XXXVII. THE UNIVERSITIES, ARISTOTLE, AND THE MENDICANTS
Intellectually, the thirteenth century in western Europe is marked by three closely connected phenomena: the growth of Universities, the discovery and appropriation of Aristotle, and the activities of Dominicans and Franciscans. These movements were universal, in that the range of none of them was limited by racial or provincial boundaries. Yet a line may still be drawn between Italy, where law and medicine were cultivated, and the North, where theology with logic and metaphysics were supreme. Absorption in these subjects produced a common likeness in the intellectual processes of men in France, England, and Germany, whose writings were to be no longer markedly affected by racial idiosyncrasies. This was true of the logical controversy regarding universals, so prominent in the first part of the twelfth century. It was very true of the great intellectual movement of the later twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, to wit, the coming of Aristotle to dominance, in spite of the counter-currents of Platonic Augustinianism.
The men who followed the new knowledge had slight regard for ties of home, and travelled eagerly in search of learning. So, even as from far and wide those who could study Roman law came to Bologna, the study of theology and all that philosophy included drew men to Paris. Thither came the keen-minded from Italy and from England; from the Low Countries and from Germany; and from the many very different regions now covered by the name of France. Wherever born and of whatever race, the devotees of philosophy and theology at some period of their career reached Paris, learned and taught there, and were affected by the universalizing influence of an international aggregate of scholarship. So had it been with Breton Abaelard, with German Hugo, and with Lombard Peter; so with English John, hight of Salisbury. And in the following times of culmination, Albertus Magnus comes in his maturity from Germany; and his marvellous pupil Thomas, born of noble Norman stock in southern Italy, follows his master, eventually to Paris. So Bonaventura of lowly mid-Italian birth likewise learns and teaches there; and that unique Englishman, Roger Bacon, and after him Duns Scotus. These few greatest names symbolize the centralizing of thought in the crowded and huddled lecture-rooms of the City on the Seine.
The origins of the great mediaeval Universities can scarcely be accommodated to simple statement. Their history is frequently obscure, and always intricate; and the selection of a specific date or factor as determining the inception, or distinctive development, of these mediaeval creations is likely to be but arbitrary. They had no antique prototype: nothing either in Athens or Rome ever resembled these corporations of masters and students, with their authoritative privileges, their fixed curriculum, and their grades of formally certified attainment. Even the Alexandria of the Ptolemies, with all the pedantry of its learned litterateurs and their minute study of the past, has nothing to offer like the scholastic obsequiousness of the mediaeval University, which sought to set upon one throne the antique philosophy and the Christian revelation, that it might with one and the same genuflection bow down before them both. It behoves us to advert to the conditions influencing the growth of Universities, and give a little space to those which were chief among them.
The energetic human advance distinguishing the twelfth century in western Europe exhibits among its most obvious phenomena an increased mobility in all classes of society, and a tendency to gather into larger communities and form strong corporate associations for profit or protection. New towns came into being, and old ones grew apace. Some of them in the north of Europe wrested their freedom from feudal lords; and both in the north and south, municipalities attained a more complex organization, while within them groups of men with common interests formed themselves into powerful guilds. As strangers of all kinds--merchants, craftsmen, students--came and went, their need of protection became pressing, and was met in various ways.
No kind of men were more quickly touched by the new mobility than the thousands of youthful learners who desired to extend their knowledge, or, in some definite field, perfect their education. In the eleventh century, such would commonly have sought a monastery, near or far. In the twelfth and then in the thirteenth, they followed the human currents to the cities, where knowledge flourished as well as trade, and tolerable accommodation might be had for teachers and students. Certain towns, some for more, some for less, obvious reasons, became homes of study. Bologna, Paris, Oxford are the chief examples. Irnerius, famed as the founder of the systematic study of the Roman law, and Gratian, the equally famous orderer of the Canon law, taught or wrote at Bologna when the twelfth century was young. Their fame drew crowds of laymen and ecclesiastics, who desired to equip themselves for advancement through the business of the law, civil or ecclesiastical. At the same time, hundreds, which grew to thousands, were attracted to the Paris schools--the school of Notre Dame, where William of Champeaux held forth; the school of St. Victor, where he afterwards established himself, and where Hugo taught; and the school of St. Geneviève, where Abaelard lectured on dialectic and theology. These were palpable gatherings together of material for a University. What first brought masters and students to Oxford a few decades later is not so clear. But Oxford had been an important town long before a University lodged itself there.
In the twelfth century, citizenship scarcely protected one beyond the city walls. A man carried but little safety with him. Only an insignificant fraction of the students at Bologna, and of both masters and students at Paris and Oxford, were citizens of those towns. The rest had come from everywhere. Paris and Bologna held an utterly cosmopolitan, international, concourse of scholar-folk. And these scholars, turbulent enough themselves, and dwelling in a turbulent foreign city, needed affiliation there, and protection and support. Organization was an obvious necessity, and if possible the erection of a civitas within a civitas, a University within a none too friendly town. This was the primal situation, and the primal need. Through somewhat different processes, and under different circumstances, these exigencies evoked a University in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.[523]
In Italy, where the instincts of ancient Rome never were extinguished, where some urban life maintained itself through the early helpless mediaeval centuries, where during the same period an infantile humanism did not cease to stammer; where “grammar” was studied and taught by laymen, and the “ars dictaminis” practised men in the forms of legal instruments, it was but natural that the new intellectual energies of the twelfth century should address themselves to the study of the Roman law, which, although debased and barbarized, had never passed into desuetude. And inasmuch as abstract theology did not attract the Italian temperament or meet the conditions of papal politics in Italy, it was likewise natural that ecclesiastical energies should be directed to the equally useful and closely related canon law. Such studies with their practical ends could best be prosecuted at some civic centre. In the first part of the twelfth century, Irnerius lectured at Bologna upon the civil law; a generation later, Gratian published his Decretum there. The specific reasons inducing the former to open his lectures in that city are not known; but a large and thrifty town set at the meeting of the great roads from central Italy to the north and east, was an admirable place for a civil doctor and his audience, as the event proved. Gratian was a monk in a Bologna convent, and may have listened to Irnerius. The publication of his Decretum from Bologna, by that time (cir. 1142) famous for jurisprudence, lent authority to this work, whose universal recognition was to enhance in turn Bologna’s reputation.
From the time of this inception of juristic studies, the talents of the doctors, and the city’s fame, drew a prodigious concourse of students from all the lands of western Europe. The Doctors of the Civil and Canon Laws organized themselves into one, and subsequently into two, Colleges. Apparently they had become an efficient association by the third quarter of the twelfth century. But the University of Bologna was to be constituted par excellence, not of one or more colleges of doctors, but of societies of students. The persons who came for legal instruction were not boys getting their first education in the Arts. They were men studying a profession, and among them were many individuals of wealth and consequence, holding perhaps civil or ecclesiastic office in the places whence they came. The vast majority had this in common, that they were foreigners, with no civil rights in Bologna. It behoved them to organize for their protection and mutual support, and for the furtherance of the purposes for which they had come. That a body of men in a foreign city should live under the law of their own home, or the law of their own making, did not appear extraordinary in the twelfth century. It was not so long since the principle that men carried the law of their home with them, had been widely recognized, and in all countries the clergy still lived under the law of the Church. The gains accruing from the presence of a great number of foreign students might induce the authorities of Bologna to permit them to organize as student guilds, and regulate their affairs by rules of their own, even as was done by other guilds in most Italian cities. At Bologna the power of Guelf and Ghibeline clubs, and of craftsmen’s guilds, rivalled that of the city magistrates.
There is some indirect evidence that these students first divided themselves into four Nationes. If so, the arrangement did not last. For by the middle of the thirteenth century they are found organized in two Universitates, or corporations, a Universitas Citramontanorum and a Universitas Ultramontanorum; each under its own Rector. These two corporations of foreign students constituted the University. The Professors did not belong to them, and therefore were not members of the University. Indeed they fought against the recognition of this University of students, asserting that the students were but their pupils. But the students prevailed, strong in their numbers, and in the weapon which they did not hesitate to use, that of migration to another city, which cut off the incomes of the Professors and diminished the repute and revenue of Bologna. So great became the power of the student body, that it brought the Professors to complete subjection, paying them their salaries, regulating the time and mode of lecturing, and compelling them to swear obedience to the Rectors. The Professors protested, but submitted. To make good its domination over them, and its independence as against the city, the student University migrated to Arezzo in 1215 and to Padua in 1222.[524]
In origin as well as organization, the University of Paris differed from Bologna. It was the direct successor of the cathedral school of Notre Dame. This had risen to prominence under William of Champeaux. But Abaelard drew to Paris thousands of students for William’s hundreds (or at least hundreds for William’s tens); and Abaelard at the height of his popularity taught at the school of St. Geneviève, across the Seine. Therefore this school also, although fading out after Abaelard’s time, should be regarded as a causal predecessor of the Paris University. So, for that matter, should the neighbouring school of St. Victor, founded by the discomfited William; for its reputation under Hugo and Richard drew devout students from near and far, and augmented the scholastic fame of Paris.
It was both the privilege and duty of the Chancellor of Notre Dame to license competent Masters to open schools near the cathedral. In the course of time, these Masters formed an Association, and assumed the right to admit to their Society the licentiates of the Chancellor, to wit, the new Masters who were about to begin to teach. In the decades following Abaelard’s death, the Masters who lectured in the vicinity of Notre Dame increased in number. They spread with their schools beyond the island, and taught in houses on the bridges. They were Masters, that is, teachers, in the Arts. As the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, interest in the Arts waned before the absorbing passion for metaphysical theology. This was a higher branch of study, for which the Arts had come to be looked on as a preparation. So the scholars of the schools of Arts became impatient to graduate, that is, to reach the grade of Master, in order to pass on to the higher study of theology. A result was that the course of study in the Arts was shortened, while Masters multiplied in number. Their Society seems to have become a definite and formal corporate body or guild, not later than the year 1175. Herein was the beginning of the Paris University. It had become a studium generale, like Bologna, because there were many Masters, and students from everywhere were admitted to study in their schools.
Gradually the University came to full corporate existence. From about 1210, written statutes exist, passed by the Society of Masters; at the same date a Bull of Innocent III. recognizes the Society as a Corporation. Then began a long struggle for supremacy, between the Masters and the Chancellor: it was the Chancellor’s function to grant the licence to become a Master; but it was the privilege of the Society to admit the licentiate to membership. The action of both being thus requisite, time alone could tell with whom the control eventually should rest. Was the self-governing University to prevail, or the Chancellor of the Cathedral? The former won the victory.
The Masters in Arts constituted par excellence the University, because they far outnumbered the Masters in the upper Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine. They were the dominant body; what they decided on, the other Faculties acquiesced in. These Masters in Arts, besides being numerous, were young, not older than the law students at Bologna. With their still younger students,[525] they made the bulk of the entire University, and were the persons who most needed protection in their lawful or unlawful conduct. At some indeterminate period they divided themselves into the four Nationes, French, Normans, Picards, and English. They voted by Nationes in their meetings; but from a period apparently as early as their organization, a Rector was elected for all four Nationes, and not one Rector for each. There were, however, occasional schisms or failures to agree. It was to be the fortune of the Rector thus elected to supplant the Chancellor of the Cathedral as the real head of the University.
The vastly greater number of the Masters in Arts were actually students in the higher Faculties of Theology, Law,[526] or Medicine, for which graduation in the Arts was the ordinary prerequisite. The Masters or Doctors of these three higher Faculties, at least from the year 1213, determined the qualifications of candidates in their departments. Nevertheless the Rector of the Faculty of Arts continued his advance toward the headship of the whole University. The oath taken by the Bachelors in the Arts, of obedience to that Faculty and its Rector, was strengthened in 1256, so as to bind the oath-taker so long as he should continue a member of the University.
The University had not obtained its privileges without insistence, nor without the protest of action as well as word. Its first charter of privileges from the king was granted in 1200, upon its protests against the conduct of the Provost of Paris in attacking riotous students. Next, in combating the jurisdiction of the Chancellor, it obtained privileges from the Pope; and in 1229, upon failure to obtain redress for an attack from the Provost’s soldiers, ordered by the queen, Blanche of Castile, the University dispersed. Thus it resorted to the weapon by which the University of Bologna had won the confirmation of its rights. In the year 1231 the great Papal Bull, Parens scientiarum, finally confirmed the Paris University in its contentions and demands: the right to suspend lectures was sanctioned, whenever satisfaction for outrage had been refused for fifteen days; likewise the authority of the University to make statutes, and expel members for a breach of them. The Chancellor of Notre Dame and the Bishop of Paris were both constrained by the same Bull.
A different struggle still awaited the University, in which it was its good fortune not to be altogether successful; for it was contending against instruments of intellectual and spiritual renovation, to wit, the Mendicant Orders. The details are difficult to unravel at this distance of time. But the Dominicans and Franciscans, in the lifetime of their founders, established themselves in Paris, and opened schools of theology. Their Professors were licensed by the Chancellor, and yet seem to have been unwilling to fall in with the customs of the University, and, for example, cease from teaching and disperse, when it saw fit to do so. The doctors of the theological Faculty became suspicious, and opposed the admission of Mendicants to the theological Faculty. The struggle lasted thirty years, until the Dominicans obtained two chairs in that Faculty, and the Franciscans perhaps the same number, on terms which looked like a victory for the Orders, but in fact represented a compromise; for the Mendicant doctors in the end apparently submitted to the statutes of the University.[527]
The origin of Oxford University was different, and one may say more adventitious than that of Paris or Bologna. For Oxford was not the capital of a kingdom, nor is it known to have been an ancient seat of learning. The city was not even a bishop’s seat, a fact which had a marked effect upon the constitution of the University. The old town lay at the edge of Essex and Mercia, and its position early gave it importance politically, or rather strategically, and as a place of trade. How or whence came the nucleus of Masters and students that should grow into a University is unknown. An interesting hypothesis[528] is that it was a colony from Paris, shaken off by some academic or political disturbance. This surmise has been connected with the year 1167. Some evidence exists of a school having existed there before. Next comes a distinct statement from the year 1185, of the reading of a book before the Masters and students.[529] After this date the references multiply. In 1209, one has a veritable “dispersion,” in protest against the hanging of some scholars. A charter from the papal legate in 1214 accords certain privileges, among others that a clerk arrested by the town should be surrendered on demand of the Bishop of Lincoln[530] or the Archdeacon, or the Chancellor, whom the Bishop shall set over the scholars. This document points to the beginning of the chancellorship. The title probably was copied from Paris; but in Oxford the office was to be totally different. The Paris Chancellor was primarily a functionary of a great cathedral, who naturally maintained its prerogatives against the encroachments of university privilege. But at Oxford there was no cathedral; the Chancellor was the head of the University, probably chosen from its Masters, and had chiefly its interests at heart.
Making allowance for this important difference in the Chancellor’s office, the development of the University closely resembled that of Paris. Its first extant statute, of the year 1252, prescribes that no one shall be licensed in Theology who has not previously graduated in the Arts. To the same year belongs a settlement of disputes between the Irish and northern scholars. The former were included in the Australes or southerners, one of the two Nationes composing the Faculty of Arts. The Australes included the natives of Ireland, Wales, and England south of the Trent; the other Natio, the Boreales, embraced the English and Scotch coming from north of that river. But the division into Nationes was less important than in the cosmopolitan University of Paris, and soon ceased to exist. The Faculty of Arts, however, continued even more dominant than at Paris. There was no serious quarrel with the Mendicant Orders, who established themselves at Oxford--the Dominicans in 1221, and the Franciscans three years later.
