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.

It is St. Paul who declares that "God has never left Himself without a
witness" and the "witness" was explicit, however clouded, in the
philosophies of paganism. Plato and Aristotle knew the limitations of
man's mind, and the corrective of over-weaning intellectuality in
religion, but thereafter the wisdom faded and pride ousted humility,
with the result that philosophy became not light but darkness. Let me
quote from the great twelfth century philosopher, Hugh of St. Victor,
who deserves a better fate than sepulture in the ponderous tomes of
Migne:

"There was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not the
true wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking
itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became presumptuous and
boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it made itself a ladder
of the face of creation.... Then those things which were seen were known
and there were other things which were not known; and through those
which were manifest they expected to reach those that were hidden. And
they stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imagining.... So