AN INTRODUCTION TO

PHILOSOPHY
BY

PAUL J. GLENN, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Professor of Philosophy in the College of St. Charles Borromeo,
Columbus, Ohio

B. HERDER BOOK CO.
15 & 17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS 2, MO.
AND
33 QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W. C.

1944

Mt. Angel Abbey Library
St. Benedict, Oregon 973/i

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Printed in U.S.A.

IMPRIMATUR

4* James J. Hartley, D.D.
Bishop of Columbus

Dec. 16, 1943

Copyright 1944
B. HERDER BOOK CO.

Vad-Ballou Press, Inc,, Binghamton and New Norte

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

WITH AFFECTION AND REVERENCE
TO

MY FIRST TEACHERS AND MY LIFELONG FRIENDS,

THE MOTHER SETON SISTERS OF CHARITY

of Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

PREFACE
An Introduction to Philosophy ought to live up to its name.
It should tell the young collegian, and the presumably older non­
collegian who takes it up with serious intent, a number of im­
portant things. It should answer the questions naturally to be
expected of the person who wishes to be introduced,-—questions
such as these : What is philosophy ? How did it come into exist­
ence ? What interesting things have happened to develop it or to
hinder its development? What great names are identified with
its effort? What have the bearers of these names done for
philosophy? Is there a single true philosophy? Can there be a
really false philosophy ? Can one know true from false ? What,
in outline, are the things philosophy speaks of?
Some such litany of inquiries, duly adapted, would be recited,
—at least inaudibly in his own mind and heart,—by any nor­
mally curious human being about to be introduced to a Person­
age. And philosophy is as interesting and as exciting as any
Personage, even if he were spelled in capitals throughout.
This book attempts to introduce the reader or student to
philosophy by answering the sort of questions just listed. It tells,
in the somewhat dry and dusty fashion exacted by the needful
compression of much in small space, the story of philosophy:
its birth, its experiences, and even discusses its ancestry. It sets
forth numerous samples of the language of philosophy, and in­
sists upon a clear understanding of these terms. It tells of true
philosophy, and of many a system of doctrines that tries to
justify itself as true philosophy. It follows the winding course
of philosophy through the centuries and down to our own. Then
it sets forth the content of philosophy, the seven master sciences
which are the departments of philosophy in its rounded and
V

vi

PREFACE

complete form. All this the present manual attempts to do. Such
value as the book may have lies all in this attempt. The intro­
duction may be a stumbling and half-inarticulate thing, but if it
brings minds into familiar and appreciative communion, it can
claim value despite its defects and stutterings.
It is hoped that this Introduction will really introduce many
minds to the Queen of Human Sciences. After that is done, the
personal efforts of each individual must determine whether he
is to retire to the remembrance of a regal smile, or to be held
as a favored courtier close to the queenly throne.

P.J.G.
College of St. Charles Borromeo,
Columbus, Ohio.

CONTENTS
FAGE

Preface ........ ...............................................................
Introduction.......................................

v
i

PART FIRST
The Origin

and

Growth

of

Philosophy

CHAPTER

The Beginnings of Philosophy....................................................... 27
Article 1. The Roots of Philosophy.................................................. 27
Article 2. The Emergence of Philosophy............................................ 36
II. The Development of Philosophy...................................................... 47
Article I. The Philosophy of Socrates and Plato
.... 47
Article 2. The Philosophy of Aristotle............................................ 65
Article 3. The Course of Philosophy after Aristotle .... 82
III. The Perfecting of Philosophy . *. ..................................................... 93
Article 1. The Factors of Perfection in Philosophy .... 93
Article 2. Some Great Philosophers of the Age of Perfection . 101
IV. The Course of Philosophy to Our Times..................................... 118
Article I. Transition from Medieval to Modern Philosophy . .118
Article 2. The Philosophy of the Last Three Centuries . . .131
I.

PART SECOND
The Questions of Philosophy
I. The Logical Question....................................................................... 161
Article 1. The Operations of the Mind........................................... 161
Article 2. Ideas and Terms............................................................ 168
Article 3. Judgments and Propositions ........ 174
Article 4. Reasoning and Argument.......................................
. 182
II. The Critical Question....................................................................... 194
Article I. Truth and Certitude...................................................... 194
Article 2. Various Doctrines on Certitude..................................... 199
Article 3. The Sources of Certitude................................................ 214
Article 4. Scientific Certitude and its Acquisition..........................223
vii

viii
CHAPTER

CONTENTS
PAGE

III. The Ontological Question................................................................. 227
Article 1. The Nature of Being.......................................................227
Article 2. The Properties of Being................................................ 237
Article 3. The Classificationof Being............................................. 246
Article 4. The Emergence of Created Being..................................... 251
IV. The Cosmological Question............................................................258
Article 1. The Nature of the Bodily World..................................... 258
Article 2. The Origin and Development of the Bodily World . 278
Article 3. The Fact of Finality in the Bodily World .... 28s
V. The Psychological Question.......................................................... 294
Article 1. Life in Plants and Animals...........................................294
Article 2. Life in Human Beings...................................................... 308
VI.
The Theological Question......................................................... 331
Article 1. The Existence of God...................................................... 331
Article 2. The Nature of God............................................................347
Article 3. The Activity of God...................................................... 355
VII.
The Ethical Question.....................................
367
Article 1. General Ethics................................................................. 367
Article 2. Individual and SocialEthics.............................................381
Index.................................................................................................................... 397

AN INTRODUCTION TO
PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
I. The Name Philosophy ; 2. Definition of Philosophy; 3. Object
of Philosophy; 4. Importance of Philosophy; 5. Identification
of the True Philosophy; 6. Division of This Treatise.

I. The Name Philosophy: The word philosophy is a com­
bination of two Greek nouns, philia which means “love” or
“friendship,” and sophia which means “wisdom.” We may there­
fore translate the word philosophy as “the love of wisdom.” A
philosopher, consequently, is “a lover of wisdom.”
Translating a word is one way of expressing its nominal
definition. For a nominal definition (called so from the Latin
nominalis which means “having reference to a nomen or name”')
tells what a name means. A nominal definition explains a name,
but sometimes it tells very little about the thing which has the
name. Of much greater value and importance is real definition
(called so from the Latin realis which means “having reference
to a reality or thing”). For while nominal definition explains
the name of a thing, real definition explains the thing itself. Still,
there is sometimes much enlightenment to be found in studying
aptly formed names. This is so in the case of philosophy. We shall
therefore pause briefly to consider the nominal definition of
philosophy. Afterwards we shall study its real definition.
We have legend, if not history, to tell us that the word philoso­
phy was coined by Pythagoras in the 6 century B.c. This ancient
Greek teacher is praised for his humility or his clear-sightedness,
I

2

INTRODUCTION

—which cornes to much the same thing,—in recognizing the
fact that a man, by the use of his unaided natural powers, can
never attain to wisdom pure and simple. He can be, and should
be, a lover of wisdom, a seeker after wisdom. But he may never
presume to call himself absolutely wise. And hence Pythagoras
called his own deep studies, not wisdom, but the love or the quest
of wisdom; that is, he called these studies philosophy.
Not long after Pythagoras there appeared in Greece men of
wide influence but of inferior mind who proudly called them­
selves “the enlightened” or “the wise” (as who should say “the
intelligentsia”) ; the name in Greek is sophoi. History has per­
mitted these persons to keep the name thus usurped, and knows
them as The Sophists. But it is a tidy piece of irony that the name
Sophist has come to mean, not a man truly wise, but a pretender
and a quack. “Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”
We wonder what lies in store for the prideful modern “intellec­
tuals” who make a religion of the latest apparent findings of ma­
terial science. Doubtless their place is already set among the
antic-comedians on the stage of coming time, and futurity will
use them for its mirth, yea, for its laughter.
Philosophy, nominally or by virtue of the word as a name,
means the love of wisdom. The words love and wisdom call for
a moment’s attention.
Love, in its fundamental meaning, is the tendency or drive of
the will towards an object. It is an act and a state of the will, not
a tender sentiment or affection. Sometimes, indeed, the will-act
and the will-state of love are attended by soft feeling, but this is
not always or necessarily the case. It is important to notice and
to remember this fact in a day when the cinema and light fiction
have distorted and almost destroyed the true meaning of the
word love.—Love is of two types, called by the learned desiring
Jove and well-wishing love (or, in the ancient Latin terminology,
amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae'). Desiring love
tends to possess its object ; well-wishing love tends to do good to
its object. Manifestly, the love of wisdom which we call philoso-

INTRODUCTION

3

phy is desiring love. It is love which finds expression in effort, in
quest, in striving to possess and to retain wisdom.
And what is this wisdom which philosophy seeks ? Wisdom is
not the same as knowledge, for a person might know much and
still be unwise. Wisdom indeed involves knowledge, but it also
includes the ability, the inclination, and the steady purpose of
putting knowledge to good use. St. Thomas Aquinas (12251274) says in his book Summa Contra Gentiles that a man is to
be called wise when he knows what he has to do and plans and
manages to do it well. Thus wisdom involves several things:
an end or purpose to be attained ; an appreciative knowledge of
this purpose ; an ability, an inclination, and a steadfast effort to
achieve the known purpose in the best possible manner. Thus it
is wisdom to work for a known good purpose in a steady, de­
voted, and enlightened way. Such is wisdom considered sub­
jectively, that is, in its subject, in the person who possesses it.
Taking the term wisdom in an objective sense (that is, as a thing
in itself, independent of a possessor) and regarding it in a most
general way, we may say that wisdom is the sum-total of the
things worth knowing and working for, which can attract the
best efforts of the best minds and wills. This is the wisdom
which philosophy pursues. This is that deepest knowledge, that
altissima scientia, of which philosophy is the love and the untir­
ing quest.
2. Definition of Philosophy : The real definition of phi­
losophy, as contrasted with the nominal definition already dis­
cussed, tells us that philosophy is the science of all things natu­
rally knowable to man’s unaided powers, in so far as these things
are studied in their deepest causes and reasons. We shall pres­
ently ponder each phrase of this definition. But first it will be
well to inspect the meaning of the term philosophy as it is loosely
employed in casual speech.
r
We often hear such expressions as these : “the philosophy of
education,” “the philosophy of religion,” “business philosophy,”

4

INTRODUCTION

“the philosophy of history,” “the American philosophy of life,”
“the philosophy of style.” Now what does the term philosophy
mean in all these uses, or what, at least, does it suggest ? It sug­
gests, first of all, a body of reasoned truths or of conclusions re­
garded as truths. Further, it suggests that these truths are the
background, the basis, and the ultimate explanation of the thing
to which they are referred as “a philosophy.” Thus the expression
“the philosophy of education” suggests a body of reasoned truths
(or principles, or “values”) which give meaning to the word
education, which show the worth of education, and which indi­
cate, in a basic way, the best means of achieving and imparting it.
Again, the expression “the philosophy of style,”—that is, of
literary style,—means, as it does in Herbert Spencer’s little book
which bears that title, the root-reasons which are back of all the
rules of grammar and rhetoric. Therefore, “the philosophy” of
anything suggests the sum-total and system of reasoned truths
which are back of the thing and give it meaning. Of any activity
or procedure, of any plan, of any programme, of any “way of
life,” the reasoned basis is called its philosophy. Here, of course,
we have the term philosophy in a very restricted meaning, even a
metaphorical meaning ; philosophy thus restricted comes close to
what people usually mean when they use that horrible misnomer
ideology. We have no quarrel with such a restricted use of the
term, but it is not in this sense that we employ it in the present
treatise. In this study we use the term philosophy to indicate the
science of all things knowable, the science which is “man’s ulti­
mate effort to interpret the universe” ; we do not use the term to
mean the basis of some one effort or some one phase of human
activity or interest. We do not speak of the philosophy of this or
that; we speak of philosophy. Our concern is philosophy in its
first meaning as the universal science, not in its restricted or
metaphorical meaning as a special or particularized science.
Reverting now to the real definition of philosophy, we find
that we have called it the science of all things naturally knowable
to man’s unaided powers in so far as these things are studied in

INTRODUCTION

5

their deepest, their ultimate, causes and reasons. This definition
must be learned with care ; we must be sure of the precise mean­
ing of its every phrase.
a) Philosophy is a science.·—Science, considered objectively,
is a body of related data, set forth systematically, expressed with
completeness, and presented together with the evidence (proofs
and explanations) which justifies and establishes these data as
certain and true. Science, considered subjectively, is scientific
knowledge in the mind of a person; it is knowledge that is
rounded, systematic, evidenced, and complete.
A science is (objectively) any branch or department of things
knowable which presents related data with certitude, prooj, sys­
tem, completeness. A science (subjectively) is a person’s certain,
evidenced, systematic, rounded knowledge of things knowable.
When we say that philosophy is a science, we take the term
science objectively. We mean that philosophy is a body of re­
lated data that is systematic, complete, evidenced, and certain.
It is to be noted in passing that the evidence or proof requisite
for a science is not merely experimental or laboratorian evidence.
Evidence may also be (as in the case of pure mathematics)
reasoned or rational evidence. This point is important because
many teachers- of our times have presumed to limit science to
the domain of the laboratorian and the statistician, arbitrarily
ruling out rational evidence from the realm of true science. Such
a ruling is blind and brazen impudence ; it is also self-contradic­
tory. For no amount of laboratorian data, no number of experi­
ments, no catalogue of statistics, can amount to scientific evidence
unless reason reduces them to unity and order and draws con­
clusions from them. And neither the nature and value of reason­
ing nor the basic force of the conclusions drawn by reason can
be tested by laboratorian devices or proved by experimental
methods. We therefore reject the positivistic, sensistic, material­
istic, and empiricist doctrine that pure reasoning is of no scien­
tific value. Philosophy is a rational or reasoned science, not a
laboratorian science. Philosophy does indeed use the findings

6

INTRODUCTION

of the laboratorian sciences, but it is not confined or hampered
by their limitations. It sheds its great light upon the data of the
laboratory sciences, serving the scientist as daylight serves the
laborer or the mechanic, and, in its turn, it draws from them il­
lustration and even direction for its efforts. But it is not fettered
by their methods or subjected to their special requirements.
b) Philosophy is the science of all knowable things.—In a day
of intense specialization, it seems silly to say that there is a single
science of everything. Nearly all the sciences we know of, and
notably the positive sciences which keep our laboratorians busy,
are partial or departmental sciences. Each of these deals with a
branch of knowledge, and each is divided into almost endless
departments and sub-departments. In the face of this bewildering
maze of sciences, how can we think of one science which em­
braces in its scope every possible object of human knowing? Yet
there inevitably is such a science. Even those who scoff at the
assertion of its bare possibility are forced to assume its existence
and to build their findings upon it as a necessary base. A little
thought will convince anyone that there must be such a science ;
the difficulty suggested by the variety and multiplicity of partial
sciences is merely a seeming difficulty. Cardinal Mercier has an
enlightening word to say on this point in his Manual of Modern
Scholastic Philosophy (p. 2) : “Philosophy does not profess to
be a particularized science with a place alongside other such
sciences and a restricted domain of its own for investigation ; it
comes after the particular sciences and ranks above them, deal­
ing in an ultimate fashion with their respective objects, inquiring
into their connections and the relations of these connections,
until it finally arrives at notions so simple that they defy analysis
and so general that there is no limit to their application. So under­
stood, philosophy will exist as long as there are men endowed
with the ability and energy to push the inquiry of reason to its
furthest limit. So understood, it is a living fact, and it has a his­
tory of more than two thousand years.”
Indeed, as the Cardinal goes on to point out, it is impossible

INTRODUCTION

7

to have any particularized science without some fundamental
grasp or some assumption of universal truths. The very existence
of particularized or partial sciences affirms the existence of a
non-particularized science, that is, of philosophy. For it is as
impossible to have a partial science without reference to a uni­
versal science as it is impossible to have words without reference
to a language, or even to have parts without reference to a whole.
Not that philosophy is the simple sum-total of partial sciences.
No, the relation of the particular sciences to philosophy is not
the relation of constituent parts or elements to a totality which
is their sum; rather, it is the relation of elements to a reality
which is other and greater than themselves. Somewhat similarly,
a building which is called a triumph of architecture is something
other and something greater than any or all of the bricks and
beams used in constructing it. A living plant is something more
than a simple sum of parts. A language is more than a list of
words ; a literature more than a sum of sentences. The glorious
harmonies of a musical masterpiece make something other and
greater than a sum of notes. To dwell for a moment on the last
illustration, we may notice that the harmonies of a musical com­
position “come after and rank above” the individual notes that
make it up. The composition is not a simple addition of note to
note; it involves more than single notes or chords sounded in
sequence; it involves notes and chords in their relations, their
interpretations, their fusions in a reality which is both other and
greater than themselves. So philosophy which is the science of
all things, and therefore includes all other sciences and their ob­
jects, comes after and ranks above the partial sciences, and is
other and greater than the sum-total of all these. Philosophy
achieves its place by drawing into basic unities the vast and be­
wildering world of knowables with which all other sciences deal
piecemeal.
c) Philosophy is the science of all things naturally knowable
to man.—Philosophy investigates all that man can know by the
use of his unaided knowing-powers; that is, by the use of his

8

INTRODUCTION

intellect or reason working upon the data gathered by his senses.
Philosophy does not investigate what man has come to know by
Divine Revelation, except, indeed, in so far as he could have
known this without such revelation. For this reason philosophy is
called a human science in contrast with the divine science of Chris­
tian Theology. Philosophy, indeed, is the queen of human sci­
ences.
Sometimes philosophy is described as “the handmaid of the­
ology.” This title is most honorable, and it is thoroughly justi­
fied. For the truths which philosophy discovers, discusses, and
proves are in perfect alignment with truths divinely revealed.
Philosophical truths, moreover, help a person to grasp and ap­
preciate revealed truths. Further, the systematic procedure of
philosophy suggests itself as the best and noblest instrument for
setting forth the truths of theological science. Thus, in these
several ways, philosophy serves theology, or, more precisely,
serves man in his study and appreciation of theology. Since this
service of philosophy to theology is the service of the human to
the divine science, it is aptly described as the service of a hand­
maid. Now, certain mistaken minds,—some of which are mali­
cious as well as mistaken,·—interpret the phrase “the handmaid
of theology” to mean “the slave of theology.” These minds, out
of an abundance of ignorance which misses the clearest truths of
history, suggest that Catholic philosophers, in times past, have
bent and twisted philosophy to make it support revealed truth.
Nothing could be further from the fact. True philosophy does
support Revelation. Naturally so. For the power of reason by
which man discovers and proves truths is a gift of the same God
who has supernaturally revealed certain truths. There is no con­
tradiction in God; hence there can be no contradiction in His
manifestations of truth, whether these be made naturally through
the activity of sound minds or supernaturally through His re­
vealed Word. No twisting or bending of philosophy is required
to make it serve theology. Philosophy is by nature the devoted
handmaid of theology, not its shackled and tortured slave.

