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Hill's Elements of Philosophy

                   Hill's Elements of Philosophy

    An anonymous writer in the Boston Pilot assails with great 

bitterness and some personal abuse, both of which are very 

unphilosophical, and neither of which is of any logical value, 

our criticism, in our number for April last, of Professor Hill's 

much-praised " Elements of Philosophy." The anonymous

 writer we find partially indorsed, much to our surprise, by 

our friend of The Louisville Catholic Advocate, for whose

 able and independent editor we have a very high esteem. 

The anonymous writer in the Boston Pilot attacks us with 

great vehemence, and writes with an imposing self-assurance, 

which may lead some readers to imagine that he really 

understands something of the subject on which he writes.

 We shall not attempt to prove the contrary, for we cannot so 

far derogate from the dignity of a quarterly review as to 

reply to an anonymous scribbler in a weekly newspaper, 

and especially a newspaper of such a character as the Boston 

Pilot.

    There is one charge the writer makes, since it is repeated

by our friend of the Catholic Advocate, and indorsed, we are 

informed, by Father Hill himself, if, indeed, it did not originate 

with him, that we feel bound to notice. It is that we do not 

know Latin, or at least are too ignorant of Latin to under-

stand the technicalities of St. Thomas and the scholastic 

philosophy. We have never pretended to be a classical 

scholar, nor a thorough Latinist. Yet we do claim to have 

enough acquaintance with the Latin of the medieval scholas-

tics, to read and understand them, as well as some understand-

ing of their technicalities both in philosophy and theology. 

But suppose we have not. Does not Fr. Hill write his 

philosophy in English for students whose mother-tongue is 

English, and will it be alleged that we are too ignorant of 

Latin to understand English? Is it necessary to charge us

with ignorance of Latin in order to prove that we misunder-

stand or cannot understand Fr. Hill's English? This 

would only confirm the criticism made in our first notice of 

his work, that his English is unintelligible to a reader who

is ignorant of the scholastic philosophy and of the Latin. 

Indeed it is a grave objection to the work, as an English 

work, that it is not intelligible to a simple English reader 

who knows no language but his own. The attempt to make 

out that our criticisms must be unfounded because  we are 

ignorant of Latin, only justifies our criticism. 

    We regard Fr. Hill as a man of passable ability, and 

as possessing considerable philosophical erudition, but he is 

bound by obedience to maintain prescribed system of 

philosophy, and he is not free to exercise any philosophical 

insight or originality of his own if he possesses any. At 

best he can only tell us what others have said, only gyrate in 

the circle prescribed by the general of his order. We admit 

the right of the Church to condemn us if in philosophy or 

any of the sciences we emit a false or an erroneous proposi-

tion; but we have yet to learn that we are bound as a 

Catholic to accept, with the reverence and submission due to 

a dogma of faith, every philosophic proposition to be found 

in Suarez, or even St. Thomas. Philosophy is a rational 

science, and is not , like faith, to be taught by authority; and 

we tell the philosophers of the illustrious Society of Jesus, 

that their recent attempts to make philosophy an authoritative

as distinguished from a rational science, are ill-advised, and

destructive of human reason itself. Their general commands 

them to return to Aristotle and Fonseca, that is, to the 

dominant philosophy of the early part of the seventeenth

century. Do you know the history of philosophy since?

    Starting in the seventeenth century with the philosophy

to which your professors are commanded by your general to

return, philosophy soon with Descartes lost its objectivity,

and became purely subjective; and in the following century

with the Abbe Condillac and others it lost the subject, and 

resulted, as with Hegel, in pure nihilism. What better result 

can be expected from persisting in teaching in our schools 

the same philosophy? It must from the first have contained 

the germs, if I may so say, of the nihilism in which we

have seen it result: and what is to hinder if from terminating 

in the same result again, if insisted on? You cannot, do 

what you will, reason as illogically as you please, prevent

society in the long run from drawing from the premises you

give it, their strictly logical consequences, unless those conse-

quences should happen to be favorable to truth and holiness.

     We do not pretend that Fr. Hill does not assert the

reality both of the object and the subject; but, if we under-

stand it, his system recognizes of admits no principle or 

premises from which that reality follows as an inevitable 

consequence. I have wholly mistaken the rev. professor,

if he anywhere asserts the identity of the principles of 

science and the principles of things: that is, only the real is

an object of science, and the unreal, which is nothing, is

unintelligible, unthinkable. The system he defends, holds

that the unreal,that is, the possible, the abstract, seclusa

the concrete or the power of the real, is not a pure nullity, 

but is intelligible,- an object of thought. Thus the author

writes: "Terms, considered in respect to their objects, are

real and logical: of the first and second intention: absolute

and connotative" (relative). The object of the real term

actually exists outside of the mind; it is a real or actual

object, or at least really possible. The really possible is

simply a contradiction in terms. The two terms cannot go 

together, are as incompatible, the one with the other, as square

circle, burning cold, or wet drought. Father Koop has clearly

proved in the Review both for April and for July, that the

possible is nothing in itself, therefore always unreal, conse-

quently never in itself the object of a real term. If we 

make it, with the rev.  professor, an object of thought, we

assume that the unreal is thinkable, that is, that we can 

know without knowing anything. Then the principles of

science and the principles of things are not identical. How,

then, know that there is any object actually existing out of

the mind, or that there are things at all?  Say we not, then, 

truly that, though the professor asserts an objective world,

he is unable, by the system of philosophy he is obliged as a

Jesuit to defend, to prove it. By denying the identity of the

principles of science and the principles of things, that

philosophy concedes that science may be unreal, and, there-

fore, no evidence or proof of the reality of its object.

    Fr. Hill asserts ontology as one of the parts of philosophy.

The assertion we accept, but we find in his philosophy no 

principle recognized that warrants it.  We do not find in his 

" Elements" any solution, nor, indeed, any consideration of

the problem: How pass from the psychological to the onto-

logical, from the subjective to the objective, the real pons

asinorum of modern philosophers? The professor does not

seem to be aware that there is and can be no passage for

the human mind from the one to the other. Suppose the 

mind has, as Pere Martin, Fr. Rothenflue, and the Louvain

professors teach, immediate perception of ens or being, and

that ens or being is God, you cannot conclude from the 

perception or intuition of God, if we have it, the existence of

the soul; for that would imply that creation of contingent

existences is necessay: which is a contradiction in terms,

since it makes contingent existence necessary and not contin-

gent, and asserts pure pantheism. If you conclude the 

ontological from the psychological, God from the soul, you 

make God the necessary product of the soul, or assert the 

Egoism of Fichte. But waiving this, if the soul can think, 

that is, know, in any instance, without thinking or knowing,

any object really, actually existing out or independent of

itself, as it must if it can know possibles or abstractions, by

what possible process can it prove that there is anything 

actually existing outside of itself?