The curriculum of studies appears much the same at both Universities, and, as followed in the middle of the thirteenth century, may be thus summarized. For the lower degree of Bachelor of Arts, four or five years were required; and three or four years more for the Master’s privileges. The course of study embraced grammar (Priscian), also rhetoric, and in logic the entire Organon of Aristotle, preceded by Porphyry’s Isagoge, and with the Sex principia of Gilbert de la Porrée added to the course. The mathematical branches of the Quadrivium also were required: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. And finally a goodly part of the substantial philosophy of Aristotle was studied, with considerable choice permitted to the student in his selection from the works of the philosopher. At Oxford he might choose between the Physics or the De coelo et mundo, or the De anima or the De animalibus. The Metaphysics and Ethics or Politics were also required before the Bachelor could be licensed as a Master.
In Theology the course of study was extremely lengthy, especially at Paris, where eight years made the minimum, and the degree of Doctor was not given before the candidate had reached the age of thirty-five. The chief subjects were Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Besides which, the candidate had to approve himself in sermons and disputations. The latter might amount to a trial of nerve and endurance, as well as proficiency in learning, since the candidate was expected to militare in scholis, against a succession of opponents from six in the morning till six in the evening, with but an hour’s refreshment at noon.[531]
In spite of the many resemblances of Oxford to Paris in organization and curriculum, the intellectual tendencies of the two Universities were not altogether similar. At Paris, speculative theology, with metaphysics and other branches of “philosophy,” regarded as its adjuncts, were of absorbing interest. At Oxford, while the same matters were perhaps supreme, a closer scholarship in language or philology was cultivated by Grosseteste, and his pupils, Adam of Marsh and Roger Bacon. The genius of observation was stirring there; and a natural science was coming into being, which was not to repose solely upon the authority of ancient books, but was to proceed by the way of observation and experiment. Yet Roger Bacon imposed upon both his philology and his natural science a certain ultimate purpose: that they should subserve the surer ascertainment of divine and saving truth, and thus still remain handmaids of theology, at least in theory.
* * * * *
The year 1200 may be taken to symbolize the middle of a period notable for the enlargement of knowledge. If one should take the time of this increase to extend fifty years on either side of the central point, one might say that the student of the year 1250 stood to his intellectual ancestor of the year 1150, as a man in the full possession and use of the Encyclopaedia Britannica would stand toward his father who had saved up the purchase money for the same. The most obvious cause of this was an increasing acquaintance with the productions of the so-called Arabian philosophy, and more especially with the works of Aristotle, first through translations from the Arabic, and then through translations from the Greek, which were made in order to obviate the insufficiency of the former.
It would need a long excursus to review the far from simple course of so-called Arabian thought, philosophic and religious. It begins in the East, and follows the setting sun. Even before the Hegira (622) the Arabs had rubbed up against the inhabitants of Syria, Christian in name, eastern or Hellenic in culture and proclivity. Then in a century or two, when the first impulsion of Mohammedan conquest was spent, the works of Aristotle and his later Greek commentators were translated into Arabic from Syrian versions, under the encouragement of the rulers of Bagdad. The Syrian versions, as we may imagine, were somewhat eclecticized and, more especially, Neo-Platonized. So it was not the pure Aristotle that passed on into Arabic philosophy, but the Aristotelian substance interpreted through later phases of Greek and Oriental thought. Still, Aristotle was the great name, and his system furnished the nucleus of doctrine represented in this Peripatetic eclecticism which was to constitute, par excellence, Arabic philosophy. Also Greek mathematical and medical treatises were translated into Arabic from Syrian versions. El-Farabi (d. 950) and Avicenna (980-1036) were the chief glories of the Arabic philosophy of Bagdad. These two gifted men were commentators upon the works of the Stagirite, and authors of many interesting lucubrations of their own.[532] Arabian philosophy declined in the East with Avicenna’s death; but only to revive in Mussulman Spain. There its great representative was Averroes, whose life filled the last three quarters of the twelfth century. So great became his authority as an Aristotelian, with the Scholastics, that he received the name of Commentator, par excellence, even as Aristotle was par excellence, Philosophus. We need not consider the ideas of these men which were their own rather than the Stagirite’s; nor discuss the pietistic and fanatical sects among the Mussulmans, who either sought to harmonize Aristotle with the Koran, or disapproved of Greek philosophy. One readily perceives that in its task of acquisition and interpretation, with some independent thinking, and still more temperamental feeling, Arabic philosophy was the analogue of Christian scholasticism, of which it was, so to speak, the collateral ancestor.[533]
And in this wise. The Commentaries of Averroes, for example, were translated into Latin; and, throughout all the mediaeval centuries, the Commentary tended to supplant the work commented on, whether that work was Holy Scripture or a treatise of Aristotle. By the middle of the thirteenth century all the important works of Averroes had been translated into Latin, and he had many followers at Paris; and before then, from the College of Toledo, had come translations of the principal works of the other chief Arabian philosophers. Of still greater importance for the Christian West was the work of Jews and Christians in Spain and Provence, in translating the Arabic versions of Aristotle into Latin, sometimes directly, and sometimes first into Hebrew and then into Latin. They attempted a literal translation, which, however, frequently failed to give the significance even of the Arabic version. These Arabic-Latin translations were of primary importance for the first introduction of Aristotle to the theologian philosophers of Christian Europe.
They were not to remain the only ones. In the twelfth century, a number of Western scholars made excursions into the East; and the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 enlarged their opportunities of studying the Greek language and philosophy. Attempts at direct translation into Latin began. One of the first translators was the sturdy Englishman, Robert Grosseteste. He was born in Suffolk about 1175; studied at Lincoln, then at Oxford, then at Paris, whence he returned to become Chancellor of the University of Oxford. He was made Bishop of Lincoln in 1236, and died seventeen years later. It was he who laid the foundation of the study of Greek at Oxford, and Roger Bacon was his pupil. But the most important and adequate translations were the work of two Dominicans, the Fleming, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant, who translated the works of Aristotle at the instance of Thomas Aquinas, possibly all working together at Rome, in 1263 and the years following. Aquinas recognized the inadequacy of the older translations, and based his own Aristotelian Commentaries upon these made by his collaborators, learned in the Greek tongue. The joint labour of translation and commentary seems to have been undertaken at the command of Pope Urban IV., who had renewed the former prohibitions put upon the use of Aristotle at the Paris University, in the older, shall we say, Averroistic versions.
If these prohibitions, which did not touch the logical treatises, were meant to be taken absolutely, such had been far from their effect. In 1210 and again in 1215, an interdict was put upon the naturalis philosophia and the methafisica of the Stagirite. It was not revoked, but rather provisionally renewed, in 1231, until those works should be properly expurgated. A Commission was appointed which accomplished nothing; and the old interdict still hung in the air, unrescinded, yet ignored in practice. So Pope Urban referred to it as still effective--which it was not--in 1263. For Aristotle had been more and more thoroughly exploited in the Paris University, and by 1255 the Faculty of Arts formally placed his works upon the list of books to be studied and lectured upon.[534]
So the founding of Universities and the enlarged and surer knowledge brought by a study of the works of Aristotle were factors of power in the enormous intellectual advance which took place in the last half of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century. Yet these factors could not have operated as they did, but for the antecedent intellectual development. Before the first half of the twelfth century had passed, the patristic material had been mastered, along with the current notions of antique philosophy, for the most part contained in it. Strengthened by this discipline, men were prepared for an extension and solidifying of their knowledge of the universe and man. Not only had they appropriated what the available sources had to offer, but, when we think of Abaelard and Hugo of St. Victor, we see that organic restatements had been made of what had been acquired. Still, men really knew too little. It is very well to exploit logic, and construct soul-satisfying schemes of cosmogonic symbolism, in order to represent the deepest truth of the material world. But the evident sense-realities of things are importunate. The minds even of spiritual men may, in time, crave explanation of this side of their consciousness. Abaelard seems to have been oblivious to natural phenomena; Hugo recognizes them in order to elicit their spiritual meaning; and Alanus de Insulis, a generation and more afterwards, takes a poet’s view of Nature. Other men had a more hard-headed interest in these phenomena; but they knew too little to attempt seriously to put them together in some sense-rational scheme. The natural knowledge presented by the writings of the Church Fathers was little more than foolishness; the early schoolmen were their heirs. They observed a little for themselves; but very little.
There is an abysmal difference in the amount of natural knowledge exhibited by any writing of the twelfth century, and the works of Albertus Magnus belonging say to the middle of the thirteenth. The obvious reason of this is, that the latter had drawn upon the great volume of natural observation and hypothesis which for the preceding five hundred years had been actually closed to western Europe, and for five hundred years before that had been spiritually closed, because of the ineptitude of men to read therein. That volume was of course the encyclopaedic Natural Philosophy of Aristotle, completed, and treated in its ultimate causal relationships, by his Metaphysics. The Metaphysics, the First Philosophy, gave completeness and unity to the various provinces of natural knowledge expounded in his special treatises. For this reason, one finds in the works of Albertus a fund of natural knowledge solid with the solidity of the earth upon which one may plant his feet, and totally unlike the beautiful dreaming which drew its prototypal origins from the skyey mind of Plato.
The utilization of Aristotle’s philosophy by the Englishman, Alexander of Hales, who became a Franciscan near the year 1230, when he had already lectured for some thirty years at Paris; its far more elaborate and complete exposition by the very Teutonic Dominican, Albertus Magnus; and its even closer exposition and final incorporation within the sum of Christian doctrine, by Thomas,--this three-staged achievement is the great mediaeval instance of return to a genuine and chief source of Greek philosophy. These three schoolmen went back of the accounts and views of Greek philosophy contained in the writings of the Fathers. And in so doing they also went back of what was transmitted to the Middle Ages by Boëthius and other “transmitters.”[535]
But the achievement of these schoolmen had other import. Their work represents the culmination of the third stage of mediaeval thought: that of systematic and organic restatement of the substance of the patristic and antique, with added elements; for there can be no organic restatement which does not hold and present something from him who achieves it. The result, attained at least by Thomas, was even more than this. Based upon the data and assumptions of scholasticism, it was a complete and final statement of the nature of God so far as that might be known, of the creature world, corporeal and incorporeal, and especially of man, his nature, his qualities, his relationship to God and final destiny. And herein, in its completeness, it was satisfying. The human mind in seeking explanation of the phenomena of its consciousness--presumably a reflex of the universe without--tends to seek a unity of explanation. A unity of explanation requires a completeness in the mental scheme of what is to be explained. Thoughtful men in the Middle Ages craved a scheme of life complete even in detail, which should educe life’s currents from a primal Godhead, and project them compacted, with none left straying or pointing nowhither, on toward universal fulfilment of His will.
Mediaeval thought had been preceded by whole views, entire schemes of life. Greek philosophy had held only such from the time when Thales said that water was the cause of all things. Plato’s view or scheme also was beautiful in its ideally pyramided structure, with the Idea of the Good at the apex. For Aristotle, knowledge was to be a syllogistic, or at least rational and jointed, encyclopaedia, rounded, unified, complete. After the pagan times, another whole scheme was that of Augustine, or again, that of Gregory the Great, though barbarized and hardened. Thus as patterns for their own thinking, mediaeval men knew only of entire schemes of thought. Their creed was, in every sense, a symbol of a completed scheme. And no mediaeval philosopher or theologian suspected himself of fragmentariness. Yet, in fact, at first they did but select and compile. After a century and more of this, they began to make organic statements of parts of Christian doctrine. So we have Anselm’s Proslogium and Cur Deus Homo. Abaelard’s Theologia is far more complete; and so is Hugo’s De sacramentis, which offers an entire scheme, symbolical, sacramental, Christian, of God and the world and man. Hugo’s scheme might be ideally satisfying; but little concrete knowledge was represented in it. And when in the generations following his death, the co-ordinated Aristotelian encyclopaedia was brought to light and studied, then and thereafter any whole view of the world must take account of this new volume of argument and concrete knowledge. Alexander of Hales begins the labour of using it in a Christian Summa; Albertus makes prodigious advance, at least in the massing and preparation of the full Aristotelian material. Both try for whole views and comprehensive results. Then Thomas, most highly favoured in his master Albert, and gifted with a genius for acquisition and synthetic exposition, incorporates Aristotle, and Aristotle’s whole views, into the whole view presented by the Catholic Faith.
Thomas’s view, to be satisfying, had to be complete. It was knowledge united and amalgamated into a scheme of salvation. But a scheme of salvation is a chain, which can hold only in virtue of its completeness; break one link, and it snaps; leave one rivet loose, and it may also snap. A scheme of salvation must answer every problem put to it; a single unanswered problem may imperil it. The problem, for example, of God’s foreknowledge and predestination--that were indeed an open link, which Thomas will by no means leave unwelded. Hence for us modern men also, whose views of the universe are so shamelessly partial, leaving so much unanswered and so much unknown, the philosophy of Thomas may be restful, and charm by its completeness.
It is of great interest to observe the apparently unlikely agencies by which this new volume of knowledge was made generally available. In fact, it was the new knowledge and the demand for it that forced these agencies to fulfil the mission of exploiting it. For they had been created for other purposes, which they also fulfilled. Verily it happened that the chief means through which the new knowledge was gained and published were the two new unmonastic Orders of monks, friars rather we may call them. Francis of Assisi was born in 1182 and died in 1226; Dominic was born in 1177 and died in 1221. The Orders of Minorites and Preachers were founded by them respectively in 1209 and 1215. Neither Order was founded to promote secular knowledge. Francis organized his Minorites that they might imitate the lives of Christ and His apostles, and preach repentance to the world. Dominic founded his Order to save souls through preaching: “For our Order is known from the beginning to have been instituted especially for preaching and the saving of souls, and our study (studium nostrum) should have as the chief object of its labour to enable us to be useful to our neighbours’ souls (ut proximorum animabus possimus utiles esse).”[536]
Within an apparent similarity of aim, each Order from the first reflected the temper of its founder; and the temper of Francis was not that of Dominic. For our purpose here, the difference may perhaps be symbolized by the Dominican maxim to preach the Gospel throughout the world equally by word and example (verbo pariter et exemplo); and the Franciscan maxim, to exhort all plus exemplo quam verbo.[537] A generation later St Bonaventura puts it thus: “Alii (scilicet, Praedicatores) principaliter intendunt speculationi ... et postea unctioni. Alii (scilicet, Minores) principaliter unctioni et postea speculationi.”[538]
It is safe to say that St Francis had no thought of secular studies; and as for the Order of Preachers, the Constitutions of 1228 forbade the Dominicans to study libros gentilium and seculares scientias. They are to study libros theologicos.[539] Francis, also, recognized the necessity of Scriptural study for those Minorites who were allowed to preach. In these views the early Franciscans and Dominicans were not peculiar; but rather represented the attitude of the older monastic Orders and of the stricter secular clergy. The Gospel teaching of Christ had nothing to do with secular knowledge--explicitly. But the first centuries of the Church perceived that its defenders should be equipped with the Gentile learning, into which indeed they had been born. And while Francis was little of a theologian, and Dominic’s personality and career remain curiously obscure, one can safely say that both founders saw the need of sacred studies, and left no authoritative expression prohibiting their Orders from pursuing them to the best advantage for the cause of Christ. Yet we are not called on to suppose that either founder, in founding his Order for a definite purpose, foresaw all the means which after his death might be employed to attain that purpose--or some other!
