Chapter VIII. God’s ineffability and the absurdity of the unknowable. Conclusion and confirmation

66. God’s ineffability.

It comes from His absolute simplicity, which consists of all perfections eminently in harmony, and is at the same time sanctity and supreme beauty.

The solution of the antinomies brings us to the question of God’s ineffability and the theoretical and practical consequences of the identification of the absolute attributes in God.

As we said (supra, n. 56), the unity of the primary notions common to God and creatures is only a unity of proportionality. Hence the perfections they express can be contained formally in God and are identical in Him. Therefore we maintain, on the one hand, God’s knowableness and, on the other, His transcendence and ineffability which are the result of His absolute simplicity.

The divine essence thus appears as the highest realization of the principle of identity or non-contradiction, which is the fundamental law of thought. If our thought has objective validity (if it is the thought of something and not of nothing), its supreme law must be also the supreme law of being. Consequently the first reality, which is the principle of all things, cannot be this composite and changing world; it must be perfectly identical with itself and must of necessity be to being as A is to A. That is not the ontological argument which is an illegitimate transition from the abstract and analogical idea of God to His existence. It is the argument based on contingency in abbreviated form, for the contingency in the world is shown by the opposition presented between its perpetual ! change and composition,? and the principle of identity which is the supreme law of our thought. For the divine identity to be rich in its eminent possession of all absolute perfections participated in by creatures, necessarily being, thought, and love are identical, included as they are in the formal notion of Deity. The Deity is thus above being (super-being), and is still being in a pure state, as it is the Thought of Thought and the subsisting love of the supreme Good (formally and eminently). “The perfect unity of God requires that what are manifold and divided in others should exist in Him simply and unitedly.” (St. Thomas, Ia, q. 13, a. 4 ad 3um, and a. 5.)

From this it follows that the Deity as such is naturally unknowable and consequently ineffable. It is unknowable inasmuch as it infinitely surpasses the natural means of knowing possessed by a created intelligence; for these means, to be proportionate to this intelligence, must be merely creatures or abstract concepts of creatures, and between these latter and God there can be only a similarity by way of analogy (la, q. 12, a. 4, 11, 12; q. 13, a. 1). The Deity cannot be naturally known by a proper concept, but only by analogically common concepts which express what is proper to God merely in a negative and relative way. Consequently the Deity cannot be defined, and remains ineffable. “In this life we cannot see the essence of God; but we know God from creatures as their principle, and also by way of excellence and exclusion. In this way, therefore, He can be named by us from creatures, yet not so that the name signifying Him expresses the divine essence in itself” (Ia, q. 13, a. 1). And the names which most properly apply to the Deity are those which are less determined, more uni-¹ versal and absolute, as “He who is” (la, q. 13, a. 11). But such as the Deity is in itself remains inexpressible.

Only supernatural revelation can make the intimate life of God known to us by faith and afterwards by vision. “What eye hath not seen nor ear heard, what hath not entered into the heart of man ... God hath revealed them by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (I Cor. 2:9). This revelation initiates us into the very knowledge of God; it teaches us the existence of the Holy Trinity, and gives us a glimpse of the relation of this supreme mystery to the other mysteries which originate from it and terminate in it. Far from impairing our autonomy by demanding an act of belief from us, it prepares us for the evidence enjoyed by the blessed in heaven: “It is for the disciple to believe,” said Aristotle. But in this life the supreme mystery that would illumine all the others, remains the most obscure for us. “We walk by faith and not by sight” (II Cor. 5:7). True, St. Paul “was caught up into paradise,” but there he heard “secret words which it is not granted to man to utter” (II Cor. 12: 4, and St. Thomas’ commentary).

Can the blessed who see God face to face express this, if not by human speech, at least by a word of the mind, by a purely interior locution? St. Thomas (Ia, q. 12, a. 2, and Commentary of John of St. Thomas) replies that it is impossible. A more sublime idea of God’s ineffability could not be given. The blessed, who contemplate intellectually and immediately this eternally subsisting and pure intellectual light which is identical with the love of the supreme Good, cannot express the object of their contemplation by a mental word. How could the ever actual intellection, which is Pure Act in the intelligible order, be contained within the limits of a created idea which is intelligible only by participation? In the finite there cannot be a homogeneous representation of the Deity that expresses and presents it such as it is in itself. As Schee- ben very well says, “the intellect in the beatific vision is so sustained by God and immersed in Him that it could not grasp and impress on its mind the object of its vision. Thus a person confronted by an impressive scene loses the gift of speech; he cannot dominate, sufficiently master what he sees, so as to give it adequate expression in his thoughts” (Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. I, sec. 81, P- 574).

God, such as He is in Himself, can be expressed only by the consubstantial word which is the eternal Word, the “brightness of eternal light; and the unspotted mirror and image of His goodness” (Wisdom 7:26), the “brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance” (Heb. 1:3). Cf. Ia, q. 34, 35-

This ineffability is in no way opposed to the knowableness of God which we have already defended. We have positive knowledge of the analogous perfections that are common to creatures and to God, and it is He indeed whom we reach in this way, but not such as He is in Himself, for we perceive the divine mode of these absolute perfections only in a negative and relative way. Thus we truly know the heart of our friends, though we do not enter into their intimate feelings such as they are in themselves. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 2:11).

The doctrine of St. Thomas, as we have explained it, is clearly in agreement with that of the orthodox mystics who have strongly insisted on God's ineffability, such as Dionysius or St. John of the Cross. Without retracting anything we have said against the Agnosticism of Maimonides and the far more radical Agnosticism of the moderns, we find it an easy matter to declare that we understand better the ways of negation and eminence. These ways, indeed, withdraw us from the created mode of the absolute perfections and remind us that the intimate life of God is infinitely superior to the manifold ideas we can form of it, ideas which would become idols if we took them for adequate representations of the Deity. Says Dionysius: “There is a more perfect knowledge of God which is the result of a sublime ignorance and which is acquired in an incomprehensible union; it is when the soul, forsaking all things and forgetting itself, is immersed in the ocean of divine glory and illumined by the abysmal splendors of the unfathomable wisdom” (De nom. div., VII, 3). “In this translucent obscurity, it sees and knows precisely by mystic ignorance Him who entirely escapes our vision and knowledge” (Mystical Theology, ch. ii).

St. John of the Cross (Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Bk. Il, chs. vii, viii, ix) requires the sacrifice of the senses and reasoning for one to arrive at the higher degree of contemplation, “Nothing, absolutely nothing which the imagination can represent and the mind conceive in this world, can serve as proximate means of union with God.” This union is effected in the night of faith by an experimental and indistinct knowledge which does not stop at the diverse attributes of God, but rises in a sense above every determinate idea; it is the perfection of the eminent and negative way.

St. Albert the Great (De adhaerendo Deo, and In lib. de myst. theol.) and St. Thomas speak in the same way. St. Thomas (Ila Iae, q. 180, a. 6), following Dionysius, distinguishes three degrees in contemplation. In the first we contemplate God in the mirror of sensible things or by means of comparisons; in the second, by reasoning, as theology does, we rise above sensible things to contemplate God in the mirror of intelligible truths and of the various mysteries of salvation; in the third, contemplation rises above the multiplicity of images and ideas and becomes a simple looking at God in the obscurity of faith. “At the end of discursive reasoning, the soul concentrates its attention upon the contemplation of one simple truth.” “But in the soul, before it attains to this uni- formity, a twofold difformity must of necessity be removed from it: first, that which arises from a diversity of external things, and secondly that which is the result of discursive reasoning.” (Ila Ilae, q. 180, a. 6.) Rich in the multiplicity of the lower degrees, this very simple and uniform contemplation remains inevitably in obscurity in this life (Ila Ilae, q. 8, a. 2); we may say in a sense that it is plunged in an ever more obscure night, for it is identified with the ever more profound conviction that God is above all ideas that we can form of Him. That does not prevent the contemplation from being ever more certain of the harmonious and ineffable union of all the absolute perfections in the Deity. God thus appears more and more like an infinite ocean of substance, pelagus substantiae infinitum. This phrase of St. John Damascene which St. Thomas is fond of quoting (Ia, q. 13, a. 11), is a way of expressing that we know of God rather how He is not, than how He is. “Concerning the divine essence we must consider the manner of its existence, or, rather, what is not the manner of its existence” (Ia, q. 2). This knowledge, however obscure, is not less savory (sapientia = sapida scientia) when it proceeds from the charity of the Holy Spirit which makes itself felt in us as the soul of our soul, the life of our life (cf. Ia Iae, q. 45, a. 2).

By this classical doctrine of contemplation, Thomism, adopting the philosophy of being, joins with the doctrine of St. Augustine which follows rather the philosophy of good. Through lack of systematization, unfortunately these two kindred concepts have at times been too much separated, as if they were irreconcilable. Considering St. Thomas too exclusively as a philosopher, as a Christian Aristotelian, was underestimating him and did not take

8 This exaggeration is to be found in writers of Augustinian tendency; but, like Laberthonniére (Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 1905-1913), by reason of a Nominalism of modern origin, they are far removed from St. Augustine. This exaggeration is found again also in writers of opposite tendency who have treated of the history of medieval philosophy in a way favorable to Thomism, though not insisting sufficiently on what is essentially traditional in it.

sufficiently into account that he was also a theologian and a saint.*

The aspects of being and goodness are already reconciled in philosophy; in itself, being precedes goodness because it is simpler, more absolute, more universal; in the order of causality, goodness precedes being as the end is superior to the formal cause. St. Thomas himself thus is in accord with Dionysius (Ia, q. 5, a. 2 ad Ium).

But the aspects of being and goodness are reconciled with far greater reason in theology, for the formal object of theology, like that of supernatural faith, is God, not precisely under the aspect of being by which He is accessible to metaphysics, but under the aspect of Deity. Now in the mysterious eminence of the Deity, being and goodness reappear formally and are identified. “Sacred doctrine,” says St. Thomas, “essentially treats of God ... not only so far as He can be known through creatures, but also so far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others .. . and all things are treated of under the aspect of God, either because they are God Himself, or because they refer to God as their beginning and end” (Ia, q. 1, a. 6, 7).

