ic idiots, when they devoted their
faculties to the elucidation of problems which were to them, and
indeed are to us, the most serious which life has to offer. Speaking
for myself, the longer I live the more I am disposed to think that
there is much less either of pure folly, or of pure wickedness, in the
world than is commonly supposed. It may be doubted if any sane man
ever said to himself, "Evil, be thou my good," and I have never yet
had the good fortune to meet with a perfect fool. When I have brought
to the inquiry the patience and long-suffering which become a
scientific investigator, the most promising specimens have turned out
to have a good deal to say for themselves from their own point of
view. And, sometimes, calm reflection has taught the humiliating
lesson, that their point of view was not so different from my own as I
had fondly imagined. Comprehension is more than half-way to sympathy,
here as elsewhere.

If we turn our attention to scholastic philosophy in the frame of mind
suggested by these prefatory remarks, it assumes a very different
character from that which it bears in general estimation. No doubt it
is surrounded by a dense thicket of thorny logomachies and obscured by
the dust-clouds of a barbarous and perplexing terminology. But suppose
that, undeterred by much grime and by many scratches, the explorer
has toiled through this jungle, he comes to an open country which is
amazingly like his dear native land. The hills which he has to climb,
the ravines he has to avoid, look very much the same; there is the
same infinite space above, and the same abyss of the unknown below;
the means of travelling are the same, and the goal is the same.

That goal for the schoolmen, as for us, is the settlement of the
question how far the universe is the manifestation of a rational
order; in other words, how far logical deduction from indisputable
premisses will account for what which has happened and does happen.
That was the object of scholasticism, and, so far as I am aware, the
object of modern science may be expressed in the same terms. In
pursuit of this end, modern science takes into account all the
phenomena of the universe which are brought to our knowledge by
observation or by experiment. It admits that there are two worlds to
be considered, the one physical and the other psychical; and that
though there is a most intimate relation and interconnection between
the two, the bridge from one to the other