oflove, the more deeply it enters into God and concentrates itselfin simply moral sense: this is produced in a physical' or ontological .* man- him. . . Therefore do I entreat that which thou desirest me to entreat, ner, but in the order ofthe soul's relation to God as object, in so much as what thou desirest not that I desire not, nor can I desire it, nor can the very grace renders the soul capable of God and turned towards God, to see desire of desiring it pass through my mind . . . and my judgment comes and to love as it is seen and loved.6 5 .' forth from thy countenance.' De vulto tuojudicium meum prodeat. . . This is the accomplishment in its plenitude of that of which sancti- Between the spiritual marriage and the states which precede it there fying grace is the principle and the root. This plenary transformation is a form of heterogeneity; St. John of the Cross, like St. Theresa, takes place in two different ways, either in that 'blessedlife which consists strongly marks tliis difference of nature. In the state of spiritual betro- in the vision of God, and which presupposes the passage through bodily thal 'the soul has come to have God in it by grace and by the conformity death'—or again in 'the perfect spiritual life, which consists in the pos- of the will' 7—to the degree of the Tightness and conformity of the will ^Consumado estc cspiritual matrimonio entre Dios y cl alma, son dos naturalezas en in itself. But 'such are not the dispositions for the union of marriage', un espintu y amor de Dios,' Cant., str. 27. (Cp. supra, p. 447, and chap vii, p. 398). 'All l Lwing Flame, str. 2, v. 6. Thus, as has been explained earlier (cp. chap, v), this that one can say is that the souL or rather the spirit of the soul, becomes, as far as one onion oflove* gifts ofintelligence and wisdom, the may judge, one thing with is possessive because, thanks to the God.... Here the little butterfly dies, but in indescribable transformation under a special illumination and joy, for Jesus Christ has become by love of the soul into God is itself, its life.' St. Theresa, Interior Castle, Seventh House, inspiration experimental knowledge of chap. 2. of the Holy Ghost, the formal means of an God, ofa passion for the things which are divine. 'Living Flame, str. 1, v. 1. Wil v. 3. 2 Sce supra, chap, v, p. 3 15. *SeejH/i/v;,chap.v. 5 chap, vii, and 419- OWe Night, book ii, chap. 18. Cp. supra, p. 437. and pp. 395 The soul lives divinely because God according to his proper essence is (mediante el amor) the object of 'Living ;it is by means of love Flame, str. 1, v. 3 : second redaction: its operations Everyone living lives by his acts, as the philosophers .' say: in having its 4at the soul acao^mGod bymeumonwlikhithasv^^ unites itself with God. . . l e death is changed into life. ...' Living V>id., str. r, v. 6. Ps. xvi, 2. Flame, str. 3, v. 3. 7< Flame, str. v. 3)- He Uegado a tener a Dios por gracia de voluntad' [Living 3. OF SUPER-RATIONAL TODO Y NADA 456 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE" 457 which the drop from the sky. Or better, of a tiny and 'that has nothing to do with these favours and delights': then the brook which throws into the sea, and which it is impossible to soul 'not only has God within it by grace, it has him also by union*—in the itself separate from thence 1 Whatever may be the comparison, it is degree of all die force and die sweetness of his will, and by 'communi- understood that so Was 1 love has not achieved the transformation of the soul, cation and union of persons,' as is the case in marriage. At each stage of the latter lives with life, without doubt its own progressively made the progress of die life of grace, the Divine Persons, says St, Thomas, are divine, but nevertheless 2 always enclosed in its created limits, always finite sent into the soul. Then they are sent and given definitively, and in full- (not only in its entita- the centre, and, until tive structure, as it will be always, but also in the ness, to very core and die ultimate transformation union of the love itself causes its operations, which is produced by death, no new or further mission which and which is like the can take place. breath ofits liberty). It

is is a whole which makes exchanges with the But it more than ever, as witness The Living Flame and The Spiri- Whole. But when the trans- tual Canticle, by love, in the life oflove and according formation of love is accomplished, and the to the esse amoris, whole soul is evaporated, so that the whole of this is accomplished. Spiritual betrothal this that it does not even draw the breath oflove itself, was trans- then in a way it is the formation of love about-to-be, or the final dispositions for this Whole, it is the infinity of the life of God trans- which explodes within it, as if formation; spiritual marriage is the the sea itself should flow into consummation of this transforming; the river, into the amorous river, spring- 'total transformation into 3 out in vital fountains, the Beloved:' an opposition olfieri andfac- ing which may become, because of the well-head tum esse which we only know in a parallel degree sensible of its waters, one spirit of example in with the sea itself. The whole universe, says St. the order of substantial changes; but it is essential to understand Thomas Aquinas, can be that contained in the least of its particles, if it is 2 what is there true of nature or entitative nature, is here verified knowledgeable. by the The eternal and infinite life of God can fill the least of

