DOGMATISM. CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

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. The attitude of Fide-

ism, which combines distrust of reason with attempts to ground

certitude ultimately on non-rational motives, finds expression in

certain recent tendencies which we purpose now briefly to ex

amine. Some of them, which we may conveniently describe

under the title of " Social Pragmatism " l or " Social Dogma

tism," 2 seek to combine the extrinsic motive of social authority

with the intrinsic motive of individual moral and religious in

stincts or needs. Others, considering such knowledge as is

attained by the speculative exercise of reason to be merely sym

bolic, to consist of contingent, hypothetical, regulative formulae,

more or less conventionally adopted, and serving the practical

purpose of helping us to orient ourselves intellectually in the

concrete stream of our conscious experience/ 3 think that it is not

It necessarily leads to the religious indifferentism which sees in all positive religious

systems mere specimens of " religious experience," or varying manifestations of the

religious sentiment that is rooted in human nature. As to the interpretation there

suggested (ibid.), by which Kant s " categorical imperative " would be the dictate

of the Divine Reason revealed in the human conscience, it is in open and explicit

contradiction with Kant s own language ; and anyhow it would leave the existence

of God as Kant left it, an unsolved and (in his view) insoluble problem.

1 Cf. JEANNIKRE, op. cit., pp. 280 sqq. 2 Cf. MHRCIER, op. cit., p. 180.

3 So, for instance, MACH, POINCARK, Boutnoux, MILIIAUD, etc. cf. JEANNI^KE,

op. iit. t pp. 277-9.

LATER ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 345

by such knowledge but by some sort of immediate vital intuition

that we attain to a true and genuine contact with reality. 1

Others, finally, pondering on the nature and significance of our

assents, whether in the form of " knowledge " or in the form of

"belief," have concluded that their real truth, their real know

ledge-value, does not and cannot consist in their giving us any

speculative insight into reality, or in their " conforming the mind

with reality" according to the old notion of truth ; but that it con

sists rather in their suitability, their practical worth or value, their

utility, the success with which they " work," with which they

enable us to perfect and develop the essential conditions and pur

poses of human existence: so that truth would not be absolute

but relative, and its ultimate criterion would be the practical test

of usefulness or suitability to human progress. This is Pragma

tism or Humanism.

As illustrative of the first of those general tendencies we may

take the theories of Mr. A. Balfour and Mr. W. H. Mallock in

England, and of M. F. Brunetiere in France. Mr. Balfour in

his Foundations of Belief (1895), as in his later occasional in

cursions from the domain of politics into that of philosophical

speculation, admits that the logical use of the speculative reason

on the data of experience, as illustrated in contemporary scientific

philosophies, which he labels as " Naturalism," leads to the ne

gation of religion and morality, to agnosticism. Yet he does

not boldly question their principles or methods, but merely ob

serves that they rest on indemonstrable and inevident postulates ;

and then goes on to contend that since men cannot and will not

and ought not to abandon religious and moral beliefs, an ade

quate motive for these beliefs must be found. But what adequate

cause or motive can be found ? Their immediate cause or motive

is the combined influence of all the factors which constitute man s

social environment and make up the " psychological atmosphere "

in which his mental life is steeped and formed. " Non-rational

causes " these are, if you will ; but, then, man cannot and does

not live (his intellectual, moral, religious life) on reasons alone :

" certitude is found to be the child not of reason, but of custom ".

Man must hold to his beliefs despite the " rational " negations of

agnosticism not by attempting the hopelessly difficult if not im

possible task of rationalizing these beliefs ; nor by attempting the

1 Notably BERGSON and his disciples; and LE Rov in the domain of Catholic

apologetics, ibid.

346 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

equally hopeless task of finding adequate rational grounds for the

authority of the various social institutions whether civil or re

ligious which propound these beliefs to him as true ; but by re

flecting that on the one hand if the authority of the extrinsic social

milieu from which he has received them is not evident to reason

neither are the postulates underlying the agnostic philosophy

of Naturalism, and that on the other hand it is only right and

proper and natural for him to trust the instinctive " non-rational "

impulses and yearnings of his soul, and so to hold firmly to moral

and religious beliefs, beliefs which so obviously harmonize with

all that is best and noblest in man s nature, and the loss of which

would degrade man to an unnatural condition of mere animality.