The new Order cometh, the old rusteth. So has it commonly been with Monasticism. Undoubtedly these uncloistered Orders embodied novel principles of efficiency for the upholding of the Faith: their soldiers marched abroad evangelizing, and did not keep within their fastnesses of holiness. The Mendicant Orders were still young, and fresh from the inspiration of their founders. In those years they moved men’s hearts and drew them to the ideal which had been set for themselves. The result was, that in the first half of the thirteenth century the greater part of Christian religious energy girded its loins with the cords of Francis and Dominic.
At the commencement of that century, when the Orders of Minorites and Preachers were founded, the world of Western thought was prepared to make its own the new Aristotelian volume of knowledge and applied reason. Once that was opened and its contents perceived, the old Augustinian-Neo-Platonic ways of thinking could no longer proceed with their idealizing constructions, ignoring the pertinence of the new data and their possible application to such presentations of Christian doctrine as Hugo’s De sacramentis or the Lombard’s Sentences. The new knowledge, with its methods, was of such insistent import, that it had at once to be considered, and either invalidated by argument, or accepted, and perhaps corrected, and then accommodated within an enlarged Christian Philosophy.
The spiritual force animating a new religious movement attracts the intellectual energies of the period, and furnishes them a new reality of purpose. This was true of early Christianity, and likewise true of the fresh religious impulse which proceeded from Francis’s energy of love and the organizing zeal of Dominic. From the very years of their foundation, 1209 and 1215, the rapid increase of the two Orders realized their founders’ visions of multitudes hurrying from among all nations to become Minorites or Preachers. And more and more their numbers were recruited from among the clergy. The lay members, important in the first years of Francis’s labours, were soon wellnigh submerged by the clericals; and the educated or learned element became predominant in the Franciscan Order as it was from the first in the Dominican.
Consider for an instant the spread of the former. In 1216, Cardinal Jacques of Vitry finds the Minorites in Lombardy, Tuscany, Apulia, and Sicily. The next year five thousand are reported to have assembled at the general meeting of the Order. Two years later Francis proceeds to carry out his plan of world-conquest by apportioning the Christian countries, and sending the brethren into France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and throughout Italy.[540] It was a period when in the midst of general ignorance on the part of the clergy as well as laity, Universities (generalia studia) were rising in Italy, France, and England. The popes, Innocent III. (died 1216), Honorius III. (died 1221), and Gregory IX. (died 1241), were seeking to raise the education and even the learning of the Church. Their efforts found in the zeal of the Mendicants a ready response which was not forthcoming from the secular clergy. The Mendicants were zealous for the Faith, and loyal liegemen of the popes, who were their sustainers and the guarantors of their freedom from local ecclesiastical interference. What more fitting instruments could be found to advance the cause of sacred learning at the Universities, and enlarge it with the new knowledge which must either serve the Faith or be its enemy. If all this was not evident in the first decades of the century, it had become so by the middle of it, when the Franciscan Bonaventura and the Dominicans Albertus and Thomas were the intellectual glories of the time. And thus, while the ardour of the new Orders drew to their ranks the learning and spiritual energy of the Church, the intellectual currents of the time caught up those same Brotherhoods, which had so entrusted their own salvation to the mission of saving other souls abroad in the world, where those currents flowed.
The Universities, above all the University par excellence, were in the hands of the secular clergy; and long and intricate is the story of their jealous endeavours to exclude the Mendicants from Professors’ chairs. The Dominicans established themselves at Paris in 1217, the Franciscans two years later. The former succeeded in obtaining one chair of theology at the University in 1229, and a second in 1231; and about the same time the Franciscans obtained their first chair, and filled it with Alexander of Hales. When he died an old man, fifteen years later, they wrote upon his tomb:
“Gloria Doctorum, decus et flos Philosophorum, Auctor scriptorum vir Alexander variorum,”
closing the epitaph with the words: “primus Doctor eorum,” to wit, of the Minorites. He was the author of the first Summa theologiae, in the sense in which that term fits the work of Albert and Thomas. And there is no harm in repeating that this Summa of Alexander’s was the first work of a mediaeval schoolman in which use was made of the physics, metaphysics, and natural history, of Aristotle.[541] He died in 1245, when the Franciscans appear to have possessed two chairs at the University. One of them was filled in 1248 by Bonaventura, who nine years later was taken from his professorship, to become Minister-General of his Order. It was indeed only in this year 1257 that the University itself had been brought by papal injunctions formally to recognize as magister this most eloquent of the Franciscans, and the greatest of the Dominicans, Thomas Aquinas. The latter’s master, Albert, had been recognized as magister by the University in 1245.
Before the intellectual achievements of these two men, the Franciscan fame for learning paled. But that Order went on winning fame across the Channel, which the Dominicans had crossed before them. In 1224 they came to Oxford, and were received as guests by an establishment of Dominicans: this was but nine years after the foundation of the preaching Order! Perhaps the Franciscan glories overshone the Dominican at Oxford, where Grosseteste belongs to them and Adam of Marsh and Roger Bacon. But whichever Order led, there can be no doubt that together they included the greater part of the intellectual productivity of the maturing thirteenth century. Nevertheless, in spite of the vast work of the Orders in the field of secular knowledge, it will be borne in mind that the advancement of sacra doctrina, theology, the saving understanding of Scripture, was the end and purpose of all study with Dominicans and Franciscans, as it was universally with all orthodox mediaeval schoolmen; although for many the nominal purpose seems a mere convention. Few men of the twelfth or thirteenth century cared to dispute the principle that the Carmina poetarum and the Dicta philosophorum “should be read not for their own sake, but in order that we may learn holy Scripture to the best advantage: I say they are to be offered as first-fruits, for we should not grow old in them, but spring from their thresholds to the sacred page, for whose sake we were studying them for a while.”[542]
Within the two Orders, especially the Franciscan, men differed sharply as to the desirability of learning. So did their contemporaries among the secular clergy, and their mediaeval and patristic predecessors as far back as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. On this matter a large variance of opinion might exist within the compass of orthodoxy; for Catholicism did not forbid men to value secular knowledge, provided they did not cleave to opinions contradicting Christian verity. This was heresy, and indeed was the sum of what was called Averroism, the chief intellectual heresy of the thirteenth century. It consisted in a sheer following of Aristotle and his infidel commentator, wheresoever the opinions of the Philosopher, so interpreted, might lead. They were not to be corrected in the interest of Christian truth. A representative Averroist, and one so important as to draw the fire of Aquinas, as well as the censures of the Church, was Siger de Brabant. He followed Aristotle and his commentator in maintaining: The universal oneness of the (human) intelligence, the anima intellectiva, an opinion which involved the denial of an individual immortality, with its rewards and punishments; the eternity of the visible world,--uncreated and everlasting; a rational necessitarianism which precluded freedom of human action and moral responsibility.
It would be hard to find theses more fundamentally opposed to the Christian Faith. Yet Siger may have deemed himself a Christian. With other Averroists, he sought to preserve his religious standing by maintaining that these opinions were true according to philosophy, but not according to the Catholic Faith: “Dicunt enim ea esse vera secundum philosophiam, sed non secundum fidem catholicam.”[543] With what sincerity Siger held this untenable position is hard to say.
XXXVIII. BONAVENTURA
The range and character of the ultimate intellectual interests of the thirteenth century may be studied in the works of four men: St. Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas, and lastly, Roger Bacon. The first and last were as different as might be; and both were Franciscans. Albertus and Thomas represent the successive stages of one achievement, the greatest in the course of mediaeval thought. In some respects, their position is intermediate between Bonaventura and Bacon. Bonaventura reflects many twelfth-century ways of thinking; Albert and Thomas embody par excellence the intellectual movement of the thirteenth century in which they all lived; and Roger Bacon stands for much, the exceeding import of which was not to be recognized until long after he was forgotten. The four were contemporaries, and, with the possible exception of Bacon, knew each other well. Thomas was Albert’s pupil; Thomas and Bonaventura taught at the same time in the Faculty of Theology at Paris, and stood together in the academic conflict between their Orders and the Seculars. Albertus and Bonaventura also must have known each other, teaching at the same time in the theological faculty. As for Bacon, he was likewise at Paris studying and teaching, when the others were there, and may have known them.[544] Albert and Thomas came of princely stock, and sacrificed their fortune in the world for theology’s sake. Bacon’s family was well-to-do; Bonaventura was lowly born.
John of Fidanza, who under the name of Bonaventura was to become Minister-General of his Order, Cardinal, Saint, and Doctor Seraphicus, saw the light in the Tuscan village of Bagnorea. That he was of Italian, half Latin-speaking, stock is apparent from his own fluent Latin. Probably in the year 1238, when seventeen years old, he joined the Franciscan Order; and four years later was sent to Paris, where he studied under Alexander of Hales. In 1248 he was licensed to lecture publicly, and thenceforth devoted himself at Paris to teaching and writing, and defending his Order against the Seculars, until 1257, when, just as the University conferred on him the title of Magister, he was chosen Minister-General of his Order, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. The greater part of his writings were composed before the burdens of this primacy drew him from his studies. He was still to become Prince of the Church, for he was made Cardinal of Albano in 1273, the year before his death.
For all the Middle Ages the master in theology was Augustine. Either he was studied directly in his own writings, or his views descended through the more turbid channels of the works of men he influenced. Mediaeval theology was overwhelmingly Augustinian until the middle of the thirteenth century; and since theology was philosophy’s queen, mediaeval philosophy conformed to that which Augustine employed in his theology. This, if traced backward to its source, should be called Platonism, or Neo-Platonism if we turn our mind to the modes in which Augustine made use of it. His Neo-Platonism was not unaffected by Peripatetic and later systems of Greek philosophy; yet it was far more Platonic than Stoical or Aristotelian.
Those first teachers, who in the maturity of their powers became Brothers Minorites, were Augustinians in theology, and consequently Platonists, in so far as Platonism made part of Augustine’s doctrines. Thus it was with the first great teacher at the Minorites school in Oxford, Robert Grosseteste, and with the first great Minorite teacher at Paris, Alexander of Hales. Both of these men were promoters of the study of Aristotle; yet neither became so imbued with Aristotelianism as to revise either his theological system or the Platonic doctrines which seemed germane to it. Moreover, in so far as we may imagine St. Francis to have had a theology, we must feel that Augustine, with his hand on Plato’s shoulder, would have been more congenial to him than Aristotle. And so in fact it was to be with his Order. Augustine’s fervent piety, his imagination and religious temperament, held the Franciscans fast. Surely he was very close to the soul of that eloquent Franciscan teacher, who called Alexander of Hales “master and father,” sat at his feet, and never thought of himself as delivering new teachings. It would have been strange indeed if Bonaventura had broken from the influences which had formed his soul, this Bonaventura whose most congenial precursor lived and wrote and followed Augustine far back in the twelfth century, and bore the name of Hugo of St. Victor. Bonaventura’s writings did much to fix Augustinianism upon his Order; rivalry with the Dominicans doubtless helped to make it fast; for the latter were following another system under the dominance of their two Titan leaders, who had themselves come to maturity with the new Aristotelian influences, whereof they were magna pars.
But just as Grosseteste and Alexander made use of what they knew of Aristotle, so Bonaventura had no thought of misprizing him who was becoming in western Europe “the master of those who know.” In specific points this wise Augustinian might prefer Aristotle to Plato. For example, he chose to stand, with the former, upon the terra firma of sense perception, rather than keep ever on the wing in the upper region of ideal concepts.
“Although the anima, according to Augustine, is linked to eternal principles (legibus aeternis), since somehow it does reach the light of the higher reason, still it is unquestionable, as the Philosopher says, that cognition originates in us by the way of the senses, of memory, and of experience, out of which the universal is deduced, which is the beginning of art and knowledge (artis et scientiae). Hence, since Plato referred all certain cognition to the intelligible or ideal world, he was rightly criticized by Aristotle. Not because he spoke ill in saying that there are ideas and eternal rationes; but because, despising the world of sense, he wished to refer all certain cognition to those Ideas. And thus, although Plato seems to make firm the path of wisdom (sapientiae) which proceeds according to the eternal rationes, he destroys the way of knowledge, which proceeds according to the rationes of created things (rationes creatas). So it appears that, among philosophers, the word of wisdom (sermo sapientiae) was given to Plato, and the word of knowledge (scientiae) to Aristotle. For that one chiefly looked to the things above, and this one considered things below.[545] But both the word of wisdom and of knowledge, through the Holy Spirit, was given to Augustine, as the pre-eminent declarer of the entire Scripture.”[546]
So there is Aristotelian ballast in Bonaventura’s Platonic-Augustinian theology. His chief divergence from Albert and Thomas (who, of course, likewise held Augustine in honour, and drew on Plato when they chose) is to be found in his temperamental attitude, toward life, toward God, or toward theology and learning. His Augustinian soul held to the pre-eminence of the good above the true, and tended to shape the second to the first. So he maintained the primacy of willing over knowing. Man attains God through goodness of will and through love. The way of knowledge is less prominent with Bonaventura than with Aquinas. Surely the latter, and his master Albert, saw the main sanction of secular knowledge in its ministry to sacra doctrina; but their hearts may seem to tarry with the handmaid. Bonaventura’s position is the same; but his heart never tarries with the handmaid; for with him heart and mind are ever constant to the queen, Theology. Yet he recognizes the queen’s need of the handmaid. Holy Writ is not for babes; the fulness of knowledge is needed for its understanding: “Non potest intelligi sacra Scriptura sine aliarum scientiarum peritia.”[547] And without philosophy many matters of the Faith cannot be intelligently discussed. There is no knowledge which may not be sanctified to the purpose of understanding Scripture; only let this purpose really guide the mind’s pursuits.
Bonaventura wrote a short treatise to emphasize these universally admitted principles, and to show how every form of human knowledge conformed to the supreme illumination afforded by Scripture, and might be reduced to the terms and methods of Theology, which is Scripture rightly understood. He named the tract De reductione artium ad theologiam[548] (The leading back of the Arts to Theology).
“‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights,’ says James. This indicates the source of all illumination, and the streaming of all enlightenment from that fontal light. While every illumination is inner knowledge (omnis illuminatio cognitio interna sit) we may distinguish the external light, (lumen exterius), to wit, the light of mechanical art; the lower light, to wit, the light of sense perception; the interior light, to wit, the light of philosophical cognition; the superior light, to wit, the light of grace and Holy Scripture. The first illuminates as to the arts and crafts; the second as to natural form; the third as to intellectual truth; the fourth as to saving truth.”
He enumerates the mechanical arts, drawing from Hugo of St. Victor; then he follows with Augustine’s explanation of the second lumen, as that which discerns corporeal things. He next speaks of the third lumen which lightens us to the investigation of truths intelligible, scrutinizing the truth of words (Logic), or the truth of things (Physics), or the truth of morals (Ethics). The fourth lumen, of Holy Scripture, comes not by seeking, but descends through inspiration from the Father of lights. It includes the literal, the spiritual, moral and anagogic signification of Scripture, teaching the eternal generation and incarnation of Christ, the way to live, and the union of God and the soul. The first of these branches pertains to faith, the second to morals, and the third to the aim and end of both.