immaterial being of love, where the whole principle gravitation his creatures if it is of ofa loving, and allows to go to all lengths in it the Love whole spiritual universe is as though transessentiated into another spirit which has first loved. '/ live, yet not I, hut Christ who liveth in me.' (it remains the same entitatively, it becomes another spiritually). This is These 3 principles allow us, I believe, to understand in its full force J why St. John of the Cross has recourse to the St. classic image of the flame Theresa, Interior Castle, Seventh Mansion, chap. 2. 'In the spiritual marriage', 4 and the wood. writes St. Alphonsus The wood goes on fire, but while it keeps its own native Liguori, 'the soul is transformed into God, and makes one with him, as a jugful humidity it crackles, ofwater which is thrown into the sea is also one with it* [Homo apost., it smokes, it sends out vapours and drops of wet, it appendix I). transforms itself, it is not transformed. Only when it is incandescent 2 De Veritate, q. 2, a. 2, charcoal or pure flame, then is it transformed (that it so loses its very en- Sometimes', writes Pere Poulain, 'the mystics allow themselves to go to exag- titative being represents the defect ofsuch a comparison, it is gerations where pre- of language, in their inability to rightly describe all that is raised in this par- cisely only that being ticipation. which is in question). St. John used another meta- They will say that one thinks with the eternal thought of God, loves with phor, where his infinite love, wills the two natures of the di- no question remains of a substantial being, but which re- by his will. They appear to confound vine and mains equally the human. They so describe what we believe we feel; like astronomers they inadequate: 'Thus, when the light a star of or of a lamp is in ^ the language of appearances.' [Des Graces d'oraison, 9th edit., p. 2S2. The italics joined and united with that of the sun, what gives light is no longer the the « author's.) I hope to have shown here that to exonerate St. John of the Cross star or the lamp but the sun, which from any to ad- has drowned the other lights in his shadow ofpantheism or of 'confusion oftwo natures', it is unnecessary own.'* And St. Theresa: mit that at the mysteries ofthe union of 'One might speak of the water from the sky, very moment when he is teaching the highest we With oflanguage, which falls into a river or a the First Truth he would allow himself to run to exaggerations fountain, and is so lost in it that we cannot jM that he not what he feels but what any longer divide or speaks the language of appearances, describing distinguish which is the water of the river and *e thmks the order ofwhat ap- he feels, in short, that he, 'like the astronomers' keeps to mving Flame, str. v. has 3, 3. *Sum. theol, i, to be, realities which he 43> 3. C p. supra, chap, v, 317-8. not of is, witnesses to the sovereign z pp. what when he Cant., str. 27. bvP" mystical ^Living Flame, /neV appearances at the end of str. 1, v. 5. *Cant. str. 27. known. It is a singular invention to set *sd«a. as if it were a telescope! TODO Y NADA 458 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 459 over him, given it a right has made it the proprietor of his what St. John of the Cross teaches of die spiritual marriage. His doctrine jus goods; it dispose of them, may give them to whom it will. dius appears under three inseparable aspects. may Thus it gives love, to God; its act of which measured in itselfis finite and To love is to give; essentially and first of all, in the sealed abyss ofim- God limited, infinite gives to God, by the Love of God, the Infinite itself, manent activity, to give all of oneself. What the wedded soul gives it a gift with- measure. A donation which evidendy must not gives by its finite act of love, and inseparably and indiscernibly by the out be understood as in any degree in the entitative order, as infinite Love himself, it loves God with the same love with which he being though the soul were able exercise any influence on God or add to his loves it and with winch he loves himself. How can this be? It is the very to perfections, to enrich the that being effect of the union of love, as I have endeavoured to explain. The un- being ofGod with itself, which would be absurd. A most real created Love has become, as the immaterial being of love, the principle donation, but which takes place in line with the pure being or actuality

and agent of all that the soul does. oflove, in a totally immanent and immaterial activity, which, widiout

'The will of the soul is changed into the will of God, it is become en- implying the slightest entitative mutation, for it is actus perfecti, fulfils

tirely the will ofGod, not that the will of the soul is destroyed, but it has and accomplishes the most important thing in the world in the sealed en-

been made the will of God. And so the soul loves God by the will of closure ofthe universe which is the soul in itself.

God, which is also its own will; and it can love as much as it is loved by 'For since the soul has been made one thing with God, it is after a cer- him, since it loves by the will of God himself, in the same love with tain manner God by participation; for, although this is not so as per- which he loves, which is the Holy Ghost, which is given to the soul, in fecdy as in the next life, the soul is, as it were, the shadow of God. And 1 the words ofthe Aposde: Gratia Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostrisper Spiri- in this way, since the soul by means of this substantial transformation is tum 1 Sanctum qui datus est nobis. . . , He shows the soul the love with the shadow of God, it does in and through God that which he does which it loves ... He transforms it into himself and he gives it by this through himself in the soul, in the same way as he does it. For the will the love wherewith it loves him, what is rightly his; he shows how to ofthese two is one and the operation of the soul and of God is one. And love, as he who puts the instrument into another's hands saith how it even as God is giving himself to the soul with free and gracious will, should be used. It is in this way that the soul loves God as it is loved by even so likewise the soul, having a will that is freer and more generous in him, since their two loves are one single love. soul is not only Thus the proportion as it has a greater union with God, is giving God in God instructed in love, it is also capped as master in love, united to the being to God himself, and thus the gift of the soul to God is true and entire. Master himself, and therefore it is content, which it cannot be so long as For in this state the soul truly sees that God belongs to it, and that it it has not come to this love which consists in loving completely God possesses him by hereditary possession, as an adopted child of God, by with the same love with which he loves himself. This however cannot rightful ownership, dirough die grace that God gave to it of himself, be perfect in this life, but at least it is possible in a certain manner in die communicate him and it sees that, since he belongs to it, it may give and state ofperfection, which is that 2 spiritual marriage ofwhich I spoke.' who is to whomsoever thus it gives him to its beloved, The it desires; and wedded soul then loves and gives the itself; it with infinite love the soul pays all that very God who gave himself to it. And herein the is by this that it acts in regard to the intentional being of love, while all it it has received with in- owes; for, of its own will, it gives as much as the while acting according to its entitative being in its own finite and in- which is his in estimable delight and joy, giving to the Holy Spirit that dividual actions. And what is it it so gives? all, Not only itself and its deserves. » voluntary surrender, that he may be loved as he but what is more than its all, its core and its life, what is more than its life soul: to see that it is giv- 'And herein is inestimable delight of the itself and its the own intimacy. God, in fact, as though to a veritable wife, ing him according to to God that his and which becomes lR 2 which is own °m-»v,j. Cant., str t 37. transformation oflove. ^Substantial' in the sense ofan absolute and basic .