Notwithstanding the unquestionable excellence of Mr. Bal-

four s intentions his achievement is not likely to advance the

cause he has at heart. His polemic against Naturalism has been

rather unceremoniously summarized by somebody in these terms :

Naturalism is false : so is my philosophy : but as my philosophy

is less false than Naturalism it ought to have the preference. 1

There is much justice in the summing up. For de facto his

philosophy is false : and for the general reason already given

against fideism or sentimentalism in any form (164). From the

point of view of reason moral and religious assents would, on his

theory, be admittedly not assents of certitude but of a prudent

probabilism. How, then, is their superior probability, as com

pared with the agnostic affirmations of Naturalism, to be trans

formed into certitude, into the firm assent of faith ? By an

appeal to subjective feeling or sentiment, to the will to believe. But

no such feeling or sentiment can be the ultimate ground of cer

titude in a being who can summon it to show its credentials

before the bar of reflecting reason. And equally futile is the

appeal to such extrinsic social influences as are not directly

rational, influences that are motives or causes, but not reasons, of

assent. Why should I yield to such social influences, or to such

instinctive, subjective feelings, until I know that what they

prompt me to believe is true ? " You should believe ; you should

trust your faculties ; you should trust the moral and religious

promptings of your nature." Yes, certainly, when I convince my

self that there arc reasonable grounds for my doing so ; but not

sooner. I refuse to abdicate my dignity as a rational being by

believing or trusting blindly. I will use my reason to discover

1 Cf. MERCIER, op. lit., 88, p. 200.

LATER ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 347

satisfactory objective grounds for believing : such grounds will be

the ultimate test of the truth of what I am to believe ; they will

be the ultimate motive of my certitude ; then will my belief be a

reasonable belief, an obsequiwti rationabile.

"But surely," it will be urged, "the masses of mankind, the

millions of men in every age, who believe in a moral law, in im

mortality, in a Divine Lawgiver, etc., de facto hold these beliefs

without ever troubling to explore rationally, and pronounce to be a

reasonably adequate ground of assent > the combination of extrinsic

social influences and intrinsic individual impulses and instincts

which determine those beliefs ? Nor could they hope to accom

plish such a process of rationalization if they attempted it.

Therefore it would be unreasonable to expect it of them ; and

the reasonable course for them rather is to follow the higher in

stincts of their nature as moral and religious beings, and to trust

in the reliability of the universal social authority when it dictates

beliefs that accord so admirably with these instincts."

We have met this plea before. It mingles false assumptions

with an ignoratio elenchi. Moral and religious beliefs are de

facto held by men in widely different ways. We have not to

defend all these ways. Some of the actual beliefs are partly or

wholly false in their contents. And some of them, even in so far

as they are true in substance or content, are no better than

superstitions on account of the irrational ways in which they are

held: ways that are in direct conflict with man s nature as a

rational being : ways that are tantamount to a denial of the

fundamental fact of man s rationality. Our task is to point out

the only rational, and therefore the only right and true, way of

holding them. When the individual holds such beliefs because

he is rationally convinced, rationally certain, that he has ade

quate grounds for their credibility, for the truth of what they

propose to him, then and then only does he believe rightly and

rationally. For, as St. Thomas says, " Ea quae subsunt fidei

. . . aliquis non crederet nisi videret ea esse credenda " ; and not

only would the individual de facto refuse, but he would be right

in refusing, to " believe them unless he saw them to be credible ".

And this brings us to the false assumptions and the ignoratio

elenchi involved in the plea we are considering.

In the first place the duty of the epistemologist, in setting

forth a theory of certitude, is not to indicate the provisional,

actual or de facto grounds of men s spontaneous beliefs, but to

348 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

discover what rational reflection declares to be dejure and neces

sarily the ultimate ground of them. And secondly, the alleged

impossibility, for individual men generally, of finding a reason

ably adequate rational basis for their beliefs, and so making these

beliefs reflex and reasoned, is based on the false assumption that

in order to do so the individual must have explored and solved

all the possible objections that human reason can urge against

their credibility and truth. But this is by no means necessary.