But it is especially in contemplation, to which faith and theology are directed, that St. Thomas and St. Augustine join hands without anything being able to separate them. We can have faith and theology without sanctifying grace and charity, but not contemplation, for this proceeds from the gift of wisdom (Ila Iae, q. 45, a. 4). Says St. Thomas: “This gift makes us judge rightly of divine things by a certain connaturalness and union with God

41It has been said of him that he was an “innovator.” This word, according to its current meaning, is not accepted by the Church. In the higher light which illumined him, neither would St. Thomas let himself be called by such a name. Does not this apparent eulogy depreciate and make us forget what savors of eternity in his writings? The opponents of Thomism, moreover, snatch at this word and point out that, if St. Thomas was an innovator, we must return to the tradition previous to his time, or advance beyond him as he advanced beyond Augustinianism, separating ourselves from him.

which is effected by charity,” and by sanctifying grace which is a participation of the divine nature, in so far precisely as it is divine.

In this absolutely simple eminent object, God as such, we have the divine attributes reconciled and identified with the theological conception which, to treat of realities as they are in themselves, derives its inspiration especially from the supreme Being, and the conception which, to lead us to Him, derives its inspiration from supreme Goodness which is our final end.

God’s ineffability proceeds, therefore, from His absolute simplicity which is eminent harmony. It is unity most profound in diversity apparently the least reconcilable; it is the identification of absolute immutability and perfect liberty, of sovereign wisdom and good pleasure which is its own reason, of most inflexible justice, and most compassionate mercy. This harmony constitutes both the holiness and the beauty of God. Holiness is the indissoluble union of all absolute perfections, purified of all imperfection; it is Perfection itself, immutable and immaculate (Ila Iae, q. 81, a. 8). Divine beauty is the splendor of all perfections in harmonious agreement, as, in the created order, beauty is the splendor resulting from the combination of all the transcendentals, of being, unity, truth, and goodness; or, more particularly, it is the brightness of a harmonious unity of proportion in the integrity of the parts (splendor, proportio, integritas; cf. Ia, q. 39, a. 8).

As a recent critic remarks, “we cannot sufficiently admire how this doctrine of St. Thomas gives the fullest scope to the intellect and at the same time (but perhaps even on account of that) is most solicitous to safeguard the profundity of God’s mysteries. It will not surprise anyone that such metaphysical speculations reach the heights of the most sublime poetry, the lyric beauty of sacred chant.” 5

This mysterious identification of the absolute perfections in God

5 Dusmesnil, the author of “La Sophistique contemporaine,” in L’Amitié de France, August 1913, p. 248.

is the principle from which an infinite number of speculative and practical consequences are derived. We should like to point out some of them. After that we will compare this ineffability of the true God with the absurdity of “the Unknowable.” All the great philosophical, social, and religious errors of our times arise from this absurdity and terminate in it.

67. Progressive harmony of the apparently conflicting perfections in the life of grace, which is sanctity.

To Agnosticism which declares that the divine attributes are irreconcilable, the life of the saints is a practical answer, because it is itself here on earth the reconciliation of perfections which seem the most opposed to one another. Sanctifying grace makes us participate in the Deity as such, whereas by nature we are like to God only according to the common perfections of being, life, inielligence, etc.

That is why our supernatural life, by a progressive purification (purgative way), must result not only in the constant exercise of different virtues under the light of faith (illuminative way), but also in the fusion of virtues apparently the least reconcilable, and must end in continual union with the very source of sanctity (unitive way). Moral purification which destroys every germ of disorder in us, corresponds to metaphysical purification which removes all imperfection from the absolute perfections. Just as it is impossible to conceive of the identification of the divine attributes when we forget to purify them of every kind of imperfection, so it is impossible, without mortification, to realize the true connection and harmony between the virtues, in the wisdom and love of God. Mortification in itself does not suffice; there must be also passive purifications which are the profound operation of the Holy Spirit in us.

Thus in our spiritual life there is and must be, more and more, a certain identification of knowledge and love, especially in the contemplation which unites us with God, which is a simple look utterly penetrated by supernatural love (Ila Iae, q. 180, a. 1, 6). To know God in this manner,® we must love Him, and all those who love Him know Him in this manner, at least at certain times. Says the Apostle St. John: “Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is charity” (1 John 4:7, 8). There is not here juxtaposition of light and life, there is light of life. “I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). This light of life proceeds from life essentially so, which is light: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1: 4).

As we see in the souls of the saints, from the progress made in this supernatural life, perfections seemingly the least reconcilable are united and in that way, far from being destructive of each other, they are constantly strengthened. Thus knowledge and love, speculation and practice,’ or rather, contemplation and action, interpenetrate each other in a more and more intimate way. St. Thomas also considers both the active and the purely contemplative life to be less perfect than the apostolic life which is a combination of both.’ Like Christ and His disciples, the apostle must be a contemplative, bestowing upon others the benefit of his contemplation for their salvation. Contemplation must be the culminating point of his endeavors in this life; ® instead of impeding his apostolic activity, it must be the source of that activity. If he

®If Blondel had meant nothing else than this, he and the Thomists would have been of one mind long ago.

1T Thus St. Thomas teaches that supernatural faith, the intellectual gifts of the Holy Ghost and even theology are at the same time eminently speculative and practical. Cf. Ila Ilae, q. 8, a. 3; q. 9, a. 3; q- 45, a. 3; la, q. 1, a. 4.

8 Cf. Ila Iae, q. 188, a. 6, “Just as illumination is greater than mere light, so to impart to others the fruit of contemplation is greater than mere contemplation.”

"Cf. Salmanticenses, on Ila Hae, q. 188: The relations between contemplation and action.

has not in some measure at least arrived at this, his words are lifeless; he preaches divine things in too human a way; he conveys the letter of the sacred sciences, but not the spirit. Incapable of being fired with that holy enthusiasm for the things of eternity, he becomes enamored of the ideas of the day. Instead of bringing souls to God, he seeks a vain glory. Since unity has not been established from above through the harmony prevailing between nature and grace, it is established from below by confusing them. When, on the contrary, we consider the apostolate of St. Dominic or St. Vincent Ferrer, is there any more intimate unity of contemplation and of action?

As the spiritual life progresses, in contemplation itself the ineffability and certainty, as also the oneness of view and infinite variety of applications, grow more and more in accord.

These oppositions are particularly striking in faith. It is at the same time quite supernatural in its motive, and reasonable in the signs which confirm the word of God. It is obscure and yet absolutely certain; it is unchangeable and yet free, contemplative and very practical. It soars to the sublimest of God’s mysteries, and descends to the smallest details of our life.

The same is the case, in due proportions, with the science of faith. Dogmatic, moral, and mystical theology constitute but one and the same eminent science, “a participation in the science of God and the blessed” (Ia, q. 2, a. 2 and 4). In the obscurity of faith, sacred doctrine treats of the same object that the saints contemplate in heaven, namely, God, the operations proceeding from Him, and the return of creatures to Him. Hence the progress of theology must be accomplished rather more by unification than by extension; the discovery of new documents or new applications, however useful, is of secondary importance; the main thing is to approach it in the spirit of the science of the saints, to grasp more and more the connection between the revealed mysteries, and especially their connection with the supreme mystery, the vision of which constitutes our final end. Theology tends essentially to contemplation or it ceases to be a “participation in the science of God and the blessed,” and becomes a barren collection of texts in which there is no connection between the revealed mysteries, and in which the sacrament of Penance is of as much importance as the Holy Trinity. True progress is not adjusted to future time but to eternity, in which the unification of knowledge is completed. From this higher point of view, St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century was more advanced than we are today, if his theological insight was purer and nearer than ours in the science of God. (On theology, see Vatican Council, Denzinger, n. 1796: “Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith, when it seeks earnestly, ptously, and calmly, attains by a gift from God some, and that a very fruitful, understanding of mysteries partly from the analogy of those things which it naturally knows, partly from the relations which the mysteries bear to one another and to the last end of man.”)

Likewise progress in action must be made especially from the standpoint of quality and unity. It consists in an ever closer union of the love of God and one’s neighbor and hatred of evil, of confident hope and filial fear, of firmness of justice and sweetness of mercy, “of the simplicity of the dove and the prudence of the serpent,” of most profound humility and a completely supernatural dignity which forbids our stooping to the opinions of the world which are opposed to the spirit of God. Each moral virtue is an exact rational mean between the excesses and defects of passion. In fact all these spiritual harmonies have found their realization in eminent sanctity.

It is said of the most humble and sweet Virgin, that she is powerful, “terrible as a strong army in battle array.” Between her and the spirit of evil, God established an “irreconcilable enmity” (Gen. 3: 15). Personified pride suffers more in being thus conquered by humility than in being punished by divine omnipotence. This trait in the humility and charity of the Blessed Virgin is indispensable, that her most beautiful and glorious titles may appear in all their splendor. Such are: Mother of our Creator, Mother of divine grace, Mirror of Justice, Refuge of sinners. It is a sublime and simple reconciliation of most diverse divine virtues.

To show us with what “wondrous magnificence” Jesus Christ came, Pascal merely says: “He was humble, patient, holy, holy to God, terrible to the evil spirits, and sinless” (Pensées). But it is only in the language of the Church that we find these admirable oppositions properly expressed. “Jesus meek and humble of heart; Jesus most powerful; Jesus God of might, of infinite majesty.”

“Heart of Jesus filled with opprobrium; Heart of Jesus patient and most merciful, burning furnace of charity.” Where in this world shall we find a more resplendent harmony of the divine perfections?