“Let us see,” continues Bonaventura, “how the other illuminations have to be reduced to the light of Holy Scripture. And first as to the illumination from sense cognition, as to which we consider its means, its exercise, and its delight (oblectamentum).” Its means is the Word eternally generated, and incarnated in time; its exercise is in the sense perception of an ordered way of living, following the suitable and avoiding the nocuous; and as for its object of delight, as every sense pursues that which delights it, so the sense of our heart should seek the beautiful, harmonious, and sweet-smelling. In this way divine wisdom dwells hidden in sense cognition.
Next, as to the illumination of mechanical art, which is concerned with the production of the works of craft. Herein likewise may be observed analogies with the light from Holy Scripture, which reveals the Word, the order of living, and the union of God and the soul. No creature proceeds from the great Artificer, save through the Word; and the human artificer works to produce a beautiful, useful, and enduring work; which corresponds to the Scriptural order of living. Each human artificer makes his work that it may bring him praise or use or delight; as God made the rational soul, to praise and serve and take delight in Him, through love.
By similar methods of reasoning Bonaventura next “reduces,” or leads back, Logic, and Natural and Moral Philosophy to the ways and purposes of Theology, and shows how “the multiform wisdom of God, which is set forth lucidly by Scripture, lies hidden in every cognition, and in every nature. It is also evident that all kinds of knowledge minister to Theology; and that Theology takes illustrations, and uses phrases, pertaining to every kind of knowledge (cognitionis). It is also plain how ample is the illuminating path, and how in every thing that is sensed or perceived, God himself lies concealed.”[549]
Ways of reasoning change, while conclusions sometimes endure. Bonaventura’s reasoning in the above treatise is for us abstruse and fanciful; yet many will agree with the conclusion, that all kinds of knowledge may minister to our thought of God, and of man’s relationship to Him. And with Bonaventura, all his knowledge, his study of secular philosophy, his logic and powers of presentation, had theology unfailingly in view, and ministered to the satisfaction, the actualization (to use our old word) of his religious nature. He belongs among those intellectually gifted men--Augustine, Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor--whose mental and emotional powers draw always to God, and minister to the conception of the soul’s union with the living spring of its being. The life, the labours of Bonaventura were as the title of the little book we have just been worrying with, a reductio artium ad theologiam, a constant adapting of all knowledge and ways of meditation, to the sense of God and the soul’s inclusion in the love divine. No one should expect to find among his compositions any independent treatment of secular knowledge for its own sake. Rather throughout his writings the reasonings of philosophy are found always ministering to the sovereign theme.
The most elaborate of Bonaventura’s doctrinal works was his Commentary upon the Lombard’s Sentences. In form and substance it was a Summa theologiae.[550] He also made a brief and salutary theological compend, which he called the Breviloquium.[551] The note of devotional piety is struck by the opening sentence, taken from the Epistle to the Ephesians, and is held throughout the work:
“‘I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled in all the fulness of God.’ The great doctor of the Gentiles discloses in these words the source, progress, and state (ortus, progressus, status) of Holy Scripture, which is called Theology; indicating that the source is to be thought upon according to the grace (influentiam) of the most blessed Trinity; the progress with reference to the needs of human capacity; and the state or fruit with respect to the superabundance of a superplenary felicity.
“For the Source lies not in human investigation, but in divine revelation, which flows from the Father of lights, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, from whom, through His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit flows in us; and through the Holy Spirit bestowing, as He wills, gifts on each, faith is given, and through faith Christ dwells in our hearts. This is the knowledge of Jesus Christ, from which, as from a source, comes the certitude and understanding of the whole Scripture. Wherefore it is impossible that any one should advance in its knowledge, unless he first has Christ infused in him....
“The Progress of Holy Scripture is not bound to the laws of reasonings and definitions, like the other sciences; but, conformably to supernatural light, proceeds to give to man the wayfarer (homini viatori) a knowledge of things sufficing for his salvation, by plain words in part, and in part mystically: it presents the contents of the universe as in a Summa, in which is observed the breadth; it describes the descent (from above) in which is considered the length; it describes the goodness of the saved, in which is considered the height; it describes the misery of the damned, in which consists the depth not only of the universe itself but of the divine judgment....
“The State or fruit of Holy Scripture is the plentitude of eternal felicity. For the Book containing words of eternal life was written not only that we might believe, but that we might have eternal life, in which we shall see, we shall love, and all our desires shall be filled, whereupon we shall know the love which passeth knowledge, and be filled in all the fulness of God....
“As to the progress of Scripture, first is to be considered the breadth, which consists in the multitude of parts.... Rightly is Holy Scripture divided into the Old and New Testament, and not in theorica and practica, like philosophy; because since Scripture is founded on the knowledge of faith, which is a virtue and the basis of morals, it is not possible to separate in Scripture the knowledge of things, or of what is to be believed, from the knowledge of morals. It is otherwise with philosophy, which handles not only the truth of morals, but the true, speculatively considered. Then as Holy Scripture is knowledge (notitia) moving to good and recalling from evil, through fear and love, so it is divided into two Testaments, whose difference, briefly, is fear and love....
“Holy Scripture has also length, which consists in the description of times and ages from the beginning to the day of Judgment.... The progress of the whole world is described by Scripture, as in a beautiful poem, wherein one may follow the descent of time, and contemplate the variety, manifoldness, equity, order, righteousness, and beauty of the multitude of divine judgments proceeding from the wisdom of God ruling the world: and as with a poem, so with this ordering of the world, one cannot see its beauty save by considering the whole....
“No less has Sacred Scripture height (sublimitatem), consisting in description of the ranged hierarchies, the ecclesiastical, angelic, and divine.... Even as things have being in matter or nature, they have also being in the anima through its acquired knowledge; they have also being in the anima through grace, also through glory; and they have also being in the way of the eternal--in arte aeterna. Philosophy treats of things as they are in nature, or in the anima according to the knowledge which is naturally implanted or acquired. But theology as a science (scientia) founded upon faith and revealed by the Holy Spirit, treats of those matters which belong to grace and glory and to the eternal wisdom. Whence placing philosophic cognition beneath itself, and drawing from nature (de naturis rerum) as much as it may need to make a mirror yielding a reflection of things divine, it constructs a ladder which presses the earth at the base, and touches heaven at the top: and all this through that one hierarch Jesus Christ, who through his assumption of human nature, is hierarch not in the ecclesiastical hierarchy alone, but also in the angelic; and is the medial person in the divine hierarchy of the most blessed Trinity.”[552]
The depth (profunditas) of Scripture consists in its manifold mystic meanings. It reveals these meanings of the creature world for the edification of man journeying to his fatherland. Scripture throughout its breadth, length, height, and depth uses narrative, threat, exhortation, and promise all for one end. “For this doctrina exists in order that we may become good and be saved, which comes not through naked consideration, but rather through inclination of the will.... Here examples have more effect than arguments, promises are more moving than ratiocinations, and devotion is better than definition.” Hence Scripture does not follow the method and divisions of other sciences, but uses its own diverse means for its saving end. The Prologue closes with rules of Scriptural interpretation.[553]
In our plan of following what is of human interest in mediaeval philosophy or theology, prologues and introductions are sometimes of more importance than the works which they preface; for they disclose the writer’s intent and purpose, and the endeavour within him, which may be more intimately himself, than his performance. So more space has been given to Bonaventura’s Prologue than the body of the treatise will require. The order of topics is that of the Lombard’s Sentences or Aquinas’s Summa. Seven successive partes consider the Trinity, the creation, the corruption from sin, the Incarnation, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sacramental medicine, and the Last Judgment. Each pars is divided into chapters setting forth some special topic. Bonaventura’s method, pursued in every chapter, is to state first the scriptural or dogmatic propositions, and then give their reason, which he introduces with such words as: Ratio autem ad praedictorum intelligentiam haec est. The work is a complete systematic compend of Christian theology; its conciseness and lucidity of statement are admirable. For an example of its method and quality, the first chapter of the sixth part may be given, upon the origin of Sacraments.
“Having treated of the Trinity of God, of the creation of the world, the corruption of sin, the incarnation of the Word, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, it is time to treat of the sacramental medicine, regarding which there are seven matters to consider: the origin of the sacraments, their variation, distinction, appointment, dispensation, repetition, and the integrity of each.
“Concerning[554] the origin of the Sacraments this is to be held, that sacraments are sensible signs divinely appointed as medicaments, in which under cover of things sensible, divine virtue secretly operates; also that from likeness they represent, from appointment they signify, from sanctification they confer, some spiritual grace, through which the soul is healed from the infirmities of vice; and for this as their final end they are ordained; yet they avail for humility, instruction, and exercise as for a subsidiary end.
“The reason and explanation of the aforesaid is this: The reparative principle (principium), is Christ crucified, to wit, the Word incarnate, that directs all things most compassionately because divine, and most compassionately heals because divinely incarnate. It must repair, heal, and save the sick human race, in a way suited to the sick one, the sickness and the occasion of it, and the cure of the sickness. The physician is the incarnate Word, to wit, God invisible in a visible nature. The sick man is not simply spirit, nor simply flesh, but spirit in mortal flesh. The disease is original sin, which through ignorance infects the mind, and through concupiscence infects the flesh. While the origin of this fault primarily lay in reason’s consent, yet its occasion came from the senses of the body. Consequently, in order that the medicine should correspond to these conditions, it should be not simply spiritual, but should have somewhat of sensible signs; for as things sensible were the occasion of the soul’s falling, they should be the occasion of its rising again. Yet since visible signs of themselves have no efficiency ordained for grace, although representative of its nature, it was necessary that they should by the author of grace be appointed to signify and should be blessed in order to sanctify; so that there should be a representation from natural likeness, a signification from appointment, and a sanctification and preparedness for grace from the added benediction, through which our soul may be cured and made whole.
“Again, since curative grace is not given to the puffed up, the unbelieving, and disdainful, so these sensible signs divinely given, ought to be such as not only would sanctify and confer grace, and heal, but also would instruct by their signification, humble by their acceptance, and exercise through their diversity; that thus through exercise despondency (acedia) should be shut out from the desiderative [nature], through instruction ignorance be shut out from the rational [nature], through humiliation pride be shut out from the irascible [nature], and the whole soul become curable by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which remakes us according to these three capacities (potentias)[555] into the image of the Trinity and Christ. Finally, whereas the grace of the Holy Spirit is received through these sensible signs divinely appointed, it is found in them as an accident. Hence sacraments of this kind are called the vessels and cause of grace: not that grace is of their substance or produced by them as by a cause; for its place is in the soul, and it is infused by God alone; but because it is ordained by divine decree, that in them and through them we shall draw the grace of cure from the supreme physician, Christ; although God has not fettered His grace to the sacraments.[556]
“From the premises, therefore, appears not only what may be the origin of the sacraments, but also the use and fruit. For their origin is Christ the Lord; their use is the act which exercises, teaches, and humbles; their fruit is the cure and salvation of men. It is also evident that the efficient cause of the sacraments is the divine appointment; their material cause is the figurement of the sensible sign; their formal cause the sanctification by grace; their final cause the medicinal healing of men. And because they are named from their form and end they are called sacraments, as it were medicamenta sanctificantia. Through them the soul is led back from the filth of vice to perfect sanctification. And so, although corporeal and sensible, they are medicinal, and to be venerated as holy because they signify holy mysteries, and make ready for the holy gifts (charismata) given by most holy God; and they are divinely consecrated by holy institution and benediction for the holiest worship of God appointed in holy church, so that rightly they should be called sacraments.”
The Breviloquium was Bonaventura’s rational compendium of Christian theology. It offered in brief compass as complete a system as the bulkiest Summa could carry out to doctrinal elaboration. Quite different in method and intent was his equally famous Itinerarium mentis in Deum,[557] the praise of which, according to the great Chancellor Gerson, could not fitly be uttered by mortal mouth. We have seen how in the Reductio artium ad theologiam Bonaventura conformed all modes of perception and knowledge to the uses and modes of theology; the final end of which is man’s salvation, consisting in the union of the soul with God, through every form of enlightenment and all the power of love. The Breviloquium has given the sum of Christian doctrine, an intelligent and heart-felt understanding of which leads to salvation. And now the Itinerarium--well, it is best to let Bonaventura tell how he came to compose it, and of its purpose and character.
“Since, after the example of our most blessed father Francis, I pant in spirit for the peace which he preached in the manner of our Lord Jesus Christ, I a sinner who am the seventh, all unworthy, Minister-General of the Brethren,--it happened that by God’s will in the thirty-third year after our blessed father’s death, I turned aside to the mountain of Alverna, as to a quiet place, seeking the spirit’s peace. While I lingered there my mind dwelt on the ascensions of the spirit, and, among others, on the miracle which in that very spot came to blessed Francis, when he saw the winged Seraph in the likeness of the Crucified. And it seemed to me his vision represented the suspension of our father in contemplation, and the way by which he came to it. For by those six wings may be understood the suspensions of the six illuminations, by which the soul, as by steps and journeys, through ecstatic outpourings of Christian wisdom, is prepared to pass beyond to peace. For the way lies only through love of the Crucified, which so transformed Paul carried to the third heaven, that he could say: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ So the image of the six seraph’s wings represents the six rungs of illumination, which begin with the creatures and lead on to God, to whom no one can come save through the Crucified....
“For one is not prepared for the divine contemplations, which lead to the rapt visions of the mind, unless he be with Daniel, a man of desires.[558] Desires are stirred within us by the cry of prayer and the bright light of speculation. I shall invite the reader first to the sighings of prayer through Christ crucified, lest perchance he believe that study might suffice without unction, or diligence without piety, knowledge without charity, zeal without divine grace, or the mirror (speculum) without the wisdom divinely inspired. Then to those humble and devout ones, to whom grace first has come, to those lovers of the divine wisdom, who burn with desire of it, and are willing to be still, for the magnifying of God, I shall propose pertinent speculations, showing how little or nothing is it to turn the mirror outward unless the mirror of our mind be rubbed and polished.”
Thus Bonaventura writes his prologue to this devotional tract, which will also hold “pertinent speculations.” Remarkable is the intellectuality and compacted thought which he fuses in emotional expression. He will write seven chapters, on the seven steps, or degrees, in the ascent to God, which is the mind’s true itinerarium. Since we cannot by ourselves lift ourselves above ourselves, prayer is the very mother and source of our upward struggle. Prayer opens our eyes to the steps in the ascent. Placed in the universe of things, we find in it the corporeal and temporal footprint (vestigium) leading into the way of God. Then we enter our mind, which is the everlasting and spiritual image of God; and this is to enter the truth of God. Whereupon we should rise above us to the eternal most spiritual first cause; and this is to rejoice in the knowledge of God’s majesty. This is the threefold illumination, by which we recognise the triple existence of things, in matter, in the intelligence, and in the divine way--in arte divina. And likewise our mind has three outlooks, one upon the corporeal world without, which is called sense, another into and within itself, which is called spiritus, and a third above itself, which is called mens. By means of all three, man should set himself to rising toward God, and love Him with the whole mind, and heart, and soul.
Then Bonaventura makes further analysis of his triple illumination into
“six degrees or powers of the soul, to wit, sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence, and apex mentis seu synteresis scintilla. These degrees are planted within us by nature, deformed through fault, reformed through grace, purged through righteousness, exercised through knowledge, perfected through wisdom.... Whoever wishes to ascend to God should shun the sins which deform nature, and stretch forth his natural powers, in prayer, toward reforming grace, in mode of life, toward purifying righteousness, in meditation, toward illuminating knowledge, in contemplation toward the wisdom which makes perfect. For as no one reaches wisdom except through grace, righteousness, and knowledge, so no one reaches contemplation, except through meditation, a holy life, and devout prayer.”
