Subjective Aids

10. The preceding observation brings up another consideration, namely, the subjective reinforcement which Christian philosophy is heir to in a Christian climate. First, so far as the formation, not yet the exercise, of the philosophic habitus in the mind is concerned, we may note that those natural convictions of reason, which I am loath to call common sense (since this expression is equivocal; and there is in fact a certain school of ethnology which is anything but helpful in working out the critical analysis which it needs today more than ever) -- we may note, I say, that that which constitutes the truly natural in common sense serves as spiritual matrix, so to speak, in the shaping of intellectual states or capacities (habitus). But, this natural reason itself is corroborated by religion. It is religion after all which places us in a coherent universe made up of things and persons with clearly defined natures, a universe wherein we must elect between a yes and no.

Relying on Mr. Piaget's tests, Mr. Léon Brunschvicg recently suggested that the Scholastic mentality is on the level of childhood -- of children from eight to eleven years of age, if I am not mistaken (for these tests furnish thoroughly particularized answers -- that is, of course, with respect to only one term of the comparison). This assertion might well be described as rash, and rich to boot in mistakes (and to say the least, such as makes a reply in kind all too easy, for to the charge that "the thinking preceding the XVII Century never reached maturity," what is to prevent the equally gratuitous retort that that following the XVII Century is over mature or senile?). And yet in another sense I find his appraisal quite gratifying. Happy indeed is the philosophy which has not lost touch with childhood, and which preserves not the levity but the vitality thereof, as well as those primordial assurances fashioned in our souls from the first dawn of reason by the Word enlightening every man coming into this world. These assurances it will verify and judge, it will never forfeit them.