The aged Simeon said: “This child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted” (Luke 2: 34). Did not Christ Himself, who brought “peace to men of good will,” utter these strange words: “I came not to send peace but the sword”? (Matt. 10: 34.) St. Thomas understands this, according to the words of St. Paul, “of the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). Like a sword, this divine word separates those who believe from those who, through malice, refuse to believe.

In these oppositions, what always predominates is infinite mercy which is peace in truth, but in truth alone. “Peace I leave with you. ... Not as the world giveth, do I give unto you” (John 14:27). The divine light of the Word and the ardor of His charity shine forth conspicuously above all things. “I am come to cast fire on the earth. And what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke

12: 49.) “This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 12).

In the Church we again meet with this same harmony between things most difficult to reconcile. In her, charity most compassionate and doctrine most firm and uncompromising are united in one love, which is zeal for God’s glory and the salvation of souls. She knows she can do no good without combating evil, that she cannot preach the Gospel without fighting heresy. Mercy and firmness of doctrine can exist only when united; separated they die, and we have left but two corpses, namely, humanitarian Liberalism with its false serenity, and fanaticism with its false zeal. It has been said: “The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle, because they do not believe, and intolerant in practice, because they do not love.” On the one hand, theory is opposed to practice; on the other, it penetrates and arranges all things with firmness and gentleness.

The Church here on earth is essentially “militant” and pacific; there is peace in the interior of the country, war at the frontier. Only the saints can express the entirely supernatural import of the strife which must be waged against the flesh, the spirit of the world, and the spirit of evil. Many times they have portrayed the Church “purified by the fire of great tribulations, having the gold of love in her heart, the incense of prayer in her soul, and the myrrh of mortification in her body. She is, as they say, the good odor of Jesus Christ to the poor and little ones, an odor of death to the great and proud ones of the world. Guided by the Holy Spirit, she is not attached to anything, is astonished at nothing, troubled about nothing. She rains upon us the word of God and eternal life. She teaches the straight way that leads to God in purity of truth, according to the Gospel, and not according to the maxims of the world, without fear of any man, however power- ful he may be. She wields the two-edged sword of the word of God.” 1° By this means she discerns the true from the false, good from evil, freeing souls from sin and saving them. Her most discerning enemies, like Proudhon, in their irreligious fanaticism, experience an evil joy in proclaiming it: “Revolution,” he wrote, “believes in humanity; the Church believes in God. She believes in Him better than any sect does; she is the purest, the most complete, the most brilliant manifestation of the divine Essence, and she alone knows how to adore Him.” 1! The harmony of the divine perfections, which in themselves seem the least reconcilable, finds its fullest manifestation in the life of Christ as reproduced in His Church and in His saints. But there is a false harmony which, because of its absurdity, makes us the better appreciate the value of the true harmony. For the light to be brought out in more brilliant contrast, there must forever be shadows. We must not let a false tranquillity of mind prevent us from seeing them.

68. The false harmony. The Unknowable-absurd, the confusion between being and nothingness.

Let us start from the most evident facts of the moral order so that we may arrive at the theory. We say that the life of the Church is the highest manifestation of the mysterious harmony which is in God. On the other hand, humanitarian Liberalism or indifference which, in the name of charity, finds fault with the Church for her intolerance, bears the same resemblance to charity as a glass bead does to a diamond. There is precisely the same degree of resemblance in the case of the pharisaical zeal of the sectaries. However opposed these tendencies may be to each other, at times they unite in order the better to simulate justice and goodness. But the counterfeit is generally too crude for anyone to be deceived by it. It would be ridiculous and sacrilegious to com-

10 The words of Blessed Grignon de Montfort. 11 Proudhon, De la justice dans la Revolution et dans l'Eglise, 1, 27.

pare the zeal of an inquisitor like St. Peter Martyr to that of Calvin terrorizing Geneva in his endeavor to reform it, or to that of Robespierre instituting the feast of the Supreme Being and declaiming on liberty, the day before he exempted the Revolutionary Tribunal from the obligation of observing legal procedure. Only perversity or sottishness can compare the mildness and force of the Apostle St. John with the sentimentality and egotistic harshness of Rousseau or the insipidity and cruelty of Saint-Just. Was there ever anything more ridiculous than the sect of Theophilanthropists to which, under the Directory, was entrusted the task of creating the sham of a new religion? For the Christian feasts, were substituted those of Youth, Old Age, Husband and Wife, Agriculture, the Sovereignty of the People. The liturgy of the celebration of the Decadi consisted of silly things in the Rousseau fashion which were quite naturally the sequel, as they were the prelude, to the Terror and the profanation of the altars. It is singularly mysterious that anybody can be so blinded as to confound the purest light with the densest darkness, the highest degree of holiness with sacrilege, the spirit of Christ, the Word of God, with that of the so-called Reformation or that of the French Revolution. “The Light is come into the world and men loved darkness rather than the light,” says the Gospel (John 3:19), and it gives the reason for this.

On the eminent harmony which belongs properly to God and the saints, there is a more learned parody which at times is misleading and which is nothing else but a systematic organization of universal confusion. Harmony enhances and extols all forms of truth and goodness which converge in it. Confusion strives to destroy them though seeming to preserve them intact.

We must pause here a moment. This point will be a practical and theoretical confirmation of our thesis, obtained by the method of reductio ad absurdum. Since the adversaries of belief in the true

God have resorted to this method, it will be enough for us to follow them to their ultimate conclusion. It has been said of hypocrisy that it is a homage rendered to virtue. The same may be said of the false reconciliation which strives to reproduce the mystery hidden in the eminence of the Deity. It shows us, if we look at it closely, that the only possible choice is between the true God whose essence is ineffable, and the radically inconceivable absurdity which is posited as the principle of all things.

This fundamental alternative has been formulated theoretically by a philosopher who seems not to have perceived the gravity of the moral consequences of his thesis. William James categorically affirms what many contemporaries state only in veiled terms: “Human experience is radically irrational, or at least non-rational.” Says James: “Hegel was the first non-mystical writer to throw away the ordinary logic. . . . Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the truer path. Fechner has never heard of logic’s veto, Royce hears the voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to spurn them—and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the veto? . . . For my own part, I have finally found myself compelled to give up the logic, fairly, squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the essential nature. If you like to employ words eulogistically, you may say that reality obeys a higher logic. . . . I prefer bluntly to call reality if not irrational, then at least non-rational in its constitution.” By logic, James means the “logic of identity” based on the principle of noncontradiction. He admits, therefore, with Hegel that an absolute absurdity is what constitutes the real. From this point of view he readily concludes that an “external Creator, ... an intelligent and moral governor, sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish religion. The vaster vistas which scientific Evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or obsolescent.” After affirming the non-rationality of the real, James adds: “Without the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson’s authority gives me, I should never have ventured to urge these particular views of mine upon this ultra critical audience.” 1?

In fact, Bergson and Le Roy speak in the same way when they state that, “the principle of non-contradiction is not so universal and necessary as it was believed to be. ... Being the supreme Iaw of speech and not of thought in general, it has but static force. But there is contradiction in the world as well as identity. Such are these fleeting mobilities, becoming, duration, life.” +° If this life and this becoming are the supreme reality, as these philosophers declare, it follows that contradiction is at the root of all things.

Seriously minded men, sometimes Catholic writers, speak of this new philosophy, the radical absurdity of which is no longer a matter of astonishment for them. What is at the present day surprising, is the facility with which we accept the absurd built up into a system under the veil of the magic word, “Unknowable.”

69. The way which generally leads one to the absurdity of the unknowable: the confusion between good and evil in moral mediocrity.

How is it possible to arrive at this perversion of intellectual judgment, this violation of what constitutes the very essence of thought? By what way is one led to this unknowable absurd? It is reached in two ways. Many take this course after a life of habitual moral delinquency which they seek to justify from an intellectual standpoint—“one that doth evil hateth the light” (John 3:20). Some philosophers become involved in it by resorting, with

12 A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 211, 207, 212, 208, 29, 215. 18 Le Roy, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1905, pp. 200, 204.

more or Iess conscious intellectual pride, to the use of paradoxes which are at the root of the Empirical or Idealist Agnosticism that we examined in the earlier part of this work.

Generally no one starts on the road which leads to radical absurdity, which is the confusion of being and nothingness, except by means of another confusion more or less conscious and voluntary, the confusion of good and evil. Here we must recognize the element of truth in a philosophy of action. It is worth our while to insist on this, that it is a practical confirmation of God’s existence and supreme perfection of God.

St. Augustine, in the City of God, often says: “The two cities are indistinguishable in this world and are, for the time being, a promiscuous gathering; at the end of the world they will be separated and are already so at heart.” In one of these two cities, says the saint, the love of God is emphasized even to contempt of self; in the other, the love of self, even to contempt of God. This latter is by its very nature divided; in it we find indolent cowardice and predominance of the passions. Between these two cities there is a blurred zone where white and black are intermingled, where all things get confused, and where we no longer really know whether we are concerned with consciences that are still good or with those already bad. What do they seek first of all: the good or the favors of public opinion? Whom do they serve: God or the world? And who can boast of having nothing to do with this blurred zone in which, under an appearance of good (bonum apparens), begins the confusion between being and nothingness?

Apparent good is all the more dangerous the more it looks like real good. Now, above the extreme forms of evil, such as thorough laziness and brutish commotion, there is room for two things apparently alike, but essentially different and opposed to each other; these are the good and the mediocre. Between excess and defect in evil, good rears its head like a mountain peak; it is the City of

God. The mediocre is situated midway between this culminating point and the opposite forms of vice. It tries to pass itself off as the just mean in which everything is harmonized and, in fact, it is a sort of mean in which everything is confused. Let us suppose a triangular elevation the summit of which is good, the extremities of the base are excess and defect in evil, then the place of the mediocre will be exactly in the center of this triangle, halfway up. In fact, it is often called the center, situated between the party representative of order and that of anarchy which is alternately violent and powerless.

