It is impossible to reconcile science and morality by subordinating the former to the latter on the grounds either of theology, or of Kantian or monistic metaphysics, or of the Bergsonian doctrine that the brain and intellectual truth are instruments of action, or of the sociological theory that reasoning has evolved from social pressure and collective prejudices, or of pragmatism or of humanism. Science has an absolute point of view of its own that in its evolution becomes increasingly independent of every other influence. However, science stands for several moral values of the utmost importance, such as freedom of thought, and disinterestedness, the latter inculcating the attitude of justice, as Littré and Spencer have shown. The significant conception of the French Revolution, of which Descartes was the spiritual father, is that experimental knowledge appears to all alike and is not a privileged revelation, and that through common reason and science society is to be guided and directed. It is in this that the moral value of science finds its highest confirmation. But this value, both in science and in society, is less an established fact than a research, a task, an ideal to be realized.
P. Mandonnet contends that St. Thomas's De unitate intellectus contra Averroystas is a refutation of Siger de Brabant's De anima intellectiva; but M. Doncoeur and others have come to believe that this work of St. Thomas is rather a refutation of some other writing of Siger which has not come down to us. The present writer finds a confirmation of M. Doncoeur's conjecture in the writings of Jean de Baconthorp. In his first "dispute quod libétale," Baconthorp refers to a work of Siger which cannot be the De anima, for the following reasons. The principal contention of the work mentioned by Baconthorp is exactly contradictory to the main thesis of the De anima. Not one of the three arguments quoted by Baconthorp from the former can be found in the latter. The very Aristotelian arguments denominated sophisms in the work alluded to by Baconthorp are set forth in the De anima as unquestionably valid. The title of the third chapter of the latter work is meaningless on the supposition that the two are identical. Objection three in the same third chapter establishes three points, all of which are denied in the work cited by Baconthorp. The two writings differ also in their methods of proof, their exegesis of Aristotle and their citations from him. If, as is generally admitted, the 'condemnation' of 1270 was aimed at Siger, that writer must have upheld the doctrines condemned, prior to that date. Since these doctrines are not to be found in the De anima, there must have been other writings of Siger containing them. All agree that in the De unitate intellectus contra Averroystas, St. Thomas is refuting Siger de Brabant. It would seem, however, that he is refuting the work of Siger referred to by