TODO Y NADA 4

says to the other that which the Son of God said to the Father in St. question, in any possible way, ofany entitative participation by the crea-

John: Omnia mea tua sunt, et tua sunt .* which the Holy Ghost proceeds from mea et darificatus sum in eis. . . This ture in the act ofuncreated love by gift can evidendy be made the soul, madness to suppose that any crea- by although it is greater than its the Father and the Son: it would be

capacity and its being This is the of the Persons great satisfaction and contentment ture could contribute in any way to the procession of one

ofthe soul to see that it is giving to God more than it itself is worth. . . and eternal and therefore it is necessary that the soul should return an immense In the next life this comes to pass through the light of glory, and in this limits; the Holy Spirit, ofwhich love to be able to completely rest in God. This can only be by life through most enlightened faith.'2 in hearts, by the Holy Spirit the Aposde speaks, "The love of God is poured forth our

^ohn.xvii, 10. which is given to us" (Rom. v, 5). a gift of God. And be- f The gloss points out: the Love of God is at once God and Living Flame, str. , w. 5-6. 3 love him, he has given us cause God has loved us in order that we on our side may In an article in Vie Spirituelle (1st July, 1931), Dom Philippe Chevallier has rightly for God in the is to be the measure ofour love pointed the Holy Spirit. Ifthe virtue of charity out that in these pages of the Living Flame where he explains with what values his wisdom has given life God in the fullness of {con extranosprimores. of the blessed, it is plainly in vain that . . .) the soul mates its gift, St. John ofthe Cross is referring to the opuscule it Bcatitudine as the Holy Spirit. (which is indeed expressly cited in Canticle B). I should like to opinion, nowadays modem men reproduce here, following 'Heretofore the Master ofthe Sentences was of this Dom Chevallier and his translation, the passage in question given us remains that God would have from this opuscule, think differently, choose which side you will; it which was for long attributed to St. Thomas, but which now an equal love and by that Mandonnet's his Holy Spirit in order that the blessed soul may give him researches have classified among the apocrypha. 'The glorified soul will love God by God, that is to find in him a repose without any admixture.' say, by the Holy Spirit. Not only is everything that the creature the delicate love may do in as much as it is a creature r blessing and imperfect, but the Lord Jesus asked this Of that breathing of God, which is foil of glory and for his disciples to speak; tor when he said to the Father: I of neither do I desire now have taught them your name (by faith), God for die soul, I should not wish to speak, I will show it them (by the vision) so that the Love •* and that, if I were to *«***£ by which you have loved me may clearly that I cannot say ought concerning it, be found in them. Now the str. 4-0. Love with which the Father loves the is eternal and would redacaon, 4, W Son appear less than it is.' Living Flame, second immeasurable: _isa He loves Him in the Holy Ghost, which these dungs, ihere is the Union between them. « seems wrong to hazard even the smallest comment on The gloss says: the same to dc.here ma Love with which the Father loves in all attempting the Son will dwell measure of reassurance in the knowledge that what I am the just; by bin the glorified soul loves God and is loved by God; otherwise the soul »° surrounding such umon, pretension to lessen any of the mystery «»g^ which, according to St. Augustine, can xnu* be only rest in God for it was created, language ^*°°? whom "Ton to make clear the angle from which the Saint's would never know either a fill above (chap. or complete repose ifit did pointed out not give back to die Crea- Mysdcal which, as I have tor an equality not ontological uuerances, by £ oflove. love has known witness to what favour, before aU and at any price, to 'When God loves the soul, says _ St. Bernard, it is an eternity which loves, it is an pcrience. immensity which loves, one whose grandeur has no bounds and wisdom no whose a Canf. |Str.28. . . .

