Volume 20 — Ontologism And Psychologism.

Our readers sometimes complain that the philosophical articles of The Catholic World are too hard to be understood. Yet some of these very readers make a great effort to read these articles, and ask questions about metaphysical subjects—among others, about the very topic of the present article—showing a great desire to gain some knowledge about them. We are going to try to make this article intelligible to these readers, even to those who are yet quite young persons, in whose laudable efforts to improve their minds and acquire knowledge we are greatly interested.

We shall begin, therefore, by explaining some terms which need to be well understood before they can be used in a satisfactory manner, and especially the two which make up the title of this article. Ontology is the name given to one branch of metaphysics, which is also called general metaphysics, in distinction from the two other principal branches of that science—to wit, logic and special metaphysics. It is derived from two Greek words—that is, the first two syllables from a word which means being, and the last two from one which means reasoning. It is therefore a reasoning about being, or the scientific exposition of the object of the idea of real being, of metaphysical truth, good and evil, beauty, substance, accident, quantity, causality, the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc. Psychology is also a Greek derivative signifying a scientific exposition of the rational soul of man, its powers and operations, which is a sub-division of special metaphysics. Therefore every philosopher must be an ontologist and a psychologist, in the proper sense of those terms. Yet, there is a difference between ontology and ontologism, psychology and psychologism. Ontologism and psychologism are names denoting opposite philosophical systems which diverge in opposite directions from the scholastic philosophy, or that philosophy commonly taught in the Catholic schools after the method and principles of the Angelic Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas. Of the authority which this philosophy possesses in the church we cannot now treat at length. We will, however, cite here the latest utterance of the Sovereign Pontiff which has come to our knowledge, as a sample of a great number of similar official expressions of approbation from the Holy See. In a letter to Dr. Travaligni, founder of the Philosophico-Medical Society of S. Thomas Aquinas, dated July 23, 1874, Pius IX. says: “With still greater pleasure we perceive that, faithful to your purpose, you have determined to admit only such members to your society as hold and will defend the doctrines propounded by the sacred councils and this Holy See, and in particular the principles of the Angelic Doctor concerning the union of the intellective soul with the human body, and concerning substantial form and primary matter (materia prima).” We shall take for granted at present that in all its essential parts, as well as in those specified [pg 361] in the above quotation, the philosophy of S. Thomas has the highest sanction and authority in the church which any system of philosophy can have, and that it is the only true and sound philosophy. The system of ontologism differs from it by proposing a totally different ontology, which is made the basis of an essentially different philosophy. The advocates of that system call themselves ontologists, as claiming to be the only philosophers who understand rightly real being and the relation of intelligence to it as the object of its intuition and knowledge. They are also called by that name by their antagonists for the sake of convenience and courtesy, as those who believe in God, but not in revelation, are called theists, although neither party has an exclusive right to the appellation given to it by usage. Psychologism is a system which makes the basis and starting-point of philosophy to lie exclusively in the individual soul and its modifications, like Des Cartes, whose first principle is, “I think, therefore I am.” The opponents of the scholastic philosophy who pretend to be ontologists give it the nickname of psychologism, because they either misunderstand or misinterpret its ontological and psychological doctrine. The scholastic philosophy is also frequently called Aristotelian, because S. Thomas derived a great part of his metaphysics from the great philosopher of Greece; and Peripatetic, which was the name given to the school of Aristotle, because the teachers and pupils used to walk up and down during their lectures and discussions. Those who diverge from the philosophy of S. Thomas in the same direction with the ontologists are also frequently called Platonists, because they follow, or are supposed to follow, Plato, in regard to certain opinions differing from those maintained by Aristotle.