INTRODUCTION

9

d) Philosophy is the science of all things naturally knowable
to man inasmuch as these are studied in their deepest causes and
reasons.—The quest of philosophy is an ultimate one. Philoso­
phy seeks bed-rock for the edifice of human knowledge. Every
science looks for causes and reasons to evidence its data ; philoso­
phy seeks the last, the ultimate, the deepest causes and reasons.
Philosophy, therefore, stands unique among human sciences.
The partial or particularized sciences,—such as physics, chemis­
try, biology,—must be satisfied with proximate causes and
reasons, that is, with those that are more or less ready to hand.
For each of the partial sciences works in a very restricted field,
and must find justification for its data within that field or in im­
mediately related fields. Philosophy, however, is not so re­
stricted ; philosophy is not immediately or necessarily concerned
with proximate causes ; it wants the ultimate, the root-deep evi­
dence for its truths.
To illustrate the contrast between the particular sciences and
philosophy, consider a block of limestone. Mathematical science
is interested in it solely as quantity. Physics looks to its mass and
and inertia. Chemistry wants to know the substantial bodily
constituents (the elements) that compose it. Now, philosophy
ignores quantity, physical properties, and chemical constitution
(although it does not deny these things). Philosophy poses an.
ultimate question; it asks, “What, in the deepest sense of the
inquiry, is this thing called a block of limestone?” Philosophy
does not, like mathematics, inquire about the size or measure­
ment of the limestone. It does not, like physics, investigate quali­
ties or properties of limestone. It does not, like chemistry, seek
to know which other bodily realities (called elements) make up
this bodily reality called limestone. Philosophy asks what this
limestone is. The other sciences accept the basic fact, the deepest
reality, of the block of limestone ; they take this for granted ; they
do not seek to investigate it. But it is precisely this deepest
reality, ignored or blindly assumed by the partial sciences, that
focusses the inquiry of philosophy. Philosophy asks, “What, ulti­

ίο

INTRODUCTION

mately, is this limestone?” Well, it is a thing or reality; it is a
substantial reality; it is a bodily reality. Fundamentally, ulti­
mately, this limestone is a substantial reality of the bodily order;
more briefly, it is a body. And as such, as a body, the limestone
block engages the attention of philosophy. Notice here what an
immense world of knowable things is drawn into unity in the
one concept or idea of body. Notice too how truly ultimate is the
quest of philosophy as contrasted with the effort of partial sci­
ences to gain proximate justification for their conclusions. We
have here something that should give us a grasp of the truth
that philosophy can be, and is, a science of all things knowable
(despite the endless variety and multiplicity of these things),
and that philosophy penetrates as deeply as the human mind can
go in its investigation of reality.
Philosophy seeks to trace things actual and things possible to
their last discernible causes and reasons. Now a cause is anything
that contributes in any way to the producing or the maintaining
of a reality. A reason is whatever helps in any way to explain a
reality to the inquiring mind. A cause contributes to the becom­
ing or the being of a reality; a reason contributes,to a person’s
understanding of a reality. In a word, a cause produces or main­
tains, a reason explains.
All reality must be either produced or unproduced. If pro­
duced, it is caused, it is an effect. One effect may, in turn, become
the cause of a further effect. But the chain of cause-and-effect
is not endless, nor can it be endless. Working back along this
chain, we inevitably must come to a First Cause which is not
produced, not an effect of a prior cause (for it is first). There
must be a First Cause, existing of its own necessity, by its own
unbounded and supreme excellence. And this Cause is, and must
be, one. There is only one First or Primary Cause. All other
causes in the universe, whether actual or merely conceivable, are
effects before they are causes. As causes then they are not pri­
mary, but secondary. The one First or Primary Cause is God.
God is First ; He has no cause or causes of Himself ; He is un-

INTRODUCTION

II

produced; He is not an effect. Yet God is somehow knowable
(even as He is here shown to be knowable in the present train of
argument) ; God is recognizable; God is explainable to the in­
quiring mind. All of which proves that while there are no causes
of God, there are reasons which explain to the mind the existence
and the excellence of God. Notice and remember this truth : All
reality other than God has both causes and reasons; God has no
causes but only reasons.
Now, when we know the cause of anything we have at least a
partial explanation of that thing; therefore, every cause is a
reason. But there are reasons other than causes; therefore, not
every reason is a cause. Further, a reality, even if it lack causes
(as does God) cannot lack reasons; for reality as such is know­
able, graspable, understandable. Hence, everything is explain­
able ; everything has its reasons; this is true even if the reasons
elude the grasp of man’s imperfect mind. In a word nothing can
exist without a sufficient or fully-accounting reason for its exist­
ence. This is the meaning of the familiar Latin axiom Nihil sine
ratione sufficienti existentiae suae. Literary folk like to refer to
this truth as the necessity for a raison d’être.
Causes are of four chief types; these are called, respectively,
material, formal, effecting, final. A bodily reality is the product
or effect of all four types of cause ; a spiritual reality is the effect
of the last three types, for a spirit has no material cause. A ma­
terial cause is the bodily stuff out of which a body is made. A
formal cause gives “form” or character or definiteness or deter­
minateness to a reality, making it that thing formally or as such;
and this, whether one considers a substantial or an accidental
reality ; hence a formal cause is either a substantial formal cause
(such as that which makes a silver statue silver) or an accidental
formal cause (such as that which makes a silver statue six inches
high). An effecting cause produces an effect by its activity or
operation. A fined cause is the goal which invites dr indicates the
aim of the activity of the effecting cause.
Philosophy is interested in all types of causes and in all reasons,

12

INTRODUCTION

but only in so far as these are ultimate or serve as means to the
discovery of the ultimate explanation of reality. Herein we
notice once more one of the unifying characteristics of philoso­
phy, and we are enabled to grasp something of the possibility of
a single science which deals with all knowables. For the multitude
of sciences that exist today to amaze us with their endless variety
are largely a tissue of proximate causes and effects, and of reasons
immediate and often provisional. Philosophy, by entering the
ultimate realms of investigation, is able to unify, clarify, and en­
hance the many and various findings of the particular sciences.

3. Object of Philosophy : When we speak casually of “an
object” we may mean a reality or thing, as when we talk of
“visible objects” or “objects of value” or “objects of art.” Or we
may mean the end, aim, or purpose of an action, fact, or event, as
when we speak of “the object of a visit” or “the object of a plan
or programme” or “the object of a meeting.”
Now, when we speak of the object of a science we employ the
term object in an ancient technical sense. First of all, the object
of a science is what the science treats of; it is what we loosely
call “the subject-matter” of the science. In this sense the object
of a science is known as the material object. Thus, for example,
the material object of the science of geology is the earth; the
material object of the science of physiology is the human body ;
the material object of the science of astronomy is the world of
heavenly bodies. Hence when we speak of the material object of
a science we name, in general, the field in which the science
works.—In a second and more penetrating meaning, the object
of a science is what gives the science its precise character, its
“form” as the ancients would say. It is that which makes a sci­
ence this determinate science, formally or as such, and marks it
off from other sciences in the same general field. In this sense
the object of a science is called the formal object. Now, that
which gives a science its accurate and determinate character is
its point of approach, its aim and purpose, and the principles

INTRODUCTION

13

which guide it or light its way. Thus geology which studies the
earth as its material object is concerned with the rocky structure
of the earth, and not with the shape or size of fertility or divisions
of the earth. We say : the material object of geology is the earth;
the formal object of geology is the rocky structure of the earth.
Many sciences may work in the same field; therefore many
sciences may have the same material object. But no two sciences
deal with the material object in precisely the same way and with
the same end in view ; should they do so they would coalesce as
one science. Hence no two sciences can have the same formal
object. Sciences are distinguished one from another by their
objects, and, in last analysis, by their complete formal objects.
To illustrate this, consider the sciences of anatomy, physiology,
and hygiene. All three of these sciences have the same material
object, namely, the organs of the human body. But these three
sciences have not the same formal object. Anatomy studies its
material object for the purpose of knowing structure; physiology
studies the same material object for the purpose of knowing
function; hygiene studies the same material object for the pur­
pose of knowing how to maintain normality and health.
The material object of philosophy is reality, that is, “all things
knowable.” The formal object of philosophy is reality in its final
explanation, that is, “studied in its deepest, its ultimate causes
and reasons.” Philosophy is at one with all sciences in its material
object, for all sciences deal with reality, although each particular
science has but a limited part of reality in its scope while philoso­
phy has all. But philosophy stands alone, stands unique, in its
quest of ultimate causes and reasons. Philosophy is distinguished
from every other science by its formal object.
There was once great confusion on the question of the distinc­
tion between philosophy and theology. The difficulty was this:
Philosophy deals with all knowables in an ultimate manner. So
does theology. For all knowables may be summed up in two
words, Creator and creature, or in two equivalent words, God
and the universe. It would seem then, since both theology and

14

INTRODUCTION

philosophy deal with God and the universe in an ultimate way,
that these two sciences coalesce as one. St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225—1274) cleared up the difficulty. He showed that the for­
mal object is itself twofold : the formal object as aim, purpose, or
special aspect, and the formal object as guiding principle or light.
The former he called “the formal object which” (objectum
formale quod) ; the latter he called “the formal object whereby”
(objectum formale quo). Now, philosophy deals with all knowables (its material object) in an ultimate manner (formal object
which) under the unaided light of the human mind (formal ob­
ject whereby). Theology, on the other hand, deals with its
material object (all knowables—God and creatures) in an ulti­
mate manner (formal object which) under the light of Divine
Revelation (formal object whereby). Stating the principle:
sciences are distinguished one from another by their respective
formal objects and ultimately by the formal object “whereby,”
St. Thomas drew a clear line of distinction between philosophy
and theology.
We may state the object of philosophy as follows :
Material Object : all things knowable; all reality;
Formal Object Quod: reality as knowable in its ultimate
explanations ;
Formal Object Quo: reality knowable in its ultimate ex­
planations under the light and effort of man’s unaided
reasoning power.

4. Importance of Philosophy: On the face of things, it
is unquestionably important for us to know what man has
accomplished through the centuries by the closest and most
intense use of his mind. It is manifestly important to know some­
thing of man’s quest into the heart of reality and to read some
of the results of that quest.
We all acknowledge the importance of knowing man’s deeds,
his dreams, his plans and policies, his management of affairs,
his aspirations. Still greater must be the importance of knowing

INTRODUCTION

15

man’s achievements in the high domain of the intellect. To follow
the course of human efforts to learn ultimate truth; to be cul­
turally enriched by a knowledge of what these efforts have won ;
to be helped by this knowledge to avoid the calamitous mistakes
of the past ; to achieve in all this a real enlightenment of mind,—
surely this is to pursue most noble aims. Now, the earnest study
of philosophy and its course through history is the one direct
means of pursuing such aims. Can there be any doubt then that
philosophy is a science of tremendous importance ?
Father Stanislaus Lortie in his Elementa Philosophiae Chris­
tianae (Vol. I, p. 4 f. ) says that philosophy is of great importance
(a) to individual persons, (&) to human society, (c) to the
Christian Faith, and (d) to all the particular sciences.—(a) The
individual finds in the study of philosophy a splendid means of
exercising-both understanding and will : the understanding is
stimulated by the quest of ultimate truth; the will is stirred
by basically known truth to choose what is truly good, (δ) Hu­
man society finds its condition improved as its members advance
in the knowledge of truths fundamental to the social order, to
sound economics, to solid political science, (c) .The Christian
Faith is benefited by philosophy inasmuch as this science demon­
strates the truths which the Fathers of the Church called “The
Preamble of the Faith” ; further, philosophy is a splendid instru­
ment for the scientific exposition of the truths of Faith, and it
illuminates sacred doctrine by apt analogy and telling similitude.
Philosophy also defends the Faith against those who presume to
attack it in the name of reason ; for true philosophy shows that
there is, and must be, completest harmony between faith and
reason, between religion and science, (d) The particular sci­
ences find in philosophy,—as M. Jacques Maritain points out,—
their judge, their defender, and their governor. Yet, though
philosophy uses the particular sciences as instruments, and fur­
nishes to them their requisite basis of reasoned principles, it
never loses its queenly independence; it remains ever superior
to the particular sciences and is “pre-eminently free.”

16

INTRODUCTION

These, then, are the points in which philosophy shows its tre­
mendous importance : its intrinsic character ; its necessity to
man in individual and social life; its service to religion and to
scientific study; its rank and independence as the queen of hu­
man sciences.
No one should go unwillingly to the study of philosophy, sur­
rendering reluctantly to its imperious claims and taking up the
work as a dull and heavy duty. For philosophy is not only in­
escapably important for the person who seeks education and
culture ; it is also one of the most attractive and absorbing studies
that can engage the attention of any mind.

5. The Identification of True Philosophy: We have
defined philosophy as the science of all things naturally know­
able viewed in their last discernible causes and reasoiis. Ponder­
ing this definition, we conclude that a considerable amount of
time must have been required for the necessary viewing and
discerning. Philosophy, the greatest of human sciences, was not
developed in a day. It must have come to whatever objective
perfection it may now possess through the expenditure of great
effort long sustained.
Now, it is hardly conceivable, in this clamoring, arguing
world, that the development of philosophy has been a manifest
and steady growth, like that of a tree in a garden, a thing to be
recognized by every observer, and not to be mistaken or denied.
No, there must have been in ages past, there must be still today,
many and various philosophical efforts, some copiously fruitful,
some largely futile and false. Man has been slow of mind since
the original Fall; he has been in ignorance, subject to pride and
prejudice; he has been wildly capricious and wilful. Even the
story of man’s most serious and studious thinking cannot be a
simple record of steady achievement and constant agreement.
Quite the contrary, in fact. Hence there have been, and there are
now, multitudes of theories and of systems of theories which are
not true philosophy at all. There are, to use a graceless phrase,

INTRODUCTION

17

many “false philosophies.” Grains of truth are everywhere, of
course; no system of thought, however mistaken, can be so
wholly false as to exclude altogether every element of truth. But
there are endless systems and theories in the world (many of
them exhumed from ancient books and presented as sparklingly
new “interpretations of the universe”) which, in general charac­
ter, and in their speculative and practical conclusions, are false
and harmful to minds and souls. On the other hand, however,
much of man’s philosophical effort through the ages has led to
the discovering of ultimate truth; much of man’s mental labor
has been successful labor. And, since the effort to systematize
findings has been as continuous as the effort to know root-causes,
we must reasonably expect to find, somewhere in the world, a
comparatively complete and ultimate system which alone is en­
titled to the name of philosophy. In a word, there must be avail­
able now for the mind a true philosophy. It may not be wholly
perfect ; indeed, we cannot expect it to be that, since it is a human
achievement and will necessarily bear the mark of human limita­
tions. But, after two thousand years of tireless questing, there
must be now available a system of ultimate thought, of reasoned
truths, of which we say, “This is the best that the mind of man
has been able to achieve ; this system, more than any other, meets
at all points the requirements of fact, and of reason in its most
penetrating investigation of reality.” The philosophy of which
these words can justly be said is the true philosophy. Nor is it
true in any mere metaphorical sense, true because it seems ac­
ceptable, true because it is comparatively better than other sys­
tems. It must be true in fact, true actually, true in very truth.
If it be not so, then truth is simply not attainable by man’s mind.
For if two thousand years of the best efforts have produced a
best and tested system which is not a true system, how can we
hope that truth will be attained in two thousand years more, or
in two million ? How can we hope that man’s mind can achieve
philosophy at all? Unless we are prepared to accept the selfcontradiction and the insanity of complete skepticism, we must

i8

INTRODUCTION

admit, on the one hand, that the mind is capable of attaining
truth, and, on the other hand, we must acknowledge some success
where that capability has been exercised for studious centuries.
That man can go on learning is certain, but that man can utterly
change the pattern of his knowing, and can abandon all the most
certain and fundamental principles and data of his knowledge, is
so impossible as to be inconceivable. The true philosophy, then,
imperfect but still true and relatively perfect, must be here in the
world for the energetic and adequate mind to discover and em­
brace.
The modern mind is subject to a benighting influence in the
steady advance of experimental science. It is likely to conclude
that light and truth lie all ahead, and that the past was all a grop­
ing and mistaken time. One thought should serve to correct this
sort of blindness. If there is no eternal, unchanging, unaging
meaning in the words truth, knowledge, certitude, how do we
even know what we are after in all our splendid experiments?
How do we even know our aims, however far off in a glorious
future we choose to set their attainment? This thought should
lead to another : that philosophy is a system of ultimate truths
which must stand up, and stand unchanged, under all the new
findings of all the new sciences. True philosophy will throw its
light around the findings of the partial sciences, and will take
illustration of ultimate truths from what they offer. But this is
only saying what has already been said : “True philosophy must
meet at all points the requirements of fact and of reason.” True
philosophy welcomes and fosters the development of all sciences ;
the light of its ultimate truth finds new glories in them, as the
light of the sun flashes with new beauty when the prisms which
refract its ray are multiplied in number and variety.
We assert then that true philosophy exists in the world, and
that it is available to the human mind. Y et much “false philoso­
phy” is here too. How shall the true philosophy be known? What
criteria have we for identifying the true philosophy ?
First of all, true philosophical doctrine must exhibit itself as

INTRODUCTION

19

enduring, as historically continuous. Truth endures; error tends
to fall away, although it tends also to recur and reappear in new
guises. A doctrine which has managed to last, to weather storms
of skepticism and direct attack, to stand up and stand firm under
all the advances and extensions of human knowledge, has a claim
on our attention as true doctrine. It has proved its mettle ; it is
authentic ware. Further, doctrine which involves a necessity of
truth in itself, and has endured because it cannot be rationally
doubted or denied, is necessarily part of the true philosophy.
Again, in addition to lastingness, a true philosophical doc­
trine will fit in with others of its kind in a sort of interlocking
security, so that there is a true consistency in the system of such
truths. Philosophical truths cannot be like individual survivors
riding individual planks ; they must rather be amicable and mutu­
ally helpful survivors in a single boat,—the one ark of intellectual
salvation.
Still again, in addition to lastingness and interlocking con­
sistency, true philosophical doctrines must be changeless in them­
selves; they are not to be trimmed or shaded, contracted or
expanded. As the world grows older, as the sum of human knowl­
edge is extended, as science opens new doors and windows, the
truths of philosophy must show themselves over and over again,
and in more and more detail, to be the rays of a single glorious
sun. Truth is always truth. There is no such thing as a doctrine
becoming more true or less true, although, of course, there is
always the possibility of man’s learning more about what is in
itself changelessly true. Truth is eternally there. It may be dis­
covered in successive and increasingly larger views, but, in itself,
it neither grows, nor does it fade into falsity. Further, no truth
can be in conflict with any other truth. Where such conflicts seem
to exist, they are apparent, not real conflicts, or one of the con­
flicting things is falsity and not truth.
The course of human history shows a successive discovery
and application of ultimate truths. We discern, moving down
through the centuries, the stream of man’s philosophical achieve-

20

INTRODUCTION

ment. Sometimes the stream is clear and clean; sometimes it is
muddled with intermingled error. In one place its course is
straight and plain; in another it moves through bewildering
loops and curves. Here it is open, there it lies concealed by some
rank growth that obscures its channel. But the stream flows on,
flows ever, continuous, consistent, enduring.
Now, of all the doctrines propounded and defended by many
men of many ages, which are those that constitute this ever­
flowing stream of true philosophy? Which are the truths that
make the perennial philosophy, the philosophia perennis, the
philosophy which runs a course unbroken through the centuries ?
Well, we shall find that this philosophy is mainly Greek in its
origins, and mainly Aristotelian in its Grecian character. We
shall find that this philosophy has come, in the main, from Soc­
rates, Plato, and Aristotle,—but chiefly from Aristotle,—and
that it moved into Christian times to take new light and power
in the day of Christianity which succeeded the night of pagan
antiquity. We shall find it enriched by the genius of St. Augus­
tine in the 4 century; carried forward by religious men,—sole
preservers of things of the mind during the true Dark Ages,—
into the 9 century and the Revival of Learning under Charle­
magne and Alcuin. We shall find it taking more complete form
under the labor of the eloquent Roscelin, the deeply learned St.
Anselm, the keen but hesitant William of Champeaux, the fiery
and erratic Abelard. We shall find it rounding into perfection
under the power of the unequalled genius of the 13 century when
the greatest minds gave it their best efforts,·—William of Au­
vergne, Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the
Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus. After the 13
century, the philosophia perennis,—henceforth known as the
Scholastic philosophy or the philosophy of the schoolmen,—
moved through the years to our own day, often obscured, often
ignored, often and for long periods despised as outmoded by
those who knew little or nothing of its doctrines and their com­
pelling evidence. Despite continued and recurring obstacles and