    We are assumed to be ignorant of Latin, are assumed, as a 

matter of course, not to be able to understand Fr, Hill writing 

in English!  We are told that we charge him ignorantly and

falsely when we call him a conceptualist. We are told that

we seem not to know the scholastic distinction between the

first and the second intention, or at least to pay no attention

to it. We paid no attention to it, we own, because the dis-

tinction had no bearing on the points we were discussing,

and could not relieve Fr.Hill's philosophy of the objections

we felt it our duty to urgy against it. The distinction as-

serted by the author, expressed in plain English, we take it,

is the distinction between intuition and reflection, or between 

thinking and rethinking: the pensare and the ripensare of

the Italians. Thus the author writes, p. 20 : "A term of 

the first intention expresses the object seen by the first and

direct act of the mind, in which the object is affirmed with its

real predicates; a term of the second intention stands for

another concept, which the mind forms by a second and reflex

act, in which second act logical or universal predicates are

attributed: v. g., the terms genus, species, universals, are

terms of the second intention, because their objects are not

real, but logical only; " that is, formed by the reflex act of 

the mind, that is, abstractions, creatures of reflection, there-

fore unreal, simple nullities. Does not this bear out our

charge, that Fr. Hill in his philosophy is " a conceptualist, if

not a nominalist" ?  We are examining, not his intentions,

but the philosophical principles asserted or implied in his 

definitions.

    Now, what was the question debated between the medieval

realists on the one side, and the conceptualists and nominalists

on the other? The question was confined to universals

including genera and species. The realists, represented by 

Guillaume de Champeaux, of St. Victor, Paris, maintained

that they are real; the conceptualists, represented by the Bas-

Breton, Abelard, maintained against him that they are not

indeed mere words as asserted by the nominalists, represented

by Roscelin, another Bas-Breton, but conceptions formed by

the mind, and without any actual existence out of it: the precise

doctrine of Fr. Hill.   St. Thomas teaches that universals

exist in conceptu, or in mente, cum fundamento in re; which is 

true of abstractions, such as whiteness, redness, roundness,

hardness, etc., but it is not of genera and species, which are 

terms not of the second, but of the first intention, to adopt the

very un- English terminology of Professor Hill.   As to the 

objective reality of genera and species, it makes no difference 

whether you call them mental conceptions with Abelard, or

empty words with Roscelin; for, if you deny their objective 

reality, you can assert only a verbal or a subjective difference

between an oak and a pine, a man and a horse. We do not

doubt the intentions of the author or the justness of his views,

when he forgets his system and follows his common-sense.

    But the first intention being only an act, a direct and 

immediate act, if you will, of the mind, gives only a concept;

and the author concedes it, when he says the mind in its reflex

act, or act of the second intention, forms another concept:

which plainly implies that the object affirmed in the first

intention is a concept. It will be no answer to this to say

that, though the object of the term is a concept, the object

of the mental act is a real object, existing out of the mind

and independent of it; for, if the term stands for a concept, 

and not for the real object, it is inappropriate and false.

Moreover, if the term expresses a concept only, and not the 

real object, we have our old difficulty, How know that there

is a real object out of the mind, of which the term expresses

the cencept, and which responds to it? The direct act 

of the mind is never, taken by itself, anything but a concept,

and every concept is subjective.  How pass from it to the

objective, or prove that in the concept, or idea, any object

but the idea or concept, which is in the mind, is apprehended?

The idea or concept, if we understand the author, stands in

his terminology for the species impressa and the species ex-

pressa of the schoolmen; but he derivers the species from the 

direct act of the subject, while St.  Thomas and all the

medieval scholastics we are acquainted with, derive it

from the object. They teach, as does Plato, that we know

only per ideam, per imaginem, or, as St. Thomas says, per

similitudinem, which is the representation-presentation, as 

we prefer to say, for representation is a term of the second

intention-of the object to the mind, not formed by its own

act, direct or indirect, simply because without it the mind 

cannot act at all, does not even actually exist, and is only 

in potentia ad actum.

    We objected to Fr.  Hill that he makes the mind an in-

dependent intelligence, apprehending by its own inherent

activity alone, without the concurrent activity of the object.

This we are told is a misrepresentation-that he holds that

the mind knows only by the concurrent activity of subject

and object. Yet the anonymous critic who accuses us of 

misrepresentation, says that the idea, or concept, according

to Fr.  Hill, is that in which or by which the mind knows

or apprehends the object: which, as we understand it, is, so

far, the doctrine of St.  Thomas, and our own;  but   Fr.

Hill makes the idea, or concept, the product of the direct act

of the mind, and therefore purely subjective; not as we,

following St. Thomas and the medieval philosophers, do -the

active affirmation to the mind by the object of itself.  The 

medieval peripatetics make the object supply their phantasms

and species, the idea or similitude by which or in which the 

mind apprehends it; and we can see no essential difference

between holding the soul to be an independent intelligence 

apprehending the object by its own inherent activity alone,

and holding that the concept, idea, image, or similitude, in

which or by which the object is affirmed or apprehended,

is supplied by the mind or soul itself. The professor's phi-

losophy is in substance only the Kantian, subjectivism; the 

germ of which may be found in Leibnitz, who, in his " Remarks

on Locke's 'Essay on the Human Understanding ,' "says 

that he holds that " the principal part of our ideas come from

our own resources (nos fonds);" still more decidedly, perhaps,

in his amendment of the peripatetic maxim,Nihil est in in-

tellcetu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, NISI IPSE INTELLECTUS.

To us it seems little less than absurd to say the mind appre-

hends or knows by the concurrent activity of the subject and 

the object, and then to maintain that the subject supplies by

its own direct act the concept, idea, image, or similitude, by

which or in which the object is affirmed.

    Moreover, the professor, as we have seen, in defining what

he calls a real term, says its object is " a real or actual object,

or, at least, really possibble." The possible is no object

"actually existing outside of the mind," indeed, has no actual 

existence at all. What has no actual existence cannot act.

