Savoring Reality An Introduction to the Childlike Catholic Mind of Brother Francis By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M. Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M., was my mentor, teacher, superior, and spiritual father from 1993 until his death at the age of 96 in 2009. A few necessary biographical details at the beginning of this paper will help to frame my considerations of Brother Francis and his childlike Catholic mind. Fakhri Boutros Maluf (Brother’s name in the world) was born in the town of Mashrah, Lebanon, about thirty miles from Beirut, on July 19, 1913. His father, Boutros Maluf, was an educational pioneer in Lebanon, and young Fakhri was educated at a school for poor children run out of the Maluf home. Before he was ten years old, in keeping with his father’s method, Fakhri helped in the instruction of the younger children. Fakhri graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics. From 1934 to 1939, he taught physics at that same University. In addition to his academic career, Fakhri was also involved in Lebanese statecraft, being the philosopher, and later the president, of the Syrian National Party, whose leader, Antun Saadeh, was a profound influence on Brother Francis. He was, during his time at the AUB, also a friend, disciple, and associate of Dr. Charles Malik, the noted Lebanese philosopher and diplomat. 1
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Savoring Reality: An Introduction to the Childlike Catholic Mind of Brother Francis
This paper was written for a Festschrift in honor of Dr. Robert Hickson. It was intended to be a loving tribute to my superior, teacher, mentor, and friend, Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.
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Savoring RealityAn Introduction to the Childlike Catholic Mind of Brother Francis
By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.
Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M., was my mentor, teacher, superior, and spiritual father from
1993 until his death at the age of 96 in 2009. A few necessary biographical details at the
beginning of this paper will help to frame my considerations of Brother Francis and his childlike
Catholic mind.
Fakhri Boutros Maluf (Brother’s name in the world) was born in the town of Mashrah, Lebanon,
about thirty miles from Beirut, on July 19, 1913. His father, Boutros Maluf, was an educational
pioneer in Lebanon, and young Fakhri was educated at a school for poor children run out of the
Maluf home. Before he was ten years old, in keeping with his father’s method, Fakhri helped in
the instruction of the younger children.
Fakhri graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Bachelor’s Degree in
mathematics. From 1934 to 1939, he taught physics at that same University. In addition to his
academic career, Fakhri was also involved in Lebanese statecraft, being the philosopher, and
later the president, of the Syrian National Party, whose leader, Antun Saadeh, was a profound
influence on Brother Francis.
He was, during his time at the AUB, also a friend, disciple, and associate of Dr. Charles Malik,
the noted Lebanese philosopher and diplomat.
1
In 1939, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where
he received first an M.A. and, in 1942, a Ph.D. in philosophy. He then undertook post-doctoral
studies at Harvard University and Saint Bonaventure University in southwestern New York State.
From 1942 to 1945, Dr. Maluf taught mathematics and science at Holy Cross College in
Worcester, Massachusetts. From 1945 to 1949, he taught philosophy and mathematics at Boston
College. In 1942, the young professor met Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., and soon became
involved in the activities of Saint Benedict Center, a Catholic student center operating in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dr. Maluf married Mary Healy, of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1943.
In 1949, Dr. Maluf became one of the pioneer members of Father Leonard Feeney’s religious
Order, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.1 As has happened in not a few cases in the
Church’s history, by mutual consent, both Dr. Maluf and Mrs. Maluf took religious vows and
lived separately in the monastery and convent, where they were known respectively as Brother
Francis and Sister Mary Bernadette.2
For the rest of his life, until overtaken by illness while in his nineties, Brother Francis taught
Sacred Scripture, philosophy, theology, science, and mathematics at various levels. For almost
1 The congregation into which he received me in 1993. 2 Sister Mary Bernadette died on December 16, 2011.
2
twenty years he was the Superior of Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire,
teaching in the Center’s High school, overseeing the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic
Studies, and the Center’s publishing apostolate. He authored four published books of poetry and
philosophy, published scores of articles on various Catholic subjects, and gave thousands of
lectures, many of which were taped and professionally produced. He has also left to posterity
many notes for future volumes.
Besides his philosophical and poetical wisdom, Brother Francis was well known for his memory.