INTRODUCTION

21

obscurities, this philosophy has ever been coming newly into
view, ever striving to assume and maintain its rightful place of
pre-eminence and control. Today it challenges the attention of
the best minds, and its influence widens hourly. Many of its most
notable modern exponents are called, perhaps regrettably, the
Neo-Scholastics,—the “neo” being a concession to current fash­
ion and a call for attention which, without it, would hardly be
bestowed.
The Scholastic philosophy, or, more precisely the GrecoScholastic philosophy, survives in the world today as the only
continuously existent and consistent system of philosophic
thought that man may find in all the records of his race. It rep­
resents the best that man has been able to do in his tireless quest
of root-reality. It is the one system that has any roundness or
completeness in its expression of the human philosophic effort,
that is, of the effort of the deepest and most earnest human
thought upon the ultimate unities which embrace all knowable
reality within their mighty scope. This blunt statement is ever
provocative of indignation and denial among non-Scholastics
with their broken and partial philosophies. But there the thing
stands. Like it or hate it, it is fact and not fiction. This is no
dictum of partisan minds, but the irrefutable declaration of hu­
man history.
Nor is this perennial philosophy, this acme of human achieve­
ment in “interpreting the universe,” a dry and dusty system of
statistical truths, set in an iron fixity that leaves nothing for the
student but the task of memorizing, and balks constructive think­
ing or advance in philosophic knowledge. No one who knows
anything of the Scholastic philosophy could so utterly miscon­
ceive it or so slanderously misrepresent it. The Scholastic phi­
losophy has been likened to a stream ; it is no stagnant pool. It
is a running, living, vitalizing stream, and its springs are ever­
flowing, fresh, clear, new as well as old. Indeed, it is the
non-Scholastic welter of philosophies that resembles the stale
standing water that can do no more than dry away and leave but

22

INTRODUCTION

fruitless and hardened clay. These futile “philosophies,” with
their opinions, their views, their approaches to this subject and
to that, can never give the human mind the certainty it requires
for constructive thinking; they can never bring knowledge to
flower or truth to glorious fruitfulness. It is these, and not the
perennial philosophy, which give a show of reason to the lay­
man’s notion that philosophers are mere idlers and misty-eyed
dwellers in a world of unreality.
Now, why should there be indignation and denial when the
unique claims of the Scholastic philosophy are presented ? There
are many minor reasons: the resentment of prideful minds
against any claim to uniqueness; the current substitution of
fashion for thought, which finds anything with the mark of the
past upon it an object for scoffing and derision; the ineptitude
that ignores history, and reduces knowledge to a set of charts
on the walls of a laboratory. Plain, brazen, unblinking ignorance
is another reason. But the major reason for modern resentment
against the claims of Scholasticism lies in this fact : the great
Scholastics of the past were Catholics and, for the most part,
churchmen, who, finding that divinely revealed truth may have
in philosophy a noble instrument for exposition and scientific
elaboration, applied their philosophic doctrines in the realm of
theology. Because, as a fact, Scholastic philosophy stands in
agreement with Catholic doctrine (and how could it be other­
wise, since both are true?) biassed minds have declared that the
Scholastics forced and twisted their philosophy to fit with their
religion ; that they warped its tenets into place as “Catholic phi­
losophy” ; that they shackled and enslaved philosophy to serve a
set system of theology. All this is, of course, quite untrue. The
philosophia perennis has not been warped or twisted ; it fits natu­
rally and nobly into its place as the free-serving and devoted
ancilla theologiae. Just as grace supposes nature and builds upon
it, so does Revelation suppose reason and ennobles and enlarges
its efforts and its scope. Y et the modern non-Scholastic will have
none of this. To him, Scholastic philosophy is Catholic philoso-

INTRODUCTION

23

phy. And Catholic philosophy is theological philosophy. Now,
nothing is more distasteful to the modern mind than theology.
For the first mark of pride is that it resents God, and the modern
mind is sadly tainted by pride.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as Catholic philoso­
phy. That is to say, there is no system of philosophical doctrines
built up for the purpose of supplying a reasoned basis for Cath­
olicity. True philosophy actually supplies such a reasoned basis,
but it has not been elaborated for that purpose. True philosophy
is naturally and inevitably the reasoned basis for true theology.
But, as it is the fate and the glory of the Catholic religion to
resemble its Divine Founder in being the object of hatred, abuse,
contempt, and misrepresentation on the part of those who do not
know and will not investigate its character, claims, and history,
so it is the fate and glory of the true philosophy which naturally
supports Catholicity to be the object of like evil sentiments and
activities on the part of persons who reject, with the smallest
and most cursory investigation, its irrefutable claims upon the
human mind.
At the outset of our study we assert the claims of Scholastic
philosophy to be the true philosophy. As we have said, there are
elements of truth scattered through many doctrines and many
systems and schemes of theories. But in the Scholastic phi­
losophy we find truths systematized, correlated, set forth in a
rounded completeness which covers the whole ground of ra­
tional inquiry. We do not assert that the Scholastic philosophy
is wholly perfect. We must admit that certain departments of
it, and notably that called Natural Philosophy or Cosmology,
are subject to development and improvement. But in its basic
principles, in its rounded character, in its coherence and continu­
ity, in its reasoned conclusions, it is a unique thing in the world.
If there can be true philosophy at all, and surely there can be,
then this is the true philosophy. Our studies, as we advance, will
help to show the justice of this claim.
From the standpoint of Scholastic philosophy we shall view

INTRODUCTION

24

and criticize the development of philosophic thought as we en­
deavor to trace, in an elemental and sketchy manner, the progress
of the philosophia perennis through human history.
6. Division of This Treatise: The first part of the pres­
ent study is descriptive and historical. We shall, in this part,
look into the beginnings of philosophy, its development, its com­
ing of age. The second part of our study turns upon the essential
questions of philosophy; it turns upon what may be called the
diversified function of philosophy. If we choose, we may say that
the first part of this study is historical, the second part functional.
The treatise is therefore divided into two Parts. These, with
their subjoined Chapters are set forth in the following scheme :
PART FIRST

The Origin and Growth of Philosophy
Chapter
I. The
Chapter II. The
Chapter III. The
Chapter IV. The

Beginnings of Philosophy
Development of Philosophy
Perfecting of Philosophy
Course of Philosophy to Our Times
PART SECOND

The Questions of Philosophy
Chapter
I. The Logical Question
Chapter
II. The Critical Question
Chapter III. The Ontological Question
Chapter IV. The Cosmological Question
Chapter
V. The Psychological Question
Chapter VI. The Theological Question
Chapter VII. The Ethical Question

PART FIRST

The Origin and Growth of Philosophy

The Part gives some account of the roots of philosophic endeavor,
and of the emergence and development of philosophy. It gives a
summary description and criticism of notable philosophical doc­
trines from the most ancient times to the present day. These matters
are discussed in four Chapters, as follows :

Chapter

I. The Beginnings of Philosophy

Chapter II. The Development of Philosophy
Chapter III. The Perfecting of Philosophy
Chapter IV. The Course of Philosophy to Our Times

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

The present Chapter discusses the roots of philosophy found
in man’s rational nature and in some primeval manifestation to
man of the meaning of reality, particularly of his own existence.
Further, the Chapter studies the first emergence of philosophy
among the ancient Orientals and the early Greeks. The Chapter
is accordingly divided into two Articles :
Article i. The Roots of Philosophy
Article 2. The Emergence of Philosophy

Article 1. The Roots of Philosophy
a) Man’s Rational Nature;

b) Primitive Revelation and Tradition.

a) Man’s Rational Nature

Philosophy, the loving quest of wisdom, the tireless pursuit of
knowledge to its deepest origins and roots, comes into being,
first and foremost, because the human mind is forever seeking
to know, and to grasp the ultimate how’s and why’s of what it
knows. Man has a quenchless thirst for knowledge. Nor is this
a desire for mere data, for bare facts and events; it is a desire
for data with their explanations, their justifications, their evi­
dence, their proofs. And if a proof or explanation is not in itself
an evident and inescapable reality, the mind looks for proof of
that proof. So the search for solid and reliable knowledge,—for
truth, in a word,—is carried forward, or naturally tends to be
carried forward, towards fulfillment. The mind proves truth by
truth ; it holds truths in relation and connection ; it delves deep
to unify and clarify its findings in an ultimate understanding.
Thus man is, by his very nature, philosophical.
27

28

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

The incessant questions of a child are manifest proof of the
natural thirst for knowledge in which philosophy finds its first
root. And though the child, unspoiled and trusting, will accept
any explanation as satisfactory, and will find, for instance, no
difficulty in the story of a fat Santa Claus coming down a narrow
chimney or in the leap that carried the cow over the moon, the
young mind will presently inquire further for evidence as ex­
tended experience makes its first willing acceptance give place
to doubts. In its immaturity, in its lack of time and experience
to draw into understandable unity the endless wonders of the
world about it, the child accepts any explanation of any fact, and
accepts fantastic tales quite casually as no more wonderful than
the reality of this most wonderful world. But the child accepts
each explanation, each wondrous tale, because it regards these
things as true. Truth is what the mind is after ; truth is what the
mind desires; truth is what the mind is for. And the quest of
truth, down to its last foundations, is a philosophical quest. Here
is discerned the first root of philosophy.
Nor can it be successfully objected that many minds are indif­
ferent, careless, unconcerned about the quest for truth and the
explanation of facts. Such an objection is far from exact. No
normal mind, however incurious, is without special interests in
which it has the tendency to know and to understand, even
though enervation or lack of energy hinders the full exercise of
this tendency. There are indeed countless persons who have no
direct or conscious interest in what are loosely called “the things
of the mind,” that is, deep reasonings upon abstract truths, such
as are the delight of the practised philosopher. There are many
who have no sympathy with such things ; who regard effort spent
upon them as idleness and waste of time ; who consider all “phi­
losophizing” as silly vaporizing in a world of unreality. It is re­
markable that this should be, since the philosopher, above all
others, is most thoroughly and exclusively concerned with real­
ity. It is remarkable, but it is so. But the point we make here is

THE ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHY

29

that even those who regard professed philosophers as fools who
wear out their minds (and their readers and hearers) in mean­
ingless discussions of “the whichness of what” and “the whatness
of which,”·—even those scoffers to whom there is no important
reality beyond machines and microscopes and bread and sport,
even these are seekers after facts with their causes and reasons,
their how’s and their why’s. Your “practical” person, full of
scorn for philosophy, is none the less an ardent admirer of the
man who knows his job ; it is his own proudest boast that in his
special sphere of interest and activity he “knows all the answers.”
So even this “practical” person is proof sufficient of our assertion
that the human mind wants knowledge, and wants the how’s and
why’s of what it knows.
But we have no need to pause and argue with the inept, the
lazy, the incurious. Our statement that the human mind is natu­
rally philosophical in its effort is manifestly true of the mind at
its unspoiled best. That some minds are ill-directed and spend
their energies amiss ; that some are thwarted by incapacity ; that
some are quickly weary in the quest of truth,—these facts are in
no sense an argument against the native tendency of the human
mind for ultimate truth. Indeed, they are rather a proof of that
tendency. There is an explanation for the fact that many human
beings fail to seek out ultimate causes and reasons, fail to realize
or to concern themselves about the meaning of existence, and
are content with second-best and third-best explanations of the
world about them, of life, of duty, of effort. There is an explana­
tion, and only one. It is the fact that something has, in human
origins, gone wrong with man; something has hurt his mind,
darkening it and making it subject to sudden weariness, willing
to surrender its effort under the stress of exacting labor. The
name of this fact is Original Sin. And of that we may not pause
to speak further in this place.
We come back to our statement that the first root of philos­
ophy is found in man’s native tendency to know truths with their

30

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

evidence. This statement is given with technical accuracy in the
following formula : the first root of philosophy is found in the
rational nature of man.
.
Now, the nature of a thing is its working essence. And the
essence of a thing is that which constitutes it and makes it what
it is. Essence regarded as the source of operations is called na­
ture; thus we are justified in our description of nature as “work­
ing essence.” To illustrate: the essence of a man (physically
considered) is his body and soul; these are the elements which
constitute a human being, and make him what he is in his funda­
mental actuality. But the nature of a man is the essence looked
at as the source and font of human operations. So we say that
it is according to man’s nature that he feels and sees and thinks
and wills. Man’s essence works that way. That is his mode of
operation. That is his nature.
When we say that the nature of man is rational we use the
term in its original Latin meaning, not in its current meaning
of “conscious” or “normal.” A rational nature means a nature
fundamentally equipped for understanding and freely choosing.
We do not say that a being of rational nature can think or will
at any instant; no, we say that such a being is fundamentally
equipped for thinking and willing, even though some obstacle
should prevent the exercise of these activities. Thus a baby, even
a baby yet unborn ; a madman ; a man unconscious, each of these
is a being of rational nature as truly as is the alert, mature, and
normal man who is consciously exercising his powers of thinking
and willing. This is a point of boundless importance for many
reasons which lie outside the scope of our present study. But one
of these reasons is of such vital character that it must be allowed
to obtrude itself even here; we shall pause upon it for a brief
paragraph.
One great reason for stressing the true meaning of the phrase
“rational nature” lies in the fact that current usage makes the
word "rational” practically synonymous with the word “con­
scious,” or the word “lucid,” or the word “normal.” Thus we

!

THE ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHY

31

speak of one recovered from the stress of high emotion, or of
one who has emerged from delirium or coma, or of one who has
achieved normality after a temporary lapse into insanity, as one
who “is quite rational again.” This is a sad, nay a disastrous use
of the word. For it has in it the suggestion,—which grew up
and grew strong together with the materialistic and pagan
view of things which we call “modern” and sometimes “scien­
tific,”—that one who is not “rational” (that is, one who is
not in adequate and active awareness and management of
himself) is something less than hitman. Especially is this so
with reference to the unborn child, the insane, the more be­
nighted sort of criminal, the senile, the immature,—the “un­
fit,” in a word. And out of this evil sense of the term “rational”
has come, in a measure far greater than most of us realize, our
easy tolerance, our sober acceptance, of “scientific” discussions
and justifications of abortion, of sterilization, of euthanasia or
“mercy killing.” No one would listen for a moment to the pro­
posal, however sober and “scientific,” that we should murder or
mutilate a great number of perfectly normal men. But many of
us will listen patiently, perhaps with half-assent, to the proposal
that the abnormal, the subnormal, or the outworn should be
eased gently out of life or mutilated and made impotent to prop­
agate. It is, in large measure, our false grasp of the word “ra­
tional” that prevents us from seeing that the one proposal is
precisely the same as the other. Each is a proposal to maim or
murder human beings, every one of whom is a being of rational
nature.
Here we recall an important Scholastic distinction. A being
fundamentally equipped for an operation is said to possess in
actu primo the perfection which that operation indicates or be­
stows. A being that exercises the operation is said to possess its
perfection in actu secundo. Literally, the Latin phrases mean,
respectively, “in first actuality” and “in second actuality” ; we
may, however, translate them freely as “in basic fact” and “in
actual exercise.” Thus a baby is a thinking and a walking be­

32

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

ing in actu primo or in basic fact, because it is fundamentally
equipped for the operations of thinking and walking, even
though lack of experience and of development balks the actual
exercise of these operations. After a time, the child will both
think and walk, and, in exercising these operations, it will be a
thinking and a walking being in actu secundo or in actual exer­
cise. It will think and walk in the second place, given the exist­
ence of the basic equipment for thinking and walking in the first
place. Now, the point here to remember is that every rational
creature is rational by reason of the fact that it possesses in actu
primo the powers of understanding and free choice.
That every human being is a being of rational nature is a truth
discussed in the department of philosophy called psychology. For
the present, we merely notice the fact that man is rational, that
he has the natural equipment and tendency to think, to appre­
hend, to understand, to think things out, to correlate and inte­
grate his findings and to bring them into unity. In all this man
shows himself to be cast m the image of God who knows all
things in the unity of eternal understanding. And this connatu­
ral human power and tendency for understanding, reasoning,
unifying,—this rational nature of man,—is the first root of phi­
losophy.
It must be noticed that a rational nature is more than a know­
ing nature. All animals have a knowing nature, but man alone,
of all animals, is rational. Animals are equipped for sense­
knowledge ; man is equipped for intellectual knowledge, that is,
for rising from the individual findings of the senses to the suprasensible and universal grasp of reality and for will-acts in the
light of this superior knowledge.
Sense-knowledge is knowledge of concrete and individual
things; mental or intellectual knowledge is knowledge of es­
sences (expressed in the mind as concepts or ideas) and of the
relations of essences (expressed in the mind as judgments and
reasonings). The sense of sight, for example, beholds individual
objects, say a tree or a group of trees. But the mind, taking the

THE ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHY

33

findings of sight, rises from these data to an understanding of
what tree means, not this tree or these trees only, but any tree
and every tree. Further, the mind rises to concepts or ideas of
things which the senses cannot possibly grasp,—things such as
substance, or symmetry, or beauty.
Inevitably, out of its findings and their unions, their compari­
sons, their relations, their connections, the mind becomes aware
of truths which it enunciates within itself as judgments and
expresses outwardly as propositions. And out of judgments,
aligned in their proper relations, the mind will draw conclusions
or further judgments. Thus does the mind reason or think things
out.
Among reasoned conclusions of the mind there are, by natural
necessity, certain clearly recognized truths involving duty, obli­
gation, rightness or wrongness ; in a word, morality.
The fact that a man can define a reality, that he can discuss
things in a general way, that he can do a sum in arithmetic or
prove a theorem in geometry; the fact that he is aware of duty
and recognizes the need of law and order,—all these facts are
proof inescapable that man is a being of rational nature, and,
by that same token, that he is by nature philosophical. Philosophy
exists because, first of all, man has a nature that makes him
pursue the philosophical quest. Such is the meaning of the dec­
laration that the first root of philosophy is the rational nature of
man.

b) Primitive Revelation

and

Tradition

The fact that man is of rational nature, and therefore funda­
mentally philosophical, does not mean that all human beings are
actively interested in the deep and determined process of think­
ing things out which we call philosophical speculation. No, all
we may say, and must say, is that man is equipped by nature for
such speculation. It is to be expected, however, that man’s natu­
ral equipment for speculation would manifest itself in the forma­
tion of some system of thought about reality. Special tastes and

