De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That the concept of relative truth is absurd in itself, and that apart from the definition consecrated by ancient philosophy (the adequation of intellect and thing), no other notion of truth is admissible.

« Just as the good names that toward which the appetite tends, so the true names that toward which the intellect tends. But this is the difference between appetite and intellect, or any cognition whatsoever: cognition is according as the thing known is in the knower, whereas appetite is according as the appetent is inclined toward the appetible thing itself; and so the term of appetite, which is the good, is in the appetible thing, but the term of cognition, which is the true, is in the intellect itself... Since, moreover, every thing is true according as it has the proper form of its nature, it is necessary that the intellect, insofar as it is knowing, be true insofar as it has the likeness of the thing known, which is its form insofar as it is knowing. And on this account truth is defined by the conformity of intellect and thing »¹. And indeed, if knowledge is, by its own proper nature, a representation of the object, existing in the intellect, it immediately follows that truth, as the proper perfection of knowledge, cannot consist in anything else than in its conformity with the object itself. Now I mean a conformity which is not to be sought in the entity of the cognitive act by comparison with the entity of the thing outside the intellect, but precisely in this: that the object is in reality constituted in itself as the intellect apprehends and says it to be constituted.

But in order that the intellect say something about the real constitution of the object, it is necessary that it refer itself to that object by its act; and it does this not in simple apprehension, but only in judgment, which is expressed by a proposition. For every judgment comprehends two notions, of which one is taken as the subject, which stands for the thing to which² the mind refers itself, and the other as the form which is attributed to the subject and predicated of it. And the subject indeed, standing for a thing outside the intellect, always enunciates something designated and distinct, although as yet imperfectly apprehended, as a kind of quasi-potential thing that is to be determined by the predicate. Nor are these things mutually inconsistent. For certainly the mathematician begins to speak of the triangle before he knows its properties, and the physicist of magnetism as of the cause of certain effects, without yet knowing its intimate constitution; you name a plant before you have determined its species; you name an angel, even if you have a very vague and imperfect notion of it; you name God, even though you know that you are infinitely far from a conception of His essence, for it is enough that you say the first being, the cause on which the universe depends, or whatever else of that kind, so as to distinguish Him from everything that is not He. Just as, therefore, a corporeal singular is presented to me most distinctly, although I am ignorant of many things about it and its very numerical constitution, or principle of individuation, is hidden from me, so the subject of the judgment is set before me as something singularly designated and yet potential, which is to be determined by the predicate. Now, therefore, if the form signified by the predicate agrees with the thing designated by the subject, as the judgment affirms that it agrees, or if it does not agree, as the judgment denies that it agrees, truth is had; but if not, falsity; and each is said not relatively but absolutely, simply, without qualification. For the agreement on the part of the thing either is or is not, and this is the objective agreement to which the agreement affirmed by the intellect must be adequated, so that this at last may be truth, and nothing else: the adequation of intellect and thing.

But note well the terms of the adequation. The terms of the adequation are not the intellect and the thing — as if, namely, on the one side the object were posited in its whole reality, and on the other the intellect were exhausting the whole intelligibility of that reality, and consequently as if nothing ought to be in the object that would not be equally in the intellect. For it is thus that the new masters wished to interpret the adequation of intellect and thing, in order to reduce to absurdity the definition of truth received in ancient philosophy — and indeed an all too easy task. For who, I ask, could ever have dreamed that true knowledge is the same as comprehensive cognition, through which a thing is known as much as it is knowable? You will not, therefore, take the terms of the adequation in this way, but so that on one side is what the intellect affirms about the thing, and on the other what in the thing corresponds conformably to the affirmation. Accordingly, when I judge that God is wise, I do not say that there is an adequation between my knowledge and God or the wisdom of God — far be it — but only between the fact that wisdom is in God, or belongs to God, and that which shows forth as affirmed about this agreement in my judgment.

