see God. If we ascribe moral truth to God, it is because, as we have seen, it cannot depart from Him without losing its reality and sanction. To show the relationship of moral truth. to God, we need only call to mind the point at which it surpasses our capacities, and indeed overwhelms us. We, as creatures, are not only imperfect, we are frail and attainted; and yet we have a perception of the higher good, of the ideal of perception. This is manifestly above us and not the product of our conceptions; for if we were shut up within ourselves we could not conceive of anything better than ourselves. This living characteristic of moral truth which binders us from comprehending it in a formula, and which in some sense gives it the grandeur of highest personality, is a new reason for giving a large place to the will and to the heart in its approbation.

"Thought can of itself grasp a formula; a personality escapes its grasp. It only lays hold of contours and limits; it can. never attain to complete knowledge. It must love in order to know, and without harmony it is unintelligible. What shall be done then when we attempt to treat of a personality which is the Absolute Goodness? Living truth presents an infinity of aspects to the honest student. It is too wide to be contained within any given formulas. Its formulas are at best only symbols."*

God is not known, according to Pascal's profound remark, except when He is manifest to the heart. "Moral truth that has been ignored or neglected is never thrust into the mind by the all-powerful virtue of a syllogism. Neither the excellence of the virtue nor the dignity of the soul could tolerate that. No, friendship demands something broader. And is it not a sublime and intimate association between the human soul and truth, when truth entreats the soul and gains its consent. It is an association, and at the same time it is a friendship. For in the moral order abstractions have only a provisional value. Behind the ideas there are genuine realities, and these realities. are personal existences. At the very foundation every thing is included in this: God calls-man answers. This constitutes. all the moral life. "Listen," said Bossuet, "listen in your

* Ollé-Laprune, Ouvrage cit., p. 351.

heart-listen in the place where truth makes itself heard, where pure and simple ideas are wont to congregate.'

*

Moral certainty, then, implies: 1st, the exercise of the moral faculties; 2d, the firm decision of the will to submit to the categorical imperative, and to place the sacred intuition of duty above logical necessity. We cannot therefore avoid marking a decrease in moral power from the denial of any truth which consciousness has revealed; although we should note the many inconsistencies by which a man sometimes in himself rises. above or falls below his theory. In the same way there are atheists who by their virtues and nobility of character compel us to believe in God-men who are atheists merely because under the name of God they have comprehended a monstrous idol of human creation-and just so we see professed adorers of the divine who are really only wretched profaners of the same. When we speak of a true moral certainty, we mean that which is at once a theory and a practice; which is at once, if we may so say, a sight and a life of the divine. This, according to our view, is possible to every person who has desired to make a legitimate use of his moral faculties. On the other hand, in spite of our respect for the liberty of opinion, we are compelled to reckon the denial of moral truth as a manifest transgression by the will.

Skepticism, which often under the most brilliant exteriors contests the moral order, and admits only a curiosity on the part of the soul-that refined Epicurism which wishes always to enjoy and never to obey-is a disease of the soul. That it doubts proves no excuse, because its foundation lies in the will. It is not sufficient to say, "What is truth?" to bring the soul into bondage to the uncertainties of unbelief. If one says it ironically, as Pilate did, he never gets an answer, or rather he does get just what he wanted, which is a denial. Skepticism proves no more against moral certainty than sickness proves against health, or the wilfully closed eyes against the sun. The world has long known that it is possible to have eyes without seeing, and ears without hearing.

"The action of the will is not centered upon a single moment of the moral life. Every one, in proportion as he has made a

* Ollé-Laprune, "De la Certitude Morale," p. 385.

proper use of the former life shining into his soul, is thereby more or less perfectly prepared to make use of the new light which has been bestowed upon him. Former faithfulness is the best gauge by which to measure the present ability to recognize the pathway of to-day. To think is a natural gift. To think accurately depends in some measure upon our own free will."*

It would be difficult to speak more accurately concerning the moral side of knowledge than M. Liard has done in the following passage taken from his work on "Metaphysics and Science:"