If, then, it can be apprehended by the mind, as the professor

and his school maintain, the subject can know by itself alone

without the concurrent activity of the object, and is therefore

an independent itelligence: as we never represented him and his 

school as holding.  Of course, we never pretended and do 

not pretend that he or his school expressly maintain this, or

would not disavow it; but we maintain that it follows as a

 necessary consequence from the principles or premises, as

we here show, which they do expressly assert or maintain.

Fr. Rothenflue has given an admirable refutation of pan-

theism; and yet his philosophy in its principles, as that of

Victor Cousin, is undeniably pantheistic. We must judge

all systems, not by the intentions, or even formal assertains,

of their authors, but by the principles which they maintain.

It is not every philosopher who foresees all the logical con-

sequences that follow from the principles he assumes; and 

especially is this true of authors who take their principles

or premises from a school or a great and renowned meta-

physician, without original investigation, or attempting to

verify them for themselves.

    We may be permitted to remark that there is, and neces-

sarily must be, a great difference between theology and 

philosophy. The theologian proceeds from principles divinely 

revealed, and therefore certain. He cannot err as to his 

principles or premises, and, if he is able to reason logically,

his conclusions will be true and certain. Hence St. Thomas

calls theology scientia divina. Theologians may, indeed, err

in their deductions, and in respect to the use they make of

elements borrowed from natural reason; but, as their principles

are taken from divine revelation, and have the authority of 

the word of God, they are included in the depositum of 

faith, watched over and protected by the infallible authority

of the Church. He who proceeds from them as his premises,

and can reason logically, may arrive at authoritaitve con- 

clusions. Hence the authority in theology of the great

doctors of the Church, and of the traditional teaching of

Catholic schools; and yet neither this tradition of the schools,

nor the dicta of the doctors are infallible, and are authoritative

only as witnesses to the teaching of the Church. One may 

even in theology differ, for good and solid reasons, from an 

opinion of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St, Gregory

the Great, St. Thomas, or St. Liguori, but it would be 

temeraria to do so without such reasons. Fr. Ballerini

differs on the question of Probabilism from St. Liguori, and,

in our judgment, which is worth perhaps nothing, very justly;

for we have no Gunter's rule by which to determine the

different degrees of probability, or what degree of probability

binds the conscience, or what degree leaves it free. An

uncertain law does not bind the conscience; and whether

the law is more or less probable can ,make no difference, for, 

whether more or less probable, it is still uncertain. If it is 

probable that the law does not forbid this or that act, then the 

confessor cannot pronounce me guilty of sin if I perform it.

The question between probabilism and probabiliorism, or

equi-probabilism, is, it seems to us, of little practical impor-

tance, because in practice one must be either a probabilist or a 

tutiorist.

    If we may say so much in regard to theololgians and 

theological schools, we may say even more of philosophers

and philosophical schools; for the principles of philosophy

are not drawn from divine revelation, but from natural 

reason, of which no man or set of men enjoy the monopoly.

Great names in philosophy, as Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine,

St. Thomas, St. Bonaventura, Suarez, Descartes, Malebranche, 

John Locke, Hume, Reid, Berkeley, Leibnitz, Cardinal Gerdil, 

Kant, Fichte, Cousin, Vico, Rosmini, Galluppi, Gioberti, 

may be consulted and should be, not as absolute authorities,

but for their testimony as to what may be presumed to be

the principles and dictates of reason. Their opinions 

enlighten our reason, but do not supersede or conclude it.

Great respect is certainly due to the teachings or the

traditional philosophy of our Catholic schools, as it may be

supposed that the professors in these schools would not be

permitted to go on for centuries, under the very eye of the 

Church, in teaching an unsound or false system of philosophy

or of science; yet this argument is by no means conclusive,

and has less weight than at first sight it would seem to have.

Professors, however learned and honest, are no more infallible

in questions of human reason, than they are in questions of 

faith. The geocentric theory was for centuries taught in

Catholic schools by Catholic professors, who, when the helio-

centric theory was broached, denounced it as heretical and 

false. Yet in later times Catholic professors have very 

generally rejected the geocentric theory, and it has long since

ceased to be the received doctrine of Catholic schools. The

infallibility of the Church is not pledged to our Catholic

schools, and, in matters of human science, their doctrines, like

those of non-Catholic schools, must stand or fall on their merits

or demerits. If their doctrines impugn or tend directly to 

impair faith, the Church reprobates them; but so long as they

remain within the circle of pure human science, she, as a 

rule, leaves them free, and intervenes not in the quarrels of 

professors.

    For four hundred years, or since the so-called Renaissance,

Catholic schools, in spite of the protest of a Savonarola and

others, have cast the minds of the young generations com- 

mitted to their charge in a classic, that is, a pagan mould;

and under their influence modern society, even in so-called

Catholic countries, has lapsed into paganism. Who dares

throw the responsibility of the heathenism, evidently revived 

and fostered by the schools, on the Church? The basis of the 

education given in our schools is heathen, not Christian. Cite,

then, not as authority against us in philosophy or human

science, the traditional teaching of Catholic or of any other

schools, in which the professors, generally speaking, only 

follow routine, and repeat the lessons of their predecessors,

often with entire innocence of any investigation or under-

standing of the reasons of what they repeat. The master 

says it, and that suffices.

    Whether we agree with the schools or not is not the ques-

tion, but is what we defend true, founded on the constituent

principles of natural reason? The critic in the Boston Pilot, 

though he accuses us of ignorance of Latin, whence it is

inferred we are incapable of understanding a work on philo-

sophy written in English, never, so far as we have observed,

even attempts to prove that our own philosophy is unsound,

but bends all his rare powers to convicting us of misunder-

standing and misrepresenting Professor Hill, and in proving 

that, on the points we objected to, he and his school hold

with us. If so, as the professor writes in English, it is a 

little singular that we never discovered it. But we must

say this in our excuse, that, though we find no difficulty

in understanding the author when he explains his meaning

in Latin, which we are said to be ignorant of, we have no little

difficulty in getting at his meaning when he expresses it 

in English,- a language of which we have been thought to

know something. Indeed, Fr. Hill's English is far less

intelligible to us than any scholastic Latin we have ever 

encountered; and his technology would be absolutely unintel-

ligible to us but for the little acquaintance we have with the

Latin scholastics. We hope the professor will not take it ill,

if, while we do not doubt his proficiency either as an English

or as a Latin scholar, we do not find him very happy in his

rendering of the Latin, in which he studied his philosophy,

into English. When we translate the scholastic technical 

terms into English, and conform them to the genius of our

mother-tongue, we suspect he and his defenders fail to recog-

nize them. The author's terminology is un-English, " done

out of Latin," if you will, but " into no language." Take

what he calls terms of the first and second intention: they 

have in English, either etymologically or by good usage, no 

such meaning as he gives them, but really a very different 

meaning, and one that has no analogy to it. We define,

sometimes restrict or enlarge, the meaning of a term to make

it conform to its etymology, but never use a term in a sense

authorized neither by etymology nor good usage, and we try

always, in our use of a term, to retain some trace, at least, of 

its primary sense and original figure or symbolism.

