The name is absent

What Is Our Idea of a University? 117
us. A sound philosophy will, above all, maintain in this par-
ticular realm the fundamental principle of finality as the
formal bond of experience and the conducting wire of scien-
tific thought, opposing to the so-called scientist the necessary
existence of primary causes.

Science is privileged with complete autonomy in its meth-
ods and conclusions. But philosophy has the right to criti-
cize science; and it is philosophy that points out to us the
exact sense, the nature, and reach of laws and formulas.

To quote again Cardinal Villeneuve, Chancellor of Que-
bec University: “. . . the true University man is the one who
does not simply possess a good knowledge and a fair culture
in science and arts but who, moreover, knows their major
principles. . . . Philosophy alone links the different teach-
ings on a common ground and provides the root and strength
of every science. In other words, philosophy alone gifts the
thinker with intellectual power and transcendency, thus en-
abling him to consider the problems of truth as a uni∙υersal-
ist; philosophy alone creates the University mind apt to
judge truth universally, and trains the genial specialist who
finally conquers the élite. . . .”

Philosophy ranks first because it possesses the power to
organize the different branches of human knowledge and to
show the hierarchy in which they stand. But in our estima-
tion, the noblest of all our Faculties is theology, whose ob-
ject is God himself.

* * *

“The supreme glory of a Catholic university and its
sturdiest rampart against doctrinal error is to add to the
gleam of natural lights the splendid rays which come from
Above; to pursue its researches in the brightness of this
double focus and to penetrate its teaching with the princi-

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