Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/183

] can draw great abstract and general truths, rising out of great depths and mounting to great heights, constituting a body of philosophy, based on the earth but towering to heaven. . . . Having begun with realities, not with mere impressions, ideas, and phenomena, all that we reach by the abstracting generalizing process is also real; and this is not only a reality in thought, but thought being rightly conducted, a reality in things" (Christianity and Positivism, pp. 125, 126). Let us add that all our powers find repose only in that infinite reality which is first efficient as well as final cause of all creation. Each and every object of this visible world, bearing the likeness of its heavenly Maker, seems to say to us, "The creature's home is the Creator's hand."

Such are the lines of argument on which St. Thomas founds the great philosophical and theological structure which he has so carefully and admirably erected. In this paper we have but a glimpse of the magnitude of his undertaking. Like a wise builder, he surveys his ground, he shirks no difficulty, he faces every objection, be its seeming defense drawn from Scripture or from reason. He presses even error into service, distinguishing in it the false from the true in virtue of which alone it gains a following among men. His is not the method of setting up men of straw for the vain pleasure of knocking them down. But, with consummate skill, he takes the materials of his own day, be they crude or polished, and out of these often unpromising elements he constructs that wonderful body of coherent principles which has challenged the admiration of the thinking world.