    But to return to our proper subject. We charged the

professor and his school with maintaining that the soul is an 

independent intelligence, which, though pronounced false,

we have seen to be true; for they hold that possibles, as 

such, that is, as having no actual existence, are thinkable or

intelligible. we also objected that the system the professor

defends, makes the act of knowledge independent of the

divine creative  act, or as we said, the divine concurrence- as 

theologians say, the divine concursus. This, we are told, is 

a gross and unpardonable misrepresentation, for neither Pro-

fessor Hill, nor any philosopher of his school, ever dreamed of 

denying the divine concurrence. Perhaps not, in their sense;

but we doubt if one among them even admits if in the sense

in which the objection assumes that they deny it. As the 

point, in our estimation at least, is very important, we must

be allowed to dwell on it for a moment.  Every Catholic

theologian, of course, teaches that God is universal Creator,

and efficaciously present at all times and places in all his

works; that all his creatures are absolutely dependent on him

for life, breath, and all things; and that, without his creative

act, they never would and never could have existed. This is

all very well, so far; but, if we mistake not, the school to

which, we take it, the professor belongs, holds that the divine

concurrence in the fact of intelligence is sloely as causa

eminens. It holds that the light of reason is a created light,

not the divine light itself  "that enlighteneth every man

coming into this world." Then, as we understand the school,

though the idea is not formed without an object real of pos-

sible outside of the mind, it is the mind by its own activity alone 

that forms it: and hence the professor calls it a concept. The

object is passive, and its existence is affirmed by the subject,

and intuition is the act of the subject, and stands opposed to 

discursion or ratiocination. The judgment, the object is, or

exists, is affirmed by the mind, not by the object affirming or

presenting itself to the mind, and, by so doing, creating and

constituting the mind, or the soul intelligent.

    The school, as we have learned it, holds that mind cog-

nizes creatures, contingent existences, by its own activity, 

and in themselves as if they were intelligible in themselves.

The professor evidently so holds; and, though he doubtless

holds that the contingent cannot exist without the creative

act of the necessary, he holds that the contingent can be

known without intuition of the necessary. Here we touch

what we consider  the fundamental error of the philosophy

contained in the text-books at present used in all our colleges.

We hold it indubitable that what is not is not intelligible,

is and can be no object of thought or knowledge. Hence we 

maintain that being, real and necessary being, ens necessarium

et reale, is alone intelligible per se, as it alone exists per se. 

Contingents, creatures, exist only by being, not in, by, or

from themselves, and therefore not cognizable in or by them-

selves, but are intelligible or cognizable only in and by being.

To maintain the contrary is to maintain that what is not,- that

is, what is nothing, a simple nullity,-is intelligible, since,

without real and necessary being, contingents are nothing.

As only what is or exists is intelligible or cognizable, things

are and can be known, if known at all, only as they are, not

as they are not. Hence we maintain that the principles of

science and the principles of things are indentical. Nothing 

can be true in the order of science that is not true in the

otder of being. This the philosophy the professor defends,

and which our colleges teach to our ingenuous youth, denies.

It makes the principles of science and the principles  of things

different, and therefore holds that the unreal, the non-existent,

can be an object of science: as any one may see who will 

read a chapter or two in the Metaphysics of Suarez, one of the 

most eminent philosophers and thelologians of the illustrious    

 Society of Jesus.

    Here we may see wherefore the peripateticism of the seven-

teenth century ended, as we have said, in the nihilism of the

Hegelians. Noble and powerful minds expounded, developed,

and defended it, but nothing could save it, for it denied or

failed to assert the identity, we say not of science and things,

but that the Principles of science and the principles of things

are identical, that science must follow the order of being, for

only that which is, only the real, is intelligible, thinkable, or

knowable. By admitting, as the professor does, that the

unreal is knowable, it made philosophy in principle an

unreal science, and therefore no science at all, but nescience

or nihilism. That the germ of nihilism,concealed from the

first in the system, has not been so fatally developed in 

Catholic schools as in others, is owing to Catholic theology,

which has restrained them, and held them practically within

the bounds of the real.  But whenever and wherever the re-

straints of that theology have been thrown off or loosened, and

the system has had its free and natural development, it has 

invariably developed in the direction, first, of egoism, as

with Descartes, Kant, and Fichte; and then of downright

nihilism, as in Hegel, Sir William Hamilton, and J. Stuart

Mill, however these pseudo-philosophers may have differed

on minor points among themselves. The only scientific

remedy is not, after the heterodox, in conforming our

theology to our philosophy, but in showing the conformity

of all true philosophy with Catholic theology: and it is for

attempting to do this, which necessitates a more or less severe

criticism on the system in which is concealed the germ of 

the evil, that we are denounced as a rash innovator, or as

an Ishmaelite. We hope we shall be forgiven, if we say to 

our critics,

             There are more things in heaven and earth, gentlemen,

              than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

    Our sole aim in our philosophical essays is to show that

between true philosophy and Catholic theology there is no

discrepancy; it is only a false or defective philosophy with

no scientific value, that ever comes in conflict with the

principles of Catholic theology. Yet we find ourselves

opposed by men who do not blush to deny, as philosophers,

principles which they do and must assert as theologians.

We cannot sympathize, and never could, with this sort of

dualism; and therefore we are counted eccentric, one who

is always running to one extreme or another, never contented

to walk in a beaten path, or to keep the middle way; that is,

who is never contented to be a routinist.