He memorized all four Gospels, being able to recite the entirety of Saints Matthew, Luke, and
John each in Latin, and Saint Mark in Greek. He could name all the popes from Saint Peter to the
present, and had numerous other lists of persons, dates, and facts equally at his command. But he
was best known as a teacher.
Brother Francis died on Saturday, September 5, 2009, at the age of ninety six.
Although his Congregation is of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Brother Francis was a
Melkite Rite (Byzantine) Catholic.
With this skeletal biography out of the way, I would like to fill in a few details that are germane
to Brother Francis’ intellectual development.
3
The Maluf Home and the AUB
The family in which Fakhri grew up was one that had a long Christian tradition, but which had
recently fallen into the Masonic mindset of “enlightened indifferentism.” The background of this
mindset is worth knowing, since it, and especially the reaction against it, were major factors in
forming Fakhri’s mind. His Father, Boutrous Maluf, was a Melkite Rite Catholic who had lost
his Faith and become a Freemason, though not a very advanced one. On his Mother’s side, the
family had defected to Presbyterianism thanks to the Americans that founded the Syrian
Protestant College, an institution that had great influence on the family and our subject. In 1920,
this college was renamed the American University of Beirut (AUB), reflecting at once — as
Brother Francis himself assured me — three things: (1) the College’s elevation to the academic
status of University; (2) the new reality of the nationhood of Lebanon; and (3) the “enlightened
indifferentism,” of Masonry, for the faculty no longer considered themselves Christian
missionaries, but boasted that, whether a student was Christian, Moslem, Druze, etc., the AUB
would make him a better one. A slogan that expressed this philosophy was one Brother would
later lampoon: “It does not matter if you believe in one God, many gods, or no god; at least you
will know what we believe” — to which Brother Francis added facetiously, “...and that is, that it
does not matter if you believe in one God, many gods, or no god!”
This is all noted because it shows something of the academic atmosphere in which Brother lived
for many years — at once American, cosmopolitan, Masonic, and Protestant. Curiously,
according to the AUB’s web site, “The college opened with its first class of 16 students on
December 3, 1866.” December 3 is the feast of Saint Francis Xavier, Brother Francis’ chosen
patron when he became a religious brother.
Dr. Charles Malik’s Christian Influence
Despite the academic influence of the AUB, Brother Francis was a product of the Orient. The
proverb and the parable were natural to him the way they were to the inspired writers of Holy
Scripture. So, too, was the poem, for his people were poets. For all that, he was trained at the
University of Beirut in mathematics and became an instructor of physics at that same University.
He was being groomed for greater things in the empirical sciences when he changed plans to take
up the study of Philosophy, much to the chagrin of his faculty advisor, who lectured him on the
uselessness of such a pursuit for modern Lebanon. “But all your people are poets and
philosophers! What you need is science!” said the American professor trying to make his young
charge see the necessity of the empirical sciences to bring the fledgling Arab nation into
modernity. Young Maluf was left unmoved.
This interest in philosophy was thanks to the profound influence of Dr. Charles Malik, the
philosopher and diplomat, who helped to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The
influence of Dr. Malik led the young materialist to accept realities beyond matter. This early
exposure to philosophy, while it opened his vistas beyond mere matter to the realm of
metaphysics, was heavily influenced by the heterodox excogitations of modern philosophers:
Professor Malik himself wrote his doctoral dissertation at Harvard on the metaphysics of Alfred
5
North Whitehead and Martin Heidegger, both of whom were his teachers.3
His conversion to Catholicism led Fakhri from the notoriously opaque thought of Heidegger4 and
Whitehead to the lucidity of classical Catholic thought. He thrilled when he read the Penny
Cathechism’s simple presentation of the most important wisdom. He often said that that little
book contained more wisdom than all of the works of the philosophers. After subjecting his mind
to the tortuous ruminations of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, seeing the most
important truths declared so clearly and simply was a revelation and a refreshment to his soul.
