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 IMMANENCE

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IMMANENCE

for the innate capacities which render the knowledge of God so easy and so natural. St. Augustine, in his turn defines these capacities as "the active and pas- sive potentialities from which flow all the natural effects of beings", and this theory he employs to demonstrate the real, but relative, immanence of our intellectual and moral life. Our natural desire to know and our spontaneous sympathies do not germi- nate in us unless their seeds are in our soul. These are the first principles of reason, the universal pre- cepts of the moral consciousness. St. Thomas calls them "habitus principiorum", "seminalia virtutura " " dispositiones naturales", " inchoationes naturales". He sees in them the beginnings of all our physiolog- ical, intellectual, and moral progress, and, following the course of their development, he carries to the high- est degree of precision the concept of relative imma- nence. The Thomist tradition — continuing after him the struggle against empiricism and positivism on the one side and, on the other, against rationalism carried to the extreme of monism — has always defended the same position. It recognizes the fact of immanence, but rejects every exaggeration on either side.

(b) Actual Content of the Doctrine of Relative Im- manence. — This doctrine rests upon that innermost experience which reveals to man his individuality, that is to say his inward unity, his distinctness from his environment, and which makes him conscious of his personality, that is to say, of his essential inde- pendence with respect to the beings with which he is in relation. It, moreover, avoids all imputation of monism, and the manner in which it conceives of immanence harmonizes excellently with Catholic teaching. "An ejusmodi immanenlia Deum ab hom- ine distinguat, necne? Si distinguit, quid tum a catholica doctrina differt?" (Encycl. "Pascendi").

(i) God. — God, then, transcends the world which He has created, and in which He manifests His power. We know His works; through them we can demon- strate His existence and find out many of His attri- butes. But the mysteries of His inner life escape us; Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption are known to us only by revelation, to which revelation the imma- nence of our rational and moral life presents no obstacle whatever.

(ii) The World, Life, and the Soul. — The organiza- tion of the world is governed by Divine Providence, whose ordering action can be conceived in diverse ways, whether we suppose successive interventions for the formation of various beings, or whether, fol- lowing St. Augustine, we prefer to maintain that God created all things at the same time — "Deus simul omnia creavit" (De Genesi ad lit.). In the lat- ter case we should invoke the hypothesis of germinal capacities, according to which hypothesis God must have deposited in nature energies of a determinate sort — "Mundus gravidus est causis nascentium " ( ibid . ) — the evolution of which at f a vourable j unctures of time would organize the universe. This organiza- tion would be due to an immanent development, in- deed, but one proceeding under external mfluences. Thus did plants, animals, and men appear in succes- sion, though there could be no question of attributing to them a common nature; on the contrary, the doc- trine of relative immanence draws a sharp line of demarcation between the various substances, and par- ticularly between matter and soul; it is extremely careful to maintain the independence of the human person. Not only does this doctrine, joining issue with sensualism, demonstrate that the mind is a living energy, which, far from letting itself be absorbed by influences from without, forms its necessary and universal principles by its own action under the pres- sure of experience — not only this, but it also safe- guards the autonomy of human reason against that encroachment of the Divine which the ontologists maintained.

(iii) Dogma and Moral. — The human soul, then, en- joys an immanence and an autonomy which are relative indeed but real, and which Divine Revelation itself respects. Supernatural truth is, in fact, offered to an intelligence m full possession of its resources, and the reasonable assent which we give to revealed dogmas is by no means "a bondage" or "a limitation of the rights of thought". To oppose Revelation with "a preliminary and comprehensive demurrer" ("unefinde non-recevoir pr(51iminaire et globale" — Le Roy) in the name of the principle of immanence, is to misinterpret that principle, which, rightly under- stood, involves no such exigencies (see below, "The Method of Immanence"). Nor does the fact of rela- tive immanence stand in the way of progress in the understanding of dogmas "in eodem sensu eademque sententia " (Cone. Vatic., sess. III). The human soul, then, receives the Divine verities as the disciple re- ceives his master's teaching; it does not create those verities. Neither does it create principles of moral conduct. The natural law is certainly not foreign to it, being graven upon the very foundation of man's constitution. It lives in the heart of man. This law is immanent to the human person, which conse- quently enjoys a certain autonomy. No doubt it recognizes its relation to a transcendent legislator, but none the less true is it that no prescription coming from another authority would be accepted by the conscience if it was in opposition to the primordial law, the requirements of which are only extended and clearly defined by positive laws. In this sense the human will preserves its autonomy when, in obeying a Divine law, it acts with a fundamentally inviolable liberty. This liberty, however, may be aided by natural and supernatural helps. Conscious of its weakness, it seeks and olitains the assistance of grace, but grace does not absorb nature; it only adds to nature, and in no way infringes upon our essential immanence.

B. Employment of the Method of Immanence. — The notion of immanence occupies so large a place in contemporary philosophy that many make an axiom of it. It is held to be a directing prmciple of thought and Le Roy makes bold to write that "to have ac- quired a clear consciousness of the principle of imma- nence is the essential result of modern philosophy" (Dogme et Critique, 9). Now it is in the name of this principle that "a preliminary and comprehensive demurrer " (ibid.) is presented in bar of all Revelation, for in the light of it " a dogma has the appearance of a subjection to bondage, a limitation of the rights of thought, a menace of intellectual tyranny" (ibid.). And this creates a religious situation with which apolo- getics is deeply concerned, and with good reason. All the efforts of this science will be vain, all its arguments inconclusive, if it cannot, first of all, com- pel minds imbued with the prejudice of absolute immanence to take under consideration the problem of the transcendent. Without this precaution, anti- nomy is inevitable: on the one hand, it is claimed, the mind cannot receive a heterogeneous truth; on the other, revealed religion proposes to us truths which go beyond the range of any finite intelligence. To solve this difficulty we have recourse to the method of immanence. But this method has been under- stood in two different ways which lead to diametri- cally opposite results.

(1) Method Based on the Idea of Absolute Imma- nence. — This is the positivist and subjectivist method. It consists in accepting off-hand the postulate of an absolute immanence of the rational and moral life. It is therefore obliged to lower revealed truth to the level of scientific truths which the mind attains solely by its own energy. Thus, some, like Lechartier, have proposed to modify dogmatic formula; and "dissolve the symbols " of them in order to harmonize both with the aspirations of the soul which thinks them. By