The philosophical disputes which have been lately carried on with so much vehemence about questions of ontology are by no means of recent origin. They have been waged both within and without the limits of the Catholic Church. Des Cartes, the great modern master of psychologism, always professed to be a loyal son of the church, and had many disciples among Catholics. Malebranche, the author of modern ontologism, was a devout priest of the French Oratory; and Cardinal Gerdil, who began as an earnest advocate of the same doctrine, but gradually approached toward the scholastic philosophy in his maturer years, was really the second man to the Pope for a long time in authority and influence, as well as a most illustrious model of virtue and learning. More recently, the principal advocates of ontologism have been very devoted Catholics. The Louvain professors, Hugonin, Branchereau; for anything we know to the contrary, Fabre, and many others, have been most zealous and devoted Catholics. Only Gioberti, who was, however, the prince among them all, and one of the most gifted men of the century, among the well-known leaders of that school, was a disloyal Catholic. We have heard on very good authority that Gioberti continued to receive the sacraments up to the time of his death, and was buried with Catholic rites. Nevertheless, as a number of priests were still in the external communion of the church at the time Gioberti was living in Paris, who were really heretics and have since apostatized, this fact alone does not count for much as a [pg 362] proof that he died in the Catholic faith. All his works were long before on the Index; he was at least suspended, if not ipso facto excommunicated, as a contumacious rebel against the Pope. Dr. Brownson calls him “that Italian priest of marvellous genius, and, we were about to write, Satanic power.” And again he says: “Gioberti died, we believe, excommunicated, and his last book, published before his death, contains a scurrilous attack on Pius IX., and bears not a trace of the Catholic believer, far less of the Catholic priest.”96 For a long time the Church did not directly interfere with the philosophical discussions which went on among her children in regard to ontology. Neither Des Cartes97 nor Malebranche was condemned, nor were any specific propositions in the works of Gioberti censured. The Holy See has never been in the habit of using its supreme magisterial authority in deciding scientific controversies considered merely as scientific. Science is left to itself, to make its own way and fight its own battles, unless the interests of the faith become involved with those of science. When these interests demand the interference of the supreme authority, it utters its disciplinary edicts or its doctrinal decisions, as in its wisdom it deems opportune and necessary. For a considerable period of time philosophy was left in the enjoyment of the largest liberty, so long as the doctrines of the church were respected and maintained. But when professed Catholics, especially in Germany, began to frame systems of philosophy manifestly dangerous to sound theology and subversive of it, the Holy See began to exercise a more special vigilance over the teaching of philosophy in Catholic schools. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. have condemned a number of works, of systems, or of distinct propositions in which philosophical errors were contained, because these were directly or indirectly subversive of the Catholic faith. Among other errors condemned, ontologism holds a prominent position. After various means more mild and indirect of correcting the evils which the teaching of this system threatened to produce had failed, the Holy See pronounced (Sept. 18, 1861) its condemnation of seven propositions embracing the fundamental tenets common to the so-called ontologists, and some particular tenets advanced by individual professors or writers of the same school. The professors of the Catholic University of Louvain were required to make a formal act of submission to this decision of Rome, which they did in the most exemplary manner.

The Abbé Hugonin, when nominated to an episcopal see in France, was also required to make a formal renunciation of ontologism, which he had taught in his writings, as a condition of receiving the confirmation of the pope, and complied without hesitation. The Abbé Branchereau, a distinguished French Sulpitian and professor of philosophy, voluntarily submitted a statement of the doctrine contained in his Prelections to the examination and judgment of the Holy See, and, when the judgment condemning his system was made known to him, promptly submitted and suppressed his work. In fact, there has been everywhere a most ready and edifying submission given to [pg 363] the judgment of Rome on a system which was rapidly spreading and gaining ground, and toward which a great number of the finest minds among Catholic scholars felt the strongest attraction. The reason of this may be found in the fact that those who had embraced this system or were inclined toward it were generally good Catholics, holding sound theological principles, and imbued with the love of truth and the love of the church, loyal to conscience, and well grounded in Christian humility and obedience. Consequently, ontologism, as a system, prevailing among Catholics and in Catholic schools, is dead, and rapidly passing into oblivion—a great gain for science, as well as for religion, since it removes a great obstacle in the way of the revival of the genuine and sound philosophy which alone contains the real and solid wisdom of the Grecian sages, the fathers of the church, and the gigantic masters of the mediæval schools, combined, harmonized, and reduced to method.

It is time now to explain in what the essence of ontologism consists. In the words of M. Fabre, a professor at the Sorbonne, “Ontologism is a system in which, after having proved the objective reality of general ideas, we establish that these ideas are not forms or modifications of our soul; that they are not anything created; that they are necessary, unchangeable, eternal, absolute objects; that they are concentrated in the being to which this name belongs in its simple signification (l'être simplement dit), and that this infinite Being is the first idea apprehended by our mind, the first intelligible, the light in which we see all the eternal, universal, and absolute truths. Ontologists say, then, that these eternal truths cannot have any reality outside of the eternal essence, whence they conclude that they do not subsist except as united to the divine substance, and consequently that it can only be in this substance that we see them.”98

We will now give the first two, the fourth, and the fifth of the propositions condemned at Rome, and which, with the other three, were taken from the prelections of a professor in a French seminary, never published, but extensively circulated in lithograph or MSS., and which, the reader will see, express the identical doctrine summarized so concisely and ably by M. Fabre:

I. The immediate cognition of God, at least habitual, is essential to the human intellect, so that without this it cannot know anything, since it is the intellectual light itself.

