Chapter I. In Avhat Sense Reason and Experience Are a Rule of Right Believing

GrOD is author in us of natural reason and hates nothing that he has made,* so that having signed our understanding with this his lightjt we must not imagine that that other and supernatural light which he imparts to the faithful, opposes and contradicts the natural. They are daughters of the same Father, the one by process of nature, the other by more noble and lofty birth; they can, therefore, and should, live in harmony together as loving sisters. Whether in the natural or in the supernatural order, reason is always reason, and truth truth. The eye which sees two steps in advance amid the obscurity of a dark night, is the same as that which, in the full brightness of noon, takes in the whole circle of its horizon, only the light which serves it is different; so it is certain that truth, whether of nature or above nature, is always the same, and there is only a difiference in the light which displays it to our understanding: faith shows it to us in the supernatural and our intelligence in the natural, but truth is never at contradiction with itself.

• Sap. xL 23. t Psal. iv. 7.

ART. VIII. c. I.] The Rule of Faith. 327

Again, God who has given our senses their proper action and means of apprehending, completes this gift by never permitting them to be deceived when rightly applied to their proper object; and experience taken by itself, simple and anterior to reasoning, cannot mistake. These are propositions of philosophy, founded on these certain premisses that God himself is the author of our senses, and as a holy and infallible agent directs them to their true end and object; these are simply first principles, and they who would take them from us, would take from us all process of inference, all reason. Some examples will make us clearly understand these propositions. My eye may make a mistake, judging a thing to be larger than it is; but size is not the proper object of the eye, for it is common also to the touch and the hand. It can fall into error, again, by considering that movement is taking place where it is not; as those who sail along the strand seem to see the trees and buildings move. But movement is not the proper object of my eye, touch has its part also therein. The eye can err, again, when it is not properly applied; for if there be green or red glass between it and its objects, it will think these to be green or red when they are not so.

If, moreover, you add reasoning and inferences to the judgments of the senses and of experience, do not now attribute your false conclusions to the actions of the senses or to experience, for they are no longer pure and simple, which was one of the conditions which I laid down; it is the reasoning and deductions which you have added that have put you wrong. Thus the eyes and the experience of those who saw, and saw experimentally in Our Lord the human form and haviour, were not deceived, for the fact was really so; those went wrong who drew thence the consequence that he was not God. The senses which judge that there are on the altar the roundness, the whiteness, the taste and colour of bread are right, but the reasoning which concludes that the substance of bread is still there, is unsound and false. That has nothing to do with the senses, which take cognisance, not of the substance of things but of the accidents. In like manner, the experience which shows us that we do not know how these accidents stand without their natural substance is quite just, but if our judgment draw the conclusion that they do not so stand, it deceives itself and us. This is not the fault of experience, which has nothing to do with that conclusion.

Experience, therefore, and the judgment of the senses are quite correct, but the reasoning which we make on them deceives us. Barring this, he who denies the correctness of the knowledge supplied by the senses and by experience, attacks and overthrows reason; for the foundation of all logical process depends on the data furnished by the senses and by experience. Now how entirely your ministers have gone against experience, sensible cognition, and natural reason, I will make clear to you at once, provided that you do not reject the testimony of your own judgment.

ABT. VIII. c. 11.3 The Rule of Faith. 329