TODO Y NADA 4^3 462 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE . order of the union of love, in the pure itnman- : uniquely in the 1 s in God. He is speaking of something entirely different, and this is why inwardly refers the soul to the Trinity as object, and fan act which he insists on the ineffable nature ofthe mystery on which he touches. and acliicvcd in itselfwithout any outward overflow: Hcli is perfected When he recalls the highpriestly prayer of Christ: 'Father, I will that is or it acts, but only in the degree to which it not in so much as it where I am, they also whom thou hast given me may be with me: that ft is becomes its centre and its weight and its all, that 2 so that another they may see my glory which thou hast given me,' that is to say, adds loves, crowned with the seven gifts, penetrates into the heart of the bridal soul, the Saint, I will 'that they may do by participation in us that which I do or of the Trinity, without the Triune essence in itself suffering by nature, namely the suspiration of the Holy Ghost';3 when he ex- the life contact. says eternally to his able to suffer the least entitative God plains that we are so called, in association with the divine nature, to be- being 'Touch me not', but equally ,'I will espouse thee to me for- come 'gods by participation, equals with and companions of God',4 to creature, spouse,2 am thine 1 Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my 1 work in the measure of God, to 'partake in him, in concert with him, in ever.' that I give myself to thee for thee, and I rejoice to be what I am may die work of the Most Holy Trinity, in the way in which I have said', 5 and 3 to penetrate it thine,' to raise it to the kiss of his spirit, and he means that die Father, wishing that we should be one as they are one, and may be of love.4 those 'substantial touches', in virtue of the union the Son in us and he in the Son, and loving us as he has loved the Son, 8 entirely with towards the Father and the Son as the objects of its love, will give us 'the same love as is in the Son, not by nature as in the Son, So that, turned receiving absolutely loves them—without the Third Person but truly, as I have said, by virtue of the unity and transformation of love. the soul forth the same love with which God breathes We are not to suppose from this (from St. John) that the Son asked of anything from it—with God same sense in which it 'gives God to die Father diat the saints should become one in essence and nature as the the Holy Spirit, and in the Father and the Son the Son and the say that it suspires with the Father are; but they may be so in the union of love, as the himself', one can regard to what the soul is in itself Father and the Son are one in the unity of love.' 7 Spirit of love, in a very real way in but not in the least real in re- and its rightful amorous transformation, 1The teaching of St. John of the Cross has nothing to do with the proposition by entitative effect. Thus it is that gard to I know not what inconceivable which Eckhart affirmed that 'everything which is proper to the divine nature is also There Spirit by the union of love. proper the soul is itself transformed into the to the just and holy man; he works all the works of God; with God he created united with heaven and if the soul were not earth, he generates the eternal Word, and God without such a man could would be no veritable transformation not act', a proposition which was condemned the two other Divine by the Church. Eckhart, as a theoretician and transformed into the Holy Spirit equally with and maker of systems, enunciates a theological ot the enormity from which St. John of the and veiled manner because Cross remains wholly Persons, although in a very obscure alien, exacdy by reason of the strict fidelity by which he only m united with and transformed holds to what is . . soul warranted by his own experience. As I have base conditions of this life. . The explained in the text, St. God, John of the Cross nowhere divine suspiration which suggests that the soul is associated in any entitative way, God breathes in God and to God the same even by participation, in the divine processions. understand the words The participation of which he speaks this is how I dwelling in it, breadies in it and to if, is in relation to the union love, of to the unity and" transformation love. rftoSan of God hath sent the Spmt 2 of St. Paul: Because you are sons of God, John, xvii, % 24. Cant., str. 3 8

*'De dondc las almas esos mismos bienes poscen por participation, que el por narur- but through GodW- 'The not dirough itself, alcza; por lo cual verdadcramente son diosespor soul „J loves God, participacidn, wuales y companeros suyos through the Holy Spirit, dcDws. [Ibid.) since it loves which is a wondrous illumination

Hbid. 'O souls created for such greatness,' he adds, 'and forsuch a vocation, what is it that you do? With what tCatitickofCanticfo,iv,9- are you preoccupied? Your ambitions are base and your pos- 'Oscc.ii, 19. session misery, 403-4- O miserable blindness ofyour eyes!' iitgflawe,!>tt.2,v.i. s J°hn, xvii, 22-3. »Gmf., 5rr.38. oCflM'.jStr.jS- 6 Gal.iv,6. DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 464 THE TODO Y NADA 465 loves the Son, as the Son himself says in St. John: even as the Father Persons, the resplendent and tranquil Three society ofThree in the same thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them> that the love wherewith essence and light of love. So in indivisible these last pages we rejoin the me what my soul hath desired ' This then 'There thou wilt show ofmystical experience set forth doctrine in an earlier chapter. Essentially attains to his penultimate end, to that supreme point of the is how man supra-philosopliic, since its immediate and proportionate principle is commencement here on earth of eternal life, where he loves God as he faith illuminated by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, mystical 2 experience and as God loves himself, already ready to pass with- is loved by God its origin towards the tends from loving and fruitful knowledge of the when his body shall be dissolved, to the out hiatus or suppression, Persons. Three uncreated 'The knowledge of the Trinity in unity*, transformation which will give him open possession of that ultimate Aquinas, 'is the fruit 1 says St. Thomas and end of all our life'. And St. which he loves. 'The lover cannot be content unless he feels that he Augustine: 'The realities which we have for our joy are the Father and 3 as he loves us, that is to say, loves as much as he is loved.' To love God 2 the Son and the Holy Ghost.' the eternal with his own love: in this equality of love of marriage in- Another conclusion becomes visible at the same time. How can the augurated here on earth, we see the plenary fulfilment in its highest de- supreme perfection of mystical experience, its flowering into the state of gree of the evangelical precept: 'Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven spiritual marriage, be possible to souls to whom the mystery of the Tri- his love: it is is perfect,' that is, be perfect in his own perfection or and nity has not been explicitly revealed? Doubtless more or less concealed also the supreme accomplishment of the third petition of the Lord's forms are possible, corresponding to diverse typical phases of normal Prayer: that the will of the Father may be done on earth as in heaven, mystical progress. The fact remains that spiritual marriage is in itself a that is, that we may live in his own will or his love. state existing in explicit reference to the inward life of the Trinity. In It is very remarkable and ofthe highest consequence, that, at the sum- distinction to all anterior states, it carries with it an explicit and formal mit of spiritual life and mystical experience, the soul should expressly experience of the Trinity in unity. St. Theresa attests this on her part in enter into —the depths of the most sacred mystery of the whole christian revelation 'transformed into that flame of love, in which the Father, Hn I Sent., dist. Z, expos, textus. Cp. ihid., dist. i, q. 2, a. 2: 'Una fruitione fruimur 4 the Son and the Holy Spirit communicate themselves to it' —that what tribus Personis.'

