268 MELVIN A. GLUTZ 



natural philosophy will have to conform to the exigencies of 

 the logical process of demonstration. Among the many require- 

 ments of demonstration is this one, that the principles of a 

 demonstration, i. e. the definitions and premises, have to be 

 foreknown, even reducible to self-evident propositions, so that 

 the mind may be led from the known to the yet unknown. 

 The first point of our study will be the order in which the 

 mind is led from the known to the unknown. 



The order of learning ® 



The learning process may be likened to the way in which 

 nature operates a cure. It may do so through its own intrinsic 

 powers, or it may be helped along by the art of the physician 

 and the instrumentality of his medicines. By analogy, there are 

 two ways of acquiring science. " In one way, natural reason 

 by itself reaches knowledge of unknown things, and this way 

 is called discovery {inventio) ; in the other way, when someone 

 else aids the learner's natural reason, and this is called learning 

 by instruction {disciplina) ." ^ There follows from this a funda- 

 mental principle of organizing a science. "A similar thing takes 

 place in acquiring knowledge (scientia) . For the teacher leads 

 the pupil to knowledge of things he does not know in the same 

 way that one directs hhnselj through the ^process of discovering 

 something he does not know." ® 



Therefore, the via inventionis and the ordo disciplinae coin- 



°L. M. Regis, O. P., Epistemology (New York: Macmillan, 1959), Chap. IV 

 " The Angehc Doctor's Method." Chap. XII. " Infalhble Knowledge of Mediate 

 Truth." R. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 

 1943) , " The Method of St. Thomas," pp. 9-26. 



'' Truth, 11, 1, transl. J. V. McGlynn, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1953). 



* Ibid. Italics ours. St. Thomas teaches the same doctrine elsewhere. " Scientia 

 acquiritur dupliciter: et sine doctrina, per inventionem; et per doctrinam. Docens 

 igitur hoc modo incipit docere sicut inveniens incipit invenire: offerendo scilicet 

 considerationi discipuli principia ab eo nota, quia omnis disciplina ex praeexistenti 

 fit cognitioiie (I Poster., 1, 1; 71a), et ilia principia in conclusiones deducendo; et 

 proponendo exempla sensibilia, ex quibus in anima discipuli formentur phantasmata 

 necessaria ad intelligendum " (Contra Gent., II, 75. Cf. Summn Theol., I, 117, 1; 

 In II De Anima, 11, n. 372; De Spir. Great., a. 9, ad 7) . 