    Now, as the principles of science and the principles of 

things are identical, it follows necessarily that we do and

can know only the real: things only as they are, only in the

order and the relation in which they actually exist. They

actually exist only in and by real and necessary being, through

its creative act. Then it is only  by and in real and necessary

being,-ens necessarium et reale, and through its creative act,

not in or by themselves, that they are or can be known, are or

can be objects of science. But as things exist only in and by

being, mediante its creative act, they can be known or be in-

telligible only in the intuition of being, mediante the same act:

otherwise the principles of science and the princeples of things

would not be identical, and we should be obliged either to

deny all knowledge, or to hold that we can know without

knowing anything, as we charge that Professor Hill's system

requires us to do. As things exist, not by their own act,

but by the creative act of being, so, the principles of science

and by the principles of things being identical, they cannot be 

known by their act, but only, as they exist, mediante the

creative act of being. The creative act is as necessary to the

fact of science as it is to the fact of existence,- the existence

of things, we mean. There is and can be no fact of science

or knowledge without the presentation or affirmation of being,

by its own act, as the object and light of the created intelli-

gence; and this presentation or affirmation, called self-evi-

dence, which is wholly independent of our intelligence, which

does and must precede our activity, or what we call empirical

intuition, or direct and immediate perception or apprehension,

creates and constitutes the human intellect. As the fact of

science is impossible without it, since without it there is and 

can be no intelligen or knowing subject, there is and can be

no fact of science or knowledge but mediante the creative

activity fo the object, or the direct and immediate creative 

act of real and necessary being affirming itself.

    Now, we feel quite sure that the writer in the Pilot, who

seems disposed to make out that we misrepresent  Fr.

Hill, and that on the points on which we object to his

philosophy he holds with us,- we feel quite sure, we say,

that he will not even pretend that Fr. Hill or his school

holds and teaches the doctrine we here set forth. It is the

doctrine which, as we understand it, stands opposed to the

whole modern peripatetic school, as defended by Curci,

Liberatore, Tongiorgi, San Severino, Kleutgen, Dr. Ward,

and others, and of which we have discovered no trace in

the professor's  "Elements," his Logic, or his Ontology. His 

definitions not only do not include, but exclude it, if we 

understand them and ourselves.

    The school the professor represents, and ably represents,

we are well aware, teaches that the object in the fact of

thought is ens, that is, some ens, but it may be either ens

reale, or ens possibile; but Professor Koop, we repeat, has,

in our own pages, proved that the possible is nothing in 

itself, and is cognizable or thinkable only in the power or

ability of the real. Fr. Hill, and his defender in the

Boston Pilot, would do well to read Professor Koop's dis-

cussion of possibilities and the Mundus Logicus,-a priest

who cannot be accused of being too ignorant of Latin either

to understand a work written in English, or to be familiar

with the technicalities of St. Thomas and other scholastics.

Ens possibile is not a real entity, but an abstraction like

the ens in genere, and therefore created by the human mind,

and, consequently, not its object. Moreover, the ens the 

school asserts, as the object of intuition, or "a term of the first

intention," does not, by its own activity, present or affirm

itself, but is simply apprehended by the direct act of the

subject. The intuition that affirms the object is the act of 

the subject, not the act of the object or ens affirming itself,

and is, therefore, no surety that it is not, as some of our

German philosophers say, "subject-object," or that it is

 "object-object." Kant, who shows, in his "Critik der

reinen Vernunft," that it is impossible by the most rigid

analysis of reason to refute the skepticism of Hume, makes

as do we, the fact of thought the product of subject and

object; and yet he includes the object in the subject, making

it not object-object, but a form of the intellect, therefore

subjective, or subject- object, as, without knowing it, does Fr.

Hill himself in his definition of what he calls a real term.

His " really possible," if it means anything, means the subject-

object, or object -subject fo the German school founded by

the Konigsberg philosopher.

    Fr. Rothenflue, indeed, teaches that the ens, which is

the the direct and immediate object of the mind, is ens reale, and

so do Peres Fournier and Martin, all Jesuit Fathers; but their

philosophy is not approved by the Society, and its professors

are forbidden by its genersl to teach it. But Fr. Rothen-

flue did not teach the philosophy which we oppose to Fr. 

Hill's school. He makes ens the object, and holds it to be

intuitively apprehended; but the intuition he asserts is the 

act of the mind by its own force apprehending ens, not, as we

do, the act of ens presenting or affirming itself immediately,

and by its immediate creative act rendering the subject

intelligent, and capable of apprehending it, and, by its un-

derived light, all things dependent on its creative act that

fall within the range of our natural faculties when fully 

formed and duly exerted.

    There are several points here which we do not accept, or

which are not in accordance with the philosophy we defend.

Ens necessarium et reale, real and necessary being, is God in-

deed, though we do not know it by immediate intuition. Being 

in the intuitive act does not affirm itself as God, but as idea;

yet it is so, for the ideal is real, and the ens intuitively affirmed,

though idea, is really God as the intelligible, or as facing

our intelligence, as we have shown in our "Refutation of

Atheism." But to maintain that we have direct and 

immediate intuition of God, understanding by intuition the

act of the mind, that is direct perception, or, as we call it,

empirical intuition, as distinguished from ideal intuition,

which is the creative act of ens, or the object, is to fall into one

of the errors of the Louvain professors, and of the Sulpician,

M. Branchereau, reprobated by the Holy See. We have

intuition of ens only mediante its creative act, as it in that

act affirms, evidences itself.

    Fr. Rothenflue makes ens the principle of science and of 

things, which necessarily implies pantheism, as it would make

both science and things identical with real and necessary

being or God. We maintain that the principle of sience

and of things is God and his creative act. All things,

the universe and all its contents, are said to be in God eternally,

but they are so only in the sense that their types or exem-

plary ideas are in him, eternal in his essence; but these ideas,

or types, are indistinguishable from the divine essence itself,

and the assertion, that they are eternal in him, only means

that he has eternally the power to create things, existences,

the universe, the heavens and the earth, and all things therein.

They are identical with his creative power, and their asser-

tion is simply the assertion that his creative power is an

intelligent, not a blind force. We cannot, by any possible

logic, from the judgment, God is, conclude, therefore, things 

or creatures are, for God is a free creator, and obliged,

neither by extrinsic force nor internal necessity, to create or

exercise his power ad extra. These ideas or types belong, if

you will, to the Divine Intelligence, but they are no element

in the created existence. There is a world of speculation

and endless distinctions on this point among schoolmen, all of

which proceed on the assumption that possibles are not

nothing in themselves, but in some sense real; and which

serve only to confuse the mind, to obscure the simple truth, and

to render metaphysics an unintelligible and even a repul-

sive science. Rational science, that is, philosophy, treats

of being only as the intelligible; it does not penetrate its

essence, and undertake to tell us what it is in itself. For the

same reason that things, creatures, contingent existences, are

not deducible from the jugment, being or God is, science

cannot be logically developed or derived from the intuition 

of being alone. From the intuition of being you can only

conclude, being is, for being is eternal, self-sufficing, and

needs only itself in order to be. The intuition of being of

itself alone is not and cannot therefore be the principle of 

science. Hence the condemnation of ontologism, which is

very generally supposed to be the philosophy we defend, but

is not, and never has been.