II. That being which we intellectively perceive in all things, and without which we perceive nothing intellectively (quod in omnibus et sine quo nihil intelligimus), is the divine being.

IV. The congenital knowledge of God as simply being (ens simpliciter) involves every other cognition in an eminent manner, so that by it we have implicit knowledge of every being, under whatever respect it is knowable.

V. All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived (intelligitur) as simply being (ens simpliciter).

Similar propositions to these are found in the fifteen submitted by M. Branchereau to the judgment of the Holy See, viz.:

1. In the act of thought two [pg 364] things are to be essentially distinguished—the subject thinking and the object thought.

2. Again, the object thought is distinguished into two things—that which is being simply, and that which is being in a certain respect.

3. By that which is being simply we understand real being, concrete and infinitely perfect; ... in a word, that which is being simply is God.

12. From the first instant of existence the mind enjoys ideal perception, not indeed reflexively, but directly.

13. Among the intelligible truths, which we apprehend ideally, God occupies the first place, the intellective perception of whom, although essentially distinct from the intuition of the beatified, is terminated, not at a representative image, but at God himself.

The reader will now, we trust, understand without difficulty what is the fundamental idea of ontologism—namely, that God is the immediate object of the intellect, the ideal object which faces it from its creation, is present to it as its light and its luminous, intelligible term of vision, in which all ideal, necessary, self-evident, eternal ideas, verities, realities, are concentrated, beheld, made luminous; lighting up all objects whatsoever which exist and are perceived by sense and intellect, so that the things that are made are clearly seen by the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead; as Malebranche expressed it, “in Deo,” and Gioberti, “in Deo et per Deum”—in God, and by or through him, as clouds in a luminiferous ether. For an explanation of the scholastic doctrine of the origin of universal ideas we refer the reader to a former article on Dr. Stöckl's Philosophy. In brief, it is the reverse of the one just delineated, viz., the universal and transcendental ideas are derived by abstraction from created things, and the knowledge of God is obtained by a discursive act of reasoning, by which we ascend from the knowledge of creatures to the knowledge of the Creator, whose invisible essence and attributes are understood by the things that are made. That is, God is known by a mediate and not an immediate apprehension, resulting in an intellectual judgment that he is. The mind terminates at a representative and inadequate image of God, and not at God himself or that which is God, real, concrete, necessary, infinite being, which is the remote and reflected object of the intellect.

We are now prepared to answer the question, What is the harm and danger of ontologism on account of which it has been condemned? It has not been condemned as heretical, for it does not formally, directly, and explicitly contradict any doctrine of faith. The Holy See has simply decided that it cannot be safely taught—that is, that it cannot be taught with a safe conscience, without danger to the faith, and consequently without grievous sin. It must therefore contain in it an error which cannot be extensively held and taught in Catholic schools without a serious danger of indirectly subverting Catholic faith and doctrine, especially in the minds of the young and inconsiderate. While this danger was only remote or not yet apparent, the error might be tolerated, and left to be opposed and refuted by argument. Moreover, it might be held and advocated in good faith and without sin by intelligent and pious men, who are liable to error when left to their own reasonings about abstruse matters [pg 365] in theology and philosophy. But when the danger was apparent and proximate, it was necessary to appeal to the supreme authority of the Roman Church, that the whole matter might be thoroughly examined and adjudicated; and, the judgment being once rendered, the cause is finished for all good Catholics. Thenceforth all that remains to be done is to study the import of the decision, and to search into the reasons by which the condemned errors may be proved false by philosophical and theological arguments, and the opposite truths brought out into a clearer light for the advancement of sound and solid science and the protection of the faith.