Chapter one closes with little that is novel; for we seem to be retracing the thoughts of Hugo of St. Victor. The second chapter is on the “Contemplation of God in His Footprints in the Sensible World.” This is the next grade of speculation, because we shall now contemplate God not only through His footprints, but in them also, so far as He is in them through essence, power, or presence. The sensible world, the macrocosmus, enters the microcosmus, which is the anima, through the gates of the five senses. The author sketches the processes of sense-perception, through which outer facts are apprehended according to their species, and delighted in if pleasing, and then adjudged according to the ratio of their delightfulness, to wit, their beauty, sweetness, salubrity, and proportion. Such are the footprints in which we may contemplate our God. All things knowable possess the quality of generating their species in our minds, through the medium of our perceptions; and thus we are led to contemplate the eternal generation of the Word--image and Son--from the Father. Likewise sweetness and beauty point on to their fontal source. And from speculation on the local, the temporal, and mutable, our reason carries us to the thought of the immutable, the uncircumscribed and eternal. Then from the beauty and delightfulness of things, we pass to the thought of number and proportion, and judge of their irrefragable laws, wherein are God’s wisdom and power.
“The creatures of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God; in part because God is the source and exemplar and end of every creature; in part through their proper likeness; in part from their prophetic prefiguring; in part from angelic operations; and in part through superadded ordainment. For every creature by nature is an effigy of the eternal wisdom; especially whatever creature in Scripture is taken by the spirit of prophecy as a type of the spiritual; but more especially those creatures in the likeness of which God willed to appear by an angelic minister; and most especially that creature which he chose to mark as a sacrament.”
From these first grades of speculation, which contemplate the footprints of God in the world, we are led to contemplate the divine image in the natural powers of our minds. We find the image of the most blessed Trinity in our memory, our rational intelligence, and our will; the joint action of which leads on to the desire of the summum bonum. Next we contemplate the divine image in our minds remade by the gifts of grace upon which we must enter by the door of the faith, hope, and love of the Mediator of God and men, Jesus Christ. As philosophy helped us to see the image of God in the natural qualities of our mind, so Scripture now is needed to bring us to these three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), which enable the mind of fallen man to be repaired and made anew through grace.
From this fourth grade, in which God is still contemplated in his image, we rise to consider God as pure being, wherein there is neither privation, nor bound, nor particularity; and next in his goodness, the highest communicability (summam communicabilitatem) of which may be contemplated, but not comprehended, in the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. “In whom [the persons of the Trinity] it is necessary because of the summa bonitas that there should be the summa communicabilitas, and because of the latter, the summa consubstantialitas, and because of this the summa configurabilitas, and from these the summa coaequalitas, and through this the summa coaeternitas, and from all the preceding the summa cointimitas, by which each is in the other, and one works with the other through every conceivable indivisibility (indivisionem) of the substance, virtue, and operation of the same most blessed Trinity....” “And when thou contemplatest this,” adds Bonaventura, “do not think to comprehend the incomprehensible.”
From age to age the religious soul finds traces of its God in nature and in its inmost self. Its ways of finding change, varying with the prevailing currents of knowledge; yet still it ever finds these vestigia, which represent the widest deductions of its reasoning, the ultimate resultants of its thought, and its own brooding peace. Therefore may we not follow sympathetically the Itinerarium of Bonaventura’s mind as it traces the footprints of its God? Thus far the way has advanced by reason, uplifted by grace, and yet still reason. This reason has comprehended what it might comprehend of the traces and evidences of God in the visible creation and the soul of man; it has sought to apprehend the being of God, but has humbly recognized its inability to penetrate the marvels of his goodness in the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. There it stops at the sixth grade of contemplation; yet not baffled, or rendered vain, for it has performed its function and brought the soul on to where she may fling forth from reason’s steeps, and find herself again, buoyant and blissful, in a medium of super-rational contemplation. This makes the last chapter of the mind’s Itinerarium; it is the apex mentis, the summit of all contemplations in which the mind has rest. Henceforth
“Christ is the way and door, the ladder and the vehicle, as the propitiation placed on the Ark of God, and the sacrament hidden from the world. He who looks on this propitiation, with his look full fixed on him who hangs upon the cross, through faith, hope, and charity, and all devotion, he makes his Passover, and through the rod of the cross shall pass through the Red Sea, out of Egypt entering the desert, and there taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the tomb, dead to all without; and shall realize, though as one still on the way, the word of Christ to the believing thief: ‘To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’ Which was also revealed to the blessed Francis when in ecstasy of contemplation on the high mountain, the Seraph with six wings, nailed on a cross, appeared to him. There, as we have heard from his companion, he passed into God through ecstasy of contemplation, and was set as an exemplar of perfect contemplation, whereby God should invite all truly spiritual men to this transit and ecstasy, by example rather than by word. In this passing over, if it be perfect, all the ways of reason are relinquished, and the apex affectus is transferred and transformed into God. This is the mystic secret known by no one who does not receive it, and received by none who does not desire it, and desired only by him whose heart’s core is aflame from the fire of the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent on earth.... Since then nature avails nothing here, and diligence but little, we should give ourselves less to investigation and more to unction; little should be given to speech, and most to inner gladness; little to the written word, and all to God’s gift the Holy Spirit; little or nothing is to be ascribed to the creature, and all to the creative essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Here Bonaventura loses himself in an untranslatable extract from Eriugena’s version of the Areopagite, and then proceeds:
“If thou askest how may these things be, interrogate grace and not doctrine, desire and not knowledge, the groaning of prayer rather than study, the Spouse rather than the teacher, God and not man, mist rather than clarity, not light but fire all aflame and bearing on to God by devotion and glowing affection. Which fire is God, and the man Christ kindles it in the fervour of his passion, as only he perceives who says: ‘My soul chooseth strangling and my bones, death.’ He who loves this death shall see God. Then let us die and pass into darkness, and silence our solicitudes, our desires, and phantasies; let us pass over with Christ crucified from this world to the Father; that the Father shown us, we may say with Philip: ‘it sufficeth us.’ Let us hear with Paul: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ Let us exult with David, saying: ‘Defecit caro mea et cor meum, Deus cordis mei et pars mea Deus in aeternum’.”[559]
It is best to leave the saint and doctor here, and not follow in other treatises the current of his yearning thought till it divides in streamlets which press on their tortuous ways through allegory and the adumbration of what the mind disclaims the power to express directly. Those more elaborate treatises of his, which are called mystic, are difficult for us to read. As with Hugo of St. Victor, from whom he drew so largely, Bonaventura’s expression of his religious yearnings may interest and move us; but one needs perhaps the cloister’s quiet to follow on through the allegorical elaboration of this pietism. Bonaventura’s Soliloquium might weary us after the Itinerarium, and we should read his De septem itineribus aeternitatis with no more pleasure than Hugo’s Mystic Ark of Noah. It is enough to witness the spiritual attitude of these men without tracking them through the “selva oscura” to their lairs of meditation.
XXXIX. ALBERTUS MAGNUS
Albert the Great was prodigious in the mass of his accomplishment. Therein lay his importance for the age he lived in; therein lies his interest for us. For him, substantial philosophy, as distinguished from the instrumental rôle of logic, had three parts, set by nature, rather than devised by man; they are physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. “It is our intention,” says Albert at the beginning of his exposition of Aristotle’s Physics, “to make all the said parts intelligible to the Latins.” And he did. Perhaps the world has had no greater purveyor of a knowledge not his own. He is comparable with Boëthius, who gave the Latin world the Aristotelian Organon, a gift but half availed of for many centuries. Albert gave his Latin world the rest of Aristotle, the philosophia realis. His world was as ready to receive this great donation, as the time of Boëthius was unready to profit by any intellectual gift demanding mental energies for its assimilation. Boëthius stood alone in his undertaking; if his hand failed there was none to take up his task. Fate stayed his hand; and the purpose that was his, to render the whole of Plato and Aristotle intelligible to the Latin world, perished with him, the Latin world being by no means eager for the whole of Aristotle and Plato, and unfit to receive it had it been proffered. But Albert’s time was eager; it was importunate for the very enlargement of knowledge which Albert, more than any other man, was bringing it. An age obtains what it demands. Albert had fellow-labourers, some preceding, some assisting, and others following him, to perfect the knowledge in which he worked, and build it into the scholastic Christian scheme. But in this labour of purveyorship he overtopped the rest, the giant of them all.
He was born Count of Bollstadt, in Suabia, probably in the year 1193. Whether his youth was passed in the profession of arms, or in study, is not quite clear. But while still young he began his years of studious travel, and at Padua in 1223 he joined the Dominican Order. He became a miracle of learning, reputed also as one who could explain the phenomena of nature. From 1228 to 1245 he taught in German cities, chiefly at Cologne. Then the scene changed to Paris, where he lectured and won fame from 1245 to 1248. With this period begins the publication of his philosophical encyclopaedia. Perhaps it was first completed in 1256. But Albert kept supplementing and revising it until his death. In 1248 he was remanded to Cologne to establish a school there. His life continued devoted to study and teaching, yet with interruptions. For he filled the office of Provincial of his Order for Germany from 1254 to 1257, and was compelled to be Bishop of Regensburg from 1260 to 1262. Then he insisted on resigning, and retired to a cloister at Cologne. Naturally he was engaged in a number of learned controversies, and was burdened with numerous ecclesiastical affairs. In 1277 for the last time he set his face toward Paris, to defend the doctrines and memory of his great pupil, who had died three years before. His own illustrious life closed at Cologne on the fifteenth of November, 1280. Albert was a man of piety, conforming strictly to the rules of his Order. It is said that he refused to own even the manuscripts which he indited; and as Dominican Provincial of Germany he walked barefoot on his journeys through the vast territory set under his supervision. Tradition has him exceeding small of stature.
Albert’s labours finally put within reach of his contemporaries the sum of philosophy and science contained in the works of Aristotle, and his ancient, as well as Arabian, commentators. The undertaking was grandly conceived; it was carried out with tireless energy and massive learning. Let us observe the principles which informed the mind of this mighty Teuton scholar. He transcribed approvingly the opinion expressed by Aristotle at the opening of the Metaphysics, that the love of knowledge is natural to man; and he recognized the pleasure arising from knowledge of the sensible world, apart from considerations of utility.[560] He took this thought from Aristotle; but the proof that he made it his own with power lay in those fifty years of intellectual toil which produced the greatest of all mediaeval storehouses of knowledge.
In his reliance on his sources, Albert is mediaeval; his tendency is to accept the opinion which he is reproducing, especially when it is the opinion of Aristotle. Yet he protested against regarding even him as infallible. “He who believes that Aristotle was God, ought to believe that he never erred. If one regards him as a man, then surely he may err as well as we.”[561] Albert was no Averroist to adhere to all the views of the Philosopher; he pointedly differed from him where orthodoxy demanded it, maintaining, for instance, the creation of the world in time, contrary to the opinion of the Peripatetics. Albert, and with him Aquinas, had not accepted merely the task of expounding Aristotle, but also that of correcting him where Truth (with a large Christian capital) required it. Albert held that Aristotle might err, and that he did not know everything. The development of science was not closed by his death: “Dicendum quod scientiae demonstrativae non omnes factae sunt, sed plures restant adhuc inveniendae.”[562] This is not Roger Bacon speaking, but Albertus; and still more might one think to hear the voice of the recalcitrant Franciscan in the words: “Oportet experimentum non in uno modo, sed secundum omnes circumstantias probare.”[563] Yet these words too are Albert’s, and he is speaking of the observation of nature’s phenomena; regarding which one shall not simply transcribe the ancient statement; but observe with his own eyes and mind.
This was in the spirit of Aristotle; Albert recognizes and approves. But did he make the experimental principle his own with power, as he did the thought that the desire to know is inborn? This is a fundamental question as to Albert. No one denies his learning, his enormous book-diligence. But was he also an observer of natural phenomena? One who sought to test from his own observation the statements of the books he read? It is best here to avoid either a categorical affirmation or denial. The standard by which one shapes one’s answer is important. Are we to compare Albert with a St. Bernard, whose meditations shut his eyes to mountains, lakes, and woods? Or are we to apply the standards of a natural science which looks always to the tested results of observation? There is sufficient evidence in Albert’s writings to show that he kept his eyes open, and took notice of interesting phenomena, seen, for instance, on his journeys. But, on the other hand, it is absurd to imagine that he dreamed of testing the written matter which he paraphrased, or of materially adding to it, by systematic observation of nature. Accounts of his observations do not always raise our opinion of his science. He transcribes the description of certain worms, and says that they may come from horse-hairs, for he has seen horse-hairs, in still water, turning into worms.[564] The trouble was that Albert had no general understanding of the processes of nature. Consequently, in his De animalibus for instance, he gives the fabulous as readily as the more reasonable. Nevertheless let no one think that natural knowledge did not really interest and delight him. His study of plants has led the chief historian of botany to assert that Albert was the first real botanist, after the ancient Theophrastus, inasmuch as he studied for the sake of learning the nature of plants, irrespective of their medical or agricultural uses.[565]
The writings of Albertus Magnus represent, perhaps more fully than those of any other man, the round of knowledge and intellectual interest attracting the attention of western Europe in the thirteenth century. At first glance they seem to separate into those which in form and substance are paraphrases of Aristotelian treatises, or borrowed expositions of Aristotelian topics; and those which are more independent compositions. Yet the latter, like the Summa de creaturis, for example, will be found to consist largely of borrowed material; the matter is rearranged, and presented in some new connection, or with a purpose other than that of its source.
In his Aristotelian paraphrases, which were thickly sown with digressive expositions, Albert’s method, as he states at the beginning of the Physica, is “to follow the order and opinions of Aristotle, and to give in addition whatever is needed in the way of explanation and support; yet without reproducing Aristotle’s text (tamen quod textus eius nulla fiat mentio). And we shall also compose digressiones to expound whatever is obscure.” The titles of the chapters will indicate whether their substance is from Aristotle. Thus instead of giving the Aristotelian text, with an attached commentary, Albert combines paraphrase and supplementary exposition. Evidently the former method would have presented Aristotle’s meaning more surely, and would have thus subserved a closer scholarship. But for this the Aristotelian commentaries of Aquinas must be awaited.
The compass of Albert’s achievement as a purveyor of ancient knowledge may be seen from a cursory survey of his writings; which will likewise afford an idea of the quality of his work, and how much there was of Albert in it.[566] To begin with, he sets forth with voluminous exposition the entire Aristotelian Organon. The preliminary questions as to the nature of logic were treated in the De praedicabilibus,[567] which expanded the substance of Porphyry’s Isagoge. In this treatise Albert expounds his conclusions as to universals, the universal being that which is in one yet is fit (aptum) to be in many, and is predicable of many. “Et hoc modo prout ratio est praedicabilitatis, ad logicam pertinet de universali tractare; quamvis secundum quod est natura quaedam et differentia entis, tractare de ipso pertineat ad metaphysicam.” That is to say, It pertains to logic to treat of the universal in respect to its predicability; but in so far as the question relates to the nature and differences of essential being, it pertains to metaphysics. This sentence is an example of Albert’s awkward Latin; but it shows how firmly he distinguishes between the logical and the metaphysical material. His treatment of logic is exhaustive, rather than acutely discriminating. He works constantly with the material of others, and the result is more inclusive than organic.[568] In his ponderous treatment of logical themes, no possible consideration is omitted.