    The intuition or affirmation, in order to present the prin-

ciples either of science or things, must be of both ens and

its creative act. The princeple of philosophy or rational

science, Prefessor Rossi, of Genoa, says truly, in his profound

and remarkable work, "principii di Filosofia Sopran-

naturale," is "L'ENTE CREA  L'ESISTENTE," for things proceed

from being and exist only by its creative act, and, as the same

professor also says, " are not intelligible in themselves, for

they have not their reason or cause in themselves, and the

intelligibleness of a thing is in its reason or cause." This

follows from the doctrine that the principles of science and

the princeples of things are identical, for only the the real is

knowable: as we have shown over and over again, Professor

Hill and his school to the contrary not withstanding.

    Science, or knowledge, is either intuitive or discursive,

direct or reflex; in the professor's terminology, either of "the

first intention," or of "the second intention." The professor,

of course, uderstands that in what he calls "the second inten-

tion," or discursive knowledge, first principles are necessary;

and, if we understand him, the principle here, that is, the

principle of demonstration, is the principle of contradiction,

which is the common doctrine of his school. We will not

stop now to examine this principle, if principle it be, for

it is of the second intention, of reflection, reasoning, or

ratiocination, and presupposes " the first intention," or

direct and immediate knowledge, apprehension, or perception,

which we call empirical intuition, in order to distinguish it

from ideal intuition, which is the act of the object, not of the

subject. Now in this intuitive order, or this direct order of 

knowledge or science, we find in the professor's system no

recognition of principles, nor of any necessity of prin-

ciples. He asserts, indeed, the necessity of an objcet real or

possible, but would seem to hold that the mind, in and of

itself, by its own native intelligence, is able to apprehend and 

know the object. Yet it is precisely here that our quarrel

with his system begins, or that lies the question between his

philosophy and that which we have the honor to defend. We

maintain that first or a-priori principles, principles neither

furnished by the subject from its own forms or resources, nor

obtained or obtainalble by its own act, - since without them it

cannot act at all,- are necessay, and the principal matter of

the higher philosophy. The professor, as well as his zealous

defender in the Boston Pilot, seems to be either ignorant of the

question, or to ignore it. He appears never to have understood 

the difficulties in the way of human knowledge suggested by

Hume in his "Treatise on Human Nature," and which Kant

shows unanswerably, in his "Critik der reinen Vernunft,"

no analysis of reason can solve. He seems to proceed as if 

the subject is itself alone competent to apprehend the real 

or possible object, and that in the fact of direct knowledge or

perception it needs nothing, no principle or principles not 

inherent in itself. He demands nothing from the activity of

the object, and assumes that its own subjective activity alone

suffices, Hence we charged his system with maintaining

that man, a dependent existence, is an independent intelli-

gence: which is simply absurd.

    We think we have here stated the question so clearly and

distinctly, that even our modern peripatetics, however wedded

to routine, or blinded by prejudice, cannot misapprehend it.

The question, then, turns on the necessity to the fact of know-

ledge, intuitive or discursive, of a- priori principles, or, as

Kant calls them, cognitions or synthetic judgments a priori,-

judgments which precede experience, and which are not

and cannot be furnished or obtained by the action of the 

subject, because, as we hold, the subject cannot act without

them. They are given by the objcet in affirming itself by its

own activity, in which the subject has no more lot or part

than he has in the divine creative act which calls him

from nothing into existence. The object is ens necessarium

et reale, real and necessary being; and it is its creative act

that gives the mind, as we have so often explained, the prin-

ciples of science, which are at the same time the principles

of all the knowable and of all the real, These principles

constitute what Gioberti names " the ideal formula," and

"I' Ente crea I' esistenze," as he tells us; Professor Rossi says:

"La formula razionale-I' Ente crea I'esistente-e il principio

primo e supremo della filosofia."

These principles, we have time and again proved, are: Real

and necessary Being creates existences; and we need not here

argue the question anew. In spite of the sneer of the writer

in the Boston Pilot, we think it sufficient to refer to our essay

in " Refutation of Atheism," already published in the

Review.

    But we are gravely told that this formula, Ens creat

existentias, is ontologism, and ontologism condemned by the

Holy See. We are so told, we presume, because it is easier to

attack our philosophy than ir is to defend Fr. Hill's system.

That ontologism, as held a few years since by the Louvain

professors and several eminent fathers of the Society of

Jesus, has been pronounced by the Holy See a doctrine

that cannot be " safely taught," is well known; but that the

formula we defend falls under that or any other censure

pronounced by the Holy See, is so far as we are informed, a

very great mistake. It may, for aught we know, have been

censured by the general of the Jesuits, but not, so far as known

to us, by the Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ. Then,

to accuse the formula of the error of the the ontologists betrays

either great hardihood or gross ignorance. We have shown the

broad difference between it and ontologism, in criticizing Fr.

Rothenflue's system. Ontologism teaches that being simply is

the principle both of science and of things, that all science is

deducible from the empirical intuition of being, and that,

given being, all existences and all science are given; while the

philosophy we defend teaches that science and existences are

derived from being, real and necessary being, indeed, but

mediante the creative act of being,- Ens creat existentias.

He who can see no essential difference between this formula

and ontologism, has no reason to applaud himself for his

intellectual acumen or powers of discrimination.

    The formula we are told again, and with equal gravity, is

pantheistic. Pantheism denies the creative act, and makes

the universe and its contents, or existences, emanations, modes,

affections or phenomena of eing, or the one only substance,

Power, or Something which ir calls God, but which the

cosmists say may just as well be called nature. Now, what

are we to think of the philosopher who can discern no differ-

ence between this really atheistic doctrine, and the formula

which asserts the creative act as the copula or nexus between 

being and existences, and therefore asserts that there is and

can be neither human science nor contingent existences, but

mediante the creative act of being?  Why, such a philosopher

would be apt to find pantheism in the first verse of Genesis:

" In principio, Deus creavit celum et terram." But we are

told once more, and with a triumphant air not a little provok-

ing, that the human mind is not equal to the intuition of the 

formula. Well, who says ir is?  Have we not objected to 

Fr. Rothenflue that he makes real and necessary being

perceptible by the direct and immediat act of the subject?