Again, the terms of the adequation are not the mode of the intellect in understanding and judging, and the mode of the thing in itself, because again the mode of understanding is one thing, and what is affirmed about the object through this mode of understanding is altogether another. Hence St Thomas, in the First Part, q. 13, a. 12, asking whether true propositions can be formed about God, and objecting to himself that every intellect understanding a thing otherwise than it is, is false, and that on the other hand the mode of God is plainly different from the mode of our cognition, answers thus: « To the third it must be said that this proposition: an intellect understanding a thing otherwise than it is, is false, is twofold, inasmuch as this adverb otherwise can determine this verb understanding, on the part of the thing understood or on the part of the one understanding. If on the part of the thing understood, then the proposition is true, and the sense is: Whatever intellect understands a thing to be otherwise than it is, is false. But this has no place in the present matter, because our intellect, forming a proposition about God, does not say that He is composite, but simple. If, however, on the part of the one understanding, then the proposition is false. For the mode of the intellect in understanding is other than the mode of the thing in being. For it is manifest that our intellect understands material things existing below it immaterially — not that it understands them to be immaterial, but it has an immaterial mode in understanding. And similarly, when it understands simple things that are above it, it understands them according to its own mode, namely composite, (that is, by composing the predicate with the subject), yet not so that it understands them to be composite. And thus our intellect is not false when it forms a composition about God ». And for a similar reason, when our intellect affirms simple perfections of God, it does not affirm them of Him according to the determinate and participated mode that they have among us. For in the names that we attribute to God, there are two things to consider, namely the perfections themselves signified — such as goodness, life, wisdom, etc. — and the mode of signifying. Therefore, as regards the perfection that such names signify, they properly belong to God — indeed, more properly than to creatures — and thus they are predicated of Him by us; but not as regards the imperfect mode in which the participated perfection is found among us³. And therefore, even if the proper mode of the divine perfection is not positively known by us, nor can even be positively known before we are granted intuitive vision, nevertheless in those things that our mind rightly judges about God there is always an adequation of intellect and thing, because there is always truly in God that which the intellect affirms to belong to God, and as it affirms it to belong to Him.

See, then, how sophistical are the things they bring forward to establish their notion of relative truth. For they say: How could that judgment be absolutely true in which the subject is apprehended confusedly, and the predicate has a mode altogether different from that which the thing has in itself? How would knowledge so far distant from a reality everywhere elevated above us not be mixed with falsity, and consequently at most relatively true? Finally, if neither God, nor His attributes, nor their proper nature are known to us, will there then be anything more than a mere manner of speaking in all those things that we either reason about or discuss concerning God and divine matters? So they say, but absurdly, because all these things show that our cognition can receive a greater perfection, whether by means of better species than those we now have, or through a direct intuition of that which is now manifested only in its effects, or through a new light by which the intellectual power is strengthened; but they do not prove that the right judgments of our intellect about even the highest things will ever have to be reformed. It does not matter that the subject of the judgment is not manifest in itself; for it is enough that it be so designated that we know what we are speaking about. Again, it does not matter that the predicate is inferior to the form signified; for it is enough that the concept be placed under such an abstraction that it can extend even to a reality which otherwise exceeds our knowledge — as is seen in the case of separate substances, in formal notions that do not include in their signification the limitation proper to corporeal things; and in the case of God, the limitation of the creature. And indeed, if the concepts of life, cognition, love, etc., included that mode of living, understanding, and loving that is in us, they would most certainly be attributed to God only falsely, just as we would falsely say that God is a body, or an animal, etc. But now, since these notions abstract from our determinations and of themselves express pure actuality unmixed with any restrictive element, they can and ought to be attributed to the infinite being. Finally, it does not matter that the mode of God's being is immensely distant from that which is known among us; for we do not judge, as was said above, that there is in God that mode of perfection which is known to us, or the concretion or composition that is found in our enunciations. It must therefore be said that God is wise, immense, omnipotent, omniscient, etc., and a judgment thus brought forth will always have the same immutable truth in whatever state of culture, and for whatever intellect, whatever may be the higher mode by which the heavenly minds attain the object, more fully penetrating its intelligibility and more closely approaching the perfect knowledge of it.

