TIONARY THEORY.

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Before examining directly this widely pre

valent and very erroneous and pernicious theory, let us point out

the principal truths which it has either lost sight of or else mis

conceived and perverted.

(1) The higher the nature of the knower the more perfect the

mode of cognition : hence the Divine Knowledge, and the know

ledge of purely spiritual intelligences such as the angels, are more

perfect than our human modes of cognition.

(2) Human knowledge is obviously capable of increase,

growth, development, both in depth and in extent, intensive and

extensive. This is true both of the individual and of the race.

The universe is constantly yielding up new objects of knowledge

to human investigation. Moreover, new implications of principles

or truths already known are being incessantly brought to light,

thus increasing the depth or intensity of our knowledge of such

principles. To this process religious knowledge is no exception.

The Catholic Church recognizes a doctrinal development of

Christian dogma in this sense of a growth of human insight into

the Christian deposit of Divinely Revealed Truth. It is the

function of Catholic Supernatural Theology to note and to pro

mote this fuller understanding of the Christian Revelation ; and

nowhere has the character of this development been more clearly

expounded than in the well-known work of Cardinal Newman.

But such growth or development of knowledge, whether secular or

religious, whether scientific or philosophical, does not make know

ledge "relative" or "changeable" in the sense (of the theory)

that what is at any time truth or true knowledge can ever become

false or erroneous. This is too obvious to need enlargement.

(3) Language changes. Languages progress and decay.

New discoveries necessitate the invention of new technical terms.

The conception of new hypotheses or theories in any domain of

human experience, in physics, ethics, esthetics, philosophy,

the Encyclical Pascendi (October, 1908), rightly observes that Modernism stands for

more than mere intellectual freedom, that it champions a new conception of truth,

the view, namely, that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and therefore no

such thing as religious dogmas absolutely and definitively true. Similarly, LOISY,

Autour cTun petit livre (p. 190), writes : " If truth, so far as it is accessible to the

human intellect, were something absolute, and if revelation and dogma partook of

this character; if not alone the object of knowledge were in itself eternal and im

mutable, but also the form assumed by that knowledge in human history, then in

deed the assertions of the little book are more than rash, they are absurd and

impious". apud JEANNIERE, I.e.

236 THEOR V OF KNO W LEDGE

religion, similarly involves the finding of new forms of expres

sion. This implies not only the constant formulation of hypo

theses or theories not yet established as true, but a variety of

alternative formulations of admitted facts and familiar truths.

But mere change in the modes of formulating knowledge in

language does not involve change in the knowledge, and cer

tainly not such change from true to false, or vice versa as the

present relativist theory contemplates.

(4) A widely prevalent and generally received concept or con

ception as to the nature of things in some domain of human

experience may disappear and give place to a conception which

seems a wider, fuller, deeper, more adequate mental apprehension

or representation of the nature of the facts. But this by no

means implies that the former conception was objectively valid

or true and has now ceased to be so. If it was true, and if the

new conception is also true, the change merely shows that the

former, though true, was not adequate, and that the latter is also

true and more adequate. Or it may be that the former, though

helpful in many ways, is now discovered to have been false all

the time, i.e. not to have represented even in an inadequate way

the real state of things : as, for instance, the Ptolemaic compared

with the Copernican astronomy. Or again, it may be that the

new conception, perhaps after proving very useful as a working

hypothesis for a time, may be afterwards proved to have been

false and may lead to the reinstatement of the old, discarded

conception, or some slight modification of it, as embodying after

all a more accurate apprehension of the facts. We have an illus

tration of something like this in the quite recent reinstatement of

emission theories in the place of undulation theories, as explana

tions of magnetic and electrical phenomena, in physical science.

Now all such shifting and changing of hypotheses or conjectural

interpretations of things, so far from supporting the view that

truth or true knowledge is subject to change and evolution, rather

militates against this view : for why should hypotheses be rejected

except because they are discovered not to have been true, not to

have been expressive of the real state of things? An hypothesis

is a conjectural judgment or interpretation which may be true

or false, which may be verified or proved erroneous by research. 1

It is therefore of the very nature of an hypothesis, as opposed

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., Part IV., chap. v. WIND t:, The Church and

Science (London, C.T.S., Kjiy), chaps, v.-viii.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 237

to an established truth, to be unstable, uncertain, subject to

modification or to total rejection.

(5) Knowledge must be distinguished from its effects on

men s minds, and on their character and conduct. Different

truths have different values ; and the same truth has varying

values for different types of mind. A truth which may have a

profound influence on human progress at one epoch or in one

part of the world may not be appreciated at another epoch or

by another section of the human race. All depends on the

preparedness of men s minds for its reception, on the mentality,

the mental receptivity, of the epoch or section of humanity in

question. All this is beyond doubt. It implies, however, not

that truth or knowledge is itself relative, not that one and the

same judgment is true for some and not true for others, or true

at one time and not at another, but only that the practical effects

of a certain item or body of knowledge, or insight into reality,

on men s minds and lives, on their manners and customs, on

their actions and institutions, vary from age to age and from

clime to clime, according to the measure in which, from whatso

ever causes, men are able or unable to appropriate the truth or

knowledge in question, to give what Newman calls a real assent

to it, to utilize it and act according to it. The human mind or

intellect, no less than the human will, the moral character, the

whole man, is undoubtedly capable of progress or "evolution,"

as also, unfortunately and undeniably, of retrogression and de

cadence, by the development, or by the disuse and atrophy, of

its capacity of acquiring knowledge, which is its connatural per

fection. And whether in the individual or in the community,

nation, or society, the actual condition of this mentality, its

comparative stagnation or progressiveness, will of course depend

mainly on the opportunities offered by the whole intellectual

atmosphere or environment. Hence in different parts of the

world, and at different epochs in the world s history, we find

different stages of intellectual development ; and we find that,

naturally, human institutions corresponding to one stage of

development, and suitable to one state of society, will not adapt

themselves to another. In this sense, and in this sense alone,

may the human intellect be said to be subject to " evolution" ;

but evolution in this sense does not in the least imply that know

ledge which is true, which represents " that which is," can ever

" evolve " into falsity or error.

238 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

(6) Because the whole world of our direct cognitive experi

ence is subject to change, because its reality consists not exclu

sively in " being " ("esse") but also in " becoming " ("yfcrz"),

the doubt may be raised whether it does not follow from this, as

a necessary corollary, that the truth of our knowledge also must

be essentially subject to change, and therefore be not absolute

but relative. But the least reflection will show how groundless

such misgiving is. For since it is assumed that we know the

reality thus experienced to be changing, and that therefore our

knowledge can attain to this process of change and represent it

faithfully (if inadequately), the difficulty is seen at once to be

self-destructive. For if our knowledge represents any reality as

subject to change, or as actually changing, then in so far forth

as this reality is subject to change, or is actually changing, our

knowledge represents it aright and is therefore true.

(7) A still more transparent objection to the absolute and

immutable character of truth is that which arises from confusion

of time in predication with time of predication when there is

question of judgments concerning subjects which change with

time. 1 Because the judgment "This fire is burning" is now

true, and will be false if repeated to-morrow when the fire will

have ceased burning, it is loosely said that " What is true to-day

will be false to-morrow". But obviously to-morrow s judgment

will not be false if the predication be made of the same subject

as that of to-day s judgment, i.e. of the fire as it is to-day ; but to

refer the predicate to-morrow to this same subject, to-morrow s

judgment will have to be formulated in the past tense. The

truth of a judgment, therefore, is not independent of " time in

predication," but it is independent of " the time of predication " :

" once true, true for ever ".