GENERAL OUTLINE OF METHOD 21 



concrete, positive facts of sense ; it nourishes in the soul what we may call 

 the craving for the universal, the desire to grasp the idea in the fact, the 

 abiding law in the contingent phenomenon. 



In a word : clearness, precision, severe logic, method ; a sense or percep 

 tion of the true ; love of the truth simply for its own sake ; elevation of thought 

 and a fresh and speculative turn of mind : such are the qualities developed by 

 the Scholastic method in those who are formed upon it. Many great philo 

 sophers have placed on record authoritative eulogiums of the syllogism. 1 

 Such a writer as Huxley, who is certainly free from the suspicion of partiality 

 in this matter, pays a willing tribute of admiration to &quot; Scholastic philosophy, 

 that marvellous monument of patience and genius, constructed by the human 

 mind to give a logically unified answer to the problems raised by the spectacle 

 of the universe &quot;. a 



But the Scholastic method is not without its limitations. A method, being 

 a means to an end, becomes useless, or even injurious, when wrongly employed. 

 The Scholastic method exercises mainly the speculative reason : it is primarily 

 explicative, synthetic. It accustoms one to understand how a conclusion is 

 connected with certain premisses, how conclusions follow from principles ; 

 but it develops very little, if at all, the habit of observation ; it gives little or no 

 stimulus to personal initiative in the discovery of new truth. A training in 

 the positive sciences is, therefore, the necessary complement of a &quot; Scholastic &quot; 

 formation or discipline of the mind. To round off and perfect this latter 

 training, nothing is more efficacious than contact with facts ; since the 

 intellect must derive all its ideas from external or internal sense experience, no 

 mere verbal descriptions of phenomena can equal the direct and immediate 

 perception of these latter. By his example and by his works, Aristotle is no 

 less the master of scientists than of philosophers. Not only Roger Bacon, 

 but Albert the Great, St. Thomas, Duns Scotus, were faithful to his method. 

 Pope Leo XIII. has recommended us expressly, in his encyclical Aeterni 

 Patris, to &quot;receive with a willing and grateful mind every word of wisdom, 

 every useful thing by whomsoever it may have been discovered or planned &quot;. 

 It must also be of very great utility to supplement a training in the Scholastic 

 method by reviewing the history of scientific progress, so as to realize what 

 provisional hypotheses and theories, what guesses and approximations, what 

 deviations and errors even, the human mind has had to pass through in its 

 journey towards the discovery of every new truth. 



Again, the importance attached by Scholasticism to certain science in 

 clines its disciple to depreciate the value of the merely probable and provi 

 sional. To the &quot; Scholastic &quot; mind, the slowness of experimental work is 

 irksome : it easily becomes impatient of the problematic character of most 

 historical, sociological, political, and economic inductions, and of the many 

 reserves with which the materials of the special sciences must be employed. 3 

 But, while it is very right and proper to seek for certitude, and very praise 

 worthy to look for demonstrative reasons, it is wrong to expect the impossible ; 

 where certitude cannot be had it is unreasonable to demand it. 4 



1 Cf. Leibniz, Nouv. Ess., iv., 17, 4. apud WELTON, op. cit., i., p. 411. 



2 HUXLEY, Animal Automatism and Other Essays, p. 41. 



3 Cf. MERCIER, Origines de la psychologic contemporaine, pp. 450 sqq. 



Sunt aliqui qui omnia volunt sibi dici per ccrtitudinem. . . . Et hoc contingit 