That part of Catholic doctrine which was endangered and indirectly subverted by ontologism is the one which relates to the distinction between nature and grace, the rational knowledge of God attainable by man in this life, and the immediate intuition of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven. Ontologism destroys the real distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, between the abstractive vision of God by reason and faith, and the intuitive vision of God without any medium, and face to face. It is true that ontologists have never taught that man has, or can have, a clear vision of the divine essence, like that of the blessed, by his unaided natural powers. This is a heresy condemned by the General Council of Vienne. Moreover, it would be too absurd for any sane person to maintain that such a vision is congenital and possessed by all men from the first instant of creation. Nor would any one who maintains that the idea of God is impressed on the soul at its creation be so extravagant as to assert that the clear and distinct conception of God which can be obtained by reason and faith is present to the minds of all men from their birth. Ontologists are careful to state that there is a difference between the immediate cognition of God in this life and that of the life to come. And all who maintain any kind of ideal cognition which is congenital or innate, understand by this something which exists unconsciously in the soul until its powers are developed. The object is there, facing the intellect, but the intellect has its eyes closed, and cannot perceive it. When it perceives it, it is first obscurely, then clearly, then more or less distinctly. Its congenital cognition is an unconscious, undeveloped act. But all the principles of conscious, developed cognition are in that act, and are only evolved by the operation of the senses and the intellectual faculties. The error condemned is the assertion that this cognition has God in his intelligibility as real and necessary being as its immediate object. And though it is not formally a heresy, since it does not assert that the immediate cognition of God is identical with the beatific vision, or deny the necessity of the light of glory to make the soul capable of the beatific vision, it is erroneous, inasmuch as it removes that which really makes the essential difference of the vision of the blessed, as distinct from the natural cognition of any created intelligence. This difference is defined by Benedict XIV., in the Const. Benedictus Deus, to be that the blessed see God “without the mediation of anything created which presents itself as the object seen”—nulla mediante creaturâ in ratione objecti visi se habente. Every other cognition of God must therefore have some created [pg 366] object of intellectual vision as an intermediary between the intellect and God—that is, must be mediate and not immediate cognition. An immediate cognition, however obscure and imperfect, must therefore be essentially the same with the clear, beatific intuition of the essence of God, and capable of being expanded, extended, developed, increased, made more penetrating or powerful, without being essentially changed, until it equals or surpasses the intuition of the highest angel in heaven. The light of faith or the light of glory can be therefore only aids to the improvement of the human intellect in its own natural capacity and activity—as if one should see the stars more plainly by a telescope, and afterwards receive a more perfect body with a visual organ superior to any telescope that was ever made.

A more elaborate similitude will make the difference of immediate and mediate cognition of God more plain. Let us suppose a barbarian lying asleep on the shore of his lonely island in the Pacific, while a large ship, the first which has ever approached it, has just come within the most distant range of vision. There is an object, then on his horizon, which he has the power to see, but does not perceive until he awakes. He perceives it at first as a very small and dimly-seen object—as something, he knows not what. It may be a cloud, a bird, a wave sparkling in the sun, a canoe. It is a large man-of-war which is the real object perceived, but he does not know that it is a ship, or know its contents, or even know what a ship is. This is an obscure perception. By-and-by he can see that it is not a cloud, or bird, or canoe, but a large, moving structure, whose principal parts are visible to him. This is a clear perception. When it has anchored, he has been taken on board, has seen its crew and armament, its cabins and hold, and has learned what is its purpose and the utility of its principal parts, he has a distinct conception. After he has learned the language of the sailors, and has been instructed to a greater or less extent, he acquires a more adequate and perfect knowledge, like that which the sailors themselves possess; he joins the crew, and becomes an expert seaman, and finds himself to have become much superior in knowledge and happiness to what he was before the ship came to his island.

Let us also suppose that a bottle is washed ashore at another island, and picked up by a native. When he opens it, he finds in it a drawing representing a large ship, and a paper containing particular information about the ship and its crew. This bottle had been thrown overboard after the ship had sprung a leak in mid-ocean, and was about to founder. After the bottle has been found by the native, Europeans arrive at the island, by whom the papers are examined, and their contents explained to the native, who learns also from the explanation of the drawing to understand what the ship is, its use, construction, parts, etc. He thus gains substantially the same knowledge of that ship and its crew with that which the other native gained about the other ship, though in a different way, without ever seeing the ship itself, but only an image of it. One has immediate, the other mediate cognition. One sees the object in itself, the other sees it in something else. In the first case the native saw something which was a ship, but while it was distant it was not [pg 367] visible as a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the enjoyment, of the native—in a word, the home and centre of his chief earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.