The De praedicabilibus is followed by the De praedicamentis, Albert’s treatise on the Categories. Next comes his Liber de sex principiis, which is a paraphrasing exposition of the work of Gilbert de la Porrée. Then comes his Perihermenias, which keeps the Greek title of the De interpretatione. These writings are succeeded by elaborate expositions of the more advanced logical treatises of Aristotle, all of them, of course, Analytics (Prior and Posterior), Topics, and Elenchi. The total production is detailed, exhaustive, awful; it is ingens truly, only not quite informis; and Teutonically painstaking and conscientious.
Thus logic makes Tome I. of the twenty-one tomes of Albert’s Opera. Tome II. contains his expository paraphrases of Aristotle’s Physics and lesser treatises upon physical topics, celestial and terrestrial. From the opening chapter we have already taken the programme of his large intention to make known all Aristotle to the Latins. In this chapter likewise he proceeds to lay out the divisions of philosophia realis into Aristotelian conceptions of metaphysica, mathematica, and physica. With chapter two he falls into the first of his interminable digressions, taking up what were called “the objections of Heracleitus” to any science of physics. Another digressive chapter considers the proper subject of physical science, to wit, corpus mobile, and another considers its divisions. After a while he takes up the opinions of the ancients upon the beginnings (principia) of things, and then reasons out the true opinion in the matter. Liber II. of his Physica is devoted to Natura, considered in many ways, but chiefly as the principium intrinsecum omnium eorum quae naturalia sunt. It is the principle of motion in the mobile substance. Next he passes to a discussion of causes; and in the succeeding books he considers movement, place, time, and eternity. Albert’s paraphrase is replete with logical forms of thinking; it seems like formal logic applied in physical science. The world about us still furnishes, or is, data for our thoughts; and we try to conceive it consistently, so as to satisfy our thinking; so did Aristotle and Albertus. But they avowedly worked out their conceptions of the external world according to the laws determining the consistency of their own mental processes; and deemed this a proper way of approach to natural science. Yet the work of Aristotle represents a real consideration of the universe, and a tremendous mass of natural knowledge. The achievement of Albertus in rendering it available to the scholar-world of the thirteenth century was an extension of knowledge which seems the more prodigious as we note its enormous range. This continues to impress us as we turn over Albert’s next treatises, paraphrasing those of Aristotle, as their names indicate: De coelo et mundo; De generatione et corruptione; Libri IV. meteorum; De mineralibus, which ends Tome II. and the physical treatises proper.
Tome III. introduces us to another region, opening with Albert’s exhaustive paraphrase, De anima. It is placed here because the scientia de anima is a part of naturalis scientia, and comes after minerals and other topics of physics, but precedes the science of animate bodies--corporum animatorum; for the last cannot be known except through knowing their animae. In this, as well as in other works of Albert, psychological material is gathered from many sources. One may hardly speak of the psychology of Albertus Magnus, since his matter has no organic unity. It is largely Aristotelian, with the thoughts of Arab commentators taken into it, as in Albert’s Aristotelian paraphrases generally. But it is also Augustinian, and Platonic and Neo-Platonic. Albert is capable of defending opposite views in the same treatise; and in spite of best intentions, he does not succeed in harmonizing what he draws from Aristotle, with what he takes from Augustine. Hence his works nowhere present a system of psychology which might be called Albert’s, either through creation or consistent selection. But at least he has gathered, and bestowed somewhere, all the accessible material.[569]
Tome III. of Albert’s Opera contains also his Aristotelian paraphrase, Metaphysicorum libri XIII. In this vera sapientia philosophiae, he follows Aristotle closely, save where orthodoxy compels deviation.[570] Tome IV. contains his paraphrasing expositions, Ethica and In octo libros politicorum Aristotelis commentarii. Tome V. contains paraphrases of Aristotle’s minor natural treatises,--parva naturalia; to wit, the Liber de sensu et sensato, treating problems of sense-perception; next the Liber de memoria et reminiscentia, in which the two are thus distinguished: “Memoria motus continuus est in rem, et uniformis. Reminiscibilitas autem est motus quasi interceptus et abscissus per oblivionem.” Treatises follow: De somno et vigilia; De motibus animalium; De aetate, sive de juventute et senectute; De spiritu et respiratione; De morte et vita; De nutrimento et nutribile; De natura et origine animae; De unitate intellectus contra Averroem (a controversial tract); De intellectu et intelligibile (an important psychological writing); De natura locorum; De causis proprietatum elementorum; De passionibus aeris, sive de vaporum impressionibus; and next and last, saving some minor tracts, Albert’s chief botanical work, De vegetabilibus.
Aristotle’s Botany was lost, and Albert’s work was based on the De plantis of Nicolas of Damascus, a short compend vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle, but really made in the first century, and passing through numerous translations from one language to another, before Albert accepted it as the composition of the Stagirite. It consisted of two short books; Albert’s work contained seven long ones, and made the most important work on botany since the times of Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus. In opening, Albert says that generalities applicable to all animate things have been already presented, and now it is time to consider more especially and in turn, vegetabilia, sensibilia, rationabilia. In the first eight chapters of his first book, Albert follows his supposed Aristotelian source, and then remarks that the translation of the Philosopher’s treatise is so ignorantly made that he will himself take up in order the six problems thus far incompetently discussed. So he considers whether plants have souls; whether plant-souls feel and desire; whether plants sleep; as to sex in plants; whether without sex they can propagate their species; and as to their hidden life.
In the second book, having again bewailed the insufficiency of his source, Albert takes up the classification of plants, and proceeds with a description of their various parts, then passes on to the shape of leaves, the generation and nature of flowers, their colour, odour, and shape. Liber III., still as an independent digressio, discusses seeds and fruit. In Liber IV. Albert returns to his unhappy source, and his matter declines in interest; but again, in Liber V., he frees himself in a digressio on the properties and effects of plants, gathered from many sources, some of which are foolish enough. His sixth book is a description of trees and other plants in alphabetical order. The last and seventh is devoted to agriculture.[571]
In the De vegetabilibus, Albert, as an expounder of natural knowledge, is at his best. A less independent and intelligent production is his enormous treatise De animalibus libri XXVI., which fills the whole of Tome IV. of Albert’s Opera. A certain Thomas of Cantimpré, an admiring pupil of Albert, may have anticipated the above-named work of his teacher by his own compilation, De naturis rerum, which appears to have been composed shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century. Its descriptions of animals, although borrowed and uncritical, were at least intended to describe them actually, and were not merely fashioned for the moral’s sake, after the manner of the Physiologus,[572] and many a compilation of the early Middle Ages. Yet the work contains moralities enough, and plenty of the fabulous. But Thomas diligently gathered information as he might, and from Aristotle more than any other. Thus, in his lesser way, he, as well as Albert, represents the tendency of the period to interest itself in the realities, as well as in the symbolisms, of the natural world.
Albert’s work is not such an inorganic compilation as Thomas’s. He has paraphrased the ten books of Aristotle’s natural histories, his four books on the parts of animals, and his five books on their generation. To these nineteen, he has added seven books on the nature of animal bodies and on their grades of perfection; and then on quadrupeds, birds, aquatic animals, snakes, and small bloodless creatures. Besides Aristotle, he draws on Avicenna, Galen, Ambrose (!), and others, including Thomas of Cantimpré. Thus, his work is made up mainly of the ancient written material. Moreover, Albert is kept from a natural view of his subject through the need he feels to measure animals by the standards of human capacity, and learn to know them through knowing man. His digressiones usually discuss abstract problems, as, for instance, whether beyond the four elements, any fifth principle enters the composition of animal bodies. As for his anatomy, he describes the muscles, and calls the veins nerves, having no real knowledge of the latter. He corrects few ancient errors, either anatomical or physiological; and his own observations, occasionally referred to in his work, scarcely win our respect. Nor does he exclude fabulous stories, or the current superstitions as to the medicinal or magical effect of parts of certain animals. On the whole, Albert’s merit in the province of Zoology lies in his introduction of the Aristotelian data and conceptions to the mediaeval Latin West.[573]
After Tome IV. of Albert’s Opera, follow many portly tomes, the contents of which need not detain us. There are enormous commentaries on the Psalms and Prophets, and the Gospels (Tomes VII.-XI.); then a tome of sermons, then a tome of commentaries on the Hierarchies of Pseudo-Dionysius; and three tomes of commentaries on the Lombard’s Sentences,--commentaries, that is to say, upon works which stood close to Scripture in authority. With these we reach the end of Albert’s labours in paraphrase and commentary, and pass to his more constructive work. Of course, the first and chief is his Summa theologiae, contained in Tomes XVII. and XVIII. of the Opera. With Albert, theology is a science, a branch of systematic knowledge, the highest indeed, and yet one among others. This science, says he in the Prologue to his Summa,
“... is of all sciences the most entitled to credence--certissimae credulitatis et fidei. Other sciences, concerning creatures, possess rationes immobiles, yet those rationes are mobiles because they are in created things. But this science founded in rationibus aeternis is immutable both secundum esse and secundum rationem. And since it is not constituted of the sensible and imaginable, which are not quite cleared of the hangings of matter, plainly it, alone or supremely, is science: for the divine intellect is altogether intellectual, being the light and cause of everything intelligible; and from it to us is the divine science.”
Albert’s dialectic is turgid enough, and lacks the lucidity of his pupil. Yet his reasoning may be weighty and even convincing. Intellect, Reason and its realm of that which is known through Reason, is higher than sense perceptions and imaginations springing from them: it affords the surest knowledge; the science that treats of pure reason, which is in God, is the surest and noblest of sciences. Albert clearly defines the province and nature of theology.
“It is scientia secundum pietatem; it is not concerned with the knowable (scibile) simply as such, nor with the knowable universally; but only as it inclines us to Piety. Piety, as Augustine says, is the worship of God, perfected by faith, hope, charity, prayer, and sacrifices. Thus theology is the science of what pertains to salvation; for piety conduces to salvation.”[574]
The Summa theologiae treats of the encyclopaedic matter of the sacred science, in the order and arrangement with which we are familiar.[575] It is followed (Tome XIX.) by Albert’s Summa de creaturis, a presentation of God’s creation, omitting the special topics set forth in the De vegetabilibus and De animalibus. It treats of creation, of matter, of time and eternity, of the heavens and celestial bodies, of angels, their qualities and functions, and the hierarchies of them; of the state of the wicked angels, of the works of the six days, briefly; and then of man, soul and body, very fully; of man’s habitation and the order and perfection of the universe. Thus the Summa de creaturis treats of the world and man as God’s creation; but it is not directly concerned with man’s salvation, which is the distinguishing purpose of a Summa theologiae, however encyclopaedic such a work may be.
Two tomes remain of Albert’s opera, containing much that is very different from anything already considered. Tome XX. is devoted to the Virgin Mary, and is chiefly made up of two prodigious tracts: De laudibus beatae Mariae Virginis libri XII., and the Mariale, sive quaestiones super evangelium, Missus est angelus Gabriel. These works--it is disputed whether Albert was their author--are a glorification, indeed a deification, of Mary. They are prodigious; they are astounding. The worship of Mary is gathered up in them, of Mary the chief and best beloved religious creation of the Middle Ages; only not a creation, strictly speaking, for the Divine Virgin, equipped with attribute and quality, sprang from the fecund matrix of the early Church. The works before us represent a simpler piety than Albert’s Summa theologiae. They contain satisfying, consoling statements, not woven of dialectic. And the end is all that the Mary-loving soul could wish. “Christ protects the servants of His genetrix:--and so does Mary, as may be read in her miracles, protect us from our bodily enemies, and from the seducers of souls.”[576] The praises of Mary will seem marvellous indeed to anyone turning over the tituli of books and chapters. There is here a whole mythology, and a universal symbolism. Symbolically, Mary is everything imaginable; she has every virtue and a mass of power and privileges. She is the adorable and chief efficient Goddess mediating between the Trinity and the creature man.
Tome XXI., last tome of all, has a variety of writings, some of which may not be Albert’s. Among them is a work of sweet and simple piety, a work of turning to God as a little child; and one would be loath to take it away from this man of learning. De adhaerendo Deo is its title, which tells the story. Albert wished at last to write something presenting man’s ultimate perfection, so far as that might be realized in this life. So he writes this little tract of chamber-piety, as to how one should cling to Christ alone. Yet he cannot disencumber himself of his lifelong methods of composition. He might conceive and desire; but it was not for him to write a tract to move the heart. The best he can say is that the end of all our study and discipline is intendere et quiescere in Domino Deo intra te per purissimum intellectum, et devotissimum affectum sine phantasmatibus et implicationibus. The great scholar would come home at last, like a little child, if he only could.
XL. THOMAS AQUINAS
I. THOMAS’S CONCEPTION OF HUMAN BEATITUDE.
II. MAN’S CAPACITY TO KNOW GOD.
III. HOW GOD KNOWS.
IV. HOW THE ANGELS KNOW.
V. HOW MEN KNOW.
VI. KNOWLEDGE THROUGH FAITH PERFECTED IN LOVE.
I
With Albert it seemed most illuminating to outline the masses of his work of Aristotelian purveyorship and inchoate reconstruction of the Christian encyclopaedia in conformity with the new philosophy. Such a treatment will not avail for Thomas. His achievement, even measured by its bulk, was as great as Albert’s. But its size and encyclopaedic inclusiveness do not represent its integral excellences. The intellectual qualities of Thomas, evinced in his work, are of a higher order than those included in intelligent diligence, however exceptional. They must be disengaged from out of the vast product of their energies, in order that they may be brought together, and made to appear in the organic correlation which they held in the mind of the most potent genius of scholasticism.
We are pleased to find some clue to a man’s genius in the race and place from which he draws his origin. So for whatever may be its explanatory value as to Thomas, one may note that he came of Teutonic stocks, which for some generations had been domiciled in the form-giving Italian land. The mingled blood of princely Suabian and Norman lines flowed in him; the nobility of his father’s house, the Counts of Aquinum, was equalled by his mother’s lineage. Probably in 1225 he was born, in Southern Italy, not far from Monte Cassino. Thither, as a child, he was sent to school to the monks, and stayed with them through childhood’s formative period. His education did not create the mind which it may have had part in directing to sacred study. Near his tenth year, the extraordinary boy was returned to Naples, there to study the humanities and philosophy under selected masters. When eighteen, he launched himself upon the intellectual currents of the age by joining the Dominican Order. Stories have come down of the violent, but fruitless opposition of his family. In two years, with true instinct, Thomas had made his way from Naples to the feet of Albert in Cologne. Thenceforth the two were to be together, as their tasks permitted, and the loyal relationship between master and scholar was undisturbed by the latter’s transcendent genius. Plato had the greatest pupil, and Aristotle the greatest master, known to fame. That pupil’s work was a redirecting of philosophy. The work of pupil Thomas perfected finally the matter upon which his master laboured; and the master’s aged eyes beheld the finished structure that was partly his, when the pupil’s eyes had closed. Thomas, dying, left Albert to defend the system that was to be called “Thomist,” after him who constructed and finished it to its very turret points, rather than “Albertist,” after him who prepared the materials.
