and Science by St. Thomas Aquinas. Now involved in these, as their principal substance, when reduced to plain language, are the following principles:

First, we must take some things for granted without proof; Secondly, we must not consider some things when there is danger that we will doubt them; and, thirdly, if we find any of certain things untrue we must not admit the fact.

Here we have the three greatest of all intellectual vices; prejudice, slavery, and dishonesty, on which, more than on anything else, rests the responsibility for our culpable dark

ness.

We are to come with predilection to our investigation of religion; we are not to investigate at all where we are likely to learn anything different; and we are not to admit our conclusion if found to be unfavorable. Taking for granted what we want to know, we are not to consider what discredits it or admit anything found to be contrary to it. Starting out to find the truth we are to take up something without looking at it, then not to examine it, and if we ever learn our error afterwards not to acknowledge it. We are to open the mind unduly, shut it unduly, and if anything not wanted gets in to expel it unduly. Starting out to see, we are to look with our eyes shut, then not to open them, and if by chance we see anything, not to acknowledge it.

Religion is thus, according to Aquinas' system, never actu ally examined, is never allowed on principle to be examined, and its acceptance is never to be affected by examination if had.

Let us examine these points in detail. We say the first principle of Aquinas is to admit some things without evidence. He accepts the dictum of St. Anselm, Credo ut intelligam, I believe that I may know. That is, we are to accept some things that we do not know to be true, and then to deduce the rest of our knowledge from them, or base our intelligence on our ignorance.

The following are the matters that he specially asks us to thus accept without evidence: first, the principle of revelation, or the fact that God does communicate to us some things; secondly, the particular documents, or the fact that the Scrip

tures, decrees of councils, and teachings of the church are such a revelation; thirdly, the fact that we have a special faculty of faith to receive these divine communications; and fourthly the fact that our inward movings or inclinations to accept religion are influences from God.

For of none of these does he offer any proof, except to support them upon one another. He admits that all specially theological doctrines are incapable of demonstration, or of being proved in any way by reason. We must, he says, simply admit them. His method of defending religion is to believe it, and then show that we do not know it to be otherwise. After believing it we may, indeed, get some confirmatory proof of its truth, but only by using our faith to support it. The process is as follows: Believe that the moon is made of green cheese, and then show that all science cannot prove absolutely that it is not.

Duns Scotus following this principle of Aquinas, and reducing it to its absurdum, claims that we can know nothing in religion, not even the existence of God, but that we must take it all on faith. And Scotus is logical. If you can believe a little without evidence, you can believe more, or all; you do not contravene any additional principle in so doing. And Scotus, accordingly, rather than Aquinas, is followed in the Roman Church, particularly by the Jesuits, who have so much to defend which nobody pretends to prove. He would say, practically, Follow authority without proving it: Admit what it teaches without first learning whether it knows: Open your ears more than your eyes. Accept religion without inquiry, and ask no questions till you are incapable of doubting.

Aquinas was good in defending theology from science, but not in giving theology a basis. His argument would be good, if a good case were first made out for theology. But he allows for no such case in his system. Theology must be taken for granted to give it a basis at all. Religious argument, according to him, can only confirm one who, by already believing, needs no confirmation.

The next principle involved in Aquinas' system of religious defence is that on some subjects we must not think. They are not subjects for reason, but for faith. They must not be investigated critically or scientifically, but admitted devoutly.

Among the matters not to be investigated, according to Aquinas, are the creation, the sacraments, purgatory, and eternal life, in fact all the peculiar Christian doctrines; to which, for the masses, is added also the Bible, and, for certain classes, almost everything. Not only must you commence by taking these for granted, but you must not turn the light of reason upon them at all. This, he says, would be invading the. province of faith. The philosophical faculties of Catholic universities have been prohibited from touching these questions. Geology, Astronomy, Biology must not make any inferences bearing on religion. Theology alone has this right; and, as theology admits them to commence with, there is virtually no investigation at all.