itis authenticallymysti- already fromthebeginnings ofcontemplation—if *De Doct. christ., book iii, chap. 5. It is the fundamental error of theosophical doc- which, forgetting cal—has proceeded from living faith and the supernatural gifts, makes it trines (if we understand by theosophy the deviation of a mysticism knowledge, sapere, sed sapere ad sobrktatem, cedes enter, not into the One of the philosophers, God known from without die sobriety essentially necessary to the sacred mys- to metaphysics the space ofcontemplation, and that in the very order of and by his effects, but God attained in bis own divine essence, to the very Valentine teries)—an error already present in Doehme and very visibly expressed by deity as such, in is Trinity of knowledge who his own and absolutely inward life in Weigel—to regard the knowledge of the Trinity of Persons as an exoteric a of the knowledge of the One, ofthe Ungrund, as J God in relation to the creation, and Living Flame, str. , 5-6. 3 w. pseudo-metaphysics) is penetration into the inwardness of deity. Thus metaphysics {a a the 'Como el se ama', Cant. str. expres- supernatural wisdom, which is 37; 'con el mismo amor que el se ami', ibid. This in reality set as surpassing the divine revelation and writing sion, as a gloss on the SanhcarMS. is careful that it loves the same order in to note: 'I do not mean to say exact opposite of the truth. Jean Baruzi commits an error of experience God as much as he loves himself' evidently does soul can love et le problime del — not signify that the of St. John of the Cross himself. (Saint Jem de la Croix God, know- with its creaturely love, as much as he is lovable. signifies, in the sense which knows God by love, mi It mystique, 2nd edit., 1930.) When the contemplative is the di- has been pointed out, that it can 'give God to God', and love 'by the will of God one in its mode, it him ledge higher than any distinct concepts and more highly himself, in the same the unity love with which he loves it, which is Spirit given to the and in the same art, the Holy vine Trinity which he so knows, and at the same time soul', for as it is by the same eternal act of love by which he loves himself that God loves experience which infinitely the divine essence, attained by a supernatural ^P f«^ us; amarle como il se ama has contemplauv k un- exactly the same meaning as ie amard tanto comoes amada. in which the Philosophy. When Ruysbroeck insists on the unity are in any case Kant., str. speaking. Ha formulas 37. living Flame, srr. 1, v. 1. versed, it is the unity so attained ofwhich he is not always irreproachable. p K TODO Y NADA OF SUPER-RATIONAL 467 466 THE DEGREES KNOWLEDGE an account of his personal experience, he is giving teaching the practical fashion. But as she is speaking in the strongest possible conformity with of the mystical path. And his testimony science is entirely clear; the her own personal experience, she witnesses at the same time, if indis- which have been given quotations from the Canticle leave no doubt tinctly, to the substance of this experimental union and to the special subject. then can Perc Poulain upon the How say that in the Canticle and it: 'Once die soul is manner in which she herself knew introduced into St. the Tlie Living Flame John of Cross 'contents himself with describ- Persons of the Blessed Trinity reveal dris Mansion, the Three themselves elevated contemplation 1 ing a very of the divine attributes'? To say that 1 to it in an intellectual vision. . . Z Now, according to St. Thomas, in- the soul is associated with the life of the Trinity, that it is called to 'work tellectual vision belongs to the gift ofprophecy ; it is a high grace winch, in God, in concert with him, the work of the Holy Trinity', and to 'sus- as such, is charismatic and supererogatory to the essential nature of the pire in God the same suspiration oflove with which the Father suspires mystical state; 2 we need not therefore be astonished that die vision of in the Son and the Son in the Father, which is the very Holy Spirit which St. Theresa speaks should not always be accorded to souls who which they suspire in it in this transformation, to say that 'the soul must 3 have attained to the spiritual marriage. But that in no way authorises needs be united and transformed 'as much into the Holy Spirit as into our regarding as accidental also die essential fact that die consummated 2 the two odier divine Persons', this is not to 'content oneself with de- union is an experienced union with the very Persons of the Trinity. scribing a very elevated contemplation of the divine attributes'. The in- To speak of mystical experience ofthe life ofthe Trinity as die sovereign tellectual vision ofthe Trinity is not essential to the spiritual marriage. But degree of infused contemplation is not to speak of an intellectual vision the mystical experience of the life of the Trinity, in so much as it can only ofthe Trinity. Between these two notions there is a very clear difference, proceed from the essential principles of infused contemplation, i.e. from the one belongs to the order of charisma, the other to diat of grace and the faith which is supremely illuminated by the gifts of intelligence and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. This is the testimony of St. John of the Cross wisdom, from that/e Hustradisma* as St. John of the Cross says, exacdy 4 whom we need here to clarify that of St. Theresa, since he is not only apropos of the spiritual marriage, which is one of the essential privileges x St. Theresa, Tlie Interior Castle, Seventh Mansion, chap. I. of this state of transformation. "While always implying and because it t Sum. theol., ii-ii, 174, 2 and 3. implies the highest possible earthly knowledge of the abyss ofunity, this 3 'In this degree, certain persons have a continual intellectual vision of the Holy Tri- state applies in an explicit and formal manner to the triune life, such is nity. St. Theresa even says that it is always so. Nevertheless it seems that this is fre- certainly the teaching of St. John of the Cross. Denis the Carthusian quently not the case with souls which have arrived at transformation in God, and al- ready possessed of that which makes the basis of the spiritual marriage.' A. Poulain, imagination. Then of the soul nor with those of the body, for this is no vision of the Des graces d'oraison, 5th edit. speak to it and the Divine Persons communicate themselves, all three, to the soul, they 4 Pere Poulain {op. cit.) points where our Saviour announces out that St. Theresa says it is always so for souls which discover to it the meaning of that passage in the Gospel have reached the Seventh Ghost, and dwell in the soul Mansion; in another place she says that this is accorded 'in an that he will come, together with the Father and die Holy extraordinary way' {Interior Castle, Ice. cit.). Is this a contradiction? It is understandable which loves him and keeps his commandments.' {Op. cit.) if we make use of a distinction which she herself is has not drawn in this case, that it 1 also so in regard to pp. «7., p. 283. infused" contemplation, and that this was given, to her, in an extraordin- ary 2 glory, so profound and sublime a way,as charisma intellectual is for the soul so high a a of vision. In any case it is in reference to an experimen- See««>W,p. 46r. 'And that have any tal knowledge ofthe any human understanding as such divine Persons by the way ofinfused contemplation, subtracting joy that no mortal tongue can express it nor in the other Me; tor the charismatic mode which has its perfect accomplishment may bejoined thereto, that we should hold her testimony idea ofit.' Cant. itr. 3 8. This only into its great be- and accord it a universal the perfect state it enters value, when she writes: 'The duce divine Persons show them- all that, even here, when the soul is come to which we have spoken, al- selves distmcdy and, by an admirable such glory, in the way of notion which is communicated to it by them, die ginnings and into the savour of soul {Ibid.) knows with an absolute as I also have said. certitude that the three are one in die same substance, the though there is none that can express it, same power, the same science and one God. Thus what we believe by faith, the soul, one 'Living Flame, str. 3 , w. 5-6. may say, perceives by sight. And meanwhile one sees nothing, neither with the eyes SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE TODO Y NADA 46S THE DEGREES OF ^ 1 QUI„jtside the communion of the visible Church of the holds the same teacliing; and if it is necessary to cite modern instances Incarnate Word, a 2 mystical experience issuing from a supernatural faith that also, the witnesses of Pere Rabusier and of Mere Cecile Bruyere are is only implicit 3 never reach to this point. formally alike. It is for this reason that I hold that, high as it may attain, can

