Encomia and More

heretofore amply shown; and we may add here that no one ever thinks without thinking something the contrary of which cannot be thought, as St. Anselm asserts.

“As Berkeley says to the mathematicians, "Logic is logic, and the same to whatever subject it is applied." When, therefore, the cultivators of the inductive sciences allege a theory or hypothesis which contradicts in any respect the ideal formula, however firmly persuaded they may be that it is warranted by the facts observed and analyzed, we tell them at once, without any examination of their proofs or reasonings, that their hypothesis is unfounded, and their theory false, because it contradicts the first principle alike of the real and the knowable, and therefore cannot possibly be true. We deny no facts well ascertained to be facts, but no induction from any facts can be of as high authority as the ideal formula, for without it no induction is possible. Hence we have no need to examine details any more than we have to enter into proofs of the innocence or guilt of a man who confesses that he has openly, knowingly, and intentionally violated the law. The case is one in which judgment a priori may be safely pronounced. No induction that denies all science and the conditions of science can be scientific.

“The ideal formula does not put any one in possession of the sciences, but it enables us to control them. We can entertain no doctrine, even for examination, that denies any one of the three terms of the formula. If existences are denied, there are no facts or materials of science; if the creative act is denied, there are no facts or existences; and finally, if God is denied, the creative act itself is denied. God and creature are all that is or exists, and creatures can exist only by the creative act of God. Do you come and tell me that you are no creature? What are you, then? Between God and creature there is no middle term. If, then, you are not creature, you must be God or nothing. Well, are you God? God, if God at all, is independent, necessary, self-existent, immutable, and eternal being. Are you that, you who depend on other than yourself for every breath you draw, for every motion you make, for every morsel of food you eat, whom the cold chills, the fire burns, the water drenches? No? do you say you are not God? What are you, then, we ask once more? If you are neither God nor creature, then you are nothing. But nothing you are not, for you live, think, speak, and act, and even reason, though not always wisely or well. If something and not God, then you are creature, and are a living assertion of the ideal formula. Do you deny it, and say there is no God? Then still again, what are you who make the denial? If there is no God, there is no real, necessary, and eternal being – no being at all; if no being, then no existence, for all existence is from being, and if no existence, then what are you who deny God? Nothing? Then your denial is nothing, and worth nothing.

“It is impossible to deny any one of the three terms of the formula, for every man, though he may believe himself an atheist or a pantheist, is a living assertion of each one of them, and in its real relation to the other two. We have the right, then, to assert the formula as the first principle in science, and oppose it as conclusive against any and every theory that denies creation, and asserts either atheism or pantheism. Do you think to divert attention from the intrinsic fallacy of such a theory by babbling about natural laws. Nature, no doubt, has her laws, according to which, or, if you please, by virtue of which, all natural phenomenon or natural effects are produced, and it is the knowledge of these laws that constitutes natural science or the sciences. But these laws, 

whence come they? Are they superior to nature, or inferior? If inferior, how can they govern her operations? If superior, then they must have their origin in the supernatural, and a reality above nature must be admitted. Nature, then, is not the highest, is not ultimate, is not herself being, or has not her being in herself; is, therefore, contingent existence, and consequently creature, existing only by virtue of the creative act of real and necessary being, which brings us directly back to the ideal formula. God denied, nature and the laws of nature are denied.

“The present tendency among naturalists is to deny creation and to assert development – to say with Topsy, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, only generalizing her doctrine, "Things didn’t come, they growed." Things are not created; they are developed by virtue of natural laws. Developed from what? From nothing? Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing nothing can be developed. A universe self-developed from nothing is somewhat more difficult to comprehend than the creation of the universe from nothing through the word of his power by One able to create and sustain it. You can develop a germ, but you cannot develop where there is nothing to be developed. Then the universe is not developed from nothing: then from something. What is that something? Whatever you assume it to be, it cannot be something created, for you deny all creation. Then it is eternal, self-existent being, being in itself, therefore being in its plenitude, independent, immutable, complete, perfect in itself, and therefore incapable of development. Development is possible only in that which is imperfect, incomplete, for it is simply the reduction of what in the thing developed is potential to act.

