Innovations in doctrinal matters

Once it turned its attention to modern fashions of thought, neoScholasticism found itself face to face with problems of
which medieval philosophy had not the slightest suspicion or at any rate did
not furnish a solution. It had to bear the brunt of conflict between its own
principles and those of the systems in vogue, especially
ofPositivism and Criticism. And it had to take up, from its own point of view,
the questions which are favourite topics of discussion in the schools of
our time. How far then, one may ask, has neo-Scholasticism been affected
by modern thought? First of all, as to metaphysics: in the Middle Ages its
claim to validity met with no challenge, whereas, in the twentieth century, its
very possibility is at stake and, to defend it against the concerted attack of
Hume and Kant and Comte, the true significance of such concepts as
being, substance, absolute, cause, potency, and act must be explained and
upheld. It is further needful to show that, in a very real sense, God is not
unknowable; to rebut the charges preferred by Herbert Spencer against
the traditional proofs of God's existence; to deal with the materials furnished
by ethnography and the history of religions; and to study the
various formswhich monism and immanentism nowadays assume.
Cosmology can well afford to insist on the traditional theory
of matter and form, provided it pay due attention to the findings of physics,
chemistry, crystallography, and mineralogy, and meet the objections
of atomism anddynamism, theories which, in the opinion
of scientific authority, are less satisfactory as explanations
of naturalphenomena than the hylomorphism (q.v.) of the Scholastics. The
theory also of qualities, once the subject of ridicule, is nowadays endorsed
by some of the most prominent scientists. In psychology especially the
progressive spirit of neo-Scholasticism makes itself felt. The theory of
the substantial union of body and soul, as an interpretation
of biological, psychical, and psycho-physiological facts, is far more
serviceable than the extremespiritualism of Descartes on the one hand and
the Positivism of modern thinkers on the other. As Wundt admits, the results
of investigation in physiological psychology do not square either
with materialism or with dualismwhether of the Platonic or of
the Cartesian type; it is only Aristotelean animism, which
brings psychology into connexion with biology, that
can offer a satisfactory metaphysical interpretation of
experimental psychology. So vigorous indeed has been the growth
of psychology that each of its offshoots is developing in its own way: such is
the case with criteriology, sthetics, didactics, pedagogy, and the numerous
ramifications of applied psychology. Along these various lines, unknown

to medieval philosophy, neo-Scholasticism is working energetically and

successfully. Its criteriology is altogether new: the
older Scholasticism handled the problem of certitude from thedeductive point
of view; God could not have misshaped the faculties with which
He endowed the mind in order that it might attain to knowledge. NeoScholasticism, on the other hand, proceeds by analysis and introspection it
states the problem in the terms which, since Kant's day, are the only
admissible terms, but as against theKantian criticism it finds the solution in
a rational dogmatism. Its sthetics holds a middle course between the
extreme subjectivism of many modern thinkers who would reduce the
beautiful to a mere impression, and the no less extreme objectivism which
the Greeks of old maintained. It is equally at home in the field of
experimentalpsychology which investigates the correlation
between conscious phenomena and their physiological accompaniments; in
fact, its theory of the substantial union of body and soul implies as its
corollary a "bodily resonance" corresponding to each psychical process.