Do you not know, Mr. Objector, that we maintain that the

intuition which presents or affirms the formula, is the act

of being itself, not of the human mind, that it precedes it,

and that without it there is and can be no act of human

intelligence?  Do, pray, read our essay in "Refutation of

Atheism," instead of dismissing it with a supercilious sneer.

You may possibly learn from it what is the philosophy we

hold, and be able to object to it with some pertinency.

    Still it is insisted that, although the formula is presented or

affirmed by being itself, yet it, when so presented or affirmed,

must be received, and therefore apprehended by the subject,

otherwise the affirmation would be as if it were not.  So the

objection, though removed a step, is not solved. As the being

affirmed is really the Divine Being, or God himself, it follows

that, if the subject really apprehends the formula, he really sees

God, while the Scriptures declare that "no man can see God

and live." This states the objection in its most formidable

shape. The objection has two parts: 1. The objective

intuition does not supersede the necessity of the subjective

intuition.  2. The subjective intuition, apprehension, or re-

ception of the objective intuition implies that the subject

really sees God.

    1. In answer to the first part we remark that we have, as

every theologian knows, a nearly parallel difficulty with

regard to grace. Grace is not efficient unless we will to 

comply with it, and we cannot will to comply with grace

without the aid of grace. The difficulty is solved by the

fact that when what if termed gratia preveniens strikes and

excites the will, it becomes itself, if not resisted, immediately

gratia adjuvans, and assists the will to comply with grace,

and when complied with, it becomes, ipso facto, gratia efficax:

that is, the three graces are simply three offices of one and

the same grace. Being does not by its objective act merely

affirm the formula, but it by its creative act gives the subject 

the power or ability to receive or apprehend it:-" There is

a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth

him understanding." It is as true in the natural order as in 

the supernatural, what our Lord says, "Without me ye can

do nothing." It is the creative act of God, without which

we are nothing, and can do nothing: which is the copula that

binds the subjective or human judgment to the objective or

divine judgment, I Ente crea I esistenze.

    2. The word see, in the second part, is ambiguous. The

Scriptures cannot mean that a man cannot know God and

live, for they everywhere teach that we do know and ought

to know God; and the condemnation of the heathen, accord-

ing  to St. Paul, was, that, when they knew God, they did

not worship him as God. He declares them without excuse;

" For the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and

Godhead, have been, from the creation of the world, clearly

seen, being understood by the things that are made." (Rom. i.)

When, then, the Scriptures say no man can see God, we must

understand, not that no man  can know God, or the things

of God, but that no man in this life can see God with his 

bodily eyes.

    Moreover, those who see so many horrible errors in the

formula, would do well to pay a little attention to what its as-

sertors mean by it. When we assert that Being, that is, God,

if you will, is affirmed intuitively to us; that w do not mean

that we see Being by our organof sense, or that we see or

know what Being is in itself, or in its essence,- which is the

intuitive vision of the blessed, and possible only by the Iumen

glorice, or the ens supernaturale, - we call the formula ideal,

and understand by the idea, not ens, or God in himself, but as

the intelligible, or as he faces the human intellect. That we

have intuition of the idea is undeniable; but the modern peri-

patetics appear never to dream of its identity with real and

necessary being, but relegate it to "the second intention,"

and lodge it in the mundus logicus, a sort of intermediary world

between the real and the unnreal, being and not-being. Yet

such an intermediary world, or mundus logicus, as dis-

tinguishable from the mundus physicus, or real world, is what

Fr. Hill's friends, the schoolmen, technically call ens rationis,

that is, fiction, nothing at all. This is what Professor Koop,

as high an authority, to say the least, as Professor Hill, has

so successfully maintained in the Review, both for April and

for July last. Besides, we ourselves did as much in our

former article on professor Hill's philosophy, and in addition

proved the reality of the ideal, or what philosophers term

"absolute ideas," "necessary ideas," as the universal, the

necessary, the immutable, the eternal, etc., without which

there is and can be no logical conclusion, no fact of experience

or cognition. These can be real only inasmuch as they are

being, real and necessary being, as we have proved over

and over, till our patience is nearly exhausted. We certainly

have, in all our mental operations, intuition of them, and con- 

sequently intuition of real and necessary being; and as

all intuition is, mediante the creative act of being, we have,

in the intuition of the ideal, intuition of the formula, as the

principium both of science and of reality.

    Professor Hill cannot, with Herbert Spencer, relegate God

to the dark regions of the unknowable. He holds, as we

do, that God is knowable and known, but his existence he

ranges as a term of " the second intention," that is, a con-

clusion drawn from the term of the first intention. God,

he holds, is not affirmed in direct apprehension, that is,

as we understand it, not an affirmation of direct knowledge

or intuition, but is an affirmation of reflex knowledge. If

this means that the intuition does not expressly affirm that

this is God, we accept it in the sense already explained;

but if it mean that the intuition does not directly affirm

that which is God, to wit, the ideal, or ens necessarium et

reale, we cannot, for reasons already given, accept it.

    We do not question the sincerity and reality of Father

Hill's theism, any more than we do the sincerity and reality

of his Catholic faith; but the God his system asserts is,

to our understanding, only a generalization, an abstrac-

tion, and therefore no God, nor real being at all; for, if we

understand his definition, all terms of the second intention

are concepts of the reflex order, and are generalizations, or

abstractions formed by the mind operating on concretes

expressed by terms of the first intention, or as, in our

ignorance of the Latin technicalities of the schoolmen, we

say, given in intuition.

    Professor Hill's system rejects the doctrine, that we have

direct intuition of real and necessary being even as the ideal,

and his ontology is derived from the apprehension or

direct knowledge of contingent existences. It is from the

intuition of contingects that he concludes the cecessay,

and from the intuition of creatures that he concludes the

necessity and the fact of the creator: as from effects we con-

clude the cause. We need not develop the argument, for

everybody knows it, and wonders at its inefficiency in con-

vincing the atheist. The existence of an effect supposes a

cause; of creature, supposes a creator; of the contingent,

supposes the necessary. Of this there is and can be no doubt.

No atheist even disputes it. But this is not the question.

The real question is, Are contingent existences intelligible

or cognizable in themselves or by themselves alone?

    If congtingents can be known in or by themselves alone,

we wish the professor would tell us how from intuition of

them he can conclude the necessay, or why the necessary

is requisite to explain their existence. If the effect, in 

and by itself, is intelligible, intuition or knowledge of it can

furnish no indication that it cannot exist in and of itself-can

suggest neither the fact nor the necessity of cause of reason

of its existence beyond itself. It is because effects are unintel-

ligible in and by themselves, that we conclude they are

caused; it is because they are inconceivable without something

that has caused them, that we infer from them a creator.