The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object, objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent. This judgment is an evolution from that cognition which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is—that is, by his essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an obscure perception of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the soul.

In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions, which expresses the afore-mentioned theory, as taken in connection with the fifth. This third proposition is: “Universals, objectively considered, a parte rei, are not really distinguishable from God”; and the fifth: “All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived as simply being—tamquam ens simpliciter intelligitur.” Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are five—genus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the good, the true, [pg 368] the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals, although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as an instance, and follow it down to man—substance, corporeal substance, organized substance, animal, rational animal, i.e., man. His proximate genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men. The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, a parte rei, in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance, corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also, are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd, therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful, or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a concept of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic, specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things, considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance, and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.

Neither the absurdity nor the heterodoxy of ontologism is avoided by the system of Gioberti. The objection of Giobertians to pure ontologism, that it furnishes no dialectic principle uniting natural theology with other branches of special [pg 369] metaphysics and with ontology, is, indeed, well taken. But this only shows that pure ontologism is absurd and incoherent. It does not remove the absurdity of that which is common to pure ontologism and the ontologism of Gioberti. Neither does it remove its heterodoxy. Saying that we have immediate cognition of something which is not God does not make it more orthodox to say that we have immediate cognition of God. Moreover, Gioberti's doctrine, as taught by himself, and understood by his European disciples and admirers, as well as by his acutest and most orthodox opponents, is far more heterodox than that of any other ontologist who is also a Catholic. Evidence has been furnished which has never been rebutted that Gioberti was a pantheist even before he published his Introduction to Philosophy. In a letter to Mazzini, written before that date, but only afterwards published from a motive of pique against him, he says explicitly that he is a pantheist after the manner of Giordano Bruno, though a Christian pantheist. What does this mean, unless it means that he had conceived a plan of combining pantheistic philosophy with the Catholic dogmas, as a part of his grand scheme of reconciling paganism with Christianity, and the European revolution with the Papacy? On this supposition he must either have acted the part of a deliberate liar and hypocrite—a baseness of which we believe him to have been incapable—or he must have intended, and in a subtile manner insinuated pantheism in the guise of his famous ideal formula, Ens creat existentias. In this case whatever may bear a pantheistic interpretation or seem to point to a pantheistic conclusion must be pantheistically interpreted, so far as the sense of the author is concerned. It is not strange, however, that many have understood him in a sense not directly heretical, or even, perhaps, quite compatible with Catholic faith. For his works are filled with passages which, taken in a Catholic sense, are gems of the purest and most precious sort. If the formula Being creates existences be taken in the orthodox sense, as equivalent to God creates the world, it is obviously a directly contrary proposition to any one expressing pantheism. To make it bear a pantheistic sense, definitions of being, create, and existences must be sub-introduced which vitiate its orthodox meaning. But, leaving aside this question, we have already proved that a Catholic must hold that the human intellect cannot have an immediate cognition of the first extreme of the formula, viz., that real and necessary Being which is God. Without this he cannot have an immediate cognition of the creative act, as the act of God, or of created things in their ideas, considered as the divine ideas themselves in the divine mind, and really identical with the divine essence. It is certain that the Holy See did not intend to condemn pantheism in the decree respecting the seven propositions, for it would never have affixed such a mild censure if it had so intended. Ontologism, whether couched in Gioberti's formula or not, is condemned in that sense which is not pantheistic, and under every formula which includes an affirmation of the immediate cognition of God by the human intellect, as defined by M. Fabre in the passage quoted at the beginning of this article.