34

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

talents, together with favoring circumstances, must have come
into play, sometimes in man’s history, to put him to the task of
using his natural equipment in the developing of philosophy.
None the less, the fact of philosophy in the world is not en­
tirely explained in terms of rational nature, tastes, talents, and
circumstances. There is ample evidence in the history of human
thought that all men, from the earliest times, have had some
common store of knowledge to draw upon. The ancients, despite
wide variations in their cultures, had many notions in common.
They all had some knowledge of the emerging of the earth out of
a chaos of waters. They all believed that man was made, directly
or indirectly, out of the clay of the earth. They all held that man
is meant to serve God. They all were convinced that the human
race had somehow gone wrong in its very origins, and that man­
kind had suffered a fall. They all felt that the business of life
involves some sort of cleansing and refining of self, and the
attainment of a more perfect state here or hereafter. They all
taught that man is, in one way or another, to work for reunion
with his Primal Source. Further, all the ancients had the story
of a destructive flood of waters which laid waste the world, and
the story of the dispersion of human tribes. We must conclude
that mankind came to a knowledge of these things through the
medium of some primitive revelation.
Christians find this conclusion consonant with their belief that
God instructed our first parents; that He spoke with them fa­
miliarly ; that He doubtlessly gave them information about their
material origins even as He imparted knowledge of the creation
and inbreathing of their spiritual souls which gave them their
perfected being as images of God. This primitive revelation of
man’s nature, dignity, duty, and destiny, together with the ear­
liest and most striking experiences of the human race, must have
been a matter of common discussion. All these facts must have
been narrated again and again by the human voice as the story
was handed on from generation to generation. In a word, the
primitive revelation and the first great experiences of mankind

THE ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHY

35

must have been perpetuated through early times by human tra­
dition.
Now, tradition, unless it is divinely protected and conserved
(as is the case with Sacred Tradition which is a source of Divine
Revelation), is a stream that inevitably gathers alien matters as
it flows along. Man is imaginative, and his fancy tends to dress
fact with such abundance of adornment that the fact itself is
sometimes obscured and even forgotten. For this reason, modern
man, driven by the same imaginative impulse, is too ready to
dismiss old traditions as “mere folk-lore.” But there is always a
reason for folk-lore ; there is always a living truth in the wrap­
pings of fanciful detail ; there is no such thing as mere folk-lore.
And so, while it is undoubted that the primitive revelation and
the earliest events of human history have come down the stream
of human tradition in an imperfect and progressively obscured
condition, we are none the less on solid historical ground in our
conclusion that these two things (primitive revelation and re­
membered events of early history) are factual and not fanciful.
The primitive revelation and human tradition come together to
constitute a true source of philosophical concepts and speculation.
They may justly be regarded as the second root of philosophy.
Summary

of the

Article

In this Article we have discerned the fact that the first root of
philosophy is the rational nature of man. We have defined nature
as “essence viewed dynamically,” that is, essence regarded as the
font of operations. And rational nature means nature equipped
in actu primo (or “in basic fact”) for understanding and free
self-directive choice. We have noticed the fact that man has some
common original storehouse of knowledge which can be ac­
counted for only by a primitive revelation and an esssentially
reliable human tradition; these two agencies constitute the sec­
ond root of philosophy.
Our study thus far has given us the meaning of certain philo-

36

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

sophical terms, such as: essence, nature, sensation (i.e., sense­
knowledge}, intellection (i.e., intellectual knowledge}, concept,
judgment, proposition, reasoning, actus primus, actus secundus.

Article 2. The Emergence of Philosophy
a) First Efforts; b) The Ancient Orientals; c) The Early Greeks.

a) First Efforts

Since man is by nature philosophical, it is inevitable that the
earliest records of his thinking should manifest something of
that human quest of ultimate causes and that human effort to
make a deep unification of knowledge which we call by the name
philosophy. As soon as man begins to think he begins to think
things out ; he begins to speculate or reason deeply ; he begins to
philosophize. As soon as he records his thinking, philosophy be­
gins, however imperfectly, to take form. Philosophy emerges the
moment the mind comes to grips with reality and begins to draw
conclusions and unify findings.
Some writers speak of a period of human history and of hu­
man thinking as “pre-philosophic.” With all reverence for great
learning, we dare to reject this term as inaccurate. It is true that
the earliest records of man’s thinking offer us no rounded and
systematized interpretation of “all things knowable.” But it is
equally true that these records show a real approach to the realm
of knowables. Such an approach is not pre-philosophical, but
simply philosophical. There is no warrant for cramping the
meaning of the word philosophical to exclude all early reasoning
on the subjects of God and duty. For theology and ethics (that
is, the philosophy of God, and the philosophy of duty) are as
truly philosophical as cosmology (the philosophy of the bodily
world) or metaphysics (the philosophy of reality as such).
Hence we need not apologize for applying the high name of
philosophy to the religious and moral conclusions of the ancient

THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

37

oriental peoples who have left us the earliest records of human
thinking.
The philosophical efforts of man, from earliest to most recent,
are efforts to find the true answers to one or other of certain
fundamental questions. These questions may be listed as seven :
(1) The Logical Question, that is, the question of correct
procedure in reasoning, in thinking things out ;
(s) The Critical Question, that is, the question of the extent
and reliability of human knowledge ; the question of the possibil­
ity and method of achieving truth and certitude ;
(5) The Cosmological Question, that is, the question of the
ultimate constitution of bodies, and of their nature and proper­
ties ;
(4) The Psychological Question, that is, the question of the
meaning of life, especially human life, and of the nature and
powers of the human life-principle or soul ;
(5) The Theological Question, that is, the question of the
existence, nature, operations, and perfections of God ;
(d) The Ontological Question (or, if one prefer, The Meta­
physical Question'), that is, the question of the meaning and prop­
erties of being as such ;
(7) The Ethical Question, that is, the question of morality
in human conduct, of right and wrong, of human duty and human
destiny.
These seven questions delineate the field of philosophy. They
frame the discussion of “all things knowable.”
b) The Ancient Orientals
The ancient oriental peoples were the Hebrews, the Chaldeans,
the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians. To the
records of these early peoples we turn to discern the emergence
of philosophy.
I. The Hebrews, whose name is probably a derivation from
Heber who was one of the ancestors of Abraham, had, from their

38

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

earliest recorded times, a belief in one God (monotheism). They
believed in the immortality of the human soul, and in a life to
come which involves retribution for the good or evil practised
in this earthly existence. Evidence for these statements is found
in the most ancient books of Holy Scripture. After the 6 century
b.c., distinct groups of religious philosophers appeared among
the Hebrews : (a) The Pharisees held the doctrines already men­
tioned (one God; immortality of the soul; rewards and punish­
ments of a life to come), and they claimed to be the only
authorized interpreters of the moral and ceremonial law. (&) The
Sadducees denied the existence of anything spiritual (material­
ism) ; they acknowledged the existence of God but denied His
government and providence in the world (deism) ; they found
the true goal of human life in earthly pleasures and enjoyments
(hedonism), (c) The Essenes were a cloistered group who held
the necessity of self-denial to loose the soul from its body-prison
into the happiness of heaven. They taught that the soul existed
before it was joined to the body (pre-existence of souls), and
that it was imprisoned in the body for some fault.
The Hebrew philosophy deserves its name; it must not be
brushed aside as pre-philosophical. It deals, however brokenly,
with the theological question, the psychological question, and the
ethical question. An important point to notice is that this early
philosophy had the idea of one only God; that is, it held the doc­
trine of monotheism. Here we see that monotheism is a really
primitive doctrine, and not the development of cruder beliefs as
some materialists and evolutionists of our day would like us to
think.
2. The Chaldeans (that is to say, the Babylonians and the
Assyrians) at first held by monotheism·; they believed in one su­
preme God called El. Later they degraded this pure belief into
a system of polytheism, that is, a theory of a plurality of gods.
They held that man exists for the worship and service of divin­
ity; to fulfill his destiny he must practise virtue, he must be a
lover of peace, and must be just in his dealings with his fellows.

THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

39

Again we find monotheism, that pure and elevated doctrine,
as a really primitive form of belief, indeed of reasoned knowl­
edge. Evolutionists would like to have it that crude and polythe­
istic beliefs were gradually refined into monotheism, but history
has not a single instance of such a refinement. Monotheism pre­
cedes polytheism, and, among peoples not divinely protected
from the lapse, monotheism degenerates into polytheism. Notice
that the Chaldeans dealt with the theological question and the
ethical question.
3. The Ancient Egyptians were, at first, monotheists; they
lapsed into polytheism at an early period of their history, and
deified the elements and parts of the universe. About the 7 cen­
tury b.c. there was a mighty religious revival among the Egyp­
tians, and the very animals of sacrifice came to be worshipped.
But animal worship (zoolatry) was unknown to the most ancient
Egyptians. The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the
soul, and, about the 7 century b.c., they came to believe in the
transmigration of souls (metempsychosis'). They taught the
necessity of virtuous living as the means to happiness in a life to
come.
Here we find the elements of a philosophy which dealt with the
theological question, the psychological question, and the ethical
question. '
4. The Ancient Chinese believed in one God called Shang-ti,
a personal deity, distinct from the world, and all powerful. This
pure belief quickly degenerated, especially after the 12 century
b.c. when ancestor worship came strongly into vogue. Worship
of the sun, moon, and stars (sabaeism) also appeared. After the
6 century b.c., the Chinese were much influenced in thought and
conduct by their philosophers, especially Kun-fu-tse (Confucius)
and Lao-tse. Confucius preached faithful observance of ancestral
customs ; he discouraged the natural tendency of men to pry into
causes and reasons ; his was a philosophy to kill philosophy. Laotse taught the existence of a Supreme Being called Tao (hence
his doctrine is called Taoism') who produced the world. Tao is

40

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

ever serene, untroubled; man must model himself on Tao; man
must cultivate serenity of mind, caring nothing for riches or
honors, or even for learning or for laws ; man must follow quietly
and unexcitedly his own natural bent.
The ancient Chinese dealt with the theological question, and,
in a measure, with the psychological question ; their great philoso­
phers were concerned chiefly with the ethical question.
5. The Ancient Hindoos had sacred books called Veda, that is,
science. These show traces of an original monotheism, but only
traces, however plain. Polytheism came into being among the
Hindoos at an early period. The Hindoo philosophy is very
vague, but it contains unmistakable evidence of some belief in
human immortality, in man’s duty to worship divinity and to
avoid sin. Between the 8 and the 5 century b.c. certain books
(called Brahmanas and Upanishads') were written to explain the
Vedas. These hint at a supreme and personal God called Prajapati, but this notion is quickly submerged in a welter of poly­
theistic doctrine. The theory developed in the Brahmanas is that
the world and all things in it are maya or illusion. There is only
one reality called Brahma. Man must rid himself of the deceiving
idea that he exists as an individual ; he must strive to merge him­
self consciously in Brahma with whom all things are really one
{pantheism}. Aligned with this doctrine of Brahma is Buddhism
which holds the world unreal and illusory and teaches man to
seek changelessness and peace in a state of Nirvana in which all
desire is dead, all emotion extinguished.
The Hindoo philosophy deals slightly with the theological
question, largely with the ethical question. Notice that it is
pessimistic in character ; it holds that man’s lot is one of decep­
tion and pain, and teaches him that his sole ethical effort is to be
rid of pain.
6. The Ancient Persians were monotheists at the first, but
about the 8 century b.c. there appeared a mighty teacher called
Zarates or Zarathustra (whom the Greeks called Zoroaster)
who taught the existence of two warring gods {religious dual­

THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

4i

ism) ; one of these was the Supreme Good, the other the Supreme
Evil. The good deity was called Ahura-Mazda (the Greeks
named him Ormuzd or Ormazd) ; to him we attribute all good
things, fire, light, stars and planets, summer, fertility, the human
race. The evil deity was called Angra-Mainyu (the Greeks made
the name Ahriman) ; to him are to be attributed all evil things,
darkness, cold, bad spirits, disease, death, poisonous plants, fero­
cious animals, storms, and all destructive forces. These two
divinities wage ceaseless war. One of the followers of AhuraMazda is the great spirit Mithras who will captain the forces of
good to the final defeat of Angra-Mainyu. Perhaps, after the
evil divinity and his followers have been hurled into the pit of
punishment, Mithras will intercede for them, and they will ulti­
mately be admitted to the paradise of delights in which AhuraMazda reigns.—Man was created pure by Ahura-Mazda ; he ate
certain forbidden fruits and, in consequence, lost the love of his
creator and was numbered with the hosts of Angra-Mainyu.
Human nature was thus soiled at its source, and each individual
feels within himself the war of good and evil. Man must rid him­
self of the evil and seek his original perfection. Man’s soul is
immortal ; it will be brought to purification and happiness either
by strong efforts for virtue in this life or by suffering hereafter.
The ancient Persians discussed the theological question and
the ethical question with incidental discussion of the psycholog­
ical question. We notice in their strange mélange of doctrines
some vestiges of the primitive revelation in the somewhat dis­
torted account of man’s creation and original sin.

c) The Early Greeks
Most accounts of philosophy begin with the speculation (that
is, the deep philosophical studies) of the Greeks, dismissing the
ancient orientals as pre-philosophic. We have noticed the un­
fairness of this practice.
The Greeks had a natural liking for things of the mind. They
were inclined to dwell upon what they saw in the world about

42

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

them and to think out causes and reasons. Among the Greeks,
far more than among any other pre-Christian people, philosophy
was steadily cultivated. It reached a state of rounded develop­
ment in the Golden Age of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
The earliest Greek philosophers attacked the cosmological
question ; they sought the explanation of the bodily world. Other
questions of philosophy were only incidental to their studies.
For convenience, we group the philosophers of this period
into “schools,” that is, classifications of philosophers who studied
the same matters or held similar views. The “schools” we are to
notice are : the lonians, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the
Atomists, and the Sophists.
I. The lonians, taking up the cosmological question, asked
what is the original matter of which the bodily world is made,
(a) Thales, of the 7 and 6 centuries b.c., taught that the world­
stuff is water, for the world is a mixture of solids, liquids, and
gases, and water is the only substance which we commonly find
in all three forms. (£>) Anaximander, of the 7 and 6 centuries
b.c., thought the original world-stuff is a kind of spray or mist
which is an infinite and living substance (he called it “the Bound­
less”). Out of this substance all bodily things emerge, and, under
the action of heat which is inherent in it, they merge into it again,
and this process goes on continuously (theory of an infinite
series of worlds'). The earth is a cylinder poised in the center of
the universe. All matter is alive (hylozoism) ; plants and ani­
mals come by progressive upward stages from the slime of the
heated earth (evolution or transformism). (c) Anaximenes, of
the 6 century b.c., regarded the original world-stuff as a kind of
vapor, infinite and alive, which, by thickening and thinning (con­
densation and rarefaction) causes different things to emerge;
these bodies float in the infinite vapor like leaves in an autumn
breeze, (d) Heraclitus, of the 6 century b.c., made the primal
world-stuff a kind of fire, infinite, alive, intelligent. This fire
is not a mass of matter but a kind of all-pervading reason which
operates by its inherent power (dynamism) to produce bodies;

THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

43

the production of bodies goes on by blind necessity {determin­
ism'). (e) Empedocles, of the 5 century b.c., held that the world­
stuff is a compound of air, earth, water, fire ; these jour elements,
by their various comminglings, make up the bodily world and
all things in it. Two forces play upon the elements, a unifying
force called love and a separating and diversifying force called
hate. The bodily world is alive jhylozoism), and has the power
of sensing, (f) Anaxagoras, of the 5 century b.c., taught that the
world-stuff is a mass of particles of every kind of body found in
the universe. This mass was motionless and inert; it was put
into a whirling movement by the action of a Divine Mind which
is no part of the mass of matter. The whirling motion caused
different bodies to “separate out.” The Divine Mind knows all
and rules all.
In general, the lonians taught a cosmogony, or theory of the
emergence of the world, rather than a cosmology, or theory of the
nature of the world; still, they dealt proximately (and not philo­
sophically) with the constitution of the bodily universe, and hence
deserve to be called cosmologists. Their doctrine is hylozoistic,
dynamistic, evolutionistic, deterministic, and sometimes (as in
Heraclitus) pantheistic. Of all the philosophers of this school
Anaxagoras is by far the most notable, for he alone achieved the
idea of an independent Divine Mind as the original mover and
ruler of the world.
2. The Pythagoreans (called so from their leader Pythagoras
who lived in the 6 century b.c.) were of mathematical mind ; they
were charmed by the order and harmony of the universe, by its
regularity and proportion. They felt that the world is not only
expressible in mathematical terms, but that it is mathematical
in nature. They taught that all things are numbers, and number
is expressed in harmony. The Pythagoreans believed in an all­
pervading divinity. They taught that man’s soul (which is a
number) is imprisoned in the flesh for some primordial sin; un­
less it be purified by virtuous living, it will pass, when a man
dies, into another body, and into another and another, until

44

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

purification is attained or the soul is found hopelessly vile. Here
we have the first appearance among the Greeks of metempsy­
chosis or the transmigration of souls.
The Pythagoreans are a step higher than the lonians. The
lonians achieved a physical idea to explain the world; the Py­
thagoreans a mathematical idea. This idea is very vague, but it
is more abstract than that of the lonians, and hence more suit­
able to serve as a focussing-point for a philosophy of the world.
Philosophy could not come into its own, however, until man had
achieved a metaphysical idea (the idea of being as such) ; this was
first set forth and satisfactorily discussed by Aristotle in the 4
century b.c.
5. The Eleatics (called so from the city of Elea where nota­
ble members of this group lived and taught) were impressed by
the variety and changeability of the world. They concluded that
change is incompatible with substantial reality. Hence they
taught that there really is no change ; all change is illusion. “All
is; nothing becomes.” All bodies are of the same essential nature.
The Eleatics (important among whom were Xenophanes,
Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos, of the 6 to 4
century b.c.) were monists, that is, they taught that there is only
one kind of bodily substance. By implication they were panthe­
ists, for they made the matter of the world self-explaining, hence
necessary and eternal, and therefore divine.
4. The Atomists thought of the world-stuff as a great mass
of particles like a dust storm. All the particles have the same
nature (monism) ; they differ only in shape, size, and weight.
The particles do not cling together; they are held apart by
vacuoles or intervals of vacuum. They are eternal, and have been
in motion from eternity. Out of their motion come various ar­
rangements of differently shaped atoms which we know as
bodies. Man has knowledge of sense and of thought. The atomconstituted bodies throw off images of themselves, like shells,
and these somehow enter man’s senses and produce sense-knowl­
edge. This knowledge is not trustworthy. The knowledge of

THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

45

thought is reliable. Man must find his true good in tranquillity
of soul ; he is to obtain this by cultivating pure thought and by
using all material things with great moderation.
The atomists were materialists for they acknowledged no real­
ity but the bodily world. They were monists for they taught that
matter is “all of a piece.” They were mechanicists (or mecha­
nists) for they explained the variety and multiplicity of the world
by mechanical movement of atoms. By implication, they were
pantheists, for if matter is all, then matter is self-existing and
divine. In addition to the cosmological question, the Atomists
discussed the critical question (nature and reliability of man’s
knowledge), and the ethical question (man’s purpose in exist­
ing, the means he is to use). Notable Atomists were Leucippus,
whose times are doubtful, and Democritus who lived in the 5
century b.c.
5. The Sophists (in Greek, sophoi or “the wise ones”) took
up the critical question. They concluded that no one can know
anything with certainty {skepticism). {a) Protagoras, of the 5
century b.c., said that everything is in a state of becoming ; there
is no stable being. Man’s knowledge is never absolute ; it is rela­
tive to the subject, that is, the person who possesses it {relativism
and subjectivism), so that what is regarded as true for one per­
son at one time may be false to another person or to the same
person at another time. The individual man is thus the measure
of truth; “man is the measure of things.” {b) Gorgias, of the 5
century b.c., declared that nothing exists, and if anything did
exist it could not be known with certitude {nihilism and skepti­
cism).
The sophists were skeptics, and their influence degraded the
philosophical effort. They have to their credit, however, that
they raised the critical question.
Summary

of the

Article

In this Article we have investigated the earliest records of
human thinking to discover the sources of philosophy. We have

46

THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILOSOPHY

noticed the doctrines,—inaccurately called pre-philosophic,—of
the ancient Hebrews, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, Hindoos,
Persians. In the records of all these people we have discovered
one constant note—monotheism. Thus we see that the evolu­
tionists are wrong when they try to persuade us that the pure
idea of one supreme God is a progressive development and
growth out of cruder notions. Monotheism definitely came first ;
polytheism and other debased religious philosophies came later
as a lapse and retrogression due to man’s original fall and the
consequent darkening of the human mind.—We have noticed
various groups or schools of early Greek thinkers among whom
philosophy began to take more perfect form. We have discussed
the lonians, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Atomists, the
Sophists. We have seen that the chief interest of the early Greeks
centered on the world about us; their main discussion turned
upon the cosmological question.
Incidentally, we have learned many valuable terms used in
every treatise on philosophy: speculation, monotheism, poly­
theism, materialism, hedonism, deism, pre-existence of souls,
metempsychosis, zodlatry, sdbaeism, pantheism, pessimism, reli­
gious dualism, hylozoism, infinite-series-of-worlds, determinism,
a physical idea, a mathematical idea, a metaphysical idea, mon­
ism, skepticism, relativism, nihilism, subjectivism.

