275. Philosophical Teaching. -- The exposition we now subjoin has a twofold object in view: to point out the great organic and fundamental doctrines which may be said to constitute the scholastic system; and to indicate the special doctrines peculiar to Thomism.^{1} Without pretending to exhaust all the possible points of view, we propose to study consecutively: a group of preliminary, propaedeutic questions (I); the doctrinal content of the system proper, namely (1) logic (II.); (2) speculative philosophy: (a) metaphysics and theodicy (III.), (b) physics (IV.), and more especially psychology (V.); (3) practical philosophy: (a) ethics (VI.), (b) esthetics (VII.); and, in conclusion, the characteristics of scholasticism in general and of Thomism in particular (VIII.).

{1} The common scholastic theories are printed in ordinary type; the theories peculiar to St. Thomas or to other individual scholastics, in italics. Reference will be made to the Aristotelian sources wherever scholasticism draws on the teachings of the Stagirite.