Provided that the beliefs are objectively true ; and provided the

individual sees on the one hand adequate objective evidence of

their credibility, which the man of average intelligence can

tie facto easily see both within him and around him, in his own

nature, in the world of his experience, and in the light which

those truths throw both on his own nature and on the world

around him : for truth makes to the human intelligence an ob

jective evidential appeal which is not forthcoming in the case

of error ; and provided, finally, he can meet and settle satis

factorily, according to the measure of his capacity and oppor

tunities, such difficulties as may de facto happen to arise against

the credibility of what he believes, then the certitude of his

belief is a reflex, reasoned and reasonable certitude.

To all this, however, we must add, in explanation of the wide errors and

contradictions and conflicting beliefs that de facto prevail throughout the

world in the moral and religious domains, the doctrine already stated (163),

that the aid of a positive Divine Revelation is, morally speaking, necessary

for the preservation of moral and religious truth among men. Moreover,

what we have just said concerning the possibility of a reasoned religious belief

for the average individual applies primarily of course to the individual who

has been brought up in the possession and profession of true religious belief.

And finally, those who are in full and certain possession of the Christian re

ligion in its authentic form know that dc facto the only true religion for the

human race is this supernatural religion, that God has de facto given to

man a supernatural destiny, that He has de facto raised man to a supernatural

end, that Faith in the truths which He has revealed concerning this super

natural end and destiny is a gratuitous Divine gift, that it is not attained by

man s unaided natural powers but Divinely given, and that when given it can

be preserved and made operative only by the free co-operation of man s reason

and will with the supernatural grace by which Faith enlightens and strengthens

him.

W. H. Mallock, in a volume published in 1903, Religion as

a Credible Doctrine : a Study of the Fundamental Difficulty, con

fronts the affirmations of agnosticism with those of man s moral

LATER ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 349

and religious consciousness, and concludes that since the affirma

tions of each domain are rationally inconsistent in themselves,

and rationally incompatible with those of the other domain,

neither set can be accepted on grounds of reason. But history

teaches that the true progress of humanity is bound up with

fidelity to the dictates of the moral and religious instinct. Let us

therefore obey this instinct ; let us recognize the co-existence of

those two rationally irreconcilable orders of experience : let us

have the wisdom to bow to the inevitable "synthesis of contra

dictories," and try to make the most of it.

This is not a solution of any problem, but a verdict of des

pair : a recommendation to stifle reason and embrace a moral

dogmatism that is admittedly in conflict with reason. So long

as men have any regard for the dignity of their reason they will

not agree to stifle reflection and live by instinct. Nor, even if

they try to believe by instinct, can they prevent reason from

operating on those beliefs, and so leading either to reasoned cer

titude or to scepticism.

M. Brunetiere, a well-known French Catholic writer and

apologist, defends religious and moral beliefs on lines not unlike

those followed by Mr. Balfour. Noting that all the really great

philosophers considered the practical question of those beliefs as

the problem of supreme concern for humanity ; and pointing out

that this question, even when it appears as a social or a moral

question, is always and fundamentally a religious question, he

himself contends that the ground of religious belief can never be

fully accredited or vindicated by purely rational investigation.

We have in our nature an ineradicable "need to believe". But

we cannot find in our nature, even in our nature as rational,

whether in the individual or in the collectivity, any adequate

authority for what we are to believe. There must be, then, ex

trinsic to man and superior to man, some such authority. Where

is it and how are we to recognize it ? We can recognize it by

the unique and extraordinary civilizing, moralizing, elevating,

ennobling effect of its teaching on the human race : it is the

Christian Religion, the Catholic Church. Ex fructibus eorum

cognoscetis eos. It can be judged by its fruits, and will stand the

test. We do not need and we cannot wait for strict rational

demonstration of the justice of its claims. Life is too short

for indulging in the luxury of rationalizing through and through

the beliefs on which our social, moral and religious well-being

350 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

depends. The philosophies speak with conflicting voices on the

grounds of these beliefs. What we need is an authority which we

can recognize as responding to our highest needs by its manifest

efficacy in fostering these beliefs among men. And such an

authority we have in the Catholic Church.