So come to the highest possible degree of divine union, the 1 truth, soul can 'Thcn it will be given thee to see in all suavity and with the intelligence of a nothing which in itself is better, at least positive purified soul penetrating the causes and the secret reasons of the mysteries, all that is do by obligation, noth- with deific light, thou wilt be able to enter given to us by our faith; then, inundated into ing more useful or fecund, than the contemplation and love of God in and assiduous contemplation of the inaccessible glory of the august Trinity, the serene solitude. considering the procession and the relations ofthe Divine Persons ah intra, their mutual 'As long as the soul has not attained to the state of union of which I love and the joy which each tasteth in the other; the ineffable regard by which they self-contemplate each the other, their eternal and immutable essence, sovereignly glo- speak, it is good that it should exercise itself in love, in the active as well rious beatific. Then, in the presence of the infinity and immensity of God, every and as the contemplative life: but once it is established there, it is no longer creature will seem to thee petty and narrowed; and thou wilt find thy consolation suitable that it should occupy itself with other works, or with exterior and all thy love in God alone.' Dionys. Carthus., Flam. div. anions (French translation exercises which might raise the slightest possible obstacle to its life of in Mde. Cecile Bruyere, La Vie spirituelle et Voraisort, p. 3 50). Angelo ofFoligno brings a similar witness: 'In this Trinity which I see in such great love in God, and I do not except even those works most relevant to

darkness, it seems to me that I hold myselfand that I lie in its centre.' \ God's service. For a little of this pure love is more precious before him