CHAPTER II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

The present Chapter studies the growth of philosophy after its
emergence in the early Greek schools, and traces the develop­
ment of philosophic thought to its relatively full expression in
the magnificent synthesis of Aristotle in the 4 century b.c. The
Chapter also discusses the retrogression of philosophy after
Aristotle. These matters are studied in three Articles :
Article I. The Philosophy of Socrates and Plato
Article 2. The Philosophy of Aristotle
Article 3. The Course of Philosophy after Aristotle

Article 1. The Philosophy of Socrates and Plato
a) The Essential Question;

b) Theories of Socrates;
of Plato.

c) Theories

a) The Essential Question

It is useless to employ human reason in the quest of truth un­
less it can be known beyond doubt or quibble that the mind is
capable of attaining truth and holding it with certitude. Man
cannot attain to all truth, for the scope of the intellect, while
tremendous, is not infinite. But there is a vast domain of truth
which man is competent to investigate and within which his
natural" mental powers can bring him to unwavering certitude.
If this fact be not recognized at the outset, no development of
philosophy is possible. Without a recognition of human power
capable of knowing things with certitude, philosophy becomes
silly vaporizing and the baseless fabrication of a dream. There­
fore, the essential question of philosophy is the critical question,
47

48

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

that is, the question of the value and extent of the human knowing­
power ; the question of knowledge, truth, and certitude as avail­
able to man’s connatural and unaided efforts.
When Socrates came upon the scene, in the 5 century b.c., the
ability of man to know things for certain was being cast into
doubt by the Sophists. The doctrine of these teachers was skepti­
cism, that is, the doctrine that man cannot be certain of anything
and that all his knowledge is valueless or, at best, of dubious
value.
It is, of course, impossible to formulate a direct proof by
reason for the reliability of reason. Such a proof would involve
the fallacy of “begging the question,” that is, assuming at the
outset the point to be established by the proof. Nor is a proof
necessary. A proof is always a careful and methodical unfolding
of a thing which is complicated ; it is a simplifying ; it is a bring­
ing to light and evidence what is not evident in itself. But when
a thing is simple to begin with, no simplifying is called for. When
a thing is uncomplicated, no unfolding of complications is pos­
sible. When a thing is self-evident, external evidence is not
needed. One does not need a lighted lamp to discover the noon­
day sun. One does not demand proof that the eyes can see. One
simply beholds the sunlight and uses one’s eyes. That a man can
think, and think things out by putting two and two together, is
as direct and evident an experience as seeing with the bodily
eyes in daylight. Proof is neither possible nor necessary.
Still it is possible to formulate an indirect proof of the selfevident truths of man’s existence and man’s ability to think and
by thinking to arrive at certitude and reliable knowledge. Such
proof is found in the impossible and self-contradictory charac­
ter of the opposed doctrine called skepticism. For skepticism is
the total paralysis of philosophy ; it is, as G. K. Chesterton once
remarked, “the suicide of thought.” Like suicide, is it an insane
thing. Skepticism asserts that it is certain that nothing is certain.
It uses reason to show that there is no use using reason. The

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES AND PLATO 49
skeptic cannot speak without affirming his own existence as a
certain fact, without affirming certain meaning in the words he
he utters, without affirming the certain existence of those to
whom he speaks, without affirming the truth of his own theory
that no truth of theory is possible. Therefore, the skeptic cannot
open his mouth without contradicting himself and denying his
own philosophy even as he states it. The skeptic has no recourse
but to remain forever silent.
Socrates did not pause to analyze the error of the skeptical
Sophists. To their doubts and denials he opposed a human and
manly acceptance of the power of man’s mind to attain truth and
to hold it with certitude. This he took for granted, as every sane
man must. Starting with this premise, he developed his philoso­
phy of the critical question, giving his theory of knowledge, its
character, its value, its purpose. He tied in his studies of the
critical question with the ethical question, and, to some extent,
with the psychological question and the theological question. But
the main mark and characteristic of Socrates’ philosophy is that it
is critical and ethical; it deals with human knowing and with
virtue, and indeed it brings these two things together in one. In
much this theory is erroneous, but it marked a splendid step for­
ward in the development of true philosophy (or true speculation},
and it was a needed brake upon the ruinous course of the Sophists.

b) Theories

of

Socrates

Socrates lived from 469 to 399 b.c. He has left us no writings,
and it is likely that he wrote nothing to leave. He taught only
orally, and his teachings have come down to us through the
writings of his pupils, Plato and Xenophon. Thus our “sources”
are secondary, since only a man’s own writings are primary
sources of his teachings. But these secondary sources are, in the
present case, reliable.
Socrates felt a divine call to teach and to improve the lives of
men. Teaching was for him a religious duty. He recognized the

50

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

fact that no improvement in men’s lives and morals is possible
without a solid philosophy of knowledge. For why speak of
duties to men who cannot be sure of anything, and hence cannot
certainly know that they have duties at all ? Why talk of morals
if there is no reliable knowledge that morals exist or are desir­
able? So intimate indeed is the relation of knowledge to right
living that Socrates declared that knowledge is virtue. He main­
tained that to know thoroughly what is right is to make the do­
ing of wrong impossible.
Now, Socrates must have known very well that we often act
in contradiction to our knowledge. With the poet Ovid, he must
have had experience of “seeing and approving the better things,
yet doing the worse.” Nor did he excuse sin and crime as the
product of sheer ignorance. No, he held that when a man knows
thoroughly and realizes all the implications of what he knows
he cannot act in such a way as to make practical denial of his
knowledge.
Yet Socrates stressed the knowing-power too strongly. He
should have stressed free-will as well. Man’s mind is not like the
all-embracing daylight. What a person knows, in full setting,
with all implications clearly evident, is not present to the casual
mental glance as a wide and varied landscape is present to the
glance of the eye. The human mind is, in its action, rather like a
narrowly focussed spotlight which throws its light on one small
space and leaves many available areas in darkness. And the
hand behind the spotlight, turning it this way or that, to take in
this consideration or to omit that other, is the free-will. What­
ever proposed course of action is illuminated by the spotlight of
the mind has aspects of attractiveness and aspects of unattractive­
ness, and the mind dwells on whichever of these two things the
will decides it shall consider. No matter how good an object of
consideration may be, the will can focus the mind on features of
it that are unattractive and repellant. And no matter how bad
an object may be, the will may turn the light of the mind upon
some real or apparent phases of it that are attractive. Hence, sin

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES

51

is possible, even when the sinner “knows better.” To put this
technically: “Man is capable of objectively indifferent judg­
ments.”
Perhaps Socrates stressed knowledge so strongly because he
earnestly wished to root out the pernicious error of the Soph­
ists who made knowledge of no value at all. At all events, he did
make knowledge the one thing necessary for man’s mental and
moral well-being. And he held that of all knowledge knowledge
of self is the core and the essence. “Know thyself!” was the sum­
mary of his teaching.
Why should a person strive to know himself? Because, said
Socrates, all knowledge is in him as planted seeds are in the
earth. He must labor, as the gardener labors with hoe and waterpot, to bring this germinal knowledge to birth, growth, fruitful­
ness.
Is this latent knowledge inborn in the mind? It is not certain
that Socrates held this doctrine (innatism). If he did, he was
utterly wrong, for all our natural knowledge is acquired; it be­
gins with the action of the senses on the bodily world around us ;
from sense-findings the mind or intellect arises to knowledge that
is quite beyond the reach of the senses, and forms ideas or con­
cepts, judgments, and reasonings. But perhaps Socrates did not
teach innatism. He may have taught that the seed-knowledge
with which the mind is endowed was implanted by the action of
the senses upon the material and sensible universe. Whatever he
taught about the origin of knowledge, it is clear that he held that
the finished product is to be worked out of the mind itself.
How shall a person set to work to bring to fruitfulness,—that
is, to clear, certain, scientific understanding,—the seed-knowl­
edge of the mind? By following the Socratic Method. This
method consists of two processes, the ironic and the maieutic.—
(a) When a youth came to Socrates for instruction, the great
teacher would receive him with every mark of respect, and would
ask him questions, seeming to be himself a pupil rather than a
teacher. Invariably the newcomer would grow expansive under

52

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

this treatment, and presently he would begin to “show off.” Now,
the questions of Socrates seemed innocent, but they were most
shrewdly put. Sooner or later the over-confident newcomer
would involve himself in contradictory answers. Again and again
he would be led into conflicting and impossible statements. Soc­
rates would gently point out this distressing state of affairs, and
before long the poor victim would be forced to make shamefaced
admission that he did not know what he was talking about. This
was what Socrates was working for. The confession of igno­
rance is, he taught, the first essential step in the work of achieving
knowledge of self. Thus far the Socratic irony. It cleared and
loosened the mental soil.—(&) Then came the maieutic process,
that is, the process of “bringing to birth” the ideas and judg­
ments of the mind. This process amounted to study and dis­
cussion,—“dialogue,” it was called. If, for example, the question,
“What is virtue?” was posed for his students, Socrates would
use,—if necessary,—the ironic process to disabuse the pupils’
minds of hazy, inept, inadequate preconceptions. Then he would
call for examples of virtue. He would require a pupil to explain
why he had named each example virtue. He would institute com­
parison of example with example, noting similarities and differ­
ences. At length, the pupils would be prepared to formulate a
clear and precise definition of virtue. Now, once a person can
clearly define a thing, he knows that thing. Thus, by the maieutic
process, is knowledge “brought to birth.”
This method of working out a concept by studying various
instances or examples is known as the inductive method or
simply as induction. Socrates is rightly regarded as “the father
of induction.”
The concepts or ideas worked out by the maieutic process are
used by the mind in forming judgments and arriving at conclu­
sions by reasoning. Such judgments and reasonings, said Soc­
rates, are unchangeably true; they constitute science; they are
known with certitude. Thus did Socrates contradict the doubts

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES

53

and denials of the Sophists with a ringing assertion of the pos­
sibility of achieving truth, certitude, science.
We see, in all this, that Socrates was concerned with the critical
question; we also notice that this question is intimately bound
up in the Socratic system with the ethical question, since Socrates
held that knowledge is virtue. Dealing directly with the ethical
question, Socrates says that man is made for happiness, and that
happiness is the fruit of goodness, that is, of virtuous living. And,
since knowledge is virtue, and is to be attained by striving to
develop the contents of the mind, man’s great moral effort must
be directed to knowledge, especially self-knowledge. “Gnothi
s’auton, Know thyself !” was the constant cry of Socrates.
As to the theological question, it is fairly clear that Socrates
believed in one supreme God. But for the sake of avoiding po­
litical troubles,—which came upon him notwithstanding,—he
conformed to the polytheistic practices of his times.
On the cosmological question, it is likely that Socrates taught
the production of this world out of eternal matter, and that he
regarded the world as the best that could possibly be made {cos­
mological optimism). On both scores he was wrong. He did not
identify the world with God {pantheism), but held that God is
present everywhere in the world, ruling it in all things {divine
providence and government).
Discussing the psychological question, Socrates held that man
has a soul which is distinct from the body. The human soul, he
taught, is like God inasmuch as it is simple (that is, not made of
parts), immortal, and endowed with understanding and memory.
It seems, however, that Socrates failed to realize that the cause
of the soul’s immortality is its spirituality. It will be noticed, too,
that Socrates failed to mention free-will as a faculty of the soul,
and one that makes it like to God. And he mentions understand­
ing and memory as though they were two faculties, whereas they
are one ; the intellectual memory is but one function or service of
the understanding (i.e., the intellect) itself.

54

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

What Socrates taught about the union of soul and body in
man, is not clear. He may have held, as did Plato later, that the
soul is in the body as a hand is in a glove ; that is, he may have
taught a merely accidental union of soul and body. The truth is
that soul and body in man are substantially united ; soul and body
constitute a single substance, the human substance.
Such in briefest outline were the teachings of Socrates. Despite
incompleteness and errors, these theories constitute a developing
philosophy which is immeasurably superior to anything accom­
plished by thinkers of preceding ages.
The fame of Socrates as a teacher and his widening influence
over minds, especially the minds of the young, brought him to
the unfavorable notice of the politicians. These fine gentlemen
managed to have him condemned to death. He drank the deadly
hemlock in the year 399 b.c.
In passing, we must contradict the sentimental opinion that
the suicide of Socrates was a noble deed. If it were not for the
artistic and touching account of it we have from the pen of Plato,
we should probably never think of it as something fine and full
of dignity. Suicide is never noble. It is, in itself, a contemptible
and a cowardly deed. Of course, Socrates, despite his magnifi­
cent mind, was under the sway of pagan opinion and custom;
without doubt he regarded the taking of his life as a thing justi­
fied and even necessary in the circumstances. We make no at­
tempt to fix his personal guilt. We simply point out the truth of
sane ethics that a man may never take his life by direct means. No
man may justly be compelled to be his own executioner. Even if
he be willing to spare the hangman an ugly job, he may not kill
himself. For it is manifestly an unnatural thing (and hence con­
trary to the natural law) for a man to take his own life, even if
that life be forfeit.
One final word. While Socrates was wrong in identifying
knowledge and virtue, he deserves the highest praise for his ef­
forts to put ethics on a reasoned basis, and to show that many
things are good or bad in themselves. He made moral science

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

55

more than a set of rules of etiquette, or a programme of whims,
or a code of fads, or a list of likes and dislikes. A great many of
our modern intellectuals would do well to ponder and to imitate
this notable Socratic effort.

c) Theories

of

Plato

The name Plato is familiar to everyone, even to Macaulay’s
schoolboy. But many are unaware that the word Plato is a nick­
name. The real name of this philosopher was Aristocles. It is
said that he was of stocky build, and that his broad shoulders
earned him the nickname Plato, for platos is Greek for breadth.
Perhaps the famous name Plato was the invention of some com­
panion who fixed it upon the young Aristocles as a schoolboy
of our day labels a comrade by reason of physical appearance and
knows him thenceforth as “Shorty” or “Stumpy” or “Slim.”
Plato was of noble descent. He was a splendidly gifted man,
and he used his gifts with studious diligence. He was a poet, a
playwright, an observant traveller, a philosopher, and,—most
important of all,—a literary stylist of the first rank. Plato de­
stroyed his plays and poems, but he retained his splendid style,
and this fact (together with the other fact that many of his works
survive intact to our day) has a great deal to do with his enduring
fame. Many of his theories are exalted and attractive, but it may
be questioned whether his essential philosophy would have lived
if it had been clothed in less artistic expression. Does anyone
doubt that a masterly style can be so effective as to “put a man
over”? Let such a person consider Renan. Let him consider
Pascal. Let him even consider Will Durant. Then let him con­
sider Plato.
Plato (427-347 b.c.) studied under the philosopher Cratylus
and then for eight years he was the pupil of Socrates. His own
period of teaching was a long and notable intellectual reign. He
died in Athens at the ripe age of eighty.
We have thirty-five dialogues attributed to Plato. Many of
these are unquestionably genuine ; some are spurious ; some are

56

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

of doubtful authenticity. Among the important ones commonly
accepted as genuine are: Gorgias, The Banquet, Phaedo,
Phaedrus, The Republic, Timaeus, Laws, Theaetetus, and most
of his Letters.
Like Socrates, Plato was interested, first and foremost, in the
critical question, but this question was, for him, intertwined with
the psychological question rather than with the ethical question
as in the Socratic system. The basic and unifying doctrine of
Plato’s philosophy is his theory of knowledge. This is a famous
theory, and it served Plato well in his efforts to bring into a
harmonious system the notable teachings of his predecessors
and contemporaries. But, for all that, it is a false and futile
theory.
Plato taught that each man was originally a soul. He was a
spirit living in a world of things-in-themselves ; a world of sub­
stantial universal ideals or forms.
The world about us is a world of individual things. We see
individual trees, we speak to individual men, we hear individual
sounds, we notice individual instances or expressions of beauty.
And yet our intellectual knowledge is not individual ; it is uni­
versal. The eye can see only individual trees, but the mind or
intellect knows what tree means. We have knowledge of tree-initself or tree-as-such. We can write the definition of tree, and it
defines each and every tree that has ever existed, or exists now,
or will exist, or can exist. For we know and define an essence;
we are not confined to the sense-knowledge of individual things
that have that essence. How can it be that, in a world made up
exclusively of individual things, we have this universal knowl­
edge of essences in the abstract ?
Aristotle was presently to give the right answer to this im­
portant question. He was to teach that the mind has the power
of peering beneath the trappings of individuality and getting at
the essences of things. This abstractive power of the human
intellect was something that Plato neither recognized nor sus­
pected. Plato thought that the only explanation of the universal

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

57

ideas in our minds is found in the fact that those minds once con­
fronted universal things. So he taught that we have had a previ­
ous existence in a spiritual realm {pre-existence of souls'). There
we confronted and beheld not trees, but tree-in-itself ; there we
saw, not a beautiful object or scene, but beauty-subsisting-initself ; there we knew, not something good, but substantial good­
ness itself.
Now man, the soul, somehow sinned. The spirit that dwelt in
the world of things-as-they-are, or things-substantially-subsisting-in-themselves, was somehow contaminated, and this by its
own fault. For this offense, the soul was imprisoned in a body
and put here on the earth. As the soul was thrust into its body­
prison, it forgot all its splendid knowledge. But the body is
equipped with channels of knowledge; we call them the senses.
These can deal only with the externals of individual things, but
still they do give us knowledge. And this individual knowledge
garnered by the senses stirs the soul, prods it to recall what once
it knew. And so, stirred by the objects of sense, a man dimly
and imperfectly remembers what things are. T0 know is to re­
member.
Here we see that Plato taught these things: (1) the pre­
existence of souls; (2) the innate or inborn character of knowl­
edge; (5) the purely accidental (that is, non-substantial) union
of soul and body; (4) the existence of a supernal realm where
things exist in universal and not as individuals; (5) by im­
plication, he denied the abstractive power of the human mind or
intellect. And in all five teachings Plato was calamitously wrong.
The previous existence of souls (or pre-existence, as it is tech­
nically called) is both philosophically untenable and theologically
reprobated. The moment that God creates the soul (and God
immediately and directly creates each human soul) He joins it
substantially with its body, though the body be but a micro­
scopic reality in the bosom of a mother. One identical instant,
unbroken, undivided, is the instant of the creation and the sub­
stantial. uniting (or infusion) of the soul. The very first moment

