Chapter 2

EPILOGUE ON THE CRITERION OF TRUTH

1372. We can summarise what has been discussed in this book as follows. Knowledge is of two kinds, direct(255) and reflective.
The former, relative to the latter, is the truth(256) possessed by all human beings. Reflective knowledge simply develops, unites and analyses direct knowledge. It is true when it conforms to and is one with the latter, but false if it prefers to fabricate and create rather than be founded on and recognise what is in direct knowledge. Error therefore is a kind of creation carried out by human beings with the faculty of reflection.

First reflections constitute popular knowledge; second reflections, philosophical knowledge. Because knowledge is subject to error in proportion to the part played in it by reflection, philosophical knowledge is more subject to error than popular knowledge.

1373. Reflection adds light and perfection to human knowledge. Philosophical knowledge therefore has on the one hand the disadvantage of being very subject to error, and on the other the advantage of being endowed with much greater light and perfection than popular knowledge.
Reflection is the source of the most enlightened knowledge, and of what is generally understood as knowledge. Although it is moved by both instinct and will, we could simply say that it is moved by will because the will always co-operates, at least by means of habits or negatively. Hence a wayward or an upright will leads reflection into error or truth.
When the will is accustomed to directing reflection falsely, confusion arises so that reflection sees nothing more, not even what is evident. The human eye is darkened and, in this state, reflection denies even the first principles.

1374. But if direct knowledge is the rule or criterion to which reflection must be referred, only intellective evidence renders knowledge of this kind capable of having such authority and force over reflective knowledge that we feel obliged to direct our reflections by its rule. This evidence, which is not a subjective fact, is endowed with its own obligating force, precisely because it is intellective and not feelable. It has an intrinsic logical necessity through which we irrefutably understand and know that the contrary cannot possibly be thought.

The source of this necessity is the idea of being, the source of all intellective knowledge. This idea contains within itself all possibilities, which taken together form what we call necessity because all that is must be in them. We have to conclude therefore that the true and final principle of certainty is, and can only be, the idea of being present to our spirit and manifesting itself not only with the clarity of light but also with such intrinsic necessity that nothing else can be thought outside of it. Hence if human beings wish to find the truth, they must reason according to this principle.

1375. As long as we are content with direct knowledge, we reason naturally according to this supreme criterion pointing us to what is true. But direct knowledge does not take us far, and certainly does nothing for human needs in society. When we go on to reflect, we are dealing with mere contingent fact where the only means of solving questions is observation of the history of the human race. This explains why those who think philosophy is something very abstract and far removed from facts, readily say that questions of contingent fact do not belong to philosophy. Whatever the case may be, I must say a few words about the matter. Any language, even if non-philosophical, will be enough if true. In my opinion the history of the human race presents a sad spectacle. Corruption of heart and confusion of mind is the heritage of all humanity. This is human history — St. Paul's `corrupt lump' is the theory behind this history.(257)

Cicero writes: `Scarcely have we been born and welcomed than we immerse ourselves in every kind of wickedness and in the deepest perversity of opinions, as if we had sucked error with the milk of our nurse's breast. When we are returned to our parents and consigned to teachers, we imbibe such wayward errors that truth gives place to vanity, and nature to ancient prejudice. Add to this the poets who offer an impressive appearance of learning and wisdom; we listen to these poets, read and learn them, fixing them deeply in our minds. — Next comes the people, apparently the best teacher, and the whole multitude consenting to vice of every kind. We burden ourselves entirely with ill-doing, denying nature itself.'(258)

1376. In the common sense of the human race therefore the individual finds no secure way of correcting his wayward, disturbed reflection. The opposite however must be said about Christian society. Here, in the authority of others (if we wish to choose it), each one of us finds a secure way of confirming and reassuring his uncertain, timorous reflection.(259) Those who do not use this way therefore are inexcusable. The truth is firmly founded in Christian society, not in the society of the human race. Only in Christian society, not elsewhere, do we find `the pillar and ground of the truth' (to use a scriptural phrase). (260) Only divine help could render the stages of human reflection certain and safe, just as only divine power can strengthen the feet of a paralytic, or restore light to eyes that have lost it.(261)

1377. But it is not enough simply to assure the existence of truth among human beings in order to respond to their needs. Human beings must also improve their will; only by willed acts can we find that truth which, although we may not look at it, is continually before our gaze. This is how Christianity led human beings to the truth, corrected their behaviour and made them good. Human beings were enlightened, and culture and civilization sprang from the root of virtue. We fall short therefore if in order to help human beings, we simply indicate what the criterion of certainty is; we must also preach the love of truth and place it into their hearts.
Hence St. Augustine said: `He alone is our true teacher who can impress the idea in us, fill us with light and impart VIRTUE to the listener.'

Notes

(255)As we have said, direct knowledge is composed first of the form of reason or idea of being in general, secondly of perceptions, and finally of the first ideas we can have by universalisation or integration. If we prefer to exclude from direct knowledge the ideas we have by integration, because this supposes a first reflection, we must nevertheless note that such ideas are per se new and therefore constitute some kind of fundamental knowledge. There can be no error in this natural knowledge, which is the exemplar or rule by which all other knowledge is ascertained and corrected.

(256) The idea of being is simply called logical truth. First ideas or essences are truths or types with which we compare and identify the whole class of things included in the truths, and distinguished and known explicitly by analysis.

(257) Gal 5: 9 [Douai].

(258) Tusc., 3, 1. — Lamennais is clearly refuted here and in what follows.

(259) This choice can be made only with the light of reason, which remains in every corrupted person. The light, of itself, would be incapable of leading us to the truth, not because it is defective but because our eye, looking elsewhere, is defective. In this situation we have to associate our light with the light of others; we have to use the little power we retain to discover faithful counsellors. In this way the individual wrongdoer is aided by two associated lights, not by an individual light or the light of others. Thus no one has recourse to another for counsel without knowing the counsellor and choosing him; in other words, he does not choose human beings, but the light that he knows is in others.

(260) 1 Tim 3: 15 [Douai].

(261) It is the whole human race, not an individual, that St. Gregory compares to the man born blind and healed by Jesus Christ: `The blind man is the human race' (cf. Hom. 2 in Ev.).