St. Thomas, in establishing the philosophy of the rational mean, says: “It could not apply essentially ** to the virtues of faith, hope, and charity which have God for their object; their measure is to be without measure and always to draw nearer to infinite perfection.” But it applies essentially to the moral virtues, and in them the mean is rational only when it takes the place of an extreme, a culminating point to which all our energies converge and in which they are counterpoised over and above the forms opposed to the irrational and evil.’® If we compare, says St. Thomas, moral virtue to reason which is its rule, its conformity to right reason is an extreme with reference to the deformity of the vices opposed to it by excess and defect. But if we consider the moral virtue ac-

14 St. Thomas, Ia Iae, q. 64, De medio virtutum, a. 4: “The good of a theological virtue does not consist in a mean, but increases the more we approach to the summit. Accidentally, however, it is possible to find a mean and extremes in theological virtue. Thus hope observes the mean between presumption and despair, in relation to us, in so far, to wit, as a man is said to be presumptuous, through hoping to receive from God a good in excess of his condition; or to despair through failing to hope for that which according to his condition he might hope for. But there can be no excess of hope in comparison with God, whose goodness is infinite.”

15 St, Thomas (Ia Iae, q. 55, a. 3) says: “Virtue implies a perfection of power, Wherefore the virtue of anything is fixed to the utmost limit of its power. Now the utmost limit of any power must needs be good, for all evil implies defect. Wherefore Dionysius (Div. nom., ch. iv) says: “Every evil is a weakness.”

cording to the passion that it regulates, then it constitutes a mean between the excess and defect of this passion.'®

Moral mediocrity is, on the contrary, only a mean between good or the true mean and the opposite forms of evil. Of rational moderation it retains merely the matter without the form that animated it. It consists, moreover, in the wish to impose upon virtues, those which have God for their object, a measure of which according to their nature they are not susceptible. It makes men of little faith, restless hope, and lukewarm charity.

From the intellectual point of view, says St. Thomas," the true mean consists in being guided by first principles, in affirming exactly what a thing is. On the contrary, mediocrity consists in being guided either by current opinions true or false, taking something from cach by a sort of arbitrary selection, and in conveniently compromising between all things. It is the essence of opportunism.

But there are several ways of being mediocre. One may be so in a vulgar manner; it is also at times a maturely reflected and studied attitude which presupposes real talent, and under this second form the mediocre may become a most subtle and profound deceptive aspect of evil.

With the vulgar opportunist who prefers an advantageous situ-

16 St. Thomas (Ia Iae, q. 64, a. 1 ad tum) says: “If we compare moral virtue to reason, then, if we look at that which it has of reason, iż holds the position of one extreme, which is conformity; while excess and defect take the position of the other extreme, which is deformity. If we consider moral virtue in respect of its matter, then it holds the position of mean.” The mediocre preserves the rational mean only as to its material element; the idea or form which animated this matter has disappeared. On this point, in its relations to Liberalism, cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, Il, 419-454.

17 St. Thomas (Ia Ilae, q. 64, a. 3) says: “The good of speculative intellectual virtue consists in a certain mean, by way of conformity with things themselves, in so far as the intellect expresses them as being what they are, or as not being what they are not: and it is in this that the nature of truths consists. There will be excess if something false is affirmed, as though something were, which in reality is not. There will be deficiency if something is falsely denied, and declared not to be, whereas in reality it is.”

ation to duty, and makes quite a simple application of utilitarian maxims, mediocrity is but a commonplace medley of good and evil. It is the enemy of sublimity and profundity; it is platitude and lukewarmness, ever dull, insipid, and, in spite of its instability which it honors with the name of life, it is a despairing monotony that it calls impassible serenity. “Let us not exaggerate in anything,” is its preferred formula. “I do not deny the necessity of religion, but Catholicism exaggerates; Protestantism is more moderate.” Truth and goodness, in thus commingling and being subordinated to error and evil, lose all their force and become something mawkish, soft, and fluid, the lukewarmness of which gives one a sense of nausea and recalls those words of the Apocalypse (3:15): “I would thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” These are terrible words that God alone can utter before bringing one back to repentance.

In a higher degree, mediocrity is an adroit mingling of the true and the false, and, as it were, a science of good and evil. In this case, the mediocre claims to realize what God was never able to do. It wishes, so it says, to bring everything into harmonious agreement, and it prepares to confound everything, with the result that everything will be confused and destroyed. It begins by taking up its position in the center, equally distant from good and the opposite forms of manifest evil. In order to obtain the favor of all or of the majority, it declares itself the friend of everybody, poses modestly as the sage who can finally effect a reconciliation between the various aspects of truth and those of error. It extends its indulgent attitude to all varieties of evil in order to reunite them even in good. It identifies mercy and justice to the point of pardoning the impenitent and granting to error the same rights as to truth. Is not this the god which the world needs, the god who will finally establish the reign of peace and tranquil order here below, without the necessity of promising a future life? Is it not the principle of universal harmony? It will be able to declare itself infallible, for it will be the norm of ever changing conciliatory truth. It will be able to call itself impeccable. “Which of you will accuse me of sin?” As it is naturally fugitive, no one can bring any particular accusation against it. Its apparent harshness is but its strength, its weakness is but its mildness and longanimity. If we find fault with it for not combating evil, it has an answer ready, namely, that to combat evil would be to disclose it; moreover, evil itself must be subservient, the best is often the enemy of the good, It quotes the Gospel: “Let the cockle alone, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it” (Matt. 13:29). It speaks continually of moderation and prudence, but it can appreciate zeal as a rare thing which must remain so. Under this reign of universal peace and perfect courtesy, moral misery itself can make its way in the world, masked as correction. Good and evil have so coalesced that it has become impossible to distinguish between them.

If we look at it closely, we readily perceive that, in this commingling, good is found most often enlisted in the service of evil. Undoubtedly under the direction of divine Providence, everything concurs for a higher good, even the evil that is permitted. St. Thomas repeatedly says so and is fond of quoting the metaphysical formula of optimism given by Dionysius, that every evil is a weakness,'® but that if it is a question of number in the human species, he points out on several occasions that it is more frequently evil that is found present. “Evil appears as in the greater number in the human race.” 19

19 St. Thomas, Ia, q. 49, a. 3 ad 5um: “In man alone does evil appear as in the greater number because the good of man as regards the senses is not the good of man as man, that is, in regard to reason. More men seck good with regard to the senses than good according to reason.” Consult other references in the general index to the works of St. Thomas under the word “Malum,” n. 37; V. g., De malo, q. 1, a. 3 ad 17; a. 5 ad 16,

A holy sadness would bring us back to goodness, as one of the beatitudes recorded in the Gospel says.?? On the other hand, an optimism which is the result of light-mindedness leads the spiritual prodigal into dissipation and at times to degradation.

The refinement of evil is more pronounced in proportion as the goodness which is abused, is of a higher order. Continually on one’s lips are the words: the common good, fraternity, universal peace, justice, love and charity. “By the very fact,” says Hello,?* “that charity is pre-eminently the sublime thing, the bad use of its name must be particularly dangerous. The worst corruption is that of the best. The more beautiful this name, the more terrible it is, and if it turns against truth armed with all the power that it has received for life, what services will it not render to death? What will happen if we acquire the habit of calling charity universal accommodation to every kind of weakness? Evil does not always desire to expel the good; it asks for the permission of cohabiting with it. A secret instinct warns it that in asking for something, it asks for everything.” In consenting to let itself be converted in that way, it knows that everything will turn to its own advantage. From this point of view the toleration of evil, which ought to be fought against in order to save souls, becomes the perfection of charity; and just indignation, which De Maistre called the anger of love, is nothing else but pharisaism and pride.??

20 “Those who mourn are those who know,” says St. Augustine on this point in De Sermone Domini in monte, ch. iv: “Knowledge is befitting to those who mourn, who have learned by what evils they were overcome which they sought after as being good for them.” St. Thomas, too, connects this beatitude with the gift of knowledge which judges creatures in God's light. This gift of the Holy Spirit strikes always the right tone between a sanctimonious optimism and a sterile pessimism; it shows at what price one may draw good out of evil (Ila Iae, q. 9, 2. 4).

21 L’homme, chapter on “charity.”

22 Hello also says: “Te is time to become humble, for it is time to become proud.” There is no one less proud than the ambitious person always ready to submit to the lies of the world in order to obtain its favors, Pride despises this debasement, but to despise it always and without ostentation, pride must have its basis in

To write the history of Lutheranism or even of Freemasonry, we must speak of them not only with justice, but even, if we may so say, with a willing sympathy. It is a question of method. To criticize a system, however false it may be, we must not judge it by the externals, by the essential principles of reason that it rejects, but approach it from its intrinsic principles courteously and with methodical sympathy.

In following this strange path, unknown to the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the mind will quickly be brought to realize the philosophical basis of Liberalism that the Syllabus and more recently the encyclical Pascendi has shown. From this point of view the Church here on earth must cease to be militant,?? so as to become pacifist and understand finally that the spirit of the world could not be its enemy. As for the Church triumphant, it is nothing more than an emphatic and old-fashioned name, a myth; the more tangible and realizable city of the future replaces it in our hopes. We have faith in humanity. Charity in its conciliatory rôle and indifference to divine things, are but one and the same thing. The meaning of all the absolute perfections is perverted; there is nothing more that prevents us from confounding them with their contraries.

True charity is the love of God above all things and of our neighbor in God and for God. As a consequence, it implies a holy humility. It is the characteristic of humility never to submit to error and evil, because it always submits to God and to what there is of the divine in all souls, Ha Hae, q. 161, a. 1, 2, 3. “The ambitious always humiliate themselves more than they ought,” remarks St. Thomas in his commentary on Matt. ch. iv, with reference to the devil's words: “If falling down Thou wilt adore me.”