58

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

in which a human soul exists without its body is the moment
that comes immediately after a man’s death. There is no such
moment before conception or birth.
Innatism or the doctrine of inborn knowledge is a theory
wholly indefensible, as philosophers of all ages have shown,
from Aristotle to Locke. We acquire our knowledge. Starting
with the experiences of the senses which bring us knowledge of
things in their concrete and material individuality, we rise, by
the abstractive power of the mind, to the recognition of what
kind of things we sense; we recognize essences; we form uni­
versal ideas or concepts. And these are the elements of our intel­
lectual knowledge.
As we have seen in discussing the theories of Socrates, the
union of soul and body in man is a substantial union, not an
accidental one. The soul is not merely in the body. Soul and body
are so united as to form one single, if compound, substance. Man
is not a body alone, nor a soul alone ; neither is he merely a soulin-a-body. Plato said that the soul is in the body controlling it
as a rower is in a boat moving it at will by his efforts at the oars.
This is wholly false. Man is an animated body, a soul-infused
body, a soul-and-body compound. Union of soul and body is not
accidental but substantial. The soul is indeed the most important
part or element of a man ; it is what the Scholastics call the sub­
stantial form of the living body ; yet it is not the whole man. And
while the soul, which is a spirit, can exist alone, and does exist
alone when it leaves the body at death, it has a kind of connatural
need for the body because it cannot exercise all the functions of
which it is the natural principle or source unless it be joined in
substance with its body. Hence we see that sane philosophy finds
entirely acceptable the Christian truth of the ultimate resurrec­
tion of the body.
Plato’s notion of a supernal realm where things exist as uni­
versal substances is a fanciful conception, highly poetic, pleasingly
imaginative, but it is a wholly gratuitous assumption and is in no
sense a philosophical truth. Indeed, reason cannot admit the pos­

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

59

sibility of any finite thing existing in universal. Plato’s vague
theory seems to imply the notion that all the subsisting universal
forms or ideals are unified and identified in the Subsistent Ideal
of The Good. A sympathetic interpreter could, with a bit of
straining, bring this theory into some agreement with the majes­
tic truth that the Infinite Goodness, God Himself, is the only
Being which exists eternally and necessarily, and that in Him,
identified with His Undivided Essence, are the archetypal ideas
or forms of all things creatable. But, could such an interpretation
of Plato’s theory of ideas (or ideals) have been suggested to him
four hundred years before Christ when he walked the groves of
Academe, it would doubtlessly have been to him tire occasion of
no little astonishment.
Of the abstractive power of the human intellect which Plato
implicitly denies without having heard of it or thought of it, we
have already spoken briefly and we shall have occasion to speak
again in a later Article.
Plato’s theory of knowledge supports, however vainly and
shallowly, the important doctrines of the changelessness of truth,
the possibility of man’s achieving certitude, and the possibility of
science. Like Socrates, Plato, despite his purpose of harmonizing
and unifying all notable theories of philosophers, turned his face
steadily ^gainst the destructive and self-contradictory skepticism
of the Sophists.
'“In discussing the cosmological question, Plato teaches that
the bodily universe and all the bodily things in it are ultimately
made of some primordial world-stuff which has the elemental
, forms of air, earth, fire, and water. Thus Plato borrows from the
lonians, particularly from Empedocles. We must ever remem­
ber that he was a harmonizer; he had the avowed purpose of
bringing all acceptable philosophies into unity and system. The
primordial world-stuff (which first appears as air, earth, fire,
water) is sometimes called the Platonian prime matter. This
term is apt to be misleading, for Plato’s world-stuff was a definite
kind of matter, and hence was not primary but secondary. We

6o

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

shall discuss the true meaning of “prime matter” in our study of
Aristotle’s cosmology.
Plato believed, with Socrates, that the world is the best of all
possible worlds (cosmological optimism) since God could make
nothing inferior. And, since life is superior to non-life, the world
must be alive (hylozoism).
God,—the Subsistent Idea or Ideal of The Good,—created
the world. As Creator, God is called Demiurge. Before the bodily
universe was made, God created certain spirits ; to these He com­
mitted the work of creating the bodily world. Yet He reserved to
Himself the creation of man’s soul.
Plato’s cosmology is full of errors. Neither his primal matter
(which turns out to be secondary and not primal) nor his ele­
ments are ultimate explanations of bodies. Both are bodies them­
selves, and hence offer the same problem to the philosopher as
the universe taken at face value. As for his cosmological opti­
mism, the world is not the absolutely best world, else the inex­
haustible power of the Creator would be exhausted in its making ;
it is relatively the best inasmuch as it is most admirably suited
for its purpose. Nor is anything to be called inferior or imperfect
which fits into its place and service for the achieving of purpose.
Hence Plato’s argument for optimism and for hylozoism are
gratuitous and valueless.
As we have seen, much psychological doctrine is bound up
with Plato’s fundamental philosophy, his famous Theory of
Knowledge. Coming directly to the psychological question, Plato
teaches that man’s soul (directly created by God) is spiritual,
rational, self-moving, immortal. The body-prison in which the
soul is enclosed was originally a male body. From this was drawn
a female body and also the bodies of animals. Once produced,
living bodies proceeded to multiply by the process of generation.
In addition to the spiritual soul, man has a sensing-soul and a
soul which is the source of courage. Only the spiritual soul is
immortal. If a man properly purifies himself in this life and casts
off the guilt of the offense that led to the imprisonment of his

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

61

soul in the body, the soul will return at his death to the realm of
substantial ideals or forms from which its primal fault banished
it. If, however, a man have lived ill, his soul will pass at his death
into a female body (transmigration of souls or metempsychosis').
If the female existence be badly spent, the soul will next appear
in an animal, and eventually, if evil endures, in a plant. Hope­
lessly incorrigible souls will be put in a place of torment. At
times Plato speaks of this hell as eternal ; again he seems to sug­
gest that all souls will eventually be purified and sent to the
heaven of substantial ideals.
The idea of a primal fall of man is common to all the ancients
and can be explained only as a surviving remnant of the Primitive
Revelation. All the world remembers Original Sin, and that, as
Mr. Chesterton points out, is one reason why so many modern
intellectuals are anxious to deny it. Plato’s theory of three souls
in man is fantastic ; perhaps we might interpret this doctrine to
mean that man’s soul has three notable modes of action. The
doctrine of a spiritual, immortal, rational soul in man is true, and
is demonstrated in the department of philosophy called Rational
Psychology. The notion of transmigration of souls is oriental
rather than Grecian, yet it had won the approval of those Greeks
who followed Pythagorean doctrine, and so Plato puts it into
his harmonized system. It is utterly false, however, and lacks
every vestige of scientific or philosophical proof. The notion that
existing females are only reincarnations of unworthy males
should scarcely endear Plato to the devout female sex. The
Platonian doctrine of heaven and hell falls short of reality but
suggests it. Plato shrinks from the bald assertion of the eternity
of hell as many persons do today under the mistaken impression
that they are being fair and merciful. Anything short of an
eternal sanction for the moral law cannot satisfy reason, nor can
it meet the requirements of sane feeling. The eternity of hell is
not only a fact, but a truly sane fact, a merciful fact, not a cruel
conception involving mere revenge.
In discussing the ethical question, Plato holds that sin is in­

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

evitable because of the dullness of the mind which guides the will.
But, says Plato, the inevitable sin is to be laid to man’s charge ; he
is responsible for it in cause, inasmuch as he freely committed
the primal sin which brought imprisonment in the body and con­
sequent dullness of mind. The ultimate goal of human effort is
happiness. Man does not find happiness in things that serve his
earthly use (utilitarianism'), nor in things which flatter the
senses (hedonism), but in the steady effort to live virtuously and
to know The Good, that is, God. Earthly man is meant for life
with his fellows, and human society takes on a necessary form in
the State. The individual is necessarily a citizen. As such he
exists for the State. The civil power (that is, the State) must
take control of each child early in life ; it must discover the child’s
special aptitudes and train him in accordance with them, so that
the State may be a harmonious and smoothly functioning organ­
ism. The best form of government is that in which a few wise
men hold the place of control (aristocracy or sophocracy). The
next best form of government is military rule (timocracy). Less
desirable and even bad forms of government are : oligarchy or
the rule of certain families ; democracy or the rule of the rank
and file of common people ; and tyranny or the rule of an absolute
sovereign who lacks wisdom, foresight, and kindness.
Plato rightly declares that the goal of human conduct is hap­
piness, and, surprisingly enough for a man unenlightened by
Christian Revelation, he is right in teaching that happiness is to
be sought in the knowledge of God and the practice of virtue.
That man sins inevitably, at least venially, sometimes in life (un­
less he be kept from it by a special Providence) is true; it is not
true, however, that man cannot avoid mortal sin if he uses the
grace of God which is made available to all without exception.
Of course, it would be unfair to expect Plato to know this truth
for it is a matter of the Christian Faith. Plato is entirely wrong
in his theory that the citizen exists for the State. Strictly speak­
ing, the State exists for the citizen. And while the State must
control the citizen in many things and exact obedience to its

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO

63

laws, it does so in the interest of the body of citizens, not in its
own interest as though it were a thing independent of the citi­
zens and superior to them. For, while the State is a natural society
and not an artificial one founded on some compact or agreement
of men (as Hobbes, Rousseau, and others were to teach later in
their theories of Social Compact or Social Contract'), it is not
the owner of its citizens but their servant ; it is not their superior
but their inferior. Of course, it is not for the individual man to
say that, since the State is his servant, he may order it about as
he chooses ; the State is not his personal servant, but the servant
of all citizens together. And, while the individual man is the im­
portant thing (since he, not the State, not society, is the image
of God), he must remember that there are many other individuals
with rights equal to his own and of the same sort as his own.
Hence the individual must be prepared to make willing 'personal
sacrifice, to endure inconvenience, to curb anti-social impulses ;
he must obey civil laws, and must expect and accept punishment
for the violation of these laws,—which really means the viola­
tion of other men’s rights. Sane ethics thus avoids two evil
extremes which actually meet in their enslavement of the indi­
vidual : it avoids exaggerated individualism (with its inevitable
enslavement of the many in the interest of the few who happen
to have power), and it avoids totalitarianism or State absolutism
(with its inevitable enslavement of the citizens in the interest of
civil power, or, more precisely, in the interest of evil politicians
who manipulate the civil power). The root of Plato’s calami­
tously mistaken doctrine of State absolutism is found in his view
of the State as an organism of which the citizen is but a cell, that
is, a thing dependent, inferior, existing only for the well-being
of the larger organism of which it is but a tiny part. This view
(which was later to be developed by Herbert Spencer, who
taught that all humanity is one organism) is full of damage to
the human race. One type of such damage appears in the cry for
State control of education,—a thing which Plato himself openly
favored. It must be kept steadily and clearly in mind that parents

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

have the right and the duty of educating their children. And the
aim of true education is the producing of good men and women,
not the producing of good citizens. Of course, good men and
women will be good citizens, but that is incidental to their char­
acter as good men and women. The function of the State in edu­
cation is to guard the rights of parents in the matter, to supply
opportunity for the realization of this right, and to help in vari­
ous ways in its actual exercise. But State control of education is
an unqualified evil ; it works always to the ruin of sound govern­
ment and peaceful social life ; inevitably so, since it is a contra­
diction of the natural law.

Summary

of the

Article

In this Article we have noticed that the first and fundamental
question of all philosophy is the critical question, that is, the
question of the extent and reliability of human knowledge. We
have seen that the truth that man can know, can reason, can have
certitude, is a self-evident truth which neither requires nor ad­
mits direct proof. We have studied, in brief outline, the doctrines
taught by Socrates and by Plato, finding in them both truth and
falsity, sometimes strangely commingled, but discerning in them
a new and penetrating philosophical effort, a more thorough and
complete speculation, than the pagan world had yet known. In a
word, we find in these two sets of theories a developing philoso­
phy; we find that here the true and perennial philosophy begins
to take form.
Our vocabulary of philosophical terms and phrases has been
enriched as we learned the meaning of: the Socratic Method
(with ironic and maieutic processes) ; induction; optimism; innatism; sensation; intellection; substantial union; accidental
union; simplicity; Platonic subsistent universal ideas, or ideals,
or forms; essence; Platonic prime matter; utilitarianism; indi­
vidualism; totalitarianism; State; State absolutism; Social Con­
tract Theory (or Le Contrat Social).

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

65

Article 2. The Philosophy of Aristotle
a) Aristotle; b) Logic; c) Physics; d) Metaphysics; e) Ethics.

a) Aristotle
Aristotle was born in 384 b.c. at Stagira (and hence he is
called “The Stagirite”) in ancient Chalcis. His was perhaps the
finest mind, in natural gifts, that the world has ever known. For
twenty years he was a pupil of Plato, carrying on meanwhile his
private researches in philosophy and in physical science. He had
an interest in biological study, and it is likely that he did some
dissecting under the eye of his father, Nichomachus, who was
court-physician to the king of Macedon. Aristotle spent some
time in travel, and afterwards he was tutor to the young Alexan­
der whom the world was to know as “the Great.” Then he set up
as a teacher at Athens. His pupils about him, he lectured as they
all walked slowly up and down the shaded walks of the Lyceum
of Apollo. And thus his school came to be known as “the peri­
patetics,” a name derived from the Greek peripatein “to walk
about.” After a dozen years of teaching, Aristotle incurred the
displeasure of the politicians, for he had acquired far too much
influence with the young men of Athens to be a safe person to
have about. He quietly slipped away, and died a natural death in
Euboea in 322 b.c. when he was sixty-two years of age.
We have some of Aristotle’s writings, although certain critics
think these are but notes taken by his more gifted pupils. No such
masterful style appears in these works as graces the writings of
Plato. If Aristotle really wrote them, he did not take time to edit
them and set them in finished order. Yet, for all that, these writ­
ings are among the most precious pages that the world possesses.
We group the writings of Aristotle under four heads : Logic
(the Organon, or, as he called it, Analytic') ; Physics; Meta­
physics; Ethics.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

b) Logic
Logic is the science of correctness in the human knowing­
process. For thinking must be correct if it is to lead one securely
to knowledge that is true and certain. Today we distinguish in
Logic a twofold science : one, the science of correct thinking, of
legitimate procedure in reasoning ; we call this Formal Logic or
Dialectics ; the other, the science of truth and certitude as achiev­
able by thinking, that is, by reasoning; we call this Major Logic
or Criteriology. Aristotle, with perfect scientific acumen, as­
signed the study of truth and certitude to metaphysics.
Aristotle invented the science of Formal Logic or Analytic,
and he developed it into a rounded and relatively perfect thing.
Of few men and of few achievements may such a statement be
made.
The mind has three major operations : it directly knows things
(that is, it grasps essences in an abstract manner) ; it compares
its findings and judges their agreements and disagreements
(that is, it pronounces upon what it knows) ; finally, it works
out further judgments by reasoning upon judgments already
formed. The first of these operations is called apprehending ; the
second, judging; the third, reasoning. The purpose of Formal
Logic or Dialectics (or of Analytic) is to discern the mode of
procedure which the mind must follow to insure a reliable result ;
it is to discern the “laws of thinking” ; it is to know how and
wherein the three operations, and especially the last (i.e., reason­
ing), are legitimate and justified.
Aristotle analyzed the mental processes with enlightened ac­
curacy. Discerning the fact that the mind, by its native power,
rises from the findings of the senses to reality that lies beyond
sense-grasp, and abstracts from the individual character of sense­
objects to know things in universal, he goes on to set forth and
prove the existence of three grades of mental abstraction, the
physical, the mathematical, the metaphysical. These three grades
or degrees of mental abstraction are important in themselves and

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

67

also as the proper bases of the classification of the sciences which
deal with extramental reality.
Apprehending supplies the mind with elemental knowledge,
that is, ideas or concepts which are the mental representations of
essences. Then the mind goes to its proper work of judging,
pronouncing, recognizing truths, connecting subject-idea and
predicate-idea. Judging is the fundamental thought-process. The
operation called reasoning is but a series of judgings, connected,
related, leading to a final act of judging and pronouncing some
agreement,-—that is, bringing together some subject and some
predicate,—or disagreement,—that is, denying some predicate
of some subject. In a word, reasoning is a roundabout way of ar­
riving at a judgment which is not immediately manifest to the
mind. Judging is the basic, the essential process of thinking.
Now, in judging, the mind pronounces on the agreement or
disagreement of ideas or concepts ; the mind associates or dis­
severs a predicate-idea and a subject-idea; the mind affirms or
denies a predicate of a subject. Thus judging is predicating. Ar­
istotle discerns five ways in which predicating takes place ; every
judgment is necessarily made according to one of these five ways.
The Five Modes of Predicating are called the predicates (in
Greek, categoremataj. These are: Genus, Species, Difference,
Property or Attribute, and Accident. To explain and illustrate :
(a) Genus—When the mind predicates one idea of another
(applies predicate-idea to subject-idea) in such wise that the
predicate expresses that part of the essence of the subject which
the subject has in common with other things from which it is
none the less essentially distinguished, the predicate-idea is called
the genus of the subject-idea, and the judging or predicating is
called generic. Thus, in the judgment, “Man is animal,” the
predicate-idea “animal” expresses part of the essence “man,” but
not all of that essence for man is more than animal ; the predicate­
idea expresses that part of the essence “man” which man has in
common with other things, namely, non-rational animal beings.
(&) Species—When the mind predicates one idea of another

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

(i.e., predicate of subject) in such wise that the predicate ex­
presses or defines the entire essence of the subject perfectly and
exclusively, the predicate-idea is the species of the subject-idea,
and the judging or predicating is called specific. Thus, in the
judgment, “Man is rational animal,” the predicate-idea expresses
completely, perfectly, and exclusively the essence of the subject­
idea. This predicate applies to no other subject. The predicate is
an essential definition of the subject. The predicate is the species
of the subject.
(c) Difference—When the mind applies predicate-idea to
subject-idea in such wise that the predicate expresses that part
of the essence of the subject which marks the subject off from
other things with which it has a common genus, the predicate is
called the difference (or the ultimate difference or the specific
difference) of the subject. Thus, in the judgment “Man is
rational,” the predicate-idea expresses what distinguishes the
subject-idea from another idea which has with it a common
genus, that is, from non-rational animal. The judging or predi­
cating here is called differential.
(d) Property or Attribute—When the mind applies predi­
cate-idea to subject-idea in such wise that the predicate expresses
what belongs to the subject by natural necessity but is no con­
stituent element or part of its essence, the predicate is called the
property or the attribute of the subject, and the judging or pred­
icating is called proper. Thus, in the judgment, “Man is a-beingthat-can-laugh” the predicate-idea expresses what belongs by
nature to the subject although it is no part of the essence of the
subject.
(<?) Accident-—-When the mind applies predicate-idea to
subject-idea in such wise that the predicate expresses what may
belong to the subject, although this is no part of the essence of
the subject, nor does it follow naturally upon the nature of the
subject by any necessity, the predicate is called the accident of
the subject, and the judging or predicating is called accidental.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

69

Thus, in the judgment, “Man is a-being-that-can-read” the
predicate-idea expresses what may happen to be true of the sub­
ject, but is not necessarily so.
Notice carefully that the predicables are modes of judging in
the mind. They are in no wise classifications of things. Nor are
they, strictly speaking, classifications of ideas. They are modes
or ways in which one idea may apply to, or be predicated of,
another.
Now, the things or realities which are represented in the mind
by ideas, are classified, according to their intelligibility or refer­
ence to the mind, under ten heads called the predicamentals or
the categories (in Greek, categoriaij. Aristotle resolved all
knowable things into these ten supreme genera or master classes.
There are, indeed, certain points of fact that the mind can con­
sider which do not directly fall under any of the categories or
predicamentals; these things are called pre-predicamentals and
post-predicamentals. Yet, indirectly, or analogously, everything
to which the mind of man can turn its attention is ascribable to
one of the ten categories. Literally, they are classifications of
understandable finite being; yet, by analogy, even the infinite
Being is viewed as pertaining to the first of the categories or
predicamentals. To determine these classes, and so to construct
a workable plan for the philosopher whose task is the deep in­
vestigation of reality, Aristotle reasoned out a list of the basic
questions that the mind must ask in its effort to know all that
can be known of anything. These questions are ten and only ten.
Two thousand years and more of incessant testing have proved
beyond quibble that none of the questions is superfluous and that
no additional questions need be asked, or, indeed, can be asked.
The answers to the ten fundamental questions are the categories
or the predicamentals. Notice carefully that the predicamentals
are not merely a list of things, but a list of the supreme classes
of things as understandable. Questions and categories are
these :

7o

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
QUESTIONS

1. What (is the thing itself) ?

2. How much?
3. What sort?
4. In what comparison or refer­
ence?
5. What doing?
6. What undergoing?
7. Where?
8. When?
9. In what position or attitude ?
10. With what externals or ves­
ture?

