Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 58

34

METHODOLOGY AND HODEGETICS

§ 19.

[Div. I

places the results of Logic into relation with the ramifications of the several departments of science.

He who deunknown

sires to use a steamboat in the exploration of an

drainage system in Africa faces two questions of method: (1) how to convey his steamer thither and put it together

and (2) how he will

sail in the channels themselves system in order to reach the mountains from which the stream descends. In scientific work our thinking is that steamer which must carry us forward, and the course of the drainage system indicates the method by which to advance with our thoughts. Every science, indeed, is such

again

;

of this drainage

a dependent drainage system, which by the course of the principal stream and its ramifications determines the way

along which knowledge of it is attained. The idea of ynethod, coinciding with that of

fxeTe'pxo/J'ai^

assumes that what we seek to discover by our thinking was thought before it originated, and that our i.e.

to trace,

think over again this original thought. When a Prussian general studies the fortification system of France's capital, he starts out from the assumption that the French soldiers who have built this system of fortifications have first thought out this system, and have afterwards built it effort is to

His aim, therefore, is to agreeably to this studied plan. reached when he clearly only this is and plan, discover this grasps the original thought of the French engineer before

he began to build. Only when he understands this original plan in its relations, does he know the Paris fortifications. Hence two methods are here involved. First, the method

by which the French engineer built the secondly, the

method

ing the fortifications' plan.

method

of

him who

fortifications,

and

of the Prussian general in discover-

The two

are different.

The

built the fortifications developed itself

from the principal thought he conceived in the drawing The method of the discoverer, on the other of his plan. hand, begins by viewing the forts and bulwarks of the outer lines, from thence proceeds to the second and third lines, and only from the relations of these several means of defence does he

penetrate to the plan of the fortifica-

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