Thanks to his newly acquired certitudes regarding life’s most important questions, by the time he
received his Ph.D. in 1942, Fakhri Maluf had lost all interest in the subject of his doctoral
dissertation at the University of Michigan: The a Priori in Science according to the Philosophy
of Meyerson.5
Naturally, given Fakhri’s academic background, while the simple truths of the Penny Catechism
appealed to his humble frame of mind — and its succinct answers bore an affinity with the
3 I do not want to do a disservice to the memory of Dr. Malik. The man was an eclectic, it would seem, for he was a practicing Christian (Orthodox), and introduced Fahkri to the work of St. Augustine, and, very notably, helped the young instructor at the AUB accept the reality of angels. (This was accomplished during a conversation which lasted for the entirety of one night. Dr. Malik and his young protege walked all around Beirut during this intense conversation. When it was daylight, they stopped at a coffee bar so that they could meet their classrooms full of college students somewhat awake.) Many of those in Charles Malik’s sphere of influence became converts, usually not to his own Orthodoxy, but to Catholicism. These converts include his two brothers, who became Catholic priests, one a Jesuit, the other a Dominican.
4 Heidegger, when confronted with the unintelligibility of his work, said, “Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.”
5 Brother Francis told me he was never much interested in Meyerson anyway, but was encouraged in this direction because Meyerson’s thought was considered fertile ground for the type of original research requisite in a doctoral dissertation, especially considering Brother Francis’ education in math and science. Émile Meyerson (1859-1933) was a Polish Jew who became a naturalized French citizen after WWI. Known as a chemist and, especially a philosopher of science, he was also an early Zionist. Meyerson and Maluf had, in other words, very little in common. Brother Francis’ dissertation can be found in the University of Michigan’s Library: http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/Record/002163464.
aphoristic wisdom of the Orient — it was not sufficient to satisfy his intellectual thirst for a
deeper knowledge of Christian Truth. To satisfy that, it would take a lifetime of study of sound
philosophy, of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the Doctors of the Church.
I would like to consider Brother Francis’ childlike Catholic mind first as philosopher, then as
poet.
The Philosopher
“Philosophy begins with wonder” said Aristotle. But this wonder, if it is to be fruitful, must lead
us to a deeper understanding of what is. Brother Francis frequently pointed out in his lectures
that a child is a natural philosopher. Children, before they are even possessed of reason, can
become ecstatic about what they learn by simple apprehension and the judgments they form
based upon them.6 Brother Francis would, when making this point, imitate the enthusiastic
inquiry of a child: “What’s that, Mama? … The moon? … Ahhh! The moon!”
Quid est — what is it? That question seeks to know the quiddity, or essence of a thing.
Considering that essence more practically, by what it can do and what can be done to it, we
arrive at the nature of the thing. These are the pursuits of the philosopher, and they are also the
pursuits of the child. His wonder at things in the universe leads man to seek causes, not only of
6 In rational psychology, we learn that the “three acts of the mind” are simple apprehension, judgment, and reason.
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how things came to be, but that ultimate cause (Aristotle’s “cause of causes”) known as “final
cause,” or purpose. The child, too, has this interest, for he always asks “Why?”
Many modern philosophies deny the child his proper answers, because they deny the child’s —
and everyone’s — capacity to know. The Kantian, for instance, is an epistemological heretic, one
who draws a wedge between reality and human knowledge. The inherent reliability of our sense
faculties was something Brother Francis used to champion with great verve and vigor.
In his delightful way of transmitting truth by the device of the proverb, he would tell the story of
Joe Murphy, a student in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Joe came to night lectures at Saint
Benedict Center all confused by what he had learned in his university lecture hall. He was
skeptical about the existence of God, and of much else besides. In an effort to establish a terra
firma of certitude, Father Feeney finally asked the young skeptic, pointing to a coffee table, “Do
you at least acknowledge that you and that coffee table are two different things?”
“No,” came the perplexed reply.
After that incident, the Center’s coffee table came to be known as “Joe Murphy.”
“Truth is knowable.” I could not possibly say how many times I heard that consecrated phrase
from my mentor’s lips. It was, for him, an article of Faith worth dying for. To attack this
utterance it is to deny a child his certitudes, and ultimately to rob him of Faith and salvation.
