This intermediate position of our science, between the Church and philosophy, constitutes its independence and its originality. If, as in Catholicism, it were absolutely subjected to the authority of the Church, and were limited to receiving, without critical examination, its successive decisions and traditions, it would be confounded with the history of dogmas, and would be merely a survival of scholasticism. On the other hand, if it did not start from the data furnished by history and by the personal and collective experience of piety,--if it did not study the Christian life in its objectivity and in its historic continuity, but abandoned itself to purely subjective and general speculations--it would be fatally confounded with philosophy. It escapes this double peril, first, by taking as its object the study of the doctrinal tradition of the Church, tracing it back to its generative principle, following it in its successive forms and necessary evolution; and, secondly, by freely applying to this objective material the principles and rules of a truly rational method, a method that may be avowed as such by philosophers. It thus constitutes the philosophy of religion in general and of Christianity in particular, setting itself to connect the consciousness of the Church with the general consciousness of humanity, and establishing or maintaining between them communications equally profitable to both. It follows that our discipline, in studying the tradition of the Church, is independent of philosophy. On the other hand, the fact that it borrows its methods and processes from philosophy, renders it independent with regard to the Church. Its freedom springs from its twofold subjection. Such a little principality, placed between two great rival Powers without whose help it could not live, maintains its independence of them both by virtue of their very rivalry, and may become an arbiter, an element of pacification and good understanding, between forces which are only hostile because they either do not know or do not understand each other. Thus the science of dogmas will be free, pacific, fruitful, on condition that it does not break its connection on either hand, but remains in close communication with the two sources of its life, without which it would be liable either to die of inanition for want of food, or of impotence for lack of liberty. 2. _The Science of Dogmas and the Church_