280 MELVIN A. GLUTZ 



necessary to arouse this state in the minds of students by 

 presenting the topics of natural philosophy as questions, the 

 aporia of Aristotle. These questions are hedged in by doubts, 

 and it is only in resolving the doubts in the light of certainly 

 established definitions and demonstrations that the mind comes 

 to rest. Proper order demands that the questions and doubts 

 be first proposed. *° The thesis method is not well adapted for 

 the first imparting of knowledge, but rather for remembering, 

 reviewing, and for disputing. 



The nature of the student's mind demands that a hunt be 

 made for all definitions. Definitions have value only when 

 one understands how they have been acquired and through 

 what kind of defining principles they are stated. Merely to 

 state them without justifying them is equivalent to an appeal 

 to authority. To state the definition and then to justify its 

 elements is to proceed in reverse order. To define after an 

 inadequate preparation for the definition is to play the midwife 

 to a puny and scrawny brainchild, as Socrates would put it. 

 We can learn a valuable lesson by observing St. Thomas pains- 

 takingly proceeding through three or four articles before finally 

 stating their outcome in a definition. 



The core of science is the propter quid demonstration. All 

 else in the science, observations of facts, definitions, quia 

 demonstrations, hypotheses and other dialectical material are 

 all ordered to propter quid demonstration. This order must be 

 made evident to the student. He must be shown how all hinges 

 on the first principles of science and how one demonstration 

 follows upon another. Particularly, he must be able to evaluate 

 the type of demonstration and to situate it in the context of 

 the whole science. It must be admitted that one looks far and 

 wide before he finds philosophy books that make use of the doc- 

 trine of demontration as proposed in the logic texts. The nature 

 of the science itself demands this structure, and its order to the 

 minds of the students requires that the methodology be empha- 



*" This is, of course, the method of St. Thomas in the Quaestiones Di^putatae and 

 in the Summa Theologiae. Cf. R. Garrigou-Langrange, The One God, pp. 9-26. 