And indeed, every doctrine that is forced to change its assertions or their sense, so that what had previously been admitted is no longer recognized as exact, must evidently confess that it was simply mistaken, and not merely ignorant of what it now knows, or that it was only at a certain lower degree of relative truth. If physics at one time admitted that light is propagated by the emission of little spheres, and afterwards recognized that it consists in vibrations or periodic alterations of some fluid, it undoubtedly erred before. If it were ever demonstrated that the human soul is joined to the body only in the manner of an efficient or moving cause, and not through an intimate communication of its substantial reality, whoever once thought that the soul is the true form of the body was in error. If the moderns rightly affirmed that personality is constituted by consciousness, and not by the formal notion of a distinct subsistent — which notion by its nature precedes every operation, and hence also every consciousness of itself — whoever posited in Christ two natures and one person, while there are evidently two consciousnesses corresponding to divine and human cognition, that man again had a false judgment about Christ. And from first to last, what, I ask, is clearer, what more evident, than that it is impossible for a doctrine to be changed from a yes to a no, or vice versa, without thereby showing that a change has been made, either from error into truth or from truth into error? And if you say, from relative truth into a better relative truth, you are joining words without sense, you form an empty sound, and you do not understand what you are saying.

But perhaps they will rejoin: The change from yes to no does not occur between the same terms; rather, with the progress of science the signification of the terms becomes different, and therefore the change is not so much in the judgments, in which truth formally resides, as in the concepts and simple apprehensions on which depends the sense of the assertions and the meaning of the whole doctrine. Certainly, we reply, it depends very much. Therefore, before any proposition is brought forward, the sense of each word must be exactly defined, as was wont to be done in the ancient school and is neglected in the modern school. But let us see. Has the sense of the words really changed? Are the concepts different? What follows as regards the change of judgments? One of two things. Either the sense has so changed that there is now imported a thing altogether disparate from that which was signified before, and then the new judgment, since it is not about the same thing, must by no means be placed in comparison with the former, or be held to modify or reform it; and consequently, if such a change ever occurred, it would be necessary to agree on the words from the beginning, and to observe that what is at issue is only a new terminology, or a new vocabulary. Or the sense has so changed that the same word always refers to the same thing, and nevertheless is determined by some note contrary to what was understood before; and then it is evident that a change from yes to no has occurred between the same terms under the same words — as if you were always to say that the soul is the form of the human body, but now understand by form a merely extrinsic cause, and not an intrinsic and constitutive one. Then too it is evident that either what was said before was false and what is said now is true, or what was said before was true and what is said now is false; but in every mode, no place is left for relative truth, whether before or now.

Finally, you will notice what difference there is between what they call relative truth and what we all admit, the relative perfection of the knowledge of truth. Indeed, just as there are infinitely many possible intellects, some more perfect than others, up to the supreme intellect which is God, so too there are infinitely many degrees of perfection in the knowledge of the true. There is comprehensive cognition and non-comprehensive cognition; there is intuitive and abstractive; there is proper and quidditative, and improper and analogical. There are intelligible species that represent things in different ways; there is an intellectual light more or less powerful to penetrate what is contained in them and to judge according to them. There is a more or less intense clarity of principles; there is a more or less attentive consideration of the notes of the object, of the facts given by experience, and of effects in their relation to causes. There are certain judgments and probable judgments; there are apodictic arguments and mere conjectures, etc. It can therefore be said that the cognition of that truth which would be most imperfect in relation to an angel is perfect in relation to man, in the same sense, namely, in which the knowledge of which a learned philosopher would be ashamed is rightly called great in relation to a child. But, I ask, do not infer from this that whatever truth a child attains is not of equal truth for the philosopher. Do not conclude that truth itself is to be called relative to various intellects, or to various conditions of them. For the adequation in which its nature consists admits no degrees, since it is placed in this: that the form expressed by the predicate truly belongs to the real subject, as the intellect affirms. And this adequation either is or is not. Hence a judgment is either absolutely true or absolutely false. If it is composite, let it be resolved⁴ into its parts, and each part will be in itself either absolutely true or absolutely false. And in the true part every intellect, even the most sublime, will have to agree, although that more sublime intellect sees how the inferior mind is still immensely distant from a perfect and adequate penetration of the object according to its whole intelligibility. The conclusion, then, is that relative truth either has no sense at all, or reduces the notion of truth to the concept of Protagoras, according to which the true is that which appears, and therefore any contradictories whatsoever can be true at the same time, when different people judge differently about the same things.

But now, if the philosopher cannot consent to such a mode of truth — or rather of universal ignorance or madness — much less can the theologian or the believer, because then not only natural reason is destroyed, but also religion, faith, and the revelation of God, as must be briefly declared in the proposition that follows.