Thus, M. Brunetiere subscribes to the Traditionalist verdict

on the practical incompetence of the individual reason face to face

with the problem of orienting ourselves aright in the actual

warring world of creeds and no-creeds. He does not, however,

adopt as the test of decision the Traditionalist criterion of a

Divine Authority revealed in the magisterium of social tradition,

but rather what serves the higher interests of humanity : an index

which, for him, points immediately to Christianity ; whereas for

Mr. Balfour it only pointed to the vague mass of moral and re

ligious influences felt in our social environment.

This mode of grounding moral and religious beliefs is en

tirely unsatisfactory. It is open to anyone to assail it on such

lines as these : Granted that history shows the influence of Christi

anity to be wholly beneficent, am I therefore bound to accept

its moral and religious teaching ? It may be good ; it may be

the best : but show me that I am morally bound to accept the

good, or the best. If I happen to be a utilitarian, or a hedonist,

why should I abandon my utilitarian ethical system, or my hedon

ist programme of self-gratification, and espouse Christianity ? If

these are wrong, and if it is right, you must prove it : you must

show your reasons. But this precisely is seeking a rational

basis for moral and religious belief. You appeal to what Christi

anity has done for the progress of humanity. Progress towards

what? What is the end or aim of human life? You think that

humanity really profits and is really served by accepting the

religious teaching and submitting to the moral code of Chris

tianity. But what if I disagree ; if with Schopenhauer or

Nietzsche I hold the Christian conception of human society and

human nature and human destiny to be no better than an illu

sion ; if, in fine, I hold it folly to sacrifice individual pleasure,

present and attainable, to an ideal of some social good that

is future and problematical ? Who is to decide between us ?

Reason alone can decide ; your reason and my reason. And

whether we succeed in coming to an agreement or not, one thing

at least is clear : that the ultimate decision of all such questions

must be reached by reason, or else never reached. Between

LATER ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES 351

reasoned certitude and scepticism there may indeed be a battle

ground, but there can be no resting-place.

Before passing to the consideration of Pragmatism we may conveniently

notice here the philosophical aspect of a rather remarkable and more or less

original method which many recent Catholic apologists in France have adopted

for the vindication and defence of the fundamental beliefs of the Christian

religion. As a method of apologetics it is known as the Method of Immanence

and also, by reason of its philosophical content, as the Philosophy of Action}-

Chief among those who have advocated and used the method are Pere

Gratry, Olle-Laprune, Blondel, Brunetiere, Fonsegrive and Pere Laber-

thonniere.

The purely intellectual defence of Christianity as a supernatural, revealed

religion, on extrinsic grounds of historical evidence, these writers admit to be

necessary : it cannot be superseded. But in itself it is not adequate : it needs

to be supplemented, to be made persuasive and operative, especially for the

mentality of our own time, by showing how admirably the whole content of

the Christian religion appeals to and harmonizes with all the needs and

yearnings and aspirations of the human heart. In fact mere intellect, mere

reason, will not of itself suffice, to impose religious certitude from without, as

it were, upon the individual, or to win from him a real and living and opera

tive assent to religious truth. We must go for the truth, as Plato said, with

our whole soul. It is not by intellect alone, but also by the will, the heart,

the feelings, aspirations, instincts of our nature, that we possess and realize in

ourselves religious truth. Nay, it is primarily by these that we attain to it.

It is by following our natural instincts and aspirations and obeying our will

to believe, that we find Christianity, not wholly without us, but partly with

in us, in the anima naturaliter Christiana. And it is by living up to it, by

experiencing its elevating and purifying influence upon us, that we really and

efficaciously attain to the certain conviction of its truth. The role of intellect

or reason, as regards what we may call, with Newman, the engendering of a

" real assent " to Christianity, is but secondary and subsidiary : the primacy

is with the will. Non in dialectica complacuit Deo sal-vum facere popuhim

suum. We cannot argue men into Christianity by intellectual evidences.