23 Cf, Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason alone, tr. by Greene and Hudson, 1934, p. 106: “When an historical faith, having become ecclesiastical, embraces the principle of a continual approach to pure religious faith, a church thus characterized can at any time be called the true church; but, since conflict over historical dogmas can never be avoided, it can be spoken of only as the church militant, though with the prospect of becoming finally the changeless and allunifying church triumphant.” This final reconciliation of all cults will be Religion within the limits of reason.

hatred of evil; it cannot love the sinner without hating the sin. False charity subordinates the love of God to a false love of our neighbor; it does not hate evil, rather it sympathizes secretly with it and, under the pretext of loving the sinner, it contributes to his ruin.

The triumph of God was shown especially in His mercy by which He drew good out of evil, and a good all the more perfect as the evil had been the more profound. One could say: “Felix culpa.” There is another triumph which consists in doing what is evil by means of good, and an evil the more irreparable as the good is the more precious.

The desired mediocre obtains the striking success of number. It uses the expression that is only too true, namely: “Evil is in the majority in the human race.” It includes the bad, the lukewarm, and the good people that it has deceived. It very cleverly makes use of the latter.2* If we consider the moral world and its degrees in hierarchical order as an elevated terrain, at the summit of which is God, the mediocre will appropriate for itself a very large part of the base. Very often it has acquired popular acclaim in advance by a vast majority. Mediocrity prefers the authority of numbers to that of the best informed; in its eyes quantity makes up for quality. Thus it is naturally inclined to democracy, which it transforms into democratism. This régime, according to St. Thomas, suits the élite or little groups capable of self-government; among the common people we see it degenerating into Socialism or Sociolatry. Gradually the sovereignty of the people and its passions is substituted for God’s supreme dominion, and material progress is accompanied by a moral recoil back to Atheism. The rigorous logic of the Syllabus clearly demonstrates this long train

24 “In all the efforts we shal! have to make to come forth from the abyss, let us not forget that honest people are the ones who led us into it.” Le Play, Letter to Claudio Jannct, being the introduction to his work, Les Erats Unis contemporains, of errors 7° which originate from and end in Atheistic Agnosticism.?®

Moral mediocrity is in need of intellectual leaders; it chooses them itself and abandons them when change becomes fashionable. It is fond of calling itself the director of conscience, a philosopher pliant enough to remain a Pantheist, though declaring itself a believer in the spiritual and a Christian, but too scrupulous in its knowledge to go as far as Catholicism. This spirit, which dares not advance even to the living God who is the end of all knowledge, is called a bold spirit, a pioneer one that opens up the paths of the future. In fact the line that it has to follow is not

26 The eminent theologian C, Schaezler in his remarkable work, Divus Thomas contra Liberalismum, has shown how Thomism, by its doctrine of God’s supreme dominion, by its conception of human liberty and conscience, is the philosophical and theological synthesis which is the very opposite of all the errors condemned by the Syllabus, all of which proclaim the absolute supremacy of created liberty. All Catholic manuals of moral and natural law point out, moreover, in a general way, that there is an infinite difference between the social principles of St. Thomas and those of Rousseau’s Soctal Contract, which constitute the basis of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Christian principles, however, have had such an influence that we find traces of them even in this Declaration, which may, at first sight, mislead one as to the spirit which animates it. Cf. Leo XIII, Encyclical Immortale Dei, against the principles of the “new code.”

If great Catholic orators, men of deep faith and ardent charity, submissive sons of the Church, have for a moment favored the liberal spirit, this has been but an accidental feature of their apostolate, It would be peculiarly to depreciate them to insist designedly on this feature so as to leave in the shade what constitutes the very soul of their supernatural action, which is what will always count in the eyes of the Church and before God. As Lacordaire wrote to Montalembert in October 1833, “Conscience, which is everything in the ordinary course of life, is nothing when it is found to be in opposition to authority. The greatest crimes are committed with a false conscience. When yours is without reproach in this matter, you ought not to listen to it, but, indeed, to the voice of the Church which has already been raised, and will be so later on with a power which will beat down all pride.” “Never,” rightly said A. Nicholas, “has one found more exactly the vulnerable point of straightforward Liberalism in its relation with this Naturalism of private conscience not taking into account the supernatural authority of the Church.” Etude historique et critique sur le P. Lacordaire, p. 139. See also Lacordaire, Considérations sur le systéme philosophique de M. de La Mennais Conclusion, of the ascendent order, for it does not rise to God; it is merely that of time, pointing to the future which as yet is nothing. Absolute Evolutionism, the philosophy of the “time that is passing,” is not far off. Throughout the changes of public opinion one no longer looks for the real truth which is declared to be non-existent or inaccessible; only questions are debated. Newspapers announce it with their suggestive headlines, All that, however sad it may be, is most instructive; it is a great motive of credibility in favor of the divine origin of Christianity which alone can rescue us from this mediocrity that is entirely worldly wisdom.

This practical Agnosticism, to justify itself, needs an intellectual foundation. Here one begins to make use of the great philosophical paradoxes which could never succeed in establishing their claims if one were not secretly interested in admitting them. Many souls are thus led into speculative Agnosticism, and this latter, as the Encyclical Pascendi points out, paves the way for Atheistic Evolutionism.

70. How Agnosticism leads to Atheistic Evolutionism: identification of being and nothingness in becoming.

Agnosticism presents itself at first as a scrupulous love of truth, and the more surely to attain this end it undertakes to revise the methods of science. This word is constantly on its lips. Gradually, without people being aware of it, method is preferred to truth. It matters little what is affirmed, provided this be methodically affirmed. Heretofore method was merely the way leading to the knowledge of truth. The new criticism, for its greater assurance, begins by positively doubting all things; because of a scruple it imprisons itself in subjective phenomena; to test the natural range of the intellect concerning being, it takes away the essential relation that this latter bears to being, which is like one who would take the heart out of a sick person to see if he will live yet a long time. The new method is therefore agnostic and be- comes essentially a way leading to the non-knowledge of the real, which in all cases never brings one to the supernatural nor to the true God. In order to see better, reason blinds itself. Of all the branches of knowledge, philosophy is the one that concerns us most to revive or rather methodize. So long as anyone has not reached an understanding concerning this preliminary question, he will have to reject as non-methodical, non-scientific, every assertion, no matter on what grounds, which claims to embrace an absolute truth.

It is in this sense that Descartes unknowingly sets to work. In his famous Discourse on Method he begins by doubting the real validity of the first principle of reason. Why could not God make square circles? Descartes fears that an evil genius makes him believe in the truth of the principle of contradiction and in the existence of an external world. In fact, an evil genius succeeded in making many philosophers believe that the principle of contradiction is false, and that the external world does not exist. Many of the intellectual sons of Descartes seriously maintain that the table on which they write their thoughts exists only in their mind. Did not Berkeley say: “Esse est perctpi: existence is sense perception”? If they happened to crack their skull against a corner of the wall, it would be merely the quite subjective sensation of a shock which would do away with their sense of consciousness and put an end to their “well-connected” dream, their “real hallucination.” When Hegel denies the objective validity of the principle of contradiction, he congratulates Descartes for having opened up the approaches to modern philosophy, for having liberated the spirit from the thraldom of things, for having conceived of our reason as the legislator of the real and no longer as being measured by it.

Henceforth the followers of the separatist philosophy will cease to find their mental pabulum in truth, especially divine truth, in order to plunge themselves into false problems. “Men loved dark- ness rather than the light” (John 3:19). If we would prove the existence of God to them, they ask us first to demonstrate the existence of the external world; and before positing the question of the spirituality and the immortality of the soul, we must prove that it is a substance, a real being, and not a collection of phenomena. The strangest thing is this, that Catholics will take seriously this raving of the Idealists and will seek to formulate this dogma as an evaluation of these extravagances. It is a capitulation which deceives itself to the extent of considering itself as a most scientific defence of the faith and a most charitable apostolate.

After being divorced from revealed religion, philosophy, in order to reconstruct a method for itself, is made to go repeatedly through three stages: Empirical Agnosticism, which was brought to its perfection by Hume; Idealistic Agnosticism, formulated by Kant or at least inspired by him; finally, the Evolutional Metaphysics of becoming, formulated by Hegel, which, by an empirical adaptation, has become, as it were, the structure of actual philosophic thought.

According to the new method of Bacon and the Empirics, we must begin by dividing the powers of the mind over all the objects of experience, and gradually we are persuaded that it would be useless to wish to raise ourselves to a higher plane. The poor human intellect is overwhelmed by a mass of material information in which there is nothing but obscurity for it. We are to cherish the notion that, to be philosophically convinced, we must first survey all the systems and experiment with them all; that to have a true notion of religion we must scrutinize all the psychologies and pathologies of the races, analyze the subconscious selves, the thousand varieties of religious sentiment.

This is far removed from that contemplation which we were just now discussing. Mechanism triumphs; the human intellect becomes a machine to register facts, without being able to arrange them in proper order. It does not succeed in discovering their raison d'étre, since, on the pretext of method, it has ceased considering being and its first principles, and sees nothing but phenomena. Concepts are merely impoverished remnants of sensations which are presented out of order. Hume’s Empiricism is followed slavishly, At the same time, to meet the requirements of morality and religion, sentimentalism of the Rousseau type is adapted alternately to Deism and to Atheistic Pantheism, which succeed each other in various forms.

In this public market of ideas, he wins who makes his wares fashionable by advertising them successfully. Intellectual wretchedness makes its way in science; all it has to do is to observe the rules of “a reputable science.” With the modesty of a teaching staff whose mission is to insist on the limits of our knowledge, it denies God and makes a god of itself, without being fully conscious of the insane pride it carries about with it. In its eyes, the principle of all things, even of our intellects, is nothing more than a sort of nothingness, a chaotic matter, an earthly, blind, stupid, and impotent God. There is in this a peculiar kind of silliness which recalls the words of Voltaire about Holbach’s Système de la nature: “Never perhaps has philosophy uttered a more stupid absurdity or a more notorious falsehood, although it may have been on many other occasions guilty of lying and absurdity.” (Letter to Frederick, February, 16, 1773.)