To return to the time when both still laboured. Thomas in 1245 accompanied his master to Paris, and three years later went back with him to Cologne. Thereafter their duties often separated them. We know that in 1252 Thomas was lecturing at Paris, and that he there received with Bonaventura the title of magister in 1257. After this he is found south of the Alps; it was in the year 1263 that Urban IV. at Rome encouraged him to undertake a critical commentary upon Aristotle, based on a closer rendering into Latin of the Greek. In 1268, at the height of his academic fame, he is once more at Paris; which he leaves for the last time in 1272, having been directed to establish a studium generale at Naples. Two years later he died, on his way to advise the labours of the Council assembled at Lyons.[577]
Thomas wrote commentaries upon the Aristotelian De interpretatione and Posterior Analytics; the Physics, the De coelo et mundo, the Meteorum, the Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, and certain other Aristotelian treatises. His work shows such a close understanding of Aristotle as the world had not known since the days of the ancient Peripatetics. Of course, he lectured on the Sentences, and the result remains in his Commentaries on them. He lectured, and the resulting Commentaries exist in many tomes, on the greater part of both the Old and New Testaments. It would little help our purpose to catalogue in detail his more constructive and original works, wherein he perfected a system of philosophy and sacred knowledge. Chief among them were the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa theologiae, the latter the most influential work of all western mediaeval scholasticism. Many of his more important shorter treatises are included in the Quaestiones disputatae, and the Quodlibetalia. They treat of many matters finally put together in the Summa theologiae. De malo in communi, de peccatis, etc.; De anima; De virtutibus in communi, etc.; De veritate; De ideis; De cognitione angelorum; De bono; De voluntate; De libero arbitrio; De passionibus animae; De gratia;--such are titles drawn from the Quaestiones. The Quodlibetalia were academic disputations held in the theological faculty, upon any imaginable thesis having theological bearing. Some of them still appear philosophical, while many seem bizarre to us; for example: Whether an angel can move from one extreme to the other without passing through the middle. One may remember that such questions had been put, and put again, from the time of the Church Fathers. This question answered by Thomas whether an angel may pass from one extreme to the other without traversing the middle is pertinent to the conception of angels as completely immaterial beings,--a conception upon the elaboration of which theologians expended much ingenious thought.
In the earlier Middle Ages, when men were busy putting together the ancient matter, the personalities of the writers may not clearly appear. It is different in the twelfth century, and very different in the thirteenth, when the figures of at least its greater men are thrown out plainly by their written works. Bonaventura is seen lucidly reasoning, but with his ardently envisioning piety ever reaching out beyond; the personality of Albert most Teutonically wrestles itself into salience through the many-tomed results of his very visible efforts; when we come to Roger Bacon, we shall find wormwood, and many higher qualities of mind, flowing in his sentences. And the consummate fashioning faculty, the devout and intellectual temperament of Thomas, are writ large in his treatises. His work has unity; it is a system; it corresponds to the scholastically creative personality, from the efficient concord of whose faculties it proceeded. The unity of Thomas’s personality lay in his conception of man’s summum bonum, which sprang from his Christian faith, but was constructed by reason from foundation to pinnacle; and it is evinced in the compulsion of an intellectual temperament that never let the pious reasoner’s energies or appetitions stray loitering or aberrant from that goal. Likewise the unity of his system consists in its purpose, which is to present that same summum bonum, credited by faith, empowered, if not empassioned, by piety, and constructed by reason. To fulfil this purpose in its utmost compass, reason works with the material of all pertinent knowledge; fashioning the same to complete logical consistency of expression.
Therefore, it is from his conception of this summum bonum as from a centre of illumination, that we may trace the characteristic qualities alike of Thomas and his work. His faith, his piety, and his intellectual nature are revealed in his thought of supreme felicity. Man’s chief good being the ground of the system, the thought and study which Thomas puts upon the created universe and upon God, regarded both as Creator and in the relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, conduce to make large and sure and ample this same chief good of man. To it likewise conduce the Incarnation, and the Sacraments springing therefrom; in accord with it, Thomas accepts or constructs his metaphysics, his psychology, his entire thought of human capacity and destiny, and sets forth how nearly man’s reason may bring him to this goal, and where there is need of divine grace. In this goal, moreover, shall be found the sanction of human knowledge, and the justification of the right enjoyment of human faculties; it determines what elements of mortal life may be gathered up and carried on, to form part of the soul’s eternal beatitude.
Thomas’s intellectual powers work together in order to set his thought of man’s summum bonum on its surest foundations, and make clear its scope: his faculty of arrangement, and serious and lucid presentation; his careful reasoning, which never trips, never overlooks, and never either hurries or is taken unprepared; his marvellous unforgetfulness of everything which might remotely bear on the subject; his intellectual poise, and his just weighing of every matter that should be taken into the scales of his determination. Observing these, we may realize how he seemed to his time a new intellectual manifestation of God’s illuminating grace. There was in him something unknown before; his argument, his exposition, was new in power, in interest, in lucidity. On the quality of newness the wretched old biographer rings his reiteration:
“For in his lectures he put out new topics (articulos), inventing a new and clear way of drawing conclusions and bringing new reasons into them, so that no one, who had heard him teach new doubts and allay them by new arguments, would have doubted that God had illumined with rays of new light one who became straightway of such sure judgment, that he did not hesitate to teach and write new opinions, which God had deigned newly to inspire.”[578]
His biographer’s view is justified. Thomas was the greatest of the schoolmen. His way of teaching, his translucent exposition, came to his hearers as a new inspiration. Only Bonaventura (likewise Italian-born) may be compared with him for clearness of exposition--of solution indeed; and Thomas is more judicial, more supremely intellectual; his way of treatment was a stronger incitement and satisfaction to at least the minds of his auditors. Albert, with his mass of but half-conquered material, could not fail to show, whether he would or not, the doubt-breeding difficulties of the new philosophy, which was yet to be worked into Christian theology. Thomas exposed every difficulty and revealed its depths; but then he solved and adjusted everything with an argumentation from whose careful inclusiveness no questions strayed unshepherded. Placed with Thomas, Albert shows as the Titan whose strength assembles the materials, while Thomas is the god who erects the edifice. The material that Thomas works with, and many of his thoughts and arguments, are to be found in Albert; and the pupil knew his indebtedness to the great master, who survived him to defend his doctrines. But what is not in Albert, is Thomas, Thomas himself, with his disentangled reasoning, his clarity, his organic exposition, his final construction of the mediaeval Christian scheme.[579]
In the third book of his Summa philosophica contra Gentiles, and in the beginning of Pars prima secundae of his Summa theologiae, Thomas expounds man’s final end, ultimus finis, which is his supreme good or perfect beatitude. The exposition in the former work, dating from the earlier years of the author’s academic activities, seems the simpler at first reading; but the other includes more surely Thomas’s last reasoning, placed in the setting of argument and relationship which he gave it in his greatest work. We shall follow the latter, borrowing, however, from the former when its phrases seem to present the matter more aptly to our non-scholastic minds. The general position of the topic is the same in both Summae; and Thomas gives the reason in the Prologus to Pars prima secundae of the Summa theologiae. His way of doing this is significant:
“Man is declared to be made in the image of God in this sense (as Damascenus[580] says) that by ‘image’ is meant intellectual, free to choose, and self-potent to act. Therefore, after what has been said of the Exemplar God, and of those things which proceed from the divine power according to its will, there remains for us to consider His image, to wit, man, in so far as he is himself the source (principium) of his acts, possessing free will and power over them.”
Thereupon Thomas continues, opening his first Quaestio:[581]
“First one must consider the final end (ultimus finis) of human life, and then those things through which man may attain this end, or deviate from it. For one must accept from an end the rationale of those things which are ordained to that end.”
Assuming the final end of human life to be beatitude, Thomas considers wherein man as a rational creature may properly have one final end, on account of which he wills all that he wills. Quaestio ii. shows that man’s beatitude cannot consist in riches, honours, fame, power, pleasures of the body, or in any created good, not even in the soul. Man gains his beatitude through the soul; but in itself the soul is not man’s final end. The next Quaestio is devoted to the gist of the matter: what beatitude is, and what is needed for it. Thomas first shows in what sense beatitude is something increate (increatum). He has already pointed out that end (finis) has a twofold meaning: the thing itself which we desire to obtain, and the fruition of it.
“In the first sense, the final end of man is an increate good, to wit God, who alone with His infinite goodness can perfectly fulfil the wish (voluntas) of man. In the second sense the final end of man is something created existing in himself; which is nought else than attainment or fruition (adeptio vel fruitio) of the final end. The final end is called beatitude. If then man’s beatitude is viewed as cause or object, it is something increate; but if it is considered in its beatific essence (quantum ad ipsam essentiam beatitudinis) it is something created.”
Thomas next shows:
“... that inasmuch as man’s beatitude is something created existing in himself, it is necessary to regard it as action (operatio). For beatitude is man’s ultimate perfection. But everything is perfect in so far as it is actually (actu, i.e. in realized actuality): for potentiality without actuality is imperfect. Therefore beatitude should consist in man’s ultimate actuality. But manifestly action (operatio) is the final actuality of the actor (operantis); as the Philosopher shows, demonstrating that everything exists for its action (propter suam operationem). Hence it follows of necessity that man’s beatitude is action.”
The next point to consider is whether beatitude is the action of man’s senses or his intellect. Drawing distinctions, Thomas points out that
“the action of sense cannot pertain to beatitude essentially; because man’s beatitude essentially consists in uniting himself to the increate good; to which he cannot be joined through the action of the senses. Yet sense-action may pertain to beatitude as an antecedent or consequence: as an antecedent, for the imperfect beatitude attainable in this life, where the action of the senses is a prerequisite to the action of the mind; as a consequence, in that perfect beatitude which is looked for in heaven; because, after the resurrection, as Augustine says, from the very beatitude of the soul, there may be a certain flowing back into the body and its senses, perfecting them in their actions. But not even then will the action by which the human mind is joined to God depend on sense.”
Beatitude then is the action of man’s intellectual part; and Thomas next inquires, whether it is an action of the intelligence or will (intellectus aut voluntatis). With this inquiry we touch the pivot of Thomas’s attitude, wherein he departs from Augustine, in apparent reliance on the word of John: “This is eternal life that they should know thee, the one true God.” Life eternal is man’s final end; and therefore man’s beatitude consists in knowledge of God, which is an act of mind. Thomas argues this at some length. He refers to the distinction between what is essential to the existence of beatitude, and what is joined to it per accidens, like enjoyment (delectatio).
“I say then, that beatitude in its essence cannot consist in an act of will. For it has appeared that beatitude is the obtaining (consecutio) of the final end. But obtaining does not consist in any act of will; for will attaches to the absent when one desires it, as well as to the present in which one rests delighted. It is evident that the desire for an end is not an obtaining of it, but a movement toward it. Enjoyment attaches to will from the presence of the end; but not conversely does anything become present because the will shall delight in it. Therefore there must be something besides an act of will, through which the end may become present to the will. This is plain respecting the ends of sense (fines sensibiles). For if to obtain money were an act of will, the miser would have obtained it from the beginning. And so it comes to pass with respect to an end conceived by the mind; we obtain it when it becomes present to us through an act of the intellect; and then the delighted will rests in the end obtained. Thus, therefore, the essence of beatitude consists in an act of mind. But the delight which follows beatitude pertains to will, even in the sense in which Augustine says: ‘beatitudo est gaudium de veritate,’ because indeed joy is the consummation of beatitude.”
The supremely intellectual attitude of the Angelic Doctor, shows at once, and as it were universally, in his conviction of the primacy of the true over the good, and of knowledge over will. Sometimes he argues these points directly; and again, his temperamental attitude appears in the course of argument upon other points. For example, Quaestio xvi. of Pars prima has for its subject Veritas. And in the first article, which discusses whether truth is in the thing (in re) or only in the mind, he argues thus:
“As good signifies that upon which desire (appetitus) is bent, so true signifies that at which understanding aims. There is this difference between desire and understanding or any kind of cognition: cognition exists in so far as what is known (cognitum) is in the knower; but desire is as the desirous inclines toward the desired. Thus the end (terminus == finis) of desire, which is the good, is in the desirable thing; but the end of knowing, which is the true, is in mind itself.”
In Articulus 4, Thomas comes to his point: that the true secundum rationem (i.e. according to its formal nature) is prior to the good.
“Although both the good and the true have been taken as convertible with being, yet they differ in their conception (ratione); and that the true is prior to the good appears from two considerations: First, the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to the good; for the true regards being itself, simply and directly; while the ratio of the good follows being as in some way perfect, and therefore desirable. Secondly, cognition naturally precedes desire. Therefore, since the true regards cognition, and the good regards desire, the true is prior to the good secundum rationem.”
This argument, whatever validity it may have, is significant of its author’s predominantly intellectual temperament, and consistent with his conception of man’s supreme beatitude as the intellectual vision of God. Obviously, moreover, the setting of the true above the good is another way of stating the primacy of knowledge over will, which is also maintained: “Will and understanding (intellectus) mutually include each other: for the understanding knows the will; and the will wills that the understanding should know.”[582] Evidently all rational beings have will as well as understanding; God wills, the Angels will, man wills. Indeed, how could knowledge progress but for the will to know? Yet of the two, considered in themselves, understanding is higher than will--
“for its object is the ratio, the very essential nature, of the desired good, while the object of will is the desired good whose ratio is in the understanding.... Yet will may be the higher, if it is set upon something higher than the understanding.... When the thing in which is the good is nobler than the soul itself, in which is the rational cognizance (ratio intellecta), the will, through relation to that thing, is higher than the understanding. But when the thing in which is the good, is lower than the soul, then in relation to that thing, the understanding is higher than the will. Wherefore the love of God is better than the cognizance (cognitio); but the cognizance of corporeal things is better than the love. Yet taken absolutely, the understanding is higher than the will.”[583]
These positions of the Angelic Doctor were sharply opposed in his lifetime and afterwards. Without entering the lists, let us rather follow him on his evidently Aristotelian path, which quickly brings him to his next conclusion: “That beatitude consists in the action of the speculative rather than the practical intellect, as is evident from three arguments:
“First, if man’s beatitude is action, it ought to be the man’s best (optima) action. But man’s best action is that of his best faculty in respect to the best object. The best faculty is intelligence, whose best object is the divine good, which is not an object of the practical, but of the speculative intelligence. Wherefore, in such action, to wit, in contemplation of things divine, beatitude chiefly consists. And because every one seems to be that which is best in him, as is said in the Ethics, so such action is most proper to man and most enjoyable.
“Secondly, the same conclusion appears from this, that contemplation above all is sought on account of itself. The perfection (actus, full realization) of the practical intelligence is not sought on account of itself, but for the sake of action: the actions themselves are directed toward some end. Hence it is evident that the final end cannot consist in the vita activa, which belongs to the practical intelligence.
“Thirdly, it is plain from this, that in the vita contemplativa man has part with those above him, to wit, God and the Angels, unto whom he is made like through beatitude; but in those matters which belong to the vita activa, other animals, however imperfectly, have somehow part with him.
“And so the final and perfect beatitude which is looked for in the life to come, in principle consists altogether in contemplation. But the imperfect beatitude which may be had here, consists first and in principle in contemplation, and secondly in the true operation of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions, as is said in the tenth book of the Ethics.”