8
If all this sounds unoriginal in its essentials, there is a good reason: It is entirely unoriginal. In
fact, this paper is very carefully subtitled with reference to the “mind” of Brother Francis, not his
“philosophy” or his “doctrine.” He himself instructed us never to attribute to him an original
thought. This is because he considered himself to be, and he truly was, a disciple of philosophia
perennis. That does not mean that the man was boring. In making other men’s great thoughts his
own, his beautiful mind was dilated and enriched. Further, his way of packaging and presenting
the material — intensely, challengingly, and even thrillingly — was all his own. He was often
forced into the role of apologist while teaching. As he himself used to say, apologetics is one
theological discipline — the only one — that must change, since the objections to truth are ever
changing. In his role of apologist for philosophia perennis, he was capable of genuine art and
originality, as generations of students would agree. “The Parable of Joe Murphy” is but one
example.
If truth is knowable, not all truths are worth knowing, worth considering or worth remembering.
This was a great part of Brother’s thinking: the hierarchy of truth and the discipline of dedicating
our spiritual faculties to what is of genuine importance. In his book of meditations, Challenge of
Faith, Brother called the memory “the heart’s treasure house,” and “the abundance of a man’s
heart.” He further said that, “It is of the essence of the memory to be selective: it would be
monstrous to remember everything.”7
There are evident moral and religious reasons for making such an assertion. Brother Francis
7 Challenge of Faith, page 56.
9
could also give a metaphysical foundation for it. Here, I ask the reader’s indulgence as I try to
explain what Brother Francis could make very clear: the analogy of being as an illustration of the
hierarchy present in reality.
Something is real if it has being — if it is. The word “real” comes to us from res (thing) in Latin.
Res is a transcendental, along with being (ens), which is the most fundamental of all the
transcendentals and that to which they can all be reduced.8 From the word res, we get the word
“reality.” It is real because it is. By the “analogy of being” we know that some things are said “to
be” in a superior way, some in an inferior way. An elf is, but its existence is as an ens rationis
sine fundamento in re (a being of the mind without a foundation in reality). In a higher sense, I
(Brother André Marie) am. But while I am, I may never say of myself “I am who am.” My being
is derived, contingent, utterly dependent on the only Being whose essence is to exist: God. That
being, and He alone, may say “I am who am” because he is the necessary being, the being who is
the fullness of being.
Whatever may be said at the same time of God and of a creature — e.g., they both “are” — is not
said in the same way, but it is not said in a totally different way, either. Such things are said
“analogously,” not “univocally” (with exactly the same meaning) or “equivocally” (with a totally
different meaning). Logicians call these the “three modes of predication.” They are so important
that the philosopher Mortimer Adler — for whom Brother Francis had some genuine respect —
claimed that the failure of Protestantism to deal with the attacks of Enlightenment were due to
8 What is said of the “good” in the scholastic axiom ens et bonum convertuntur (being and goodness are convertible) can be said of the other transcendentals as well. They all reduce back to being.
10
Reformation’s “violent anti-intellectualism” in rejecting the notion of analogy, something
recognized in Catholic philosophy and theology as of utmost importance.
From this “analogy of being” (analogia entis) we can also derive an “analogy of thing” or
“analogy of the real” (analogia rei)9 whereby something can be called “real” in different degrees.
A thought in my mind is real, but my beard, having actual subsistence, is more real. I, a person (a
rational subsisting thing), am yet more real. Above all else that is real, God is most real. His
reality is of a higher ontological order. This “hyper-reality” of God is something that enraptured
the childlike Catholic mind of Brother Francis.
Ontology, or metaphysics, was to him the gateway to theology. Without supernatural revelation,
of course, no philosophy can reach to the mysteries of the Christian religion; however, “natural
theology” — what can be known of God by nature unaided by grace or supernatural revelation
— is part of the study of Ontology. For this reason, and also because of the general difficulty of
the subject and its need to be prepared by studying the other disciplines, Brother Francis put
Ontology as the last of the philosophical disciplines in his schema for teaching philosophy.
At this point, I would like to take a look at two articles that Brother Francis wrote in the 1940s.
They sounded themes that my mentor would return to and develop in his later teaching. These
articles were written for From the Housetops, which was then being published at the Center in
Cambridge, and can be found on our congregation’s web site: Catholicism.org.
9 In keeping with what we said in the previous footnote, we may say ens et res convertuntur (being and thing are convertible).