THE CATEGORIES or
PREDICAMENTALS
1. Substance or one of Nine
Accidents
2. Accident of Quantity
3. Accident of Quality
4. Accident of Relation

5.
6.
"j.
8.
9.

Accident
Accident
Accident
Accident
Accident
sition
10. Accident

of Action
of Passion
of Place
of Time
of Posture or Po­

of Habit

As we have seen, judging is the basic thought-process. But
judgment is very often balked by insufficient clarity of knowl­
edge (or, more precisely, of ideas or concepts), and it becomes
necessary to reason out the judgment. Two ideas may not, in
themselves, be so clear in the mind that it can say that they are
in agreement or in disagreement. In this case, the mind uses a
third idea which is known in its reference to the original two,
and through the medium of this common third idea the relation
(of agreement or disagreement) of the original two ideas may be
recognized. Such is the process of reasoning. And its expression
(in the mind, or outwardly in speech or writing or other sign)
takes the shape of what is called a syllogism.
A judgment is expressed (mentally or verbally) in a proposi­
tion. A syllogism consists of three propositions or expressed
judgments. The first two (which express the relations of two
ideas to a common third) are called premisses. The last (which
expresses the relation of the original two ideas, known by their
relations to the common third idea) is called the conclusion.
Here we have a syllogism :

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

71

First or major premiss: Every tree is a plant
Second or minor premiss: The oak is a tree
Conclusion or consequent: Therefore, the oak is a plant
Reasoning is the syllogism and the syllogism is reasoning.
Those shallow critics who scoff at the syllogism, are forced to
express their scoffing in syllogisms. For this is the way the mind
works, and there can be no quarrel with it. This is its nature.
This is its fixed mode of action. There is no other way to think
things out. A man might as well quarrel with the structure and
action of his feet, and expect them to hear or speak, as to find
fault with the “mental triangulation,” that is, the syllogism, by
which the mind works out truths that are not immediately evi­
dent.
Reasoning is either deductive or inductive. When (as in the
example just given) the reasoning process or syllogism pro­
ceeds from a general or universal truth to a particular or in­
dividual application or expression of it, the process is deductive
reasoning or simply deduction. The principle (i.e., the basic
guiding truth) of deduction is this : Whatever is true of all mem­
bers of a class is true of each member ; whatever is to be denied
of all is to be denied of each. When the reasoning process or syl­
logism proceeds from individual instances to general or universal
conclusion, the process is inductive reasoning or simply induc­
tion. The principle of induction is this : Whatever is true of each
member of a class is true of all members ; whatever is to be denied
of each is to be denied of all. Deduction and induction are com­
plementary, not opposed, methods of reasoning. The nature of
the investigation and the state of the mind’s information to begin
with, indicate which method is to be used.
Since induction is the only instrument available to the labora­
tory scientist, it has come to be called “the scientific method.”
Yet the whole purpose and drive of this method is to arrive at
general or universal truths which will enable the investigator to
deduce conclusions. If induction is used to determine the nature
of water, and it is discovered that water is H2O, then deduction

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

is thereafter used to determine that if the stuff under considera­
tion is water it is necessarily H2O.
Students whose knowledge of the history of philosophy is
inadequate have hit upon Roger Bacon, a philosopher of the 13
century, as the inaugurator of the inductive method, especially
when it is smugly called “the scientific method.” Yet Aristotle
is the true “father of induction.”

c) Physics
The term “physics” means, as a department of philosophy, the
philosophical science of mobile or changeable being. It is not to
be confused with the experimental science of physics which the
name usually indicates in our day. Physics here is a department
of philosophy ; it seeks ultimate causes and reasons. It is the phi­
losophy of the universe of bodily things around us. It is Natural
Philosophy.
Aristotle accepts the reality of change or “becoming.” Thus
he opposes the fantastic and unreal theory of the Eleatics (see
Chap. I, Art. 2,b. 3). Now, the most manifest sort of change or
movement is found in the bodily world around us, of which we
are a part. Thus Aristotle’s physics deals primarily with the cos­
mological question, the question of the root-constitution, and the
activities, of bodily things. Since man is bodily, despite the fact
that his most important element is spiritual, he falls under the
consideration of Aristotelian physics ; thus we have also here a
discussion of the psychological question, the question of life and
of living bodies.
A body, lifeless or living, is bodily. All bodies are at one in
this point, no matter how great their essential differences in
other respects. And bodies do differ essentially. There is an es­
sential difference between the body called a boy and the body
called a dog ; between the body called a tree and the body called
a rock. As bodies they are at one ; each is as truly body as the
others. But they are not the same essential kind of body.- Aristotle

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

73

teaches that the identity of all bodies in bodiliness is owing to
the fact that all bodies have a substratum of primal matter. And
each body is constituted in its essential kind, each is made anexisting-body-of-this-specific-sort, by its substantial form or
substantifying determinateness,—for “form” is not to be taken
lightly as a word meaning mere shape or outline or something
accidental; it is here substantial form.An existing body is ul­
timately (i.e., philosophically) explained as the substantial union
of primal matter with substantial form. This doctrine came to be
known as hylemorphism (sometimes spelled hylomorphism'), a
term which derives from the Greek hyle “matter,” and morphe
“form.’?
'''Primal matter (or, as it is more commonly called, prime mat­
ter) is the wholly passive substantial substrate of all existing
bodies. It has no proper existence of its own. It exists only in
existing bodies, that is, in bodies in-formed by substantial form.
Prime matter is a substance, but not a complete substance; it
requires the co-substance called substantial form to give it exist­
ence in existing bodies' 'Î’rime matter is the most imperfect of
things ; it has no determinateness at all (for determinateness is a
“form,” substantial or accidental) ; it is “form-less” in itself. It
might be called the substantial capacity for bodily existence, but
it is not an independently existing capacity./A body comes into
actuality, into real existence, when substantial form in-forms (or
is fused with) prime matter. And (after first creation) this prime
matter already existed in another body or other bodies before be­
coming substantially fused with the present substantial form.
Thus prime matter is not a kind of bodily stuff (for kind is a
form) ; it is not an existing mass of matter out of which bodies
emerge in determinate individuality under action of the substan­
tial form. It is wholly potential\i.e., aptitudinal ; a capacity), and
it is described as “pure potentiality.” This potentiality is actu­
alized (i.e., made an existing body) by substantial form, and the
substantial unit of matter-and-form is an existing body. The

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

identity of all bodies in bodiliness is owing to prime matter (not
actively but passively) ; the essential differentiation of bodies is
due to their respective substantial forms.
Substantial form is the actuating, substantifying, principle of
a body. It is the substantial constituent principle which makes a
body exist in its essential kind? Substantial form is a substance,—
that is, it is a reality suited to exist itself and not to be merely
the mark of something else; it is no mere accident,—that is, a
reality unsuited to exist itself and suited to exist as the mark of
something else. But substantial form (unless it be spiritual) is
not a complete substance; it requires the co-substance called
prime matter with which to fuse substantially to constitute an
existing body) And yet, it does not stand to prime matter as
something separate; for it does not (unless it be spiritual) exist
by itself, nor does prime matter exist by itself. The two exist in
substantial union ; both are partial or incomplete substances ; to­
gether in substantial fusion or unity they constitute a complete
substance, that is, an existing bodily substance.
When a body is substantially changed,—as food, for example,
is changed when it is turned into the very substance of the being
that digests and absorbs it,—the old substance is not annihilated
and a new substance created. Prime matter, in-formed as one
body, loses the substantial form of that body, and instantly, with­
out lapse of time, is in-formed by a new substantial form. The
instantaneous cessation of the old form is called “corruption” ;
the simultaneous emergence of the new form is called “genera­
tion” ; or, more precisely, the former substance ceases to be or
“corrupts,” and the new substance appears or “is generated.”
Corruption and generation are but two views of the one in­
stantaneous substantial change: the corruption of one body is
the generation of another or others, and the generation of one
body is the corruption of another or others.
Unless a substantial form be spiritual, it is said to be “educed
from the potentiality of matter” when a body is generated; and
it is said to be “reduced to the potentiality of matter” when a

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

75

body is corrupted. Prime matter is the bridge, so to speak, which
supports substantial change. It is “in potentiality” (or has the
capacity) for union with any substantial form that can make it
an existing body ; when this potentiality is actualized, the form
is said to emerge or to be educed from the potentiality of matter.
And when a body “corrupts,” that is, loses its substantial form
to gain another or others, the ceasing substantial form falls back,
so to speak, into the aptitude of matter to have such a form ; it is
“reduced to the potentiality of matter.”
Prime matter and substantial form are ultimate constituent
principles of bodies. Bodies, said Aristotle, are proximately re­
duced (or analyzed into) certain elements; these are four: air,
earth, water, fire. These proximate elements of bodies, by their
varied unions, make up the different kinds of bodies we find
about us here on earth/But the elements (air, earth, fire, water)
are themselves bodies, and are constituted ultimately by prime
matter and substantial form.h Aristotle’s “elements” are, of
course, now known to be inadequate. But the discovery of such
proximate elements is the task of laboratory science, not of
philosophy.
Aristotle thought that the heavenly bodies are made of a purer
and superior kind of material than that which enters the consti­
tution of earthly bodies ; he thought that the heavenly bodies are
naturally incorruptible. The earth, in his opinion, is the most
imperfect of bodies, and naturally tends to corrupt, that is, to
undergo substantial change. Aristotle held that matter has been
produced or caused ; it is not self-existent ; but he believed it has
been produced from eternity.
Aristotle taught, and rightly, that the human soul is the sub­
stantial form of the living human being. Indeed, the life-principle
(or psyche) is the substantial form of every living body, plant,
animal, man. He discerned the fact that man has the activities of
plant, of animal, and of reasoning creature ; yet he taught that
man has but one soul, and that this is the rational soul. Whether
Aristotle held that the soul is truly spiritual and immortal is a

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

matter of dispute. It is certain, however, that he denied the pre­
existence of souls.
d) Metaphysics
The word metaphysics is not Aristotle’s own. It was used by
Andronicus of Rhodes (about 70 b.c.) as a label for those works
of Aristotle which were arranged to follow after his treatises on
physics; for the Greek meta means “after.” Metaphysics deals
with reality, not as limited to this nature fphysis) or that, but
as viewed apart from material limitations. Its proper scope in­
cludes spiritual being and also all being in so far as it can be
considered as free from every material determinant and restric­
tion, from all that makes it this or that class or kind. Thus meta­
physics does come “after” (or reaches beyond) the more special
studies in philosophy which consider (a) material being, as
physics does, or (&) logical being, as logic does, or (c) moral
being, as ethics does. Metaphysics is the science of non-material
real being. It is no airy or imaginative philosophizing about ab­
stractions that no one can understand ; it is not something “away
up in the air”; it is the deepest philosophy of reality; it is the
very heart of philosophy.
The basic idea of metaphysics is that of being fens in Latin;
on in Greek). In this idea all others are rooted, for every idea
is the idea of some thing, that is, of some being. Anything that
can be thozight of as existing in the order of reality, independ­
ently of the creatural mind, is real being. Anything that can be
thought of as existing in the mind and dependently on the mind
(such as, subject, predicate, species—as predicable) is rational
or logical being. Anything that can be known in reference to the
law which marks the boundary between right and wrong, is
moral being. Now, logical being and moral being have place and
value only in a world of real being. And it is with this world of
real being, universally and most penetratingly considered, that
metaphysics deals.
The idea of being (and of real being) is transcendental. That

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE
is, it soars over the fences of classification. For the idea of being
is the idea of being as such, and knows not kinds or sorts. Every
being is being, and even the distinction that marks off one class
of thing from another is being.
Still, the meaning of being is not precisely the same in all refer­
ences. God is a being, man is a being, a tree is a being, the color
of a rose is a being, the distinction between man and tree is a
being. But God is infinite, self-existent, necessary being. Crea­
tures are not necessary beings ; they are contingent beings, that
is they are produced beings and as such are dependent or con­
tingent upon their causes. Of contingent beings, some are sub­
stantial (man, tree, rose) ; some are accidental (color of a rose).
Hence, while all things are beings (and real beings in so far as
they are existible in the extramental universe) all things are not
identical in possessing every implication of the term being. The
philosopher expresses this truth in some such way as this : The
transcendental idea of being does not apply to its inferiors or
subjects (that is, to the things it designates or denotes) in a
univocal manner (that is, in precisely the same sense in each
case), nor in an equivocal manner (that is, in a manner utterly
different and unrelated in any two cases), but in an analogous
manner (that is, in a manner partly identical and partly different
in various cases). In a word, while all conceivable things are
beings, there are classifications of beings on the score of neces­
sity, contingency, substantiality, accidence.
Out of the root-idea of being Aristotle draws certain selfr
evident truths or “first principles.” The truly first “first princi­
ple” in the order of all thought and knowledge is called the
principle of contradiction. Now, a principle is a source, in any
sense; and a source of knowledge and thought is a guiding truth.
The basic guiding truth is this : that a thing cannot be, at one
and the same time and under the same aspect, both existent and
non-existent. This is the principle of contradiction. It emerges
from the idea of being when it is considered as something which
cannot simultaneously be nothing. Unless this principle be aç-

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

knowledged (and it is perforce acknowledged even by those who
try to doubt or deny it), all thought and all expression of
thought become impossible. For if this principle be fallacious, the
very word “fallacious” might also mean “true.”
Out of the principle of contradiction come other self-evident
principles, such as the principle of identity and difference
(“What is, is ; what is not, is not”), and the principle of the ex­
cluded middle state (“A thing either is or is not; there is noth­
ing midway or neutral between being and non-being” ).
In his metaphysics Aristotle also considers being as cause,
being as effect, being as one or in unity; being as true; being
as good; being as predicamental (i.e., as classified in the cate­
gories) ; being as actual (or existing) ; being as potential (i.e.,
capable or apt for existing).
Being as actual (or being in actu) is existing being. Being as
potential (or being in potentia) is existible being. A thing is
actually what it is ; a thing is potentially what it may become.
The potentiality of a being is either sheer possibility, and then
the being is objectively potential ; or the potentiality is the capac­
ity of an existing thing to realize its capabilities which actually
exist, and then we have subjective potentiality. A boy is actually
a boy; potentially he is a grown man, and this potentiality re­
sides in the boy as in its subject; here we have subjective poten­
tiality. Again, the boy is potentially President of the United
States ; this is objective potentiality or sheer possibility, for there
is not in the boy any natural or arranged direction or drive tend­
ing towards such an end.
The more actuality a thing has, the more perfect it is. For the
more it is actual the more it is, and the more, so to speak, it has.
In other words, the greater the actuality of a thing, the less is its
capacity for being perfected. Still more briefly, the greater the
actuality, the less the potentiality. Now, as reason sees, there
must be a First Being that is entirely actual, with no perfecti­
bility or potentiality about It. Thus Pure Actuality is a name
and a definition of God.—At the other end of the scale of per-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

79

fection is unmixed potentiality or pure potentiality ; this is a
definition of prime matter.
Aristotle indicates that God is the final cause of the universe
(that is, the end or goal of all things), and he uses this truth to
show further that God is also the first effecting or producing
cause of things. Aristotle mentions creatural causes (or second­
ary causes'), and notable among these are certain “separate in­
telligences” (which we might call spirits or angels) who have
charge of the heavenly bodies.
Our sketch of Aristotle’s metaphysics is a very thin sketch
indeed; in the nature of things, it cannot be complete or very
detailed even as far as it goes. It is presented merely to give the
student a general grasp of the scope and character of the science
of metaphysics, and to afford him some opportunity of appre­
ciating the notable work achieved by Aristotle in rounding that
science into acceptable form.

e) Ethics
The Greek word ethos which gives us the term ethics is the
same in meaning as the Latin mos (stem mor-) which gives us
the term morals. It means that which is characteristic of man.
Now, the real characteristic of man, his hall-mark so to say, is
found in the fact that he can act freely, self-directingly, and re­
sponsibly. In a word, the distinctive mark of human activity is
this : it comes from a free-will. Thus ethics is the science of “free­
will actions.”
Now, free-will actions will lie in line with reason or will con­
flict with reason ; they· will, in other words, fit harmoniously
with the purpose for which man exists, and for which free-will
is given to him, or they will clash with that purpose. Accord­
ingly, such actions will be right and good, or they will be wrong
and evil. Ethics, therefore, deals with the morality of freelywilled human conduct.
The end and purpose of man’s existence, and the end and pur­
pose to which all his deliberate action ought to be directed, is

«

8o

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

the good, that is, the boundless good. In the achieving of that
good, man is to find the completion of himself, the filling up of
every rational tendency and appetency ; and this will be his beati­
tude, his happiness. For the achieving.of the boundless good (the
summum bonum) and beatitude man must seek to know and love
truth and to act in conformity with it. In particular, man must
rightly know and appreciate his own character and place and
duty as man. An important item in this knowledge is the fact that
man is by nature a social being ; he lives with others of his kind
and has rights and duties in their regard. Man is inclined towards
conjugal society or marriage; he requires civil society or the
State. As to the form of government in the State, times, circum­
stances, and temperaments will be the determinants. There is
also a master-and-slave society which is useful (and perhaps nec­
essary, Aristotle seems to say) but which does not involve slave­
ownership. Master and slave should be friends; slaves must
never be subjected to cruel treatment.
Aristotle’s ethics is not a perfect moral science. He omits the
necessary eternal sanctions for the moral law. He wrongly sup­
poses that the mastery of slaves is a good, and perhaps a natu­
rally necessary thing. But he is worlds ahead of Plato in his clear
discernment that the State is the instrument of the citizens, not
their owner. He rightly holds that some civil rule (i.e., the State)
is naturally required by men living in society, but that its form
is for the citizens to determine.