St. Thomas, in order to get this immunity for religion, divides off our ways of investigation, and lets only some of them undertake theological questions. This secures religion. from the criticism of the rest. He divides off the sciences in like manner, and lets only some of them undertake theological questions. This secures religion against the rest. And in general it secures religion against all science by excluding those sciences which alone can critically deal with it. And in all investigation of religion it excludes criticism and then allows consideration to proceed.

This is perhaps the worst feature of his system, which lays a ban not only on individual thinking but on the sciences, not only on the masses but on the thinkers, circumscribing alike the departments of investigation and the liberty of the investigator.

The other evil in the system of Aquinas is that it would prohibit conclusions of a certain kind however well established. Taking some things for granted men are told that they must never admit anything contrary to them. As if it were not enough to make men shut their eyes much of the time, they must not see when they are open. The doctrines of the Church, no matter what the evidence against them, must not be admitted false. We must stop thinking, first, and close up the mind. Those things which have been admitted without. evidence must not be discredited by evidence.

Come to your work, St. Thomas would say, with the pre

supposition that there is nothing contradictory between science and religion. If then you find something that is contradictory, you must conclude, either that it is not science, or that it is not religion, or that it is not a contradiction. And you prove it in this way: It is not science, because it contradicts religion; it is not religion, because it contradicts science; it is not a contradiction, because both are true.

These are the dangerous vices of Aquinas' system, whose resurrection and reënthronement in religion at this time are to be specially deprecated in the interest of progress.

St. Thomas legitimatized prejudice, and gave a code for its defence. He organized ignorance into system, and made it a satisfying substitute for knowledge. He created the world of theology from nothing, and provided, by excluding the light, against its return to that element. He negotiated for a standstill of thought on the height of the culminated scholastic philosophy, and effected, by separation, a truce between Science and Religion. By withdrawing from contemplation the difficulties of faith he provided for theology a retreat, where it might be secure from the world of thought. He cloistered religion, that like the saints, it might flourish alone.

In conclusion I may enumerate as among the advantages of Aquinas' system, or at least as steps in the direction of progress, the following: 1. The separation of the known and unknown, which, implying as it did a recognition of human ignorance, was, in those times of credulity, almost as valuable as their knowledge; 2. The separation of religion and science, with the conceding of a wider liberty to the latter; 3. The separation of the knowable and unknowable, which anticipated Kant's critique, and laid a basis (however invalid) for modern Agnosticism. 4. The separation of the religious from the secular in government, which, though but a distinction in thought with Aquinas, led the way for its application soon after by William of Occam to a divorce between the papacy and the empire; 5. The rejection of separately existing ideas, which prepared the way for Nominalism in the next century; and 6. The encouragement given to induction by rejecting innate ideas, and deriving all our knowledge from experience.

ARTICLE VII-HERBERT SPENCER'S DATA OF ETHICS.

THE visit to this country of the celebrated author of the so-called "Synthetic Philosophy" has revived the interest of American scholars in the products of his research and thought. His system of Philosophy culminates in the "Principles of Morality," of which only one volume is as yet published, under the title "The Data of Ethics." It is earnestly hoped that Mr. Spencer will be able to complete the remaining volume, as also his extensive treatises on Sociology, that we may thus have before us the entire system according to its author's conception.

"The Data of Ethics" was published out of its regular order to meet a supposed emergency. "I am anxious to indicate in outline," says Mr. Spencer, "if I cannot complete, this final work, because the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need."*

The rules of right conduct he supposes to have lost or to be fast losing their hold upon men, and mainly because the sanctions derived from their supposed sacred origin must now be given up. Some rules, however, are essential. We agree with

him that

"Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system [of morals] no longer fit before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it."*

This fitter regulative system it is the object of the "Data of Ethics" to supply. Discarding the Bible so far as it has any superior claim by reason of "supposed divine origin," discarding our own moral intuitions as intuitions, the "Data of Ethics" attempts to furnish us with a better regulative system of morality, more securely based and enforced by more powerful sanctions.

It is the aim of this Article to enquire how far the author has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose.

Moral Science or Ethics has been accurately defined as "The

* Preface, p. vi.