In order to be absolutely clear on this point we must again insist that the rational mode of knowledge in no way extends beyond the realm of generalities and cannot by itself reach any transcendent truth; if it may nevertheless serve as a means of expressing supra-rational knowledge—as in the case of Aristotelian and Scholastic ontology—this will always be to the detriment of the intellectual integrity of the doctrine.

Some may perhaps object that even the purest metaphysic is sometimes hardly distinguishable from philosophy inasmuch as it uses arguments and seems to reach conclusions. But this resemblance is due merely to the fact that all concepts, once they are expressed, are necessarily clothed in the modes of human thought, which is rational and dialectical.

What essentially distinguishes the metaphysical from the philosophical proposition is that the former is symbolical and descriptive, in the sense that it makes use of rational modes as symbols to describe or translate knowledge possessing a greater degree of certainty than any knowledge of a sensible order, whereas philosophy—called, not without reason, ancilla theologiae—is never anything more than what it expresses.

When philosophy uses reason to resolve a doubt, this proves precisely that its starting point is a doubt which it is striving to overcome, whereas we have seen that the starting point of a metaphysical formulation is always essentially something intellectually evident or certain, which is communicated, to those able to receive it, by symbolical or dialectical means designed to awaken in them the latent knowledge which they bear unconsciously and ‘eternally’ within them.

In theology as in philosophy, and to varying degrees, one encounters a deliberate way of reasoning in a given manner and in a given direction in order to support a certain axiom, and to exclude from the intelligence all possibilities which do not serve this end. The subjectivists will say that the same holds true for all demonstrations, but this is not so, since in the case of a certitude independent of all sentimental postulates, the arguments result objectively from the certitude to be demonstrated, and not subjectively from our desire to prove it.