Summary of the Article

We have outlined, in this Article, the philosophy of Aristotle,
prince of philosophers. We have seen that Aristotle is the inven­
tor of Logic and have noticed that he also rounded this science
into completeness.—Tn Physics, we have seen the matter-andform doctrine, known as hylomorphism, as Aristotle’s philoso­
phy of the bodily world. No more acceptable theory of matter
(that is, cosmology) has as yet been formulated. Aristotle was,

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

81

of course, very deficient in point of experimental physics. His
times did not afford the opportunities and the instruments for
accurate physical and chemical research. He assumed as his hy­
pothesis in the matter of experimental science the doctrine of
Empedocles on the “four elements,” and so did all philosophers
and scientists up to the Middle Ages. Still, Aristotle’s philosophy
of matter is not to be undervalued because of his inadequate
knowledge of experimental physics ; philosophy does not depend
upon the laboratory, even though it uses the findings of science
for telling illustration and for direction in its investigations. Ar­
istotle was not, after all, directly or deeply concerned with the
proximate principles of bodies; his was a philosophic quest; he
sought ultimate principles. And the Aristotelian cosmology,
while often challenged and questioned, has managed to outlive
all objections and objectors; it has held its own for over two
thousand years. Hylomorphism may not be the last word in the
philosophy of bodies; it may come to suffer modification and
even essential change. It leaves things to explain, it is not with­
out many difficulties; but its difficulties and deficiencies are
neither so many nor so baffling as those involved in the several
theories of matter which have tried to supplant it.—In meta­
physics Aristotle is on undebatable ground ; here true philosophy
suffers neither doubt nor hesitation. We have seen that meta­
physics is the philosophical science of non-material real being.
We have noticed the first principles involved in the very concept
or idea of being, and we have seen that these principles are the
indemonstrable but necessary and indubitable truths upon which
all knowledge and all the sciences ultimately depend. We have
discussed the doctrine of actuality and potentiality in being.—
In our brief consideration of Aristotle’s ethics we have noted his
doctrine of man’s purpose in existence and of the means avail­
able for the achievement of that purpose. We have seen that
Aristotle taught,—with perfect truth,—that man is, by his very
nature, a social being ; that he is in natural need of civil society or
the State ; that the State is not the owner of the citizens nor the

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

end for which they exist. We miss in Aristotle’s ethics the allimportant supreme norm of morality with its eternal sanctions.
The Article has supplied us with some new philosophical
terms, and has repeated others with which we should now be
familiar: apprehending, judging, reasoning (or inference}, idea,
concept, judgment, syllogism, deduction, induction, the predicables fgenus, species, difference, property, accident}, the predicamentals or categories fsubstance and the nine accidents},
being, real being, logical being, moral being, inferiors of an idea,
transcendental idea, univocal predication, equivocal predication,
analogous predication, principle, first principle, actuality, po­
tentiality, matter, form, prime matter, substantial form, hylomorphism.

Article 3. The Course of Philosophy after Aristotle
a) The Later Greek Schools;
b) Greco-Jewish Philosophy;
c) Neoplatonism;
d) Gnosticism;
e) Manicheism;
f) Patristic Philosophy.

a) The Later Greek Schools
After Aristotle philosophy suffered a long period of retrogres­
sion. Ancient errors were revived. Chief of these were skepticism,
which denies the ability of man to attain truth and certitude;
materialism, which asserts that the bodily universe is the whole
of reality; pantheism, which, in one way or another, identifies
God with the material world.
The chief interest of the “schools” or groups of philosophers
centered, at this time, upon the ethical question, the question of
human happiness and the means of attaining it.
The most notable of the “schools” are here to be briefly con­
sidered. These were the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, and
the Eclectics.

I. The Stoics,—chief of whom were Zeno of Citium, Clean­
thes of Assus, and Chrysippus of Soli,—held that the material

PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE

83

world is the only reality {cosmological materialism), and that
God is the soul of the world; He is a kind of fire, and of this fire
the human soul is, so to speak, a spark (pantheism). Everything
exists and happens by fixed law and necessity ; neither God nor
man has any freedom (determinism). Man’s business is to find
happiness. But, since man, like everything else, is subject to the
sway and buffetings of changeless fate, the only way to happiness
is that of stolid and passionless endurance. “Bear and forbear”
is the Stoic motto. This motto is capable of a splendid and Chris­
tian interpretation, but, as is manifest, the Stoics did not under­
stand it in any such light. Man, said the Stoics, must be apathetic,
neither giving way to pleasure in the things of sense nor acknowl­
edging the pressure of sorrow and pain.
2. The Epicureans—named for Epicurus, an Athenian phi­
losopher,—held that man can have no true intellectual knowl­
edge, but only the knowledge that comes through the senses
(sensism). The action of the senses, that is, sensation, is either
pleasurable or painful. Man must avoid what is painful and in­
dulge what is pleasurable. Yet man must not wallow in sense­
pleasures, for excess is always productive of subsequent pain.
Hence man must live with great moderation ; he must hold de­
sire in check ; he must cast off all worry and all fear. Thus shall
he achieve serenity of mind and heart, and this is the true pleas­
ure for which man is made.—All this amounts to hedonism, or
quest of what is sweetly pleasing; and some pessimism or the
conviction that the best life has to offer is the avoidance of pain.
—The Epicureans thought that the bodily world is a kind of
cluster of particles, variously united by sheer chance to consti­
tute the different things we see about us. Here we have material­
istic atomism and casualism:
3. The Skeptics,—variously classified as the Pyrrhonians, the
Neo-Pyrrhonians, the Academians,—held that man cannot at­
tain to certain knowledge of anything; he cannot surely and
positively know truth. Some skeptics admit the possibility of
attaining probability, and some say that even this is beyond man’s

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

powers. Hence philosophy and science are illusory. And no moral
duties exist, for if man can know nothing for certain, how can
he know that any duty certainly binds him ? The best a man can
do is to seek quietness and imperturbability of mind ; in this lies
his happiness.—It is manifest that the view of the skeptics is
pessimistic, amoral, and stoical.
4. The Eclectics,—named from the Greek eklegein which
means “to choose out,”—thought that true philosophy is scat­
tered piecemeal throughout all existing theories, and it is the
business of the philosopher to sift it out. The “test” for the
authentic philosophy is, according to the Greek Eclectics, a per­
son’s direct experience plus a kind of “inner voice” or instinct
which proclaims truth or indicates its presence.

It is manifest that these later Greek schools worked a damage
to philosophy. They represent a “throw back” to crass material­
ism and pantheism. Despite the doctrine of moderation which
they generally recommend, they represent a surrender to sensual­
ism. Their ignoring or denial of philosophical certitude is the
suicide of thought; they make all science and all philosophy
utterly impossible.
There is a dead and pessimistic sameness in these schools.
This is due to the fact that their ethical theory is wholly divorced
from reality. Ethics, as a human science, is the fruit of the sound
philosophy of reality, indeed of true metaphysics. When it is
severed from this true source or principle, ethics becomes a sub­
jective theory of flabby sentimentalism and invariably degener­
ates (as history shows) into dull and dreary pessimism.
b) Greco-Jewish Philosophy
The so-called Greco-Jewish philosophy was the result of an
attempt to draw into a harmonious system the Greek philosophy
(especially that of Plato) and the Old Testament Scriptures.
The effort was made by certain Jews of Alexandria in Egypt,

PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE

85

chiefly by Aristobulus (2 century b.c.) and Philo (born about
25 b.c.).
Aristobulus is notable as the inaugurator of the system. Philo
is the one great name associated with this syncretizing or amal­
gamating effort.
Philo was a contemporary of Our Lord. He was known as an
eminent scholar with an unbounded love for the philosophy of
Pythagoras and of Plato. Like Aristobulus, Philo was convinced
of two things : first, that Holy Scripture is the source of all truth ;
true philosophy derives from Scripture, and therefore the func­
tion of the philosopher is the interpreting of Holy Writ; second,
the Greek philosophy is the best that man has done in his quest
for wisdom ; it is the true philosophy ; therefore, it must be
fundamentally at one with Scripture and indeed, rightly under­
stood, must be seen as something derived from Scripture. Philo
sets to work to harmonize and unify philosophy and revelation.
Philo teaches that God is an inexpressibly perfect Being. God
begets the Logos or Word which contains in Itself patterns of
all creatable things as well as the power to produce them and to
interpenetrate them as their soul. The Logos does Its work by
impressing forms upon matter. Matter is wholly imperfect; it
exists eternally; it is independent of God. The souls of men
existed before their bodies, and were imprisoned in bodies in
consequence of some offense. Release from the body-prison is
achieved by conquest of fleshly tendencies and cultivation of
serene contemplation of God. Unless a man take the one means
of release, his soul passes from body to body in a continuous
transmigration which is the only hell. The study of philosophy
is a splendid aid in quelling passion and setting up the spirit of
contemplation.
Philo is manifestly eclectic in tendency, for he “picks and
chooses” the elements of his doctrine from Greek philosophy and
Holy Writ. He is, in many points, Platonic : thus he holds to the
subsistent forms of things resident in the Logos; to the pre­

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

existence of human souls; to the transmigration of souls (al­
though his transmigration is ever from one human body to
another and never downward through animals to plants, as in
Plato) ; to the merely accidental union of man’s soul and body.
We notice, too, that Philo adopts the Stoical idea of a world-soul.
And he borrows (as the Greeks had borrowed before him) the
ancient oriental notion of rapt contemplation or ecstatic absorp­
tion in God.
Like the later Greek schools just discussed, Philo represents
a retrogression in philosophy, not an advance. His system is
more Greek than biblical. It contains deeply erroneous doctrines
on the theological question, the psychological question, the cos­
mological question, and the ethical question. Based as it is on the
gratuitous assumption of Scripture as the only source of knowl­
edge, it also errs on the critical question. Throughout, Philo
makes Scripture conform to his conception of Greek philosophy ;
he seldom, if ever, puts pressure on his philosophy to bring it
into line with Scripture. His system is, among other things, ma­
terialistic, pantheistic, and pessimistic.

c) Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism, like the Greco-Jewish philosophy, is an at­
tempt at “blending.” It is an amalgam of Plato’s philosophy and
ancient oriental doctrines ; with these are mingled some almost
forgotten doctrines of the earliest Greeks. Neoplatonism is not
a single or clear-cut system; various Neoplatonist theories were
taught at Alexandria, at Athens, and in Syria. The Athenian
“school” of Neoplatonism was the most worthy of note because it
had the one philosopher of importance whose name is associated
with this syncretizing and eclectic movement. This was Plotinus
(204-269).
Plotinus taught that there is a formless Supreme Being. This
being he calls The One. From this Being emerges mind or intel­
ligence; that is, Notts. From Nous comes The World-Soul. Here
we have indubitably a pagan’s mistaken interpretation of the

PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE

87

Christian doctrine of The Blessed Trinity.—The human soul,
while radically identified with The One, with Nous, and with
World-Soul, is nevertheless a sort of individual; it existed be­
fore it had a body, in which it is unhappily and unnaturally en­
meshed ; it is immortal. The soul must struggle to be free of the
trammels of the flesh and to rise to contemplation of The One
in conscious union with Nous and World-Soul. Perfect attain­
ment of this glorious contemplation (which is one of direct or
intuitive vision) is only to be attained in the life to come. Souls
that fail to free themselves of subjection to the body will have
to endure a succession of transmigrations until they have finally
attained to purification.
Plotinus borrows from strangely assorted sources. From the
Christian faith he takes (and distorts) the notion of the Trinity,
and the doctrine of the Beatific Vision. From Pythagoras (and
Plato) he takes transmigration, and from Plato he takes the
pre-existence of human souls. From the old lonians he borrows
the notion of a living world (for the World-Soul, or Demiurge,
makes the world a living thing) ; and the notion of a world-soul
itself is borrowed from the Stoics.
Plotinus is pantheistic, hylozoistic, and materialistic. It is
interesting to note in passing that Henri Bergson (1859-1940)
who was converted to the Catholic Faith some five years before
his death, attributed his conversion, under God’s grace, to his
devoted study of Plotinus. The Neoplatonism of Plotinus is a
far cry. from Christianity. Divine Providence leads sincere minds
to truth from the most unlikely beginnings.

d) Gnosticism

Certain heretics of early Christian times called themselves by
the Greek name of gnostikoi or “the enlightened ones.” These
folk are known in history as the Gnostics, and their doctrine is
Gnosticism.
The Gnostics claimed to have a special divine illumination (or
gnosis “knowledge” or “enlightenment”) which is denied to

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

ordinary men. By aid of the gnosis they claimed to understand
all fundamental truths. Their doctrine is a sad mixture of Neo­
platonism, badly twisted Christian doctrine, and plain paganism.
The Gnostics taught that God cannot come into contact with
matter, for matter is wholly vile and God is all-perfect. God
created spiritual beings; these created others less perfect than
themselves ; these created others still less perfect, and so on until
the least perfect spiritual beings created the bodily world.
Matter, or bodiliness, is the source-of all evil. The human body
is the source of evil in man. Man must free the soul from the in­
fluence of the body which imprisons it so that death may restore
it to its pure and pristine state.
Among the spiritual beings that intervene between God and
the material world is one called Christ. Another is Jesus. These
are two beings, not one. Jesus assumed an apparent human body
and Christ was united with Him at the baptism by John in the
Jordan. Jesus and Christ, in union, worked for the deliverance
of mankind from pains. At the Crucifixion, Christ withdrew
from Jesus, and Jesus suffered pain and death in His apparent
human body.
Gnosticism is an example of what prideful ignorance can do.
As philosophy it is meaningless, for it is wholly gratuitous,
baseless, and grotesque. It died quickly; by the end of the 3
century it was extinct. But something like Gnosticism is always
recurring in the world, and notably in times of intellectual ex­
haustion or decadence. In our own day such vagaries as The­
osophy and Rosicrucianism, and other quackeries which promise
to “unleash the divine power within each man” suggest the
Gnostic error.
Valentinus, Marcion of Sinope, and Basilides of Alexandria,
—all of the 2 century,—were notable Gnostics.
e) Manicheism
Manes or Mani,—whose name is Latinized as Manichaeus,—
was a Persian reformer of the 3 century. He taught a mixture of

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89

doctrines taken from Zoroaster, the Neoplatonists, the Gnostics,
and the Christians.
Manicheism holds the theory of two first principles, one of
goodness and light, the other of evil and darkness. These are God
and Satan. Each produced creatures of his own, and the world is
made up of these ; hence the world is a mixture of good and evil.
Each human being is also a mixture of good and evil. Man must
seek to make the good in him triumph over the evil that is there. '
He achieves this victory by contemplation of the truth and by
bodily austerities. Still, since the average man is very weak and
consequently unable to wage the constant exacting warfare
against evil, he need not concern himself too much about the ef­
fort.
Manicheism, like all decadent philosophies, is full of a great
weariness together with a wistful longing for ideals and a pa­
thetic half-attempt to set forth a system of guiding truths.
f) Patristic Philosophy

The Fathers of the Church (that is, Patres Ecclesiae, whence
comes the adjective Patristic) were those holy and learned men
of the first Christian centuries who wrote notable treatises in
explanation or defense of the Catholic Faith. In their work of
uprooting heresy and planting true doctrine, the Fathers came
constantly upon false philosophical theories which had to be met
and answered on philosophical grounds. Thus many of the
Fathers were, perforce, philosophers, and some of them filled
the office with eminence. Among these we must mention St.
Clement of Alexandria (2-3 century) ; Origen (3 century) ;
Minucius Felix (2 century) ; Tertullian (2-3 century) ; Lactan­
tius (3 century) ; Arnobius (4 century). We must mention also
the great Greek and Latin Fathers who flourished after the
Council of Nice (a.d. 325). The “Big Four” among the Greek
Fathers were Saints John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Gregory of
Nazianzen, and Basil. Among the Latin Fathers, the “Big Four”
were Saints Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and Augus­

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

tine. Of all the Fathers, by far the most notable in philosophy was
the illustrious African, Aurelius Augustinus, whom we know as
St. Augustine of Hippo.
St. Augustine (354—430) was not only a great philosopher;
he was one of the very greatest that the world has ever known.
To a genius approaching, if not equalling, that of Plato or even
that of Aristotle, he joined the light of knowledge that comes
with the Christian Faith. In the cast of his philosophy he is
Platonian rather than Aristotelian, for in his day Plato was uni­
versally regarded as the king of philosophers. Aristotle was not
recognized at his true worth until a much later day, although he
was always held in reverent esteem. It was left for two great
Dominicans, William of Moerbeke and St. Thomas Aquinas,—
the former by a pure translation and the latter by his interpreta­
tion and application of Aristotelian philosophy,—to bring Aris­
totle to his true place as far and away the greatest philosopher of
ancient times, and indeed of all times.
St. Augustine taught that the mind of man is adequate to
attain to truth with certitude; he held that the mind is much
aided in its work by endeavoring to have as clear an idea of God
as it is possible to achieve ; for to know God is to have some con­
comitant knowledge of God’s creatures and of all knowable
things.
St. Augustine proves the existence of God from the contin­
gency of the world ; from the nature of the human soul ; and from
the character of human knowledge. He shows that God is infinite,
eternal, changeless, and absolutely free ; that God creates in good­
ness, unimpelled by any stress or necessity. He says that, in the
beginning, God made all living bodily creatures (excepting man)
in germ; that is, God gave to certain particles of matter a kind of
seed-force (or ratio seminalis) to develop into determinate plants
and animals at a time set beforehand by God. Man, however, is
not explained by this theory of rationes seminales.
Man’s soul is a spiritual and immortal substance, wholly pres­
ent in every part of the living human body. As to the origin of

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the soul, St. Augustine felt that the inheritance of Original Sin
indicates the fact that the soul is somehow drawn from the souls
of parents (traducianism). In this he is wrong. Each soul is
immediately created by Almighty God at the moment it is joined
with its body in the bosom of the mother (creationism). The
doctrine of Original Sin does not necessitate the traducianist
theory. We take our nature (that is, our complete working es­
sence), under God, from our parents, although we do not take
our souls from them ; and it is human nature that is infected in
its source by Original Sin; it is our individual human nature
that incurs this evil heritage.
Man, says St. Augustine, is endowed with free-will. He tends
of necessity towards beatitude or happiness, but he freely chooses
the means whereby he seeks to attain this beatitude. Man’s free­
dom of choice is in no way hindered or hampered by God’s fore­
knowledge of human acts. The object that will perfectly fill up
man’s capacity for happiness is God alone ; St. Augustine cites
and interprets Plato in proof of this truth. God is to be known,
loved, and served in this life, and He is to be possessed in heaven
by an immediate intuition or direct vision of the Divine Essence
(the Beatific Vision).
The law or norm of morality for man is the Eternal Law. The
Eternal Law is God Himself inasmuch as He ordains the order
He has set up in nature to be conserved and forbids it to be dis­
turbed (the natural law). Man’s normal and natural grasp of
the natural law is effected by reason, that is, by the thinking
mind, and in this service reason is sometimes called con­
science.
God is in no sense the cause of moral evil or sin. Sin is possible
because of the abuse of free-will by man, and God, having be­
stowed free-will, does not take it away again even when it is
abused. In His loving Providence, God draws good out of evil,
even of moral evil. God may be called the cause per accidens
(that is, the accidental cause) of physical evils in the world; yet
these evils, rightly undergone, prove to be blessings to man.