The learned world becomes a tower of Babel in which it is no longer possible for one person to understand another, especially in philosophy. A false meaning has been given to the fundamental notions of being, truth, goodness, knowledge, science, liberty, right, and charity. It is as impossible for them to refute one another as it is for them to come to an agreement.

If it is necessary, however, to meet the needs of intellects by a provisory systematization, at times a very exalted notion is seized upon. Spiritualism is admitted, but an Agnostic Spiritualism. The mind, believing that so far it has been dreaming, blinds itself that it may see more clearly. Kant, as he himself said, was awakened by Hume from his dogmatic sleep. No longer can he admit a real, but only a purely formal and subjective truth. Reason, instead of being measured by things, becomes the measure of things and absolutely autonomous.’ Contrary to Empiricism, which is incapable of rising above pleasure and personal interest, we are told to recognize the existence of duty, but a duty without either religious or metaphysical foundation, “Autonomy of the will is that property of it by which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition) ... If the will seeks the law which is to determine it . . . in the character of any of its objects, there always results a heteronomy.” ?° If the moral law were imposed on us externally by God, the will could submit to it only through fear, love, or self-interest; and this would be foreign or contrary to morality. Kant says we must admit for the moral world the view that Rousseau held for the social order, according to which man must prescribe for himself the law that he obeys,??

Such a conception of morality leads to a sort of religion, but it is a non-revealed religion, “within the limits of reason,” in which the love of humanity and respect for our personal dignity are more and more substituted for the love of God. Kant welcomes the French Revolution enthusiastically and, despite his austerity, sympathizes with Rousseau’s sentimentalism, which is so often unmoral. The Savoy curate’s profession of faith is susceptible of a new adaptation. Setting aside dogmas, Kant is able to admit a religion which consists in viewing the moral laws as if they were divine commandments and which thereby increases the efficacy of duty as if it were changeable. All the rest, he says, is absurd

28 Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, tr. by T. K. Abbott, 1932, p. 71.

29 Ibid., Introduction.

superstition and condemnable as tending to fraud and perfidy. Belief in revelation is the interior avowal of its unvarying certitude in our eyes. But it is a violation of conscience to declare as true “what cannot be asserted with unconditional assurance.” 3°

In his righteousness an unbeliever, Kant appropriates to himself all the respect due to God. This proud and foolish Kantian righteousness opens up the way to pure Rationalism for Protestantism which, like Jansenism, at first glance seems to be the most absolute antithesis of Rationalism.

In spite of its correctness and dignity, this Agnostic Spiritualism reminds one of “the carnal wisdom” mentioned by St. Paul,?1 carnal because it is opposed pre-eminently to the Spirit which is that of God. By its very exaltation, this blind Spiritualism can be the cause, beyond all comparison, of more deep-seated trouble than Materialism, which is manifestly too absurd. Yet many are taken in by it, seeing in the doctrine proposed to them nothing but “the soul of truth,” without perceiving that the principle of negation, which in reality animates it, places truth at the service of falsehood, sometimes in spite of the personal intentions of the philosophers who adopt it.** One may seek to minimize Kant’s incredulity, and insist upon his extreme politeness, his sincere and profound good-will, his trustworthy devotedness, his horror of a lie. Finally, we will be told there is no great difference between Kant and a saint.

Someone has sown tares amongst the wheat and it will soon appear, says the Gospel. On this point St. Thomas remarks that, “He who sows cockle hides himself, saying good things at first;

20 Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason alone, p. 177; cÉ. Bk. IV, chs. v, vi,

32 “In every evil, there is some good,” says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 49, a. 3). It is, indeed, a privation in a real subject, Without that, evil would be nothingness itself and there would no more be anything harmful. It is precisely because of its apparent govudness that evil is dangerous.

gradually he mixes it with evil and ends by exposing himself and his doctrine.” 83 St. John continually recommends charity to us, warning us not to let ourselves be seduced: “Believe not every spirit” (I John 4:1). After a certain time it becomes manifest that between truth and undeniable falsehood, between good and evident evil, there is a counterfeiting of the divine action, an operation which tends to identify in its way the various absolute perfections; but instead of uniting them and raising them to their highest degree, it neutralizes and destroys them, though appearing to preserve them intact.

All that is presently cleared up. As the encyclical Pascendi points out,3* Agnosticism soon leads to Pantheistic and finally to Atheistic Evolutionism. Since the principle of all things can no longer be found with certainty in God, it must be sought for in man.

In fact, after Hume and Kant, Fichte declares that a purely subjective truth is not enough; we must again find a real truth. But where? In ourselves. We must say of our intellect what the theologians said of God’s intellect, that it is the cause of things: “Scientia hominis causa rerum.” But how is it that there continue to be so many mysteries for our reason which ought to be omniscient?

Hegelian Panlogism finally undertakes to dispel these mysteries and reconcile all things: the identity of being and non-being must be built up into a metaphysical system; it is the normal outcome of the separatist philosophy under the form of absolute Rational-

88 St. Thomas in his commentary on Matthew, ch. xiii, shows us too on this point the rôle of laicism: ‘Heretics first of all make a secret of knowledge, because they first of all say what is good and preach to the people, and then they say what is evil about clerics, which people gladly listen to, and thus they turn people away from their love of clerics and consequently of the Church, But afterwards, when they receive their doctrine, their malice is made manifest.”

84 “Once natural theology has been repudiated and all access to revelation closed, through the rejection of the motives of credibility, nay even, when all external revelation has been abolished (if religion like everything else requires an explanation), it is clear that this explanation must not be sought for outside of man.” Denzinger, n. 2074.

ism. “All that is real, however irrational it may seem to be, is rational,” with a rationality superior to that of the logic of identity or of non-contradiction.®> Hence everything is explained and justified. Falsehood is but an incomplete truth which seeks to complete itself, evil is but an imperfect good which tends to perfect itself, heresy is but a new dogma in the becoming. There is no absolute truth, and consequently no absolute error. What appears at first sight as a radical error, the negation of the principle of identity or of contradiction, is a form of highest truth. Nothing is identical with itself, everything is changing; the opposition between being and nothingness is but an opposition in words; in reality, nothing is, everything is becoming; becoming, which both is and is not, is its own sufficient reason; it contains the solution of all the antitheses, and in it are identified being and non-being, and consequently truth and falsehood, good and evil.

It is impossible to go any farther. Such is the supreme law of universal confusion, an ironical reproduction of the harmony that is in God. It is the last word of science which teaches us to combine good and evil. For the principle of all things we have a bad goodness, a divine perversity, a god who is perpetually making and destroying himself. The devil, if he still exists, can say: “God and I are one.” They will persuade you that there is nothing subversive in this, that fundamentally this doctrine is conservative. In ancient times Heraclitus said: “Everything is changing, everything includes in itself the denial of itself, everything is both itself and its contrary. But this strife between contraries is not a disorder, it is the mother of all things.” The old Greek declared that the echo of his voice would resound throughout the ages, and indeed he is really the one whom we hear in the Hegelian philosophy which poses as the guardian, and that too, as Gomperz observes, in the revolutionary theories of a Proudhon.

85 See Vol. I, n. 22: Hegel's objection to the validity of the principle of contradiction.

Hegel, after relegating what formally constitutes the divine nature to becoming, can well enough attempt a new interpretation of the dogmas of Christianity. He finds again everywhere the Trinity and traces of it in the three stages of evolution: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The most mysterious of dogmas is demonstrated. We see God as He sees Himself. He is conscious of Himself in us. The Incarnation is thus renewed in each one who understands the law of universal evolution. God is realized in us,®® however perverse we may be. Perversity and charity have the same meaning.

If foolish words come to our lips, there will be found seriously minded men to answer: “Let us not exaggerate in anything; a very similar doctrine, one worthy of all respect, is to be found in the mystical theology of Dionysius or in that of St. John of the Cross.” This answer is but the banal application of the posited principles, the quintessence of that wisdom portrayed by Isaias: “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes and prudent in your own conceits” (Isaias 5: 20-21).

Error cannot descend lower; the Separatist philosophy has noth-

36 We find the same teaching revamped in a sentimental way by naturalistic mysticism or mystical sensualism, which finds its expression in the answer of Faust to the question, “Do you believe in God?” “Who will dare say: Z believe, if faith consists in words? Who will dare say: I do not believe, if he listens to the dictates of his conscience? He who contains and sustains all things, contains and sustains you, me, and Himself. He gives the heavens their curvature, He makes the earth firm under our tread, He ordains that the stars peaceably pursue their course. An eternal mystery, visible or invisible, surrounds you, Let us adore this eternal mystery, and when your soul is filled with sentiments of tenderness and happiness, utter words at random. I have not any to prescribe for you. What matters it that you say: Happiness, heart, love, God! Sentiment is everything, the words are to no purpose; and these words are but noise and smoke which hide from us the dazzling brightness of the heavens.” Nominalistic Modernism scarcely said other than this. How many have given the naive answer that Faust wished to receive: “That seems to me to be beautiful and good; it is practically what the priest tells us, more or less.”

ing more to teach us; it has again found a doctrine the most radically opposed to divine wisdom. It reproaches Catholicism with the antinomies, and is itself the avowed fundamental antinomy. It is the radical corruption of the mind and is incomparably more hateful than that of the flesh. It is as unbearable to a sound mind as a nauseous drink is to the palate. It is detested by God and the Church as a conscious contradiction which seeks to pass itself off for supreme wisdom and harmony. Instead of identifying the absolute perfections in the pure Act, it identifies, though destroying them, in an ever unstable becoming. Refusing to admit the absolute truth which is opposed too categorically to falsehood, and admit the absolute good which would be the enemy of evil, it reduces everything to a nameless absurdity, to m parody of the ineffable, to something which is neither being nor nothingness nor truth nor falsehood nor good nor evil, to something which as yet does not exist, but is becoming only to die even before it has lived. Liberalism or false charity, which defends the right of all opinions to exist, has at last found its philosophical foundation: the Unknowable, or rather the absurd itself posited as the principle of all things.

