hods.

The rather complete failure of our many modern and ingenious
institutions, the failure of institutionalism altogether, is due far
less to wrong theories underlying them, or to radical defects in their
technique, than it is to this false philosophy and this progressive
abandonment of religion. The wrong theories were there, and the
mechanical defects, for the machines were conditioned by the principle
that lay behind them, but effort at correction and betterment will make
small progress unless we first regain the right religion and a right
philosophy. I said this to Henri Bergson last year in Paris and his
reply was significant as coming from a philosopher. "Yes," he said, "you
are right; and of the two, the religion is the more important."

If we had this back, and in full measure; if society were infused by it,
through and through, and men lived its life, and in its life, philosophy
would take care of itself and the nature of our institutions would not
matter. On the other hand, without it, no institution can be counted
safe, or will prove efficacious, while no philosophy, however lofty and
magisterial, can take its place, or even play its own part in the life
of man or society. I must in these lectures say much about institutions
themselves, but first I shall try to indicate what seem to me the more
serious errors in current philosophy, leaving until after a study of the
material forms which are so largely conditioned by the philosophical
attitude, the consideration of that religion, both organic and personal,
which I believe can alone verify the philosophy, give the institutions
life and render them reliable agencies for good.

For a working definition of philosophy, in the sense in which I use it
here, I will take two sayings, one out of the thirteenth century, one
from the twentieth. "They are called wise who put things in their right
order and control them well," says St. Thomas Aquinas. "Philosophy is
the science of the totality of things," says Cardinal Mercier, his
greatest contemporary commentator, and he continues, "Philosophy is the
sum-total of reality." Philosophy is the body of _human_ wisdom,
verified and irradiated by divine wisdom. "The science of the totality
of things": not the isolation of individual phenomena, or even of groups
of phenomena, as is the method of the natural sciences, but the setting
of all in their varied relationships and values, the antithesis of that
narrowness and conce