'In the immense perturbations and the hell and the complete desert of the prayer of and before the soul, and more profitable to the Church, although it ecstasy the soul has bought this earthly paradise; it has found the way into that pro- seems to do nothing, than all the other works together. This is what ex- mised land, where, in a state ofincomprehensible beatitude, it can now say truly: 'It is plains the actions ofMary Magdalene. In preaching Christ she did much not I that live, but the thrice-holy Trinity which lives in me, and I live in the holy this active life she would have done still more: Trinity.* good and in continuing 'Indeed one can say that, in the prayer of spiritual marriage, the soul enters into the but in the great desire which she had to please her Bridegroom and to

spirit life as God into . . and the of God, enters the soul of man. . And in its depths, in make herself useful to the Church, she hid herself for thirty years in the that innermost sanctuary ofGod, this soul is one and at one with the essential secret of desert, in order to give herself to all the truth of this love. She was con- the Three Divine Persons and participates in their perfectk>ns.* (Revue d'ascitique et more abundant de mystique, July, 1927, p. 284.) vinced that such a life would produce in every way is fruits, for nothing is more to the good of the Church and nothing 'Speaking ofthe spiritual marriage, she writes: 'The contemplative, in the act ofcon- more profitable than a little of such love Indeed, indeed we have templation, thus perceives eternal things, not in the ordinary mode ofvision, but by a 1 real experimentation. God reveals himself and he reveals himself as he is, that is, one been created for nothing except this love.' and triune. In fact, the soul is introduced into the perfect union with and a very high is not unique in the angels, whom he saluted as ifthey were only one; and this example knowledge of the august and most holy Trinity. The words of our Saviour at the last august and Old Testament, although the truth, and particularly the mystery of the supper are realised in their entirety and their full force: AJeum venimus, et mansionem cannot be astonished: God had tranquil Trinity, were still enveloped in shadows. One apud eumfaciemus. Not only do the Three Divine Persons manifest their presence in the regions and, revealing already condescended to raise certain chosen souls to higher souL but in a certain way they dwell there, and although not always with clarity, in essence and triune in himself to such souls, taught them to know him as he is, one for the greater part of time the soul feels that it is in this divine company. It is a most persons.' (La Vie spirituelle et I'oraison, pp. 34 1-$) characteristic point of this third degree ofthe imitative life that St. Dionysus begins his the treatise mystical in the least contradictory to on theology with an invocation of the Blessed Trinity which must be Kant, second redaction, str. 28. This passage is not the Cross held tiie read in the text itself. . . soul reports that St. John of . The lives in a close and conscious union with the Three Divine witness of Pere Elisce des Martyrs, when he Persons' where contemplation overflows into same opinion ofthe superiority ofthe mixed life, also said And she adds, apropos of die saints as St. Thomas Aqumas. He of the old law, 'Abraham the great patriarch, action (without itself suffering any diminution), spiritual and whom the Bible shows us as raised good is bom of the to such a close familiarity with God, had this reve- that the love of one's neighbour and devotion to his organised so as to lation of the august Trinity, when he received the observe the mixed life, Lord under the form of the three contemplative life. ... The Rule makes us TODO Y NADA 4?I o THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 47 the interests of the individual and the species), such centred round a love, Purely and perfectly spiritual, free from all egotism, as from every which two natures are one spirit, two persons one love, is inseparable vestige of the 'animal' or 'biological' (I mean by the word a life still savours of a wisdom which in itself is from the penetrating in some the contemplative and the active. It is this life that our Lord chose for unite in itself manner substantial, and from an experiencing knowledge of the Divine state himself because it is the most perfect. And this kind of life and the of the religious it carries a human being to the highest degree of know- this reservation,* persons. Thus •who adopt it is the most perfect.* (Silv., iv, p. 351.) 'With he adds, stress publicly among the religious this accessible here on earth. 'that at a certain period he found it better not to ledge which is manner ofthought which was his own; because the number ofreligious was too small and in order not to disquiet them; it was needful to only insist on the contemplative POINTS IN THE POSSESSION OF ALL life until the number of brothers should be greater. In this nakedness the spiritfinds When St. Thomas and St. John of the Cross after him so affirm the superiority of Quiet and rest;for indeed the mixed life, they are speaking from the point ofview ofstates oflife, ofmanners and itself the state of the mixed life is evidently the best, since orders of existence; and in It covets nothing, nothing urges it is marked by that 'overplus' by which contemplation overflows, and so multiplies Towards the height and nothing draws the species ofgoodness: it is the state which resembles Christ's own manner oflife. (We may add that souls placed in this manner of life,—which, by being the highest, sanc- Either downward,for it is centred tions and sanctifies, in as much as its works proceed per se from contemplation, the In the centre ofhumility. And when it covets humble regime ofmutual service and interaction naturally required by the economy of the very act human life—will generally fulfil it badly enough, remaining themselves less inadequate Ought, in to it so long as they have not arrived at sanctity. The episcopal state is a state ofacquired Thereby it wearies. perfection, it is necessary to be a saint to fill it adequately.) and it is an immense glory to imi- In the passage on St. Mary Magdalene which I have cited, St. John of the Cross is the works of God have their greatest resplendence the' works of his Father, the objects of the considering the problem from another angle. He is no longer considering the nature of tate them. This is why Christ calls them the plenitude of union, the means which the kind or order of life taken in itself, but that of a soul presumed to have come to the Father's care.' {Ibid.) But for a soul come to of are, again, the contemplative activity plenitude oflove where it is truly co-operative with Christ; its contemplative life has are in themselves best for the salvation of souls wiU not deploy it its itself its life intra; it does of the mixed life, and total perfection in and in pure immanence, like the ofGod ad love. It possesses already the virtual perfection obligation. Thus, by an apparent not require to overflow into action, to spend itself in the duties of the state which it in action unless a special motive intervenes which is of unless required to do so from with- holds in the course ofhuman life (duties of the episcopal state, ofthat of a doctor, of a paradox, the most perfect soul should not, at least perfect state of ate. father, etc.); precisely because this activity is in the substance implied by the most supererogatory view of out, enter into those works ad extra which are of perfection (rather as production ad extra is supererogatory in regard to the divine perfection).

