persuaded.
In modern philosophy, such expressions as Leibniz’s “persuasion” or Spinoza’s vera contemplatione gaudere constitute, in a way, a substitute for the flere and for the biblical “God blessed,” a substitute smuggled into the domain of objective thought which seemed to have been so carefully and once for all cleansed of all the Schwarmerei and Aberglauben to be found in the neighborhood of Scripture and its revelations.
But this was not enough for philosophy, or, more precisely, for the philosophers; they wished, and still wish, to think, and they try by all means to suggest to others, to make them think, that their truths possess the gift of persuading all men without exception and not only themselves who have uttered them. Reason recognizes as true only these truths. They are the truths that it seeks. It is these alone that it calls “knowledge.” If someone had proposed to Spinoza, Leibniz or Kant that they limit their pretensions, in the sense of recognizing that the truths are true only for those whom they persuade and cease to be truths for those whom they do not succeed in persuading, would the truths of Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant have retained their earlier charm in the eyes of these philosophers? Would they have continued to call them truths?
Here is a concrete example (the fundamental opposition between Hellenistic and biblical thought bursts forth fully only in concrete examples): The Psalmist cries to the Lord out of the depths of his human nothingness, and all his thought is oriented—just as the truths that he obtains are determined—not by what is “given,” by what “is,” by what one can “see” be it even by means of the eyes of the mind (oculi mentis), but by something quite different—something to which what is given, what is, remains, despite its self-evidence, subordinate. Thus, the immediate deliverances of consciousness do not circumscribe the goal of the Psalmist’s searchings; the facts, the given, experience—these do not constitute for him the final criterion which serves to distinguish truth from falsehood. A fact is for him something which rose one day, which had a beginning, and consequently may, if not must, have an end. We know from history that almost twenty-five hundred years ago Socrates was poisoned in Athens. “The man who is led by reason alone” must bow down before this “fact,” which not only constrains but also persuades him; he will feel calm only when reason will have guaranteed that no force in the world could destroy this fact, i.e., when he will have perceived in it the element of eternity or necessity. It seems to him that by succeeding in transforming even that which happened only once into an eternal truth, he acquires knowledge, the true knowledge which concerns not what begins and ends, what changes and passes, but what is forever immutable. Thus he elevates himself to the understanding of the universe sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis. He attains, with a flap of his wings, the regions where truth lives. And what this truth brings with it is then altogether indifferent to him, whether it be the poisoning of the wisest of men or the destruction of a mad dog. The important thing is that he obtain the possibility of contemplating eternal, immutable, unshakable truth. The mind rejoices over the eternity of truth; as for its content, to this it remains quite indifferent. Amor erga rem aeternam fills the human soul with happiness, and the contemplation of the eternity and necessity of everything that happens is the greatest good to which man can aspire.
If someone had taken it into his head to tell Spinoza, Leibniz, or Kant that the truth “Socrates was poisoned” exists only for a definite term and that sooner or later we shall obtain the right to say that no one ever poisoned Socrates, that this truth, like all truths, is in the power of a supreme being who, in answer to our cries, can annul it—Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant would have considered these words a sacrilegious attack on the sacred rights of reason, and they would have been indignant, just as Leibniz was when he recalled Descartes’ mountain without a valley. The fact that on earth righteous men are poisoned like mad dogs does not at all trouble the philosophers, for they believe it in no way threatens philosophy. But to admit that a “supreme being” can rid us of the nightmare of the eternal truth “Socrates was poisoned”—this would appear to them not only absurd but revolting. This would not satisfy or persuade them but, on the contrary, irritate them to the last degree. Of course, they would have preferred that Socrates had not been poisoned but, since he was poisoned, it is necessary to submit and to be content with thinking up some theodicy; this, even if it does not make us completely forget the horrors which fill human existence, will perhaps succeed in somewhat weakening their impression. To be sure a theodicy—Leibniz’s or anyone else’s—must rely on some eternal truth which, in the final analysis, reduces itself to Spinoza’s sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis. It will be said that everything that is created cannot be perfect by reason of the very fact that it was created and that, consequently, the world that was created can only be the “best of all possible worlds”; we must then expect to find in it many bad things, even very bad things.
Why should creation not be perfect? Who suggested this idea to Leibniz, who imposed it on him? To this question we will not find any answer in Leibniz, just as we will not find in any philosopher an answer to the question how a truth of fact is transformed into an eternal truth. In this respect, the enlightened philosophy of modern times is hardly to be distinguished from the philosophy of the “benighted” Middle Ages. The eternal truths constrain and persuade all thinking beings equally. When in the Middle Ages the voice of Peter Damian rang out, proclaiming that God could bring it about that that which had been had not been, it seemed like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. No one, neither of our time nor even of the Middle Ages, dared to admit that the biblical “very good” corresponded to reality, that the world created by God had no defect. Even more: it may be said that medieval philosophy, and even the philosophy of the Church Fathers, was the philosophy of people who, having assimilated Greek culture, thought and wished to think sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis. When Spinoza says, in ecstasy, “the love for the eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and this itself is free from every sorrow, which is greatly to be wished and striven after with every power,” he is only summing up the teaching of the philosophers of the Middle Ages who had passed through the severe school of the great Greek thinkers. The only difference is that Spinoza, in order to trace the way which would lead him to res aeterna et infinita, believed that it was his duty as a thinker to sharply separate himself from Scripture, while the scholastics made superhuman efforts to save for the Bible the authority which belonged to it as a divinely inspired book.
But the more men occupied themselves with the authority of the Bible, the less they took account of the content of the sacred book; for, indeed, authority demands finally nothing but respect and veneration. Medieval philosophy never stopped repeating that philosophy is only the handmaid of theology and always referred to biblical texts in its reasonings. And yet as competent a historian as Gilson is obliged to recognize that the medieval philosopher, when he read Scripture, could not fail to recall Aristotle’s words about Homer, “The poets lie a great deal.” Gilson also cites the words of Duns Scotus: “I believe, Lord, what your great prophet has said, but if it be possible, make me understand it.” So the doctor subtilis, one of the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages, speaks. When he hears the words, “Rise, take up your bed and go,” he replies, “Give me my crutches that I may have something upon which to lean.” And yet Duns Scotus surely knew the words of the Apostle, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin,” as well as the biblical account of the fall of the first man, who renounced faith in order to attain knowledge. But, just as later on in the case of Kant, there never occurred to him the thought of seeking in the biblical legend the “critique of reason,” the critique of the knowledge which pure reason brings to man. Is it possible that knowledge leads to the biblical “you shall die” while faith leads to the tree of life? Who will dare admit such a “critique?”12 The truth that knowledge is above faith, or that faith is only an imperfect kind of knowledge—is not this an “eternal truth,” a truth to which Leibniz’s words, “it not only constrains but also persuades,” could be applied par excellence! This truth had already seduced the first man, and ever since, as Hegel very rightly says, the fruits of the tree of knowledge have become the source of philosophy for all time. The constraining truths of knowledge subdue and persuade men, while the free truth of revelation, which has not and does not seek any “sufficient reason,” irritates men, just as