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“The Problem of Change: A Mystery of the Natural Order”
This article is a meditation on act and potency. Brother Francis argues that the Aristotelian
solution to “the problem of change” — illustrated by the opposite errors of Heraclitus (all is
change) and Parmenides (nothing changes) — allows the creature to ascend to his Creator, and
prepares the mind for grace. The meditation is something Brother makes on a natural mystery,
just as someone engaged in mental prayer meditates on a supernatural mystery. This
methodology shows his essentially contemplative approach to philosophy.
Wonder arises in the mind when what started to be a problem turns out to be a mystery. If
you are working on a crossword puzzle you have a problem on your hands; but if you
suddenly discovered that the crossword puzzle is really a disguised message from the one
you love, the problem becomes a mystery. In a problem there is nothing to be known
besides a solution, but in a mystery there is no final solution, but a continual growth
towards contemplation. You face a problem, but you plunge into a mystery. When a
problem is once solved, you do not want to think about it any longer, but the more you
think about a mystery, the more you want to think about it. Mysteries are visible leads to
invisible realities; they are landmarks on the way to our destiny. Mysteries are
undeciphered messages from our eternal lover and the supreme object of our love.
12
Still introducing his subject, Professor Maluf shows himself the disciple of Father Feeney:
Father Leonard Feeney said once that mysteries are not things about which we can know
nothing but things about which we cannot know everything, precisely because there is so
much to be known. Tides, for example, are a problem, but the sea is a mystery. Making a
living is frequently a problem to man, but life itself is always a mystery.
He then introduces his thesis:
I intend to take up here one sample of a mystery which has haunted the minds of men at
all times, and which is partly responsible for the development and growth of philosophy. I
mean the mystery of change. I wish to suggest that meditation on this mystery is an
excellent introduction to philosophy. I can even promise, that when assisted by the light
of grace, such meditations may illuminate the central mysteries of the faith, and increase
our knowledge and love of God.
The “mystery” is framed by the opposition between two absurd positions articulated by the pre-
Socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides. The former asserted that “all is change,” while
the latter denied that change exists at all. Heraclitus said that “no man can jump in the same river
twice” because the man changes and the river changes. Since both are in constant flux, the “man”
and the “river” are not the same if a second jump is made. Parmenides and his disciple, Zeno, on
the other hand, formulated arguments that, to them, conclusively proved that there exists
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absolutely no change or motion at all.
Both of these schools lead to intellectual despair because they force the intellect and the senses to
contradict one another. The solution is to be found in a philosophy that joins — with the proper
subordination — the data of the senses and the rational processes of the mind. That philosophy,
grounded in common sense, is Aristotelianism.
It was Aristotle who contributed the right solution for the problem of change. The
solution was already implicit in the common-sense judgment of men; but when Aristotle
succeeded in drawing from the ordinary discourse about change, the distinctions and
definitions required for a philosophic solution of this problem, philosophy as a science
became possible. Parmenides had said, as already mentioned, that “being is, and non-
being is not,” that “being can be limited only by non-being, and therefore, being cannot
be finite or plural,” that “being cannot become non-being, nor can non-being become
being,” and since these are the only possible alternatives, then change is impossible. But
Aristotle denied the dichotomy between being and non-being; he said, between being in
the fully actual sense, which is God, and absolute non-being, which is nothing, there is a
third possibility, namely, a being in potency, like a seed. A seed, Parmenides would say,
either is or is not a tree. If the seed is a tree then it cannot change to one, because there is
no change when things remain the same, but if the seed is not a tree, then neither can it
change to one, because the being of a tree cannot arise from its non-being. But stated in
the more common-sense terminology of Aristotle, the problem can be stated more
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correctly in the following manner: a seed is not a tree in act but a tree in potency and
therefore when sufficient causes cooperate to reduce that potency to act, the seed
develops into a tree and the process of development is what we call change. This is how
Aristotle arrived at his definition of change: “change is the act of a being-in-potency as
long as it is yet in potency.” Potency is a reality and is different from sheer non-being
which is nothing. Change is the actualization of real potency in beings that are real but
finite.
That, then, is the solution to the “problem” of change: “Thus as far as philosophy is concerned,
the problem of change is solved by reduction to this concept of being-in-potency.” But the
“mystery” of change yet remains. And it is that mystery that leads us to God.
