466 AMBROSE J. MCNICHOLL 



that have been neglected, and for which new methods of 

 investigation are necessary. The rational nucleus of this global 

 and vital vision of reality is philosophy, seen as a strict science. 

 Philosophy is indeed insufficient for man to live by, but that 

 means that it is imperfect, not as science, but as human. As a 

 science, philosophy must be abstract, speculative, and to some 

 extent impersonal; and it is above all by means of metaphysics 

 that religion and faith can enter as vital and coherent elements 

 into the Christian Weltanschauung. The way of subjectivity 

 can be accepted as an excellent propedeutic to our ontology, 

 and the phenomenological method finds ample scope for appli- 

 cation in the new fields opened up by such reflexive self- 

 consciousness, while Analysis shows how we need to demand 

 greater rigour in our modes of thought and expression. 



As the intellect is under fire from so many sides, one must 

 stress its power to know the singular, distinguishing between 

 abstract knowledge, and knowledge of the abstract, and to grasp 

 existence, thus insisting on the role of judgment as distinct 

 from merely conceptual thought. And far greater attention 

 should be paid to pre-conceptual, or at least pre-logical, modes 

 of thought such as are at work in the various forms of con- 

 natural knowledge, for instance, in art and morality. If we 

 rightly insist on the analogical nature of science, we must 

 resist the attempt to identify intellect as such with any one 

 form of its activity; this has been perhaps the most fruitful 

 source of misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The per- 

 nicious process of univocation is active when Descartes identi- 

 fies intellect with mathematical reason, when Idealism identifies 

 it with logical reason, when Bergson conceives it as the instru- 

 ment of homo faber, or when Husserl conceives it as essentially 

 the faculty of intuition. It is the same tendency which leads 

 so many to identify science as such with one of its particular 

 forms. 



The analogical character of science depends, fundamentally, 

 on the analogy of being, just as the doctrine of science, or 

 epistemology, pertains to the critical function of metaphysics. 

 Without a sane and solid metaphysics, no satisfactory and co- 