Before concluding we are obliged reluctantly to add a few words [pg 370] about a personal controversy with Dr. Brownson, with whom we always regret to have a difference respecting any matter which belongs to Catholic doctrine. We desire to explain, therefore, that we made no statement to the effect that the ontologism condemned by the Holy See had ever been formally and explicitly taught in philosophical articles, whether written by himself or any one else, in this magazine. Moreover, in the passage where his name is mentioned there is no direct statement that “his own ontologism” falls under ecclesiastical censure. The utmost implied or asserted is that some educated men might think that some of his statements are “unsound,” philosophically or theologically, and demand a certain benignity of interpretation in order to escape the censure which a professed theologian would justly incur if he made such statements in a book written for school-boys or young pupils. Dr. Brownson's own defence of his doctrine, as based on his definition of intuition: “Intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject,” was cited as the precise distinction between his own doctrine and the one condemned, upon which the question of the theological soundness of his peculiar ontologism turns. We called it “a newly-invented distinction between ideal intuition and perception or cognition,” and qualified the definition above quoted as an “assumption,” which we think is quite correct. It is new in Catholic philosophy, and has not been proved. We think, therefore, that the phraseology of Dr. Brownson makes his doctrine liable to an interpretation, even by educated men, which makes it similar to that of the condemned ontologism. That it is sound and safe we are not prepared to say. Neither do we say positively that it is not. If it is, we think Dr. Brownson can place it in a clearer light than he has yet done, and we shall heartily rejoice to see him distinctly enunciate and vindicate his fundamental doctrine, whether it does or does not accord with that which is held by the disciples of S. Thomas. Of his loyal intention to conform his doctrine to the decisions of the supreme authority in the church there can be no doubt. That he has so far succeeded in doing so, at least by an exact and explicit expression of it, we cannot help doubting. We cannot see that the distinction between ideal intuition and cognition, so far as we apprehend it, suffices.

We understand him to define ideal intuition as an act of God presenting himself to the intellect as its object, and to call the act of the intellect apprehending this ideal object empirical intuition. We understand him also to identify the immediate object on which the active intellect exercises its discursive operations with real, necessary being—i.e. God—although it does not make the judgment that eternal verities are real being, and that real being is God, immediately, but by means of reflection and reasoning. Now, we cannot see any essential difference between this doctrine and that of M. Branchereau and other ontologists. We do not think it possible to escape the ecclesiastical censure on the doctrine of the immediate cognition of God, unless something is placed, ratione objecti visi, between God and the intellect, making the cognition mediate. Moreover, we consider that the term cognition in the Roman decree covers intuition and simple apprehension, even in their confused state, as well [pg 371] as distinct conceptions and judgments. Dr. Brownson's peculiar terminology and informal method of arguing make it, however, more difficult to understand his real doctrine and compare it with that of standard authors than if it were expressed in the usual style and method.

Dr. Brownson has also further charged the author of Problems of the Age with having actually taught in the opening chapters of that essay, as first published in this magazine, the very ontologism condemned in the seven propositions. That there are ambiguous expressions and passages which taken apart from the whole tenor of the argument are liable to such an interpretation, we do not deny. But in reality, it was the doctrine of Gerdil which was intended, and expressed with sufficient distinctness for a careful and critical reader. This doctrine is expressed by the illustrious cardinal in these words: “God, who contains eminently the ideas of all things, impresses their intellectual similitudes in us by his action, which constitute the immediate object of our perceptions.” Upon which Liberatore remarks: “In these words Gerdil did not modify the ontologism which he professed in his youth, but retracted it. And indeed, how can even the shadow of ontologism be said to remain, when the immediate object of our perceptions is no longer said to be God, or ideas existing in God, but only their similitudes, which are impressed by the divine action upon our minds.”99 A few quotations from the Problems of the Age will prove the truth of our assertion that it proposed a theory similar to the theory of Gerdil.

“It is evident that we have no direct intellectual vision or beholding of God. The soul is separated from him by an infinite and impassable abyss.”100 “God affirms himself originally to the reason by the creative act, which is first apprehended by the reason101through the medium of the sensible.... Thus we know God by creation, and creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side.”102 “The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation.”103 “It is of the essence of a created spirit that its active intuition or intellective vision is limited to finite objects as its immediate terminus, commensurate to its finite, visual power. It sees God only mediately, as his being and attributes are reflected and imaged in finite things, and therefore its highest contemplation of God is merely abstractive.”104

More passages might be quoted, but these may suffice. The form of expression is frequently Giobertian, especially in the early chapters. But the author understood Gioberti in an orthodox sense. In our opinion Dr. Brownson, as well as ourselves, failed to a very great extent to understand his artfully-expressed meaning. We used language similar to that of ontologism, but the sense in which we asserted the intuition of God was that of an infused idea of necessary and eternal truths; having their foundation and eminent, but not entitative existence in God, as Father Kleutgen teaches; by virtue of which the mind can rise by discursive reasoning through the creation to an explicit conception of what God is, and make the judgment [pg 372] that he is. All that introductory part of his work which treats of ontology was, however, suppressed by the author when the Problems of the Age was published in book-form, precisely on account of the tincture of ideas and phraselogy, which too nearly resembled those of ontologists, and were too obscure and ambiguous.

