MALICIOUS PHILOSOPHIES
51
And Professor Maritain, building on the alleged subordination of
science to metaphysics, indicates some of the immediate conse–
quences of this hierarchial arrangement:
Science . . . is distinguished from wisdom in this, that
science aims at the detail of some special field of knowing and
deals with the secondary, proximate or apparent causes, while
wisdom aims at some universal knowing and deals with prime
and deepest causes, with the highest sources of being. . • • Wis–
dom is not only distinct from hut also superior to science, in the
sense that its object is more universal and more deeply im–
mersed in the mystery of things, and in the sense that the
function of defending the first principles of knowledge and of
discovering the fundamental structure and organization thereof
belongs to wisdom, not to science. . . . Science puts means
in
man's hands, and teaches men how to apply these means for the
happiest outcome, not for him who acts, hut for the work to
he
done. Wisdom deals with ends in man's heart, and teaches man
how to use means and apply science for the real goodness and
happiness of him who acts; of the person himself. . . . Science
is like art in this that though both are good in themselves man
can put them to had uses and had purposes: while in so far as
man uses wisdom . . . he can only use it for good purposes.
The paleontologist does not step out of his sphere when he
establishes · the hypothesis of evolution and applies it to the
origin of the human being. But the philosopher must warn him
that he is out of his field when he tries to deny for that reason
that the human soul is a spiritual soul which cannot emanate
from matter, so that if once upon a time the human organism
was produced by a mutation of an animal organism, it was
because of the infusion of a soul created by God.'
Although criticism of a position is futile when those who
hold it make a virtue of its mysteries and when they regard them–
selves as superior to the usual canons of scientific intelligibility,
those who are not so fortunately placed may find the following
made a magnificient beginning by isolating the stresses indicated by his law of
gravitation. But he left no hint,
why
in
the Rature of things there should be any
stresses
at
all.
The arbitrary motion of the bodies were thus explained by the
arbitrary stresses between material bodies, conjoined with their spatiality, their mass,
and their initial states of motion. By introducing stresse&-in particular the law of
gravitation-instead of the welter of detailed transformations of motion, he greatly
increased the systematic aspect of nature. But he left all the factors of the system–
more particularly, mass and stress-in the position of detached facts
devoid of reason
for 'their compresence. He thus illuminated a great philosophic truth, that a dead
nature can give no reasons. All the ultimate reasons are
in
terms of aim at value.
A dead nature aims at nothing." A. N. Whitehead,
Modes of Thought,
pp. 183-4,
italics not in the text.
'The first paragraph is taken from the essay "Science and Wisdom," contained in
Science and Man,
pp.
66-7,
72, 94. The second paragraph is from the essay "Science,
Philosophy and Faith," contained in the volume
Science, Philosophy
and
ReligWn,
the proceedings of the First Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, p. 181.