Once this idea is spread abroad, many repeat it without knowing all that is meant by it. And in spite of its author’s intentions,’ what else does the new philosophy affirm? As we pointed out apropos of William James, it is merely an empirical transposition of Hegelian Evolutionism, a return to Heraclitus, to the puerility of philosophy which as yet had not risen to pure Act; more than this, it is a rejuvenation of the sophisms of Protagoras. Like Hegel, Le Roy writes: “The principle of non-contradiction is not as universal and necessary as has been believed. . . . Being the supreme law of speech, but not of thought in general, its influence extends

87 Cf, Maritain'’s fine article in the Revue thomiste, July 1912, “Les deux bergsonismes,” that of intention and that of fact. That of intention arrives at spiritualism and seeks even to reach God; that of fact, in virtue of its principles, arrives at nihilism.

merely to what is static. . . . But just as there is identity in the world, so also there is contradiction. Such are those fugitive fluxes, as becoming, duration, life.” 38 And as, according to the new philosophy, the fundamental reality is becoming, it follows rigorously that contradiction is at the root of everything. We have seen, as a result of Hegelianism, an idealistic Hegelian party of the right and a materialistic Hegelian party of the left, that of Feuerbach; thus, as a result of Bergsonism, we have seen a Christian party of the right in the modernist sense, and a revolutionary party of the left.®?

Both are the legitimate outcome of the system which identifies contraries; and for which everything vanishes in the fugitive duration of becoming, in the poorest of realities: the instant that is evanescent as soon as it has appeared. The instant which is the consummation of instability has taken the place of God who is pre-eminently the immutable Being. The present which passes away, the fleeting now, which Aristotle spoke of,° has taken the place of the stable now of eternity.*

89 Consult the articles by the Bergsonian John Weber in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1894, pp. 549-560: “Confronted with these morals of ideas, we outline the morality, or, more correctly, the unmmorality of the act. We call ‘good’ whatever has triumphed. Success, provided it is fierce and implacable, provided the vanquished are completely defeated, destroyed, abolished beyond hope, justifies everything.”

40 Aristotle, Physics, Bk, IV, ch. xi. Commentary of St. Thomas, lect. 18, n. 5.

41 “Immanence and transcendence are no longer contradictories,” wrote Le Roy in 1907; “they correspond to two distinct moments of duration, namely, immanence to what has become, transcendence to what is becoming. If we declare that God is immanent, it is because we know what He has become in us and in the world; but for the world and for us He always remains an infinite in the becoming, an infinite which will be creation in the strict acceptation of the term, not mere development, and from this point of view, God appears as transcendent” (Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1907, p. 512). But between what has become and has already passed, and the becoming which docs not yet exist, what is there, if God is not a substance, a pure act, but, as Bergson will have it, “a reality in the making . . . a continuous projection"? (Creative Evolution, p. 270). There is nothing left but the fleeting now, the instant which passes away, which is evanescent as soon as it has appeared. God will always, in a way, be becoming without ever existing.

It is not well enough understood that Bergsonism would give rise to far greater trouble than what it has already caused, if, without changing its fundamental principles, it claimed to safeguard the existence of God and provide us, like Hegelianism, with an interpretation of Christian dogmas.

To go to the root of things, and without being in the least concerned with the intentions of the philosophers so often unconscious of the consequences of their system, we might say that the evil genius, which Descartes distrusted, has made sport of modern thought. It alone seems to have been able to lead it to this magic sophistry which concludes that truth is false, that everything is confounded and destroyed in becoming. It alone, one would say, has been able to conceive the hidden meaning of this burlesque imitation of God and give to this sacrilegious irony just enough gravity for it to be taken seriously, enough dazzling falsehood and seduction so as to make a flower of evil, and of all flowers the most dangerous. He who wishes to pluck it will be overcome by dizziness at the brink of the abyss and hurled into doctrinal and moral nihilism of the most absolute type. “His eyes shall be opened, and he shall be like God, knowing good and evil.”

There is nothing strained about these reflections; on the contrary, they are very simple from the true point of view, which is that of the supernatural law.4? One may read the chapters of the Vatican Council referring to the progressive inroads made by Naturalism “which works with the utmost zeal (summo studio

Dumesnil, in his sensible study of Contemporary Sophistry, rightly ridicules Bergsonism. He points out particularly that Bergson suppresses the mystery of creation, and that his God is the Unconscious of the post-Kantian philosophers, Bishop Farge, in his recent book on the Philosophy of Bergson, clearly sets forth the same conclusions, that the new metaphysics is the negation of being, truth, the principle of identity or of contradiction, of causality, of the real multiplicity of beings and of the primacy of reason.

42 Cf, Maritain, art. “L'Esprit de la philosophie moderne,” in the Revue de philosophie, June 1914.

molitur) to deny the true God and His Christ, to exclude the same from the minds of men, and from the life and moral acts of nations, so that the reign of what they call pure reason or nature may be established.” ** Who is farther from God, the murderer misled by his passion or the cold and conscious defender of the negative philosophy attacked by the Council?

St. Thomas (Ila Ilae, q. 154, a. 12) says: “In every genus, worst of all is the corruption of the principle on which the rest depend. . .. Wherefore, just as in speculative matters the most grievous and shameful error is that which is about things the knowledge of which is naturally bestowed on man, so in matters of action it is most grave and shameful to act against things as determined by nature.”

71. Conclusion: the true God or radical absurdity.

By a strange coincidence, the prodigious effort that the Separatist philosophy makes to deny God, ends merely in a reductio ad absurdum demonstration of His existence and of the mysterious harmony found in Him. We must choose one of the two: either the ineffable essence which identifies in itself all the absolute perfections and, far from destroying them, raises them to their highest degree, or else the universal confusion and destruction of all forms of truth and goodness in an absurd identification with error and evil.

Take the properties of being, expressed by the primary notions; you will find them all brought to their highest perfection in the Christian philosophy; on the contrary, it is the privation of these that characterizes the philosophy of becoming.

Christian philosophy is the philosophy of the one who is the Being, harmonious Unity, the very Truth, Goodness inspiring and commanding our love, Beauty which is the splendor of being, unity, truth, and goodness combined.

#8 Constitution Dei Filius, and Vacant, Etudes sur le Concile, 1, 111.

The philosophy of becoming is the nihilist philosophy of nonbeing (of that which is becoming and as yet does not exist), of the phenomenon, of confused multiplicity, of seeming falsehood or apparent truth, of the systematic mediocre which is the subtlest of evil, and therefore of ugliness, so we must say, in spite of the seductions with which it surrounds itself.

The philosophy of becoming must of necessity deny the first principles of reason and of being, in affirming that nothing exists and that everything is becoming. The principle of causality is violated: for the greater comes from the less, in the ascendent order of evolution; the conscious comes uncaused from the unconscious; morality rises above animality without any foundation for it. The principle of finality is destroyed; in the process of evolution it has been impossible to ordain the lower forms of life to the higher, since there has not been from all eternity a designing intelligence. The principle of change, that every change presupposes a subject, is itself rejected, since becoming conceived as an absolute exists without anything that is becoming, like a flux without a fluid, a river without water, a flight without a bird. The principle of substance vanishes; there is nothing left but phenomena, appearance without anything that can appear; there is no longer a forma! principle of anything; all natures, whether lower or higher, are identified; the nature of God and that of the stone are but one in becoming. Of the stone it is true to say what the Church says of sanctifying grace, that it is a participation of the divine nature, nay rather, that it is God who is becoming in the same. The four causes of becoming have disappeared; becoming remains, they tell us, without a subject, without a formal principle to specify it, without an agent to produce it, without an end for it to tend toward. What becomes of the more general principle of sufficient reason? It disappears: becoming, which is not of itself, has no raison d’étre; the contingent is the absolute. The principle of identity or of contradiction resolves itself into uni- versal mobility; no longer may we say: flesh is flesh, spirit is spirit; but we must say: spirit is flesh, or flesh is spirit. God is the creature, the creature is God. As being disappears in the flux of all things, there is no longer any distinction between truth and falsehood, between good and evil. By its evolution, absolute Rationalism has proved its own irrationalism. It is the destruction of reason.

Between the philosophy of being and that of becoming, there can be no remaining neutral as Agnosticism would have it. If Absolute Evolutionism denies the real validity of the principle of contradiction, Agnosticism must at least bring it in question; and this is what it does when it declares the existence of God to be uncertain. If the existence of the first uncaused cause is doubtful, the principle of causality becomes doubtful and consequently also that of contradiction. The Agnostic asks at times: What may be an uncaused cause? As if the union of these two terms implied a contradiction. An uncaused effect is what is manifestly repugnant. But if the existence of an uncaused cause is declared doubtful, it follows that the world has perhaps originated from nothingness without any cause, that at every moment, perhaps, the greater comes from the less. We have already seen that it is absurd to question the impossibility of the absurd. Consequently the Unknowable of Agnosticism is contradictory like the Inconceivable of absolute Evolutionism. It is perhaps both existent and nonexistent, body and spirit, good and bad, effect and first cause, the means and the ultimate end, etc.