We do not suppose that the ideology of those Catholic philosophers whom we may call Platonisers, for want of a more specific term, has been condemned; or the Peripatetic ideology enjoined as the only one which can safely be taught in the schools; by any positive precept of the Holy See. Nevertheless, we think the former ideology, in all its various shapes, has received a back-handed blow, by the condemnation of ontologism, which must prove fatal to it. We see no logical alternative for those who reject psychologism, except between ontologism and the ideology of S. Thomas. The objective term of intellective conceptions must be, if it has real existence, either in God, in created things outside the mind, or in the mind itself. If it is the latter, a vague idealism which carries philosophy into an abstract world, separated by a chasm from the real, seems unavoidable. There is no real, concrete being, except in God and that which God has created. Unless the universals are mere conceptions or ideas, and unless ideas are, not that by which the intellect perceives, but that which it perceives—and this is psychologism—they must have their entitative existence in the essence of God, and be indistinguishable from it; or they must have it in created objects. The former cannot be safely held and taught. Therefore we must take the latter side of the alternative, or fall into psychologism. There is no solid rational basis, except that of scholastic philosophy, on which we can stand. The master in this school is the Angelic Doctor. Our interpretation, or that of any greater disciple of S. Thomas, has no authority, except that which is intrinsic to the evidence it furnishes that it is really his doctrine. The evidence is clear enough, however, to any competent person who examines it, that we have stated his doctrine correctly, and that all the criticisms upon the ideology we vindicate fall upon S. Thomas, and not upon us. Any one who will read the great works of Kleutgen and Liberatore can see this proved in the amplest manner from the writings of S. Thomas and in his own distinct statements. And any person of ordinary common sense will conclude that a man of the acute intelligence, conscientiousness, and patient application which characterize Father Liberatore, in a lifelong study of the clearest and most lucid author who ever wrote, cannot have failed to understand his philosophical system. Liberatore avowedly confines himself to an exposition of the philosophy of S. Thomas pure and simple. And in his great work, Della Conoscenza Intellettuale, he has given the most ample and lucid exposition of that particular part of it, with a solid refutation of the other principal theories. Kleutgen is more original, and not less erudite, though perhaps not equal to Liberatore in the thorough mastery of the writings of the Angelic Doctor; and he has given a most extensive and complete exposition of scholastic philosophy, accompanied by an exhaustive appreciation of modern systems, in his [pg 373] Philosophie der Vorzeit. It is very well for those who can do so to study S. Thomas for themselves, though even they cannot neglect his commentators. But it is idle to recommend this study to the generality of students in philosophy and theology, as a substitute for the study of the minor approved authors. Dogmatic and moral theology and philosophy are real sciences, as they are taught in the Catholic schools, and they can be and must be learned from text-books and the oral instruction of professors. The presumption is in favor of the books and teachers approved by ecclesiastical authority, that they teach sound doctrine. There cannot be anything more injurious to the interests of ecclesiastical or secular education than to depreciate and undermine their legitimate authority, and thus awaken distrust in the minds of those who must receive their instruction from them, or else undertake the task of instructing themselves. Such an undertaking usually results in a failure which may have disastrous consequences. The greater number follow self-chosen and dangerous guides. The few of superior intelligence and activity of mind; who throw off respect for all authority except that which they recognize as absolutely infallible, or submit to through the worship which they pay to genius and to ideas which have captivated their intellect and imagination; are apt to indulge the futile and dangerous dream of remodelling philosophy and theology. Such have been the leaders of dissension, of heresy, and of apostasy. De Lamennais, St. Cyran, Gioberti, and Döllinger are examples. They began to deviate by breaking away from the common and present sense of the great body of authors in actual use and living teachers of theology. Every one knows where they ended. Similar tendencies and proclivities can be effectually suppressed only by a sound theology and a sound philosophy, together with that spirit called the piety of faith, which goes much beyond a mere submission to absolute and categorical decrees in regard to faith and morals. In conclusion, we venture very earnestly to advise all converts who have finished a liberal education before entering the church, not to study theology without also going through a careful course of philosophy, beginning with text-books such as those of Father Hill and Liberatore.

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