The element of potency in the universe implies an aspect of mystery which will be
resolved only when we see face to face the One Eternal Being in whom there is no
potency and therefore no mystery. Our senses cannot perceive such a Being who is pure
act, but our intellect cannot be satisfied without it. We may be able now to realize a little
more fully how both Parmenides and Heraclitus were baffled by the same aspect of
mystery in the visible universe which was intended by God to wake them up to a
realization, be it dark, of the intelligible but invisible God behind the visible universe.
Parmenides was looking with his mind on the objects which his senses offer, and insisting
on finding in these extended material things the one object which satisfies the intellect.
He was looking for the right object in the wrong direction, and the result is his
15
monotonous, uniform, but empty sphere where is neither a good God nor a good universe.
Parmenides was staring at time and imagining eternity.
On the other hand, when Heraclitus denied permanence and asserted that all is mere
change he was implicitly denying the existence of God and the substantial reality of
things. Both philosophers were thwarting the universe regarding its first message as a
creature, for when the world changes it confesses its insufficiency, and points towards
God.
“The Dangers of Scientism”
“The Dangers of Scientism” puts on display Brother Francis’ complete volte-face from his days
as a materialist student of the empirical sciences. He begins with the image of a man whose view
of the universe is literally microscopic:
If a man were to say to me, “I refuse to use my eyesight except through a microscope,” I
might think that the man is queer or crazy, and I would certainly try to avoid his
company.
The allegory prolonged a bit, Dr. Maluf then explains for whom the “queer or crazy” man is a
figure, that is, the villain of his essay, a certain “type of mind”:
16
Now if you take this clumsy and most unlikely illustration and translate it from the order
of sense to the order of intelligence, you get one of the most common intellectual types
today, the type of a mind that will not apply its intelligence except through the scientific
method. This type of mind is apt to undermine common sense, on the ground that future
scientific discovery might disprove any certainty. It discredits philosophy, because the
objects of philosophy (God, the spiritual soul, cause, substance, etc.) cannot be weighed
or measured, can neither be reduced to a mathematical formula, nor observed in a test
tube. And finally, this type of mind discards all revelation, on the ground that religion is
not a channel of knowledge and that its value is purely emotional and unintellectual.
After once again extolling the value of common sense, as he did in the previous essay we
reviewed, the author considers knowledge in general and how knowledge as ordered becomes
science. The empirical sciences, he notes, have their peculiar methodology and their undeniable
benefits. But then we see the villain again, that “type of mind,” that dares to make a specialized
science into the universal science, ending in a monism:
Hence we have another danger of specialized training; namely, when man is trained to
know a part of reality, and to deal even with this part in a manner that is systematically
artificial, this man develops more as a function than as a person. Hence, it is that science
and technology carry the danger of depersonalizing social relations. But man insists on
being a person and on being treated as such; and as a person, he insists on his right of
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somehow knowing all reality and being concerned about his destiny as a complete man.
Therefore, once his common-sense perspective gets to be distorted by the artificial mold
which frames his mind in a special field, he tends to raise his special and partial science
up to the dignity of a universal science.
“All reality is made up of material atoms or quantums of energy,” says the physicist.
“Reality is a mysterious life force, élan vital,” retorts the biologist, who would see all
things from the window of biology. All history is made by economic forces (Marx), or by
sexual energy (Freud). These and similar monisms, represent some of the grave dangers
of scientism.
Of course, there is a universal science, but none of the empirical sciences qualify:
The Greeks and the scholastics considered philosophy the science par excellence, but to
the modern mind, this view cannot be taken for granted; it has to be justified.
Brother Francis was, it was said, an apologist for philosophy. We see that in a very clear way in
this essay, for he goes on for many pages to show that philosophy is a true science, and to justify
to the modern mind why it is the science par excellence. After completing this task, he presents
his own schema for the hierarchy of the sciences:
Philosophy, therefore, not only has the title to be called science, but has it in the highest
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degree: it is, as already intimated, the queen among the sciences. Beginning with
ontology, and running down the hierarchy of sciences, we would get something like the
following arrangement:
I. Ontology (or general metaphysics) of which the most important part is Theology.
II. The Philosophic Sciences (the sciences of special metaphysics): Logic, Cosmology,
Rational Psychology, Ethics.
III. The Mathematical Sciences and the General Sciences of Observation and