THE SCHOLASTIC POSITION 39 



was added by Telesio to his scheme either as 

 a prudent concession to the Church or because 

 his philosophical and his theological opinions 

 were formed in separate ' water-tight ' com- 

 partments of his mind, while he was too honest 

 to accept the current convention which ad- 

 mitted two kinds of truth, the theological and 

 the philosophical " (p. 43).* 



I cannot say what Telesio did or did not 

 mean, as I have never studied his works, but 

 nothing can be more clear than the fact that 

 scholastic philosophers were never tired of pro- 

 claiming the fact that there is and can be^only_ 

 one true view of every topic. The confusion 

 arises from the fact that they would hold that 

 there were different truths established by dif- 

 ferent methods : truths^hilosophiall^L4jroved Two kinds 

 and truths recebraCon authority after that of truths 

 authority had been accepted as adequate. This 

 is perfectly intelligible and rational, but to 

 suppose that sane men could conceive of two 

 opposite explanations of the same thing being 

 both true, men too, in whose epistemology the 

 principle of contradiction took so high a place, 

 is quite impossible. Of course, it is right that 



* The error of the two standards of truth icas held by 

 Averroes, who has no sort of title to be considered a 

 scholastic or even an orthodox philosopher, and by a few 

 other equally unorthodox writers, especially of the Renais- 

 sance period. 