From this Evolutionist or Agnostic point of view, what becomes of the love of truth? At the start it seemed urged on even to scrupulousness, in the determination of the method; at the end, the words “integrity” and “lying” no longer have any precise significance. There are no longer any lies, but merely successive opinions, Hence submission to the decisions of the Church takes on a new

meaning. The submission is merely outward, and the same opinions continue to be held. If there are any things which must be revised, these are the definitions of the Councils which, as Guenther said, could have only a provisory validity, relative to the state of knowledge at the moment when they were formulated. What influence may such a philosophy have upon religion? The history of Liberal Protestantism and of Modernism shows us. Such a philosophy finally makes a living contradiction of religion, an Atheistic religion. Whereas within the fold of the Church there is peace, and without there is war against the enemies of the faith, Relativism establishes peace without, and there are no longer any enemies of the faith, and it introduces unrest and division within the Church. It destroys real fervor, which it sometimes replaces by a frigid correctness, always by indifference to divine truth, by the cult of public opinion from which favors are sought. The calm of contemplation is succeeded by anxiety and novelty, by a fever of the mind, “a clumsy and carnal curiosity” (the carnal wisdom that St. Paul has in mind).*® Religion becomes essentially a thing of time; it is unmindful of eternal life, the glory of God, souls and their deep needs, and is concerned with nothing but the contemporary movement which is made the criterion for the things of eternity. The most useful abettors of absolute Rationalism are misguided persons who allow themselves insensibly to be imbued by this spirit without always being clearly conscious of it, and they are the recipients of its praises. Deaf to all salutary warnings, they interpret the supernatural mysteries in a thoroughly natural manner; they falsify the formal object of the science of faith, labor to bring about the worst confusion—that between nature and grace, God and the world—and are already preaching that false mysticism the very essence of which is this confusion. Now the false mysticism of the present day no longer absorbs all things in God, but it absorbs God in the constantly evolving

#5 See II Cor, 1: 12, St. Thomas’ commentary, world, and in this way it leads to Atheism. This is clearly stated in the Encyclical of 1907 (Denzinger, nn. 2073 ff. and 2081). For the statement of this judgment, all the Encyclical needs to do is to consider things from the fundamental point of view of metaphysics and theology.

We should not be surprised at the severity of the Church against those who claim to reconcile the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ with that of the Reformation and the French Revolution, in virtue of the principles of the philosophy of becoming. The burden of the refrain about the future city is merely the confusion of the two radically distinct cities of which St. Augustine said: “For the time being they are intermingled; at the end they will be separated, and are already so at heart.” A serious study of Pius IX’s Syllabus and that of Pius X suffices to show how empty are all these dreams of universal peace which are oblivious to the fact of the absolute and eternal opposition between good and evil, and which end only in universal mediocrity and lethargic indifference,

The principle of identity or of contradiction tells us that there are things impossible of reconciliation, that of the absolute perfections and their contraries: good is good, evil is evil. “Est est; non non; yea, yea; no, no,” said our Lord (Matt. 5: 37). But the principle obliges us to affirm the identification in God and in Him alone of all the absolute perfections, however different they may appear to be. Simplicity in the highest degree is rich with the multiplicity of pure perfections present there formally and eminently. The absolute immutable being is not inert, He is life itself, without either beginning or end. The absolutely simple Being knows Himself formally and knows everything in Himself, without this knowledge destroying His unity in the least. The infinitely wise Being has very wisely His own preferences and good pleasure, the reason for which is in Himself. The perfectly immutable Being was free to create or not to create, and by this free act there is no addition in Him of anything contingent and defectible; it is the dominating indifference of His love of pure Act with regard to created things. The infinitely good and powerful Being has permitted evil and from it He effects a greater good. Most compassionate mercy and most inflexible justice are identified in the same love of the sovereign Good, which communicates itself gratuitously with all the tenderness of charity and which proclaims also its inalienable right to be loved above all things.

Each of these attributes is implied in all the others and implies them. Far from being irreconcilable, they necessarily appeal to one another. In this there is no contradiction, but too much light for our feeble intelligence which remains dazzled. Truly we cannot find insoluble antinomies in God, but eminent harmony, the intimate secret of which is naturally known by Him alone.

This profound agreement between things most difficult to reconcile is realized gradually in us, by means of grace. It is one of the most characteristic signs of God’s supernatural action in the soul, since it shows that in the soul there is the image of this absolute identification which is realized formally and eminently only by the Deity. But the image, like the model, is mysterious. In the soul of our Lord, victim of love for our salvation, mercy and justice have met, and this meeting is a mystery to us, the mystery of our redemption. Thus in the life of the Church and in every Christian soul, this divine harmony keeps its secret, since it is entirely supernatural.

There is enough obscurity so that we are not tempted to bring God down to our level and imagine Him to be like us, as anthropomorphism does. The divine essence is ineffable; the saints, the more they advance in sanctity, vie with one another in repeating this name. But this name is not uttered by them in the same sense as by the Agnostics; for them and even for us there is enough light in the darkness of the mind for us to be able with absolute certainty to recognize the existence of the true God, His attributes, and His action.

Without perceiving Him as He is in Himself, we truly see God Himself by our mental act. We can truly say that we know our friends intimately, though we do not enter into their feelings as they are in themselves.

Moreover, in these days of Agnosticism we cannot too often repeat that, in a sense, we have a much more certain knowledge of God than of men with whom we live most intimately. The man who offers to shake hands with us perhaps decides at the same moment to betray us; perhaps his gesture is a lie; I may doubt his word, his virtue, his goodness. On the contrary, I know with absolute certainty, even by reason alone, that God cannot lie, that He is infinitely good, just, and holy. Of all beings it is He, in a sense, whom I know best when I recite the Our Father and meditate upon its words, just as I am known best by Him. We know God, in a sense, much better than we do our own heart; we are sure of the purity of his intentions, but we are not absolutely sure of ours.

Lastly, in a sense, we know the divine nature better than we do human nature, and especially better than we know the lower natures of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. After intensively studying St. Thomas’ treatise on God and meditating on it, we see our way clear to connect all the divine attributes with the self-subsisting Being, and to show the solidarity of all the theses with this fundamental principle: “In God alone essence and existence are identical.” It would certainly be more difficult to connect the whole treatise on man with the definition of reason. There is, indeed, the material element in man; and matter, in a sense, is repugnant to intelligibility; it constitutes the outer fringe of being and consequently of the intelligible.

Thus we come back to a profound remark made by Aristotle (Met., Bk. I, ch. i): “The supreme Cause is more knowable and intelligible in itself than all other causes, although relatively to us it is more difficult to know, because it is more distant from our senses.” Matter of itself is obscure, God is light; time is more obscure than eternity; it is so of itself and not merely for us.

We have been created and placed in the world precisely to know, love, and serve this infinite God whose light dazzles our feeble sight. We must love Him more than ourselves and above all things because we are sure He is the sovereign Good, infinitely better than we are. In Him there is no trace of imperfection, instability, or impurity, because He is Being itself without any admixture of non-being. He is the beneficent source of all being, life, knowledge, of all reality and goodness there is in our desires and wills. He cannot be the principle of error or of evil. Our deficiencies require only a deficient cause, which is ourselves. God, who unceasingly raises us up and sanctifies us, is thus Sanctity itself; in Him all the absolute perfections are identical with His essence, without any trace of imperfection. Since He is the beginning and end of all things, all glory must be traced back to Him.

Every intellect and every will must turn toward God, submit humbly to Him, let themselves be enlightened and drawn by Him. “Tt is time to become humble, for it is time to become proud.” Let us ask God’s help that we may have the strength to raise ourselves toward Him. There is nothing greater than a saint kneeling and humbling himself. That we may never stoop to manifest evil and hypocrisy, we must form the habit of bowing profoundly before God and before whatever is divine in all souls. Respect for all opinions, however false or perverse they may be, is only the proud denial of respect due to the Truth. Sincerely to love the true and the good, we must have no sympathy with error and evil. Truly to love the sinner and further his salvation, we must detest the evil in him.

The obscurity of the mystery of God is dispelled in proportion as a sincere soul grows in charity. To understand somewhat and experience the mystery of the divine action in the world and in created liberties, we must let ourselves be directed by it, let the bandage of pride covering the eyes of the mind be removed by it; above all we must let ourselves be drawn and loved by God. Only valiant souls allow themselves to be influenced by divine love in their labors, like marble in the hands of a sculptor, until God reproduces His own traits in them. The love of God for us does not presuppose lovableness in us; it gives us this in vivifying us. But it does not make us participate in the intimacy of the divine life except by purifying us, and this purification is the more painful as the soul, in following the Crucified, is predestined to mount higher. In the instability, obscurity, and death of the passing time, the divine action leads us lovingly toward the light of life of motionless eternity. Sweetly and firmly it inclines us to seek our eternal happiness and still more the glory of Him who is. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory” (Ps. 115:1).

In conclusion, with the great St. Augustine whom we might well have quoted more abundantly in this work, let us contemplate the infinite perfection of God. We are reminded of the opening words of the Confessions (Bk. I, chs. i and iv): “Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee. . . . What art Thou, then, my God? .. . For who is Lord but the Lord. Most high, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading: Thou hast created us anew in withdrawing us from the nothingness of our sin, nourishing us with Thy word and increasing in us Thy grace. It is Thou who dost seek us when we are lost, as if Thou hadst need of finding us again. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxi- ety; we speak of Thy anger, but nothing is more serene than the decrees of Thy justice. Thou changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged. Thou receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not of Thee!”

The Confessions ends as it began: “We see things because they are; but they are, because Thou seest them ... and Thou seest them in Thyself.... We oscillate between good and evil, whereas Thou art the sovereign goodness. . . . By Thy grace we perform some good works in our journey through life and, at its end, we hope to enjoy perfect rest in Thy ineffable hallowing. But Thou, being the Good which needeth no good, art ever at rest, because Thy rest is Thou Thyself. And what man can teach man to understand this? or what angel, an angel? or what angel, a man? Let it be asked of Thee, sought in Thee, knocked for at Thee; so, so shall it be received, so shall it be found, so shall it be opened. Amen.”

Blessed are the souls that have heard from God these three words which effect what they signify: “Come, enter, abide.” “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). “God is charity, and He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16). “To Him be glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen” (II Peter 3: 18).

Footnotes

1. Cf, Ia, q. 2, a. 3, the first three proofs for the existence of God, 2 Ibid., the fourth proof, ↩