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tional empiricism that has already been refuted in connection
with our defense of rational empiricism in the preceding section.
The whole range of objections against any theory that denies
the synthetic a priori or the innate categories, falls with all
its devastating weight on the very basis of Thomist reasoning to
the knowledge of God. And as we have shown in our previous
discussion that on the grounds of empiricism knowledge becomes
impossible and self-contradictory skepticism ensues, it is
hardly to be expected that a theory which embraces this type of
epistemology can [[Page 125]] ever lead us to a knowledge of
the Ultimate Reality or God---and that for the simple reason
that apart from the synthetic a priori no knowledge of anything
at all is possible. Thus Thomism stands with its foundation cut
from beneath it, so that the whole superstructure of its sophistical
reasoning collapses.
(2) But with respect to the Thomistic formulation in particular:
how, for example, can it be affirmed both that the active intellect
abstracts the universals from sensa and that there are no
innate categories, or forms of thought, or first principles? If the
intellect does abstract the form in this manner, it must proceed
either on the basis of proclivities or structures inherent within it,
or on the basis of similar tendencies derived from sense experience
itself; that it proceeds without any such proclivities is not a
possible alternative, since then it would never act at all to abstract
the universal.
But of the two alternatives, one is contradictory of the original
affirmation and the other makes knowledge impossible. If
the proclivities or structures are inherent in the nature of intellect
as basic categories which make intellection possible, then it
follows that the mind does come to sense experience with certain
forms of thought in terms of which it is disposed to understand
that experience: but this contradicts the assertion that
there are no such innate forms of thought.