Let us rather show them the content of Christianity as alone capable of satis

fying the veritable needs and instincts of their nature. Let us realize our

selves, and help them to realize, that while Christianity is supernatural,

while it transcends our mere nature, illuminating and elevating it/rom without,

there is nevertheless a true and real sense in which it is not alien or foreign

to our nature, in which we find it within us, inasmuch as it not only ade

quately corresponds to nature and perfects nature, but is also the natural

complement of nature in the actually verified hypothesis of God s having

created and intended man for a supernatural end and destiny. The super

natural is ex supposito natural. Does not St. Thomas say 2 that grace

and faith are " natural " gifts, not absolutely, of course, seeing that they

are gratuitous gifts which God might not have conferred on humanity,

but consequently on the Divine Bounty, whereby they are de facto real

1 From M. BLONDEL S work, U Action, published in 1893.

2 Summa Theol., II*, Ilae, Q. I., a . 4) a d 4.

3 5 2 THEOR Y OF KNO U LEDGE

accompaniments of human nature in its actual condition ? This being so,

should we not find the real and effective motive for Christian belief by look

ing within man, in the human heart itself, in its moral and religious instincts,

aspirations, needs and yearnings, and argue the truth of Christianity from its

perfect accord with these ? Such is the psychological or immanent method

of Christian apologetics. 1

As an apologetic method it has no direct concern for the philosopher.

It has undoubted merits from that practical standpoint as an aid to, and

complement of, the intellectual defence of objective and historical Christian

evidences. Christianity effects a harmony between two great facts the

external fact of a positive, historical, Divine Revelation, and the internal fact

of the moral and religious aspirations of the human soul. But the con

sciousness of these aspirations, and the experienced fact of their finding the

fullest satisfaction in certain religious beliefs, those, namely, of Christianity,

must of necessity raise a problem for the individual intellect, the problem of

investigating the objective credentials of doctrinal Christianity. And until

the believer or seeker finds these to be rationally adequate, he cannot find

intellectual repose, the repose of conviction or certitude, in the mere con

sciousness that assent to those doctrines satisfies certain instincts and

yearnings of his nature.

From the strictly philosophical standpoint of a theory of certitude, the

method of immanence misinterprets and inverts the respective functions of

intellect and will in the attainment of certitude concerning religious and

moral beliefs. It exaggerates the role of the will, the heart, the affective

side of man s nature, and is thus unduly anti-intellectualist. We have already

explained (159) the true sense of the priority of faith to reason, as a

purifier of the heart, as subduing human passion, as illuminating the intellect,

and thus disposing man to make a prudent and reverent use of his reason in

contact with the revealed mysteries of Faith. There is a true sense in the

practical exhortation to seek truth "with our whole soul". It is entirely

intelligible and acceptable if we understand it to mean that we should love

the truth, long to find it, apply ourselves zealously and perseveringly to the

search for it, and brace up our will to apply our intelligence to the discovery

of it." But it also may bear a sense that is false and unacceptable and

unintelligible : and that is, if it be taken to mean that it is the will rather

than the intellect that discovers and assents to truth. When we find the

truth we should no doubt love and embrace it and live up to it. But it is

intellect, and only intellect, that finds and assents to truth and keep us in

possession of truth. We have already (12) considered the influence of the

will on our " free" convictions, and have noted that its influence on assent,

even when direct and immediate, is an influence which, expelling impru

dent fear of error, commands the intellect to elicit the act of assent, the act

which puts us in possession of the truth. But will is not itself a cognitive

faculty : its proper object is not the true but the good, i.e. the already

apprehended good. To arrogate to the will, therefore, or to the affective and

emotional springs of mental action, the discovery of truth, is the anti-

1 Cf. MERCIKR, op. cit., 83, 89, 90 (pp. 187-9; 204-^).

- St. Augustine says, " Sapientia et veritas nisi totis aninii viribtis concupisca-

tur, nullo modo invcniri potcrit ". Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 275, pp. 326-7.

PRAGMATISM 353

intellectualist error of voluntarism. The Method of Immanence, the Philoso

phy of Action, would apparently accord the primacy to will, not to intellect,

in the matter of truth and certitude. In so far as it does it must be rejected

as erroneous.