IMMANENCE
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IMMANENCE
this means " the higher reahties, which religious myths
have for so many centuries striven to express, vfill be
found identical with those which positive science has
just established ". Revealed truth will then appear
as coming from us; it will present itself as the re-
flexion of our soul, which changes its formulte accord-
ing as it can or cannot find itself in them. In this
way there will no longer be any antinomy, since
human reason will be the principle of dogmas. Others
following Loisy, hope to find in themselves, through a
psychological analysis, the expression of revelation.
This would be the outcome of an immanent progress,
"the consciousness which man has acquired of his
relations with God". Revelation is realized in man,
but it is " the work of God in liim, with him, and by
him". Thus the difficulty arising out of the opposition
between the natural order and the supernatural would
disappear — but at the price of a return to the doctrine
of absolute immanence. It seems, too, that Laber-
thonniere, though in spite of his principles, ends by
accepting this very same doctrine which he had under-
taken to combat, when he writes that " since our ac-
tion is at once ours and God's, we must find in it the
supernatural element which enters into its constitu-
tion". According to this view, psychological analysis
will discover the Divine element immanent in our
action, the inward God " more present to us than we
ourselves ". Now this " living God of conscience " can
be discerned only through an intuition which we get
by a sort of moral and dynamic ontologism. But how
will this presence of the Divine manifest itself in us?
By the true and imperative demand of our nature
which calls for the supernatural. — Such is the abuse
of the method of immanence which the Encyclical
"Pascendi gregis" points out and deplores: "And
here again we have reason for grievous complaint, be-
cause among Catholics there are to be found men who,
while repudiating the doctrine of immanence as a doc-
trine, make use of it nevertheless for apologetic pur-
poses, and do this so recklessly that they seem to
admit in human nature a genuine exigency properly
so called in regard to the supernatural order." With
still less reserve, those whom the Encyclical calls
integralista; boast of showing the unlieliever the super-
natural germ which has been transmitted to humanity
from the consciousness of Christ, and hidden in the
heart of every man. This is the thought of Sabatier
and of Buisson, theologians of the liberal Protestant
school — " I am a man, and nothing Divine is foreign to
me" (Buisson).
(2) Method Based on the Idea of Relative Imma- nence. — There is another application of the method of immanence much more reserved than the one just de- scribed since it keeps within the natural order and confines itself to stating a philosophic problem, viz. : Is man sufficient for himself? or is he aware of his insuffi- ciency in such a way as to realize his need of some help from without? Here we arc not at all concerned — as the Encyclical " Pascendi gregis " reproaches the Mod- ernists — "with inducing the unbeliever to make trial of the Catholic religion " ; wo are concerned only with ( 1 ) compelling a man who analyzes Ills own being to break through the circle within which, supposedly, the doc- trine of immanence confines him, and which makes him reject a priori, as out of the question, the whole argument of objective apologetics; and then (2) with bringing him to recognize in his soul " a capacity and fitness for the supernatural order which Catholic apol- ogists, using the pro[)er reservations, have demon- strated" (Encycl. "Pascendi gregis"). In other words, this method has in itself nothing that calls for condemnation. It consists, says Maurice Blondcl, its inventor, "in equating within our own consciousness, what we seem to think, to wish, and to do with what we really do, wish and think, in such a way that in the fictitious negations, or the ends artificially desired, those profound affirmations and irrepressible needs
which they imply shall still be found" (Lettre sur
les exigences). This method endeavours to prove
that man cannot shut himself up in himself, as in a
little world which suffices unto itself. To prove this,
it takes an inventory of our immanent resovirces; it
brings to light, on the one hand, our irresistible aspira-
tions towards the infinitely True, Good, and Beautiful,
and, on the other hand, the insufficiency of ourmeans
to attain these ends. This comparison shows t hat our
nature, left to itself, is not in a state of equilibrium;
that, to achieve its destiny, it needs a help which is
essentially beyond it — a transcendent help. Thus,
"a method of immanence developed in its integrity
becomes exclusive of a doctrine of immanence". In
fact, the internal analysis which it prescribes brings
the human soul to recognize itself as relative to a
transcendent being, thereby setting before us the prob-
lem of God. Nothing more is needed to make it evi-
dent that the " preliminary and comprehensive
demurrer", which it sought to set up against Revela-
tion in the name of the principle of immanence, is an
unwarranted and arrogant exaggeration. The psy-
chologic examination of conscience which is just now
being made, far from ruling out the traditional apolo-
getic, rather appeals to it, opens the way for it, and
demonstrates its necessity.
To this preliminary clearing of the ground the method adds a subjective preparation which shall dis- pose the individual for the act of faith by exciting in him the desire to enter into relations with the tran- scendent God. And the result of this preparation will bo not only intellectual and theoretical, but also moral and practical. Arousing in him a more vivid con- sciousness of his weakness and his need of help, the method will impel a man to acts of humility which inspire prayer and attract grace.
Such IS the twofold service which the method based on the idea of relative immanence can render. Within these limits, it is rigorous. But could it not go farther, and open to us a view of the nature of this transcendent being whose existence it compels us to recognize? Might it not, for example, bring the un- believer to hear and heed " the appeal of preventive or sanctifying grace" which would then express itself in psychologic facts discernible liy observation and philosophical analysis (Cardinal Dechamps)? Would it not enable us to experience God, or at least " to find in our action the supernatural element which is said to enter into His Constitution" (Pere Laberthonni^re)? Would it not, finally, justify us in affirming with cer- tainty that the object of our " irrepressible aspira- tions" is a "supernatural Unnamed" (Blondel), an object which is " beyond and above the natural order" (Ligeard)?
At this point the method of immanence stirs the delicate problem of the relation between nature and the supernatural; but it is doubtful whether the method can solve this problem by its immanent analy- sis. All the attempts referred to above when they lead to anything, seem to do so only at the price of confounding the notion of the transcendent with that of the preternatural, or even of the supernatural — or, again, at the price of confounding the Divine co-opera- tion and Divine grace. In a word, if the psychologic analysis of the tendencies of human nature ends in " showing, without recourse to what Revelation gives us, that man desires infinitely more than the natural order can give him" (Ligeard), it does not follow that we can say with any certainty that this "desired in- crea.se" is a supernatural Unnamed. As a matter of fact, (1) the natural order far exceeds in vastness the object of my analysis; (2) between my nature and the .supernatural there is the preternatural; (3) the aids to which my nature aspires, and which God gives me, are not necessarily of the supernatural order. Besides, even if a supernatural action does in fact manifest itself under these religious aspirations, immanent
