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American
550
and
Tradz'tzonatzsm
may
conveniently be
used as terms to denote two philosophical extremes or ex
cesses, towards one or other of which every mind, and the mind
Rationalism, in this
of every people and age, is unduly bent.
sense, repudiates wholly, or suspects and distrusts, any assent
or logical demonstration.
Traditionalism,
seeing the sceptical and unpractical issue of
Rationalism, not only accepts the consent of mankind as an ex
cellent working criterion, but would make it the universal nal
which
is
not based
on self-evidence
reection
if,
it,
is
though reasonably
'
is a
elsewhere.
seek
is
must
results,
it
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551
and truthful witness, although to analyze or state their reason is beyond them.
But, according to Mr. Balfour, reason here but supervenes, and mingles its force with
that of a strong mental instinct analogous to the gregarious or imitative instincts of ani
mals, which inclines us to believe an assertion as such, rather than discredit it.
petent
of what
is so notorious;
necessary
is to show
and, in the
is
it,
it
is
is
is
it
it
it
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American
552
Catholic
Quarterly Review.
So, too, many of our beliefs may be called reasonable in so far as reason would
Still there will always be a large residuum with which
any patent absurdity.
veto
do;
mere
unsorted
indiscriminately.
As
of
these agencies
at the expense
of
"
to its exclusion, is to fall into the error of Rationalism
or of
Traditionalism, as the case may be.
It would
so
as
the great bulk of our assents which are woven into the texture of
our mind never are and never can be subjected to the criticism of
is,
Thus
that the irregularities of individuals are lost in
the crowd; and though the multitude may be deceived, the multi
ceived.
it
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553
tude will not readily agree to deceive, still less will the whole
Without accept
race, and that through successive generations.
of
consent
the
millions
as
an
ultimate
test
of truth, yet in
the
ing
many matters within its competence it is obviously a reliable test,
while in others it j usties a practical and prudent assent.
Yet, so
far as tradition is our only source of knowledge, it is full of many
impurities ; and were we dependent on it alone we should pay for
the truth with a variable but always a very appreciable percentage
of error, though we should have no more cause of just complaint
against the goodness of Nature than have the animals whose in
stincts at times fail them, but in the main are reliable.
Not that
tradition is necessarily reliable in the greater number of its truths,
but that it is so for the greater practical truths on which the life
and preservation of the race depends-else the race had perished
It is not and does not pretend to be a provision for
long since.
If there is such a thing-and surely there
speculative intelligence.
require of her child to receive her word as the word of God, but
only at her own estimate of its value. To exact more were an
abuse of authority; to exact as much, without any proof or de
lawful, just as
of her intellectual competence and veracity,
may lawfully physic or feed or otherwise govern her child in
fence
she
is
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American
554
tion and general agreement falls directly upon the fact that it is
in one
publicly said and generally agreed to; and if the mind
and the same act, reected from the mirror to the reality-if, that
of what
It
is
is
facts, but
it
of
it
because
is
sothis
generally said to be so, we infer that
value just proportioned to the trustworthiness of
inference has
For example, much
public opinion in such matters, and no more.
not professedlya record
that we read in the legends of the saints
is,
made
is
It
if
It
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verity, but upon the verity as mirrored and reected in the mind
of its informant, and as getting its objective value therefrom. To
pass from the undoubted, self-evident fact that its mother says that
555
tempt to sieve chaff from wheat, dross from gold, so long as the
dross is not hurtful. Were it all given to us as objective truth, and
not formally as tradition, then indeed it would be a hurt to deem
fact what is not fact, however unimportant;
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even
starvedbut
However
liable to
its
be favored by traditionalism
the earliest Church Aristotle was the foe of faith, she has been no
less ready to lean over to the other side, and to press Aristotle
into her service against an uncritical and short-sighted contempt of
reason in the supposed interests of faith.
Not that in any age she
has been traditionalist or rationalist, or neglected the sound prin
American
556
Church
is
is,
is
con
So far as this last tendency
edge into one organic whole.
scious and reex, we may be said to be in quest of
philosophy
but even wherever reason in any way begins to work on the gath
is
is
is
is
it
when
is
a
is
It
not only
language of the rudest savage or the simplest child.
the Gospel of S. John but the Sermon on the Mount which de
pends for its intelligibility on
presupposed philosophy.
We may not unfairly to some extent regard a philosophy as
mind-language, as
system of inward ideal signs or forms by
a
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is
is
is
it
which the mind actively presents and expresses to itself the whole
557
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And
when
so the Church
has
living-and who
American
558
Catholic
Quarterly Review.
sality even wider than that of the Latin or Greek tongue; which
was professedly the philosophy of common sense and common
language;
translated.
Similarly, if the facts which she ex
or hypostatic union,
or
transubstantiation,"
as
presses
trinity can be faithfully conveyed in the philosophy of Berke
ley or of the Sensists, well and good ; but she does not guarantee
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which it was
the translation.
Further, when she condemns certain formulae
and verbal ex
pressions, she takes them only according to the sense they bear
in the philosophy which she has adopted, and takes no account of
the sense other philosophies may attach to them.
understand the application of Aristotle to
theology, or the expression of the facts and realities of revelation
in the mind-language of the peripatetics. That the gain to theology
By Scholasticism
we
un
559
will.
That such
be at
have
provisional,
In a certain objective and impersonal sense
elsewhere insisted.
such a scientic apologetic may be considered to represent the
preambles" of faith ; but to suppose that any such logical pro
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by experts, we
formulate
informal inference.
It
560
American
The legitimate
aim
of
credibility
of revelation with
knowledge.
It
reliance on
the secular philosophy, history, physics and criticism of their own
and then to
day; to be over-eager to enter into harmony with
regard their painfully-wrought
synthesis as nal and perpetual.
a
Though introducing hostile conclusion, the following remark rightly insists on the
contingent nature of the alliance between the Catholic creed and the philosophy which
uses to express itself
:
it
is
is
it
it
it
of the Ever-Virgin Mary has carried the application of logic to spiritual matters
than any other church has dared to do, nds
necessary first to teach its future
further
theolo
].
gians the scholastic philosophy, that into minds prepared by that teaching may be poured
the Western theology built upon scholasticism."-A Complete Manual of Canon Law,
Reichel, vol. ii., Preface.
London, 1896.
P. T. 0.
by Oswald
it
it
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it,
unity of human
561
Scholastic-21m.
of ecclesiastical Latin.
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an
G.
TYRRELL.
If
dogma of faith.
could not have formulated
the
Even Anglicans can never
truth without supposing and using some kind of philosophy.
hope to say anything intelligent or coherent without committing themselves to theories
of thought and reality which form no part of revelation.
nature and so imperilled the right understanding
VOL.
xxm.--36
of
they