Before going further I would guard against two possible misconceptions; of one of them I have already spoken, that is, the error so frequent in the past as well as today, that would make of philosophy, however sound, however consonant with the finalities of revealed religion, a substitute in any degree for religion itself.  Philosophy is the reaction of the intellect, of man to the stimuli of life, but religion is life and is therefore in many ways a flat contradiction of the concepts of the intellect, which is only a small portion of life, therefore limited, partial, and (because of this) sometimes entirely wrong in its conclusions independently arrived at along these necessarily circumscribed lines.

The second possible error is that philosophy is the affair of a small group of students and specialists, quite outside the purview of the great mass of men, and that it owes its existence to this same class of delving scholars, few in number, impractical in their aims, and sharply differentiated from their fellows.  On the contrary it is a vital consideration for all those who desire to “see life and see it whole” in order that they may establish a true scale of comparative values and a right relationship between those things that come from the outside and, meeting those that come from within, establish that plexus of interacting force we call life.  As for the source of philosophic truth, Friar Bacon put it well when he said “All the wisdom of philosophy is created by God and given to the philosophers, and it is Himself that illumines the minds of men in all wisdom.”  It is a whimsical juxtaposition, but the first pastor of the Puritans in America, the Rev. John Robinson, testifies to the same effect.  “All truth,” he says, “is of God ...  Wherefore it followeth that nothing true in right reason and sound philosophy can be false in divinity....  I add, though the truth be uttered by the devil himself, yet it is originally of God.”  There are not two sources of truth, that of Divine Revelation on the one hand, that of science and philosophy and all the intellectual works of man on the other.  Truth is one, and the Source is one; the channels of communication alone are different.  But truth in its finality, the Absolute, the noumenon that is the substance of phenomena, is in itself not a thing that can be directly apprehended by man; it lies within the “ultra-violet” rays of his intellectual spectrum.  “The trammels of the body prevent man from knowing God in Himself” says Philo, “He is known only in the Divine forces in which He manifests Himself.”  And St. Thomas:  “In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passable body, it is impossible for the intellect to understand anything actually except by turning to the phantasm.”  Religion confesses this, philosophy constantly tends to forget it, therefore true religion speaks always through the symbol, rejecting, because it transcends, the intellectual criterion, while philosophy is on safe ground only when it unites itself with religion, testing its own conclusions by a higher reality, and existing not as a rival but as a coadjutor.