Besides, cause and effect, necessary and contingent, creator and 

creature, are correlative terms, and correlative terms connote

each other; so that the one is never known or intelligible

without intuition of the other. The one does not simply

imply, it connotes the other, so that both are cognized in

one and the same cognition.

    St. Thomas says, indeed, that God is not demonstrable from

first principles, or by an argument from cause to effect,

but from the effect to the cause; and the five different

arguments he gives, or different methods of demonstrating

that God is, all conclude the cause from the effect: which is

unobjectionable, if the mind is understood to be simultaneously

in possession of the idea of cause affirmed in the intuition of 

the creative act of being as expressed in the ideal formula.

But, suppose the mind destitute of the intuition of the creative

act, or of the idea of cause, the effect could not furnish any

data from which to conclude it, because without it nothing

can be pronounced an effect, since effect is the correlative

of cause, and is intelligible only in its relation to cause, that

is, in its relation as an effect, the only sense in which it im-

plies or connotes the cause. St. Thomas always assumes that

the mind is in possesssion of the idea of cause, which he holds

to be a first principle without which no demonstration is 

possible. We think Professor Hill by a more careful exami-

nation will be satisfied that the principle of demonstration is 

not the principle of contradiction, which is passive and

negative, but the principle of causality, which is intuitively

supplied by the creative act of being, and of which it is 

the type.

    But we repeat that what is not is not intelligible. What is

not is nothing; and nothing, with all deference to the able

and learned editor-in chief of The Catholic World, cannot be

even an object of thought, therefore not intelligible, for in-

telligibleness is in being, not in not-being. Hence we main-

tain that science is of the real, not of the unreal; that the

principles of science and the principles of things of reality

are identical. Therefore, as we have already said and shown,

things must be known, if known at all, as they really exist,

and in their real relations. Creatures, contingent existences,

do not exist in themselves. "Le realta contingenti non sono

per se intelligibili, ma soltanto in virtu dell' idea eterna,"

says Professor Rossi, C.M., who adds in a note: "Se il con-

thingente non ha in se la ragione della sua esistenza non e per

se intelligibile; perche I'intelligibilita d'una cosa giace nella

sua ragione." (Ib., Art. viii, No. 251.) The induction or

demonstration of the Divine Being from contingent existences,

if we deny the ideal formula, concludes nothing, and the God

demonstrated is only a generalization, and no real or con-

crete being. Concede the formula, or the intuition, by the 

object or idea, of the formula, Ens creat existentias, the

demonstration is complete. But Professor Hill's system

denies this intuition, which St. Thomas does not, though he

may not distinctly assert it; and in so far nullifies his only

demonstration of the Divine Being.

    Professor Hill, if he understands himself, must accept the

doctrine of the Genovese philosopher and theologian, that 

contingents are not intelligible per se, for he says, p. 149:

"Error is refuted and truth demonstrated only by principles

that are known per se, i. e., are self-evident, necessary, and 

immutable." Principles which are self-evident are principles

which evidence, that is, affirm themselves: precisely what we

ourselves assert of the ideal formula. Now, how can that which

does not exist per se, has not the principle of its existence in

itself, be self-evident, or evidence itself per se? Contingents

have not the principle of their existence in themselves, do not

exist per se. How, then, can they be intelligible per se, or be

known except by virtue of the self-evident, necessary and

immutable principles, that is, again, which evidence or

affirm themselves; that is, again, which are given intuitively

by ens, the light and object of the intellect? These principles

are evidently not in contigent existence, for they are nec-

essary and immutable; yet without them truth cannot be

demonstrated: them it is impossible to demonstrate the Divine

Being without the intition of principles not contained in

contingents, not furnished by them, and without which they

themselves are unintelligible?

    Thus far we have ake but little progress in the critical

examination of professor Hill's "Elements of Philosophy,"

for, contrary to our wont, we have suffered ourselves to be

put in great measure on our defence, and have, to no

little extent, been engaged in explaining and vindicating the

philosophy we oppose to the school he defends. We own

that in this we have been diverted from our oniginal design,

and have, in consequence, been obliged to go over much

ground which we had previously traversed, and to repeat

explanations and proofs of which we were already weary.

Nobody, till instructed by experience, can conceive how

hard it is to get the mind of a thorough-bred schoolman,

accustomed to the subtile distinctions, sub-distinctions, and

abstractions of the schools, out of its grooves, and to induce

him to look at things in the simple light of common-sense.

Why, we had to labor for hours with a professor of philo-

sophy to a post-graduate class in a renowned college, to 

get him to admit the truism, "Nothing is nothing," and did

not succeed even at last. The most we could get from him

was, "That depends on the sense in which you use the word

nothing." He seemed very much inclined to maintain that

nothing is something!  He was disposed to refine on the

word, and could not see that the assertion, nothing is nothing

is the English equivalent of the Latin assertion, "Nihil

est nihil."  We spent half a day in the vain effort to 

prove that the ideal formula, Ens creat existentias, is not

pantheistic; another half day, also in vain, in trying to

prove to him that there is an essential difference between the

synthetic philosophy we hold and the ontologism reprobated

by the Holy See. When once routine philosophers get the

idea in their heads that one not of their class holds such or

such a doctrine, although his system in no sense favors it,

it is next to impossible, if a doctrine not generally received

in the schools, to get it out, and to convince him of his

error and the injustice he does to his neighbor. It is this

dulness of apprehension, on the part of philosophers, in

respect of systems not strictly accordant with their own,

their nearly total incapacity to do justice to doctrines which

differ from those in which they have been trained, that

forces us to repeat our views and explanations to satiety.

We cannot divest ourselves of the hope, proved vain by

bitter experience, that at last we may hit upon some form of

statement that will prove successful. The schoolmen,

professors, and teachers of ancient Greece were called

sophists, a word originally of noble import, and naming a

most honorable and useful class, for sophist meant a sage;

but Socrates and Plato found them the bitterest enemies of

real science, and the greatest obstacles to scientific progress.

The class, though the term has become a term of contempt,

remains, and retains all its old instincts and pettifogging

spirit. We sometimes, in our moments of impatience, wish

that a new Socrates or Plato might arise, to cover, by keen

wit and polished irony, our modern sophists with ridicule.

But this is only momentary, when we have under our eyes

some newspaper article on Brownson's Philosophy. But

enough, and too much, of this.