“There is a great lack of sound philosophy with our modern theorists. They seem not to be aware that the real must precede the possible, and that the possible is only the ability of the real. They assume the contrary, and place possible being before real being. Even Leibnitz says that St. Anselm’s argument to prove the existence of God, drawn from the idea of the most perfect being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, is conclusive only in condition that most perfect being is first proved to be possible. Hegel makes the starting-point of all reality and all science to be naked being in the sense in which it and not-being are identical; that is, not real, but possible being, the abyssus of the Gnostics, and the void of the Buddhists, which Pierre Leroux labors hard, in his L’ Humanite and in the article Le Ciel in his Encyclopedie Nouvelle, to prove is not nothing, though conceding to be not something, as if there could be any medium between something and nothing. In itself, or as abstracted from the real, the possible is sheer nullity; nothing at all. The possibility of the universe is the ability of God to create it. If God were not himself real, no universe would be possible. The possibility of a creature may be understood either in relation to its creability on the part of God, or in relation to its own perfectibility. In relation to God every creature is complete the moment the divine mind has decreed its creation, and, therefore, incapable of development; but, in relation to itself, it has unrealized possibilities which can be only progressively fulfilled. Creatures, in this latter sense, can be developed because there are in them unrealized possibilities or capacities for becoming, by aid of the real, more than they actually are, that is, because they are created, in relation to themselves, not perfect, but perfectible. Hence, creatures, not the Creator, are progressive, or capable, each after its kind, of being progressively developed and completed according to the original design of the Creator.

“Aristotle, whom it is the fashion just now to sneer at, avoided the error of our modern sophists; for he knew that without the real there is no possible. The principium, or beginning, must be real being, and, therefore, he asserted God, not as possible, but real, most real, and called him actus purissimus, most pure act, which excludes all unactualized potentialities or unrealized possibilities, and implies that he is most pure, that is, most perfect being, being in its plenitude.”

"I tried to get religion, and at times almost made up my mind to submit to the Methodists, and let them 'bring me out.'

 "One of our neighbors, an elderly woman, who had seen better days, had been well brought up and well educated, was a Congregationalist, a staunch adherent to the Standing Order.  She was now very poor, and lived in a miserable log-hut on one corner of our farm, and was treated generally by our neighbors with great contempt, because she insisted on maintaining her self-respect and personal dignity, notwithstanding her poverty.  I had a great affection for her, because I found her a woman of intelligence and refinement.  I visited her one evening, when I was in great distress of mind, and told her my fears and my resolutions.  She heard me with great patience, till I had concluded my story.

    " 'My poor boy,' she replied, 'God has been good to you, and has no doubt gracious designs toward you.  He means to use you for a purpose of his own, and you must be faithful to his 

inspirations.  But go not with the Methodists or with any of 

the sects.  They are New Lights, and not to be trusted.  The Christian religion is not new, and Christians have existed from the time of 

Christ.  These New Lights are of yesterday.  You yourself know the founder of the Christian sect [Elias Smith], and I myself knew personally both George Whitfield and John Wesley, the founders of Methodism.  Neither can be right, for they come too late, and have broken off, separated from the body of Christians, which subsisted before them.  When you join any body calling itself a Christian body, find out and join one that began with Christ and his apostles, and has continued to subsist the same without change of doctrine or worship down to our own times.  You will find the true religion with that body, and nowhere else.  Join it, obey it, and you will find rest and salvation.  But beware of sects and New Lights: they will make you fair promises, but in the end will deceive you to your own destruction.'

"I was some twelve year old at the time, but the words made a deep impression on my mind.  They struck me as reasonable and just; and I think they prevented me from ever being a genuine, hearty Protestant, or a thorough-going radical even.  She was not a Catholic, but her argument is one which, though I knew it not then, none save a Catholic can consistently urge." 

“There are few questions that they have not discussed, and well discussed; there are few truths in philosophy or in theology that they have not known, and, in one form or another, set forth and defended; and no man is, or can be, well qualified to engage in any of the controversies even of our day, who has not in some way availed himself of their labors.”

Adversus Haereses:

 “There are popular errors which admit of no popular refutation.”