"The metaphysical question has a vast moral interest. When we believe in duty, we demonstrate the need of thought for something more than mere logical and scientific order. We perceive within us two distinct authorities: the law of thought and the law of morality. The authority of conscience is greater than that of science. At the very beginning of metaphysics we are forced to acknowledge moral truth, and to ask of our consciousness an explanation of the world, conformable to this truth. Since moral metaphysics can only proffer the resources of consciousness in response to the ultimate speculative needs of the soul, it may offer itself to the minds of men; but it can lay them under no constraint. To accept it willingness is required, and a belief that moral truth is the Alpha and Omega of all things. One virtue, even though it be an obscure one, is a better helper to metaphysics than the most brilliant discovery of science."+ "The personal act required of us," as M. Ollé-Laprune well says (p. 264), "is not to submit truth to the person, but to submit the person to truth." How large a place is given to the will, when people solemnly ask us (as they do) that we should not make any scientific concessions to unscientific mysticism! We profess to remain faithful to the general and universal laws of certainty. These laws which govern all experiment have been admirably stated in Claude Bernard's "Introduction to Experimental Medicine." He there most fittingly recognizes the fact that the experimenter should never assign a part to nature, but that he should subordinate entirely his own preconceived ideas to the phenomena presented.

*

Ollé-Laprune, "De la Certitude Morale,” pp. 368–376.

+ Liard, "La Metaphysique, et la Science Physique,” p. 48.

"As soon as nature speaks, let the experimenter keep silence. He never ought to answer for it, nor to listen in a partial way to its answers. In nature, what our theories call absurd, is not necessarily impossible." The illustrious scientist just quoted lays down the rule that the steps of our experimenting should always vary with the subject-matter of our investigations. "In experimenting," says he, "our methods ought to vary infinitely according to the different sciences, and the conditions more or less difficult, and more or less complex with which the experiment is engaged." What is true in the kingdom of nature, strictly socalled, is equally true in the kingdom of consciousness and the lofty sphere of moral truth, although these last should have their own peculiar processes and methods of observation that are peculiar to themselves. Here logical deduction is no more in place than the scalpel or the telescope. Primitive truths appeal to the intuitions alone; moral truths appeal to the intuitions and to the assenting will. Intuition accompanied by the assenting will might be properly styled a moral faith; and this faith, far from superseding experiment, is only a superior example of it, the only one which can avail when we are considering the first principles-those which lie beyond the realm of demonstration and reason-because they are the basis of intellectual and moral order. The thing which demands proof is not the real beginning. "It is the light that determines faith to cross the threshold of that obscure region where it dare not be satisfied with the stupid possession of an unintelligible object, but where it must deserve and conquer new and better kingdoms of light."* The intuitive faith of which we speak is really an experimenting, the only one appropriate to this order of truths. Intuition, from its very nature, cannot be a simple deduction which draws one truth from another, as consequence from a premise; for it ascends to the principle itself. It ascends to this principle by the boldest of inductions, which bears it out from the finite world, which it has trampled under feet, or broken down like prison walls; and then bears it up to the divine infinity. Without any doubt the soul that would attain this infinite world must be attracted by it, must be vivified by it; for as P. Gratry well says: "There are advances which the Ollé-Laprune, "De la Certitude Morale," p. 365.

*

true.

isolated soul cannot make alone. The soul can make deductions; it cannot propel itself." We refuse, however, to admit with the illustrious orator the glaring dualism that discriminates between the first action of the soul in obtaining the moral truth through intuition, and the second action by which it unites itself to faith-the whole being based upon the theory that reason should be separated from faith.* The theory is not From its inception moral certainty is an act both human and divine. As soon as man comes into contact with living truth there is communion between himself and God. The light about him will doubtless grow brighter, but he will reach his noon-tide by the same path that brought him to the dawn. The primordial act of faith or of intuition which enables him to comprehend with the categorical imperative the God from whom it proceeds, is of the same nature as the act which afterwards unites him intimately with the divine. The first is no less mysterious than the second, for the mystery consists in that immeasurable fulness of the infinite which ever overflows our formulas as well as our minds. Fénélon has said with profound truth: "I depend upon grace alone to guide my reason within the bounds of reason."

There is great danger in establishing, as M. Gratry and Malebranche before him have done, an absolute distinction between the initial act of reason and consciousness, and what they have called the act of faith. Faith, in the sense in which we have used it, is active and present in both these phases of knowledge. The difference between them is quantitative and not qualitative, unless we take the risk of coming back by a simple detour to the skepticism of Bayle, whose great art is to let loose the reins of free thought in the kingdoms of nature and reason, by pretending to hold it in check before the reserved kingdom of faith. Respecting this kingdom of faith he freely says: “It is sacred because nobody has ever touched it. Reason has destroyed or will dissipate all religious doctrines. But rest assured they are intact up there in the clouds, in the empyrean of indiscussable faith."

We will not admit this contradiction. Faith is already. active in the first operations of reason, and reason accompanies

* Gratry, "De la Connaissance de Dieu," vol. ii., p. 487.