Ifthen we are no longer considering the various states oflife, but purely and simply the work which is best and most useful in itself which a soul come to this degree of di- vine union can do, St. John ofthe Cross will say: to give all its time to love in contem- plation. The love of souls and their salvation remains always inseparable from the love of God. 'Explaining', continues Elisec des Martyrs, 'the words of Our Lord: Nesdehatis quia in his quae Patris mei sunt, oportet me esse, Father John of the Cross said that the works ofthe Eternal Father should be understood in no other way than as the redemp- tion of the world and the good of souls, which Christ our Lord had procured in the way preordained by the Father. And in confirmation of this truth St. Denis the Areo- pagite has written this admirable sentence: omnium divinorum divinissimum est cooperare Deo in salutem animarum. That is to say that the supreme perfection of every creature, in its hierarchical place and its degree, is to rise and to increase, according to its talent and its resources, ia the imitation ofGod, and what is most admirable and most divine is to be his co-operator in the conversion and the salvation of souls. In that A SUMMARY OF THE APPENDICES

I. ON THE CONCEPT

'The theory of the concept expounded here {chap, ii, p. 144 et seq.), in which I have followed John of St. Thomas, has been already dealt with in a more concise form in Reflexions sur V intelligence (chap, i).'

M. Maritain then proceeds to consider and reply to certain criticisms

of this theory proffered by the R. P. M. D. Roland-Gosselin in the

Revue des sciences phihsophiques et theologiques (Apr. 1925) and in the

Bulletin thomiste (Nov. 1925). This is followed by a critical and tabu- lated analysis of this theory, and a tabulated series of citations from St. Thomas, with lengthy comments.

n. CONCERNING THE ANALOGY

'The pages of chap, iv devoted to the analogy of being and the tran- scendental are not an exposition informa of the doctrine of this analogy. They only endeavour to bring to light certain particularly important as- pects of it from the point of view which is there under consideration, which is that of the critique of metaphysical knowledge. This is why, among the various forms of analogy recognised by logicians (by virtue meta- of a division which is itself analogical)—analogy of attribution, dealt phorical analogy, analogy ofrightful proportionality—I have only and which with the last, which is the metaphysical analogy par excellence, instance. it is advantageous to consider alone, in order to work on a pure the others It alone, as Cajetan has said, constitutes the veritable analogy, ' are only improperly so called kinds of analogy: Then follows 'a brief characterisation' of the three analogy of rightful that of attribution, metaphorical analogy, and the with the book of proportionality; and an argument on these points M. T.-L. Penido cited in the text. 473 474 THE DEGREES OF SUPER-RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE A SUMMARY OF THE APPENDICES 475 m. WHAT GOD IS vn. 'speculative' and 'practical' A further discussion of the scire de aliquo quid est, with authorising enlarged and technical An justification of the distinction quotations from Cajetan, In de Ente et Essentia and St. Thomas; followed drawn in chapter vii. by a critical disagreement with R. P. Sertillanges, 'due not so much to metaphysical disagreement, as to the terminology which Sertillanges vm. 'le amara tanto como es amada' has chosen to use', i.e. in the rendering of St. Thomas's Latin into French A furdier discussion and elucidation of the points raised in chaps, vii a point still more difficult to elucidate in English! — For, as M. Maritain andviii. .' adds, 'ambiguity is not a philosophical instrument. . . IX. THE 'CAUTELAS' OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS IV. ON THE NOTION OF SUBSISTENCE A reproduction of M. Maritain's preface to R. P. Bruno's St. John of the Cross. 'The notion of subsistence is one of the most difficult and controver- sial of all Thomist philosophy ' Followed by some highly technical analytic suggestions for its elucidation, based primarily on John of St. Thomas.

V. ON A BOOK BY PERE GARDEIL

'An attempt at a truly scientific analysis' of Pere Garden's La Structure de Ydme et Vexptrience mystique, and a comparison between it and the points put forward in chapter v. 'After the classical works ofa Joseph of the Holy Ghost and, above all, John of St. Thomas, ofwhom it has been said that nothing can be added to his teaching on the Holy Ghost except our meditations upon it, the profound and penetrating book of Pere Gardeil, together with the two admirable books of Pere Garrigou- Lagrange {Perfection chritienne et contemplation and VAmour de Dieu et la Croix deJesus), must be regarded as the most important on this theme. I would here like to bear witness to the depth ofmy gratitude to these two masters.' In his book Pere Gardeil makes certain references to the sub- stance of this book when it appeared as articles in La Revue thomiste, and M. Maritain proceeds to consider these comments in detail, with further elucidations and certain criticisms; a difference in the use of the word intentional, etc.

VI. SOME PRECISIONS

A critique of the criticisms offered by M. Blondel on Reflexions sur Intelligence, and a rebutting criticism of an article by M. Blondel on Le Probleme de la mystique' (Cahiers de la nouvellejournie, 3).