It being thus shown that perfect beatitude lies in the action of the speculative intelligence, Thomas next shows that it cannot consist in consideration of the speculative sciences--
“for the consideration of a science does not reach beyond the potency (virtus) of the principles of that science, seeing that the whole science is contained potentially (virtualiter) in its principles. But the principles of speculative sciences are received through the senses, as the Philosopher makes clear. Therefore the entire consideration of the speculative sciences cannot be extended beyond that to which a cognition of sense-objects (sensibilium) is able to lead. Man’s final beatitude, which is his perfection, cannot consist in the cognition of sense-objects. For no thing is perfected by something inferior, except as there may be in the inferior some participation in a superior. Evidently the nature (forma) of a stone, or any other sensible thing, is inferior to man, save in so far as something higher than the human intelligence has part in it, like the light of reason.... But since there is in sensible forms some participation in the similitude of spiritual substances, the consideration of the speculative sciences is, in a certain way, participation in true and perfect beatitude.”
Neither can perfect beatitude consist in knowledge of the higher, entirely immaterial, or, as Thomas calls them, separate (separatae) substances, to wit, the Angels. Because it cannot consist in that which is the perfection of intelligence only from participation. The object of the intelligence is the true. Whatever has truth only through participation in something else cannot make the contemplating intelligence perfect with a final perfection. But the angels have their being (esse) as they have their truth, from the participation of the divine in them. Whence it remains that only the contemplation of God, Who alone is truth through His essential being, can make perfectly blessed. “But,” adds Thomas, “nothing precludes the expectation of some imperfect beatitude from contemplating the angels, and even a higher beatitude than lies in the consideration of the speculative sciences.”
So the conclusion is that “the final and perfect beatitude can be only in the vision of the divine essence. The proof of this lies in the consideration of two matters: first, that man is not perfectly blessed (beatus) so long as there remains anything for him to desire or seek; secondly, that the perfection of every capacity (potentiae), is adjudged according to the nature (ratio) of its object.” And a patent line of argument leads to the unavoidable conclusion: “For perfect beatitude it is necessary that the intellect should attain to the very essence of the first cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as its object.”
There are few novel thoughts in Thomas’s conception of man’s supreme beatitude. But he has taken cognizance of all pertinent considerations, and put the whole matter together with stable coherency. He continues, discussing in the succeeding Quaestiones a number of important matters incidental to his central determination of the nature of man’s supreme good. Thus he shows how joy (delectatio) is a necessary accompaniment of beatitude, which, however, in principle consists in the action of the mind, which is visio, rather than in the resulting delectatio. The latter consists in a quieting or satisfying of the will, through the goodness of that in which it is satisfied. When the will is satisfied in any action, that results from the goodness of the action; and the good lies in the action itself rather than in the quieting of the will.[584] Here Thomas’s reasoning points to an active ideal, an ideal of energizing, rather than repose. But he concludes that for beatitude “there must be a concurrence of visio, which is the perfect cognizance of the intelligible end; the getting it, which implies its presence; and the joy or fruition, which implies the quieting of that which loves in that which is loved.”[585] Thomas also shows how rectitude of will is needed, and discusses whether a body is essential; his conclusion being that a body is not required for the perfect beatitude of the life to come; yet he gives the counter considerations, showing the conduciveness of the perfected body to the soul’s beatitude even then. Next he follows Aristotle in pointing out how material goods may be necessary for the attainment of the imperfect beatitude possible on earth, while they are quite impertinent to the perfect beatitude of seeing God; and likewise he shows how the society of friends is needed here, but not essential hereafter, and yet a concomitant to our supreme felicity.
The course of argument of the Liber iii. of the Contra Gentiles is not dissimilar. A number of preliminary chapters show how all things tend to an end; that the end of all is God; and that to know God is the end of every intellectual being. Next, that human felicitas does not consist in all those matters, in which the Summa theologiae also shows that beatitude does not lie; but that it consists in contemplation of God. He puts his argument simply:
“It remains that the ultimate felicity of man lies in contemplation of truth. For this is the sole action (operatio) of man which is proper to man alone. This alone is directed to nothing else, as an end; since the contemplation of truth is sought for its own sake. Through this action, likewise, man is joined to higher substances (beings) through likeness of action, and through knowing them in some way. For this action, moreover, man is most sufficient by himself, needing but little external aid. To this also all other human acts seem to be directed as to an end. For to the perfection of contemplation, soundness of body is needed, to which all the arts of living are directed. Also quiet from the disturbance of passions is required, to which one comes through the moral virtues, and prudence; and quiet also from tumults, to which end all rules of civil life are ordained; and so, if rightly conceived, all human business seems to serve the contemplation of truth. Nor is it possible for the final felicity of man to consist in the contemplation which is confined to an intelligence of beginnings (principiorum), which is most imperfect and general (universalis), containing a knowledge of things potentially: it is the beginning, not the end of human study. Nor can that felicity lie in the contemplation of the sciences, which pertain to the lowest things, since felicity ought to lie in the action of the intelligence in relationship to the noblest intelligible verities. It remains that man’s final felicity consists in the contemplation of wisdom pursuant to a consideration of things divine. From which it also is evident by the way of induction, what was before proved by arguments, that the final felicity of man consists only in contemplation of God.”[586]
Having reached this central conclusion of the Contra Gentiles, as well as of the Summa theologiae, Thomas proceeds to trim it further, so as clearly to differentiate that knowledge of God in which lies the ultimate felicity of intelligent beings from other ways of knowing God, which do not fully represent this supreme and final bliss. He first excludes the sort of common and confused knowledge of God, which almost all men draw from observing the natural order of things; then he shuts out the knowledge of God derived from logical demonstration, through which, indeed, one rather approaches a proper knowledge of Him;[587] next, he will not admit that supreme felicity lies in the cognition of God through faith; since that is still imperfect. This felicity consists in seeing[588] the divine essence, an impossibility in this life, when we see as in a glass. The supreme felicity is attainable only after death. Hereupon Thomas continues with the very crucial discussion of the capacity of the rational creature to know God. But instead of following him further in the Contra Gentiles, we will rather turn to his final presentation of this question in his Summa theologiae.
II
The great Summa, having opened with an introductory consideration of the character of sacra doctrina,[589] at once fixes its attention upon the existence and attributes of God. These having been reviewed, Thomas begins Quaestio xii. by saying, that “as we have now considered what God is in His own nature (secundum se ipsum) it remains to consider what He is in our cognition, that is, how He is known by creatures.” The first question is whether any created intelligence whatsoever may be able to see God per essentiam. Having stated the counter arguments, and relying on John’s “we shall see Him as He is,” Thomas proceeds with his solution thus:
“Since everything may be knowable so far as it exists in actuality,[590] God, who is pure actuality, without any mingling of potentiality, is in Himself, most knowable. But what is most knowable in itself, is not knowable to every intelligence because of the exceeding greatness of that which is to be known (propter excessum intelligibilis supra intellectum); as the sun, which is most visible, may not be seen by a bat, because of the excess of light. Mindful of this, some have asserted that no created intelligence could behold the essential nature (essentiam) of God.
“But this is a solecism. For since man’s final beatitude consists in his highest action, which is the action of the intelligence, if the created intelligence is never to be able to see the essential nature of God, either it will never obtain beatitude, or its beatitude will consist in something besides God: which is repugnant to the faith. For the ultimate perfection of a rational creature lies in that which is the source or principle (principium) of its being. Likewise the argument is against reason. For there is in man a natural desire to know the cause, when he observes the effect; and from this, wonder rises in men. If then the intelligence of the rational creature is incapable of attaining to the first cause of things, an inane desire must be ascribed to nature.
“Wherefore it is simply to be conceded that the blessed may see the essential nature of God.”
So this general conclusion, or assumption, is based on faith, and also leaps, as from the head of Jove, the creature of unconquerable human need, which never will admit the inaneness of its yearnings. And now, assuming the possibility of seeing God in his true nature, Thomas proves that He cannot be seen thus through the similitude of any created thing: in order to behold God’s essence some divine likeness must be imparted from the seeing power (ex parte visivae potentiae), to wit, the light of divine glory (which is consummated grace) strengthening the intelligence that it may see God. And he next shows that it is impossible to see God by the sense of sight, or any other sense or power of man’s sensible nature. For God is incorporeal. Therefore He cannot be seen through the imagination, but only through the intelligence. Nor can any created intelligence through its natural faculties see the divine essence. “Cognition takes place in so far as the known is in the knower. But the known is in the knower according to the mode and capacity (modus) of the knower. Whence any knower’s knowledge is according to the measure of his nature. If then the being of the thing to be known exceeds the measure of the knowing nature, knowledge of it will be beyond the nature of that knower.” In order to see God in His essential nature, the created intellect needs light created by God: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen. And it may be given to one created intellect to see more perfectly than another.
Do those who see God per essentiam, comprehend Him? No.
“To comprehend God is impossible for any created intelligence. To have any true thought of God is a great beatitude.... Since the created light of glory received by any created intelligence, cannot be infinite, it is impossible that any created intelligence should know God infinitely, and comprehend Him.”
Again he reasons; They who shall see God in His essence will see what they see through the divine essence united to their intelligence; they will see whatever they see at once, and not successively; for the contents of this intellectual, God-granted vision are not apprehended by means of the respective species or general images, but in and through the one divine essence. But in this life, man may not see God in His essential nature:
“The mode of cognition conforms to the nature of the knower. But our soul, so long as we live in this life, has its existence (esse) in corporeal matter. Wherefore, by nature, it knows only things that have material form, or may through such be known. Evidently the divine essence cannot be known through the natures of material things. Any cognition of God through any created likeness whatsoever, is not a vision of His essence.... Our natural cognition draws its origin from sense; it may extend itself so far as it can be conducted (manuduci) by things of sense (sensibilia). But from them our intelligence may not attain to seeing the divine essence.... Yet since sensible creatures are effects, dependant on a cause, we know from them that God exists, and that as first cause He exceeds all that He has caused. From which we may learn the difference between Himself and His creatures, to wit, that He is not any of those things which He has caused....
“Through grace a more perfect knowledge of God is had than through natural reason. For cognition through natural reason needs both images (phantasmata) received from things of sense, and the natural light of intelligence, through whose virtue we abstract intelligible conceptions from them. In both respects human cognition is aided through the revelation of grace. For the natural light of the intellect is strengthened through the infusion of light graciously given (luminis gratuiti); while the images in the man’s imagination are divinely formed so that they are expressive of things divine, rather than of what naturally is received through the senses, as appears from the visions of the prophets.”[591]
Natural reason stops with the unity of God, and can give no knowledge of the Trinity of divine Persons. Says Thomas:[592]
“It has been shown that through natural reason man can know God only from His creatures. Creatures lead to knowledge of God as effects lead to some knowledge of a cause. Only that may be known of God by natural reason which necessarily belongs to Him as the source of all existences. The creative virtue of God is common to the whole Trinity; it pertains to the unity of essence, not to the distinction of persons. Through natural reason, therefore, those things concerning God may be known which pertain to the unity of essence, but not those which pertain to the distinction of persons.... Who strives to prove the Trinity of Persons by natural reason, doubly disparages faith: first as regards the dignity of faith itself, which concerns invisible things surpassing human reason; secondly as derogating from its efficiency in drawing men to it. For when any one in order to prove the faith adduces reasons which are not cogent, he falls under the derision of the faithless; for they think that we use such arguments, and that we believe because of them. One shall not attempt to prove things of faith save by authorities, and in discussion with those who receive the authorities. With others it is enough to argue that what the faith announces is not impossible.”
Here Thomas seems rationally to recognize the limits upon reason in discovering the divine nature. In the regions of faith, reason’s feet lack the material footing upon which to mount. So Thomas would assert. But will he stand to his assertion? The shadowy line between reason and faith wavers with him. At least so it seems to us, for whom ontological reasoning has lost reality, and who find proofs of God not so much easier than proofs of the Trinity. But Thomas and the other scholastics dwelt in the region of the metaphysically ideal. To them it was not only real, but the most real; and it was so natural to step across the line of faith, trailing clouds of reason. The feet of such as Thomas are as firmly planted on the one side of the line as on the other. And now, as it might also seem, Thomas, having thus formally reserved the realm of faith, quickly steps across the line, to undertake a tremendous metaphysical exposition of the Trinity, of the distinctions between its Persons, of their properties, respective functions, and relationships; and all this is carried on largely in the categories of Aristotelian philosophy. Yet is he not still consistent with himself? For he surely did not conceive the elements of his discussion to lie in the lucubrations or discoveries of the natural reason; but in the data of revelation, and their explanation by saintly doctors. And was not he also a vessel of their inspiration, a son of faith, who might humbly hope for the light of grace, to transfigure and glorify his natural powers in the service of revealed truth?
Thomas’s ideal is intellectual, and yet ends in faith. His intellectual interests, by faith emboldened, strengthened, and pointed heavenward, make on toward the realisation of that intellectual beatitude which is to be consummate hereafter, when the saved soul’s grace-illumined eye shall re-awaken where it may see face to face.
III
Knowledge, then, supplemented in this life by faith, is the primary element of blessedness. We now turn our attention to the forms of knowledge and modes of knowing appropriate to the three rational substances: God, angel, man. The first is the absolute incorporeal being, the primal mover, in whom there is no potentiality, but actuality simple and perfect. The second is the created immaterial or “separated” substance, which is all that it is through participation in the uncreate being of its Creator. The third is the composite creature man, made of both soul and body, his capacities conditioned upon the necessities of his dual nature, his sense-perception and imagination being as necessary to his knowledge, as his rational understanding; for whom alone it is true that sense-apprehension may lead to the intelligible verities of God: “etiam sensibilia intellecta manuducunt ad intelligibilia divinorum.”[593]
The earlier Quaestiones of Pars prima, on the nature of God, lead on to a consideration of God’s knowledge and ways of knowing. Those Quaestiones expounded the qualities of God quite as far as comported with Thomas’s realization of the limitation of the human capacity to know God in this life. Quaestio iii. upon the Simplicitas of God, shows that God is not body (corpus); that in Him there is no compositeness of form and material; that throughout His nature, He is one and the same, and therefore that He is His Deitas, His vita, and whatever else may be predicated of Him. Next it is shown (Qu. iv.) that God is perfect; that in Him are the perfectiones of all things, since whatever there may be of perfection in an effect, should be found in the effective cause; and as God is self-existent being, He must contain the whole perfection of being in Himself (totam perfectionem essendi in se). Next, that God is the good (bonum) and the summum bonum; He is infinite; He is in all things (Qu. viii. Art. 1) not as a part of their essence, but as accidens, and as the doer is in his deeds; and not only in their beginning, but so long as they exist; He acts upon everything immediately, and nothing is distant from Him; God is everywhere: as the soul is altogether in every part of the body, so God entire is in all things and in each. God is in all things created by Him as the working cause; but He is in the rational creature, through grace; as the object of action is in the actor, as the known is in the knower, and the desired in the wishful. God is immutable (Qu. ix.); for as final actuality (actus purus), with no admixture of potentiality, He cannot change; nor can He be moved; since His infinitude comprehends the plenitude of all perfection, there is nothing that He can acquire, and no whither for Him to extend. God is eternal (Qu. x.); for him there is no beginning, nor any succession of time; but an interminable now, an all at once (tota simul), which is the essence of eternity, as distinguished from the successiveness of even infinite time. And God is One (Qu. xi.). “One does not add anything to being, save negation of division. For One signifies nothing else than undivided being (ens indivisum). And from this it follows that One is convertible with being.” That God is One, is proved by His simplicitas; by the infiniteness of His perfection; and by the oneness of the world.
“After a consideration,” now says Thomas, “of those matters which pertain to the divine substance, we may consider those which pertain to its action (operatio). And because certain kinds of action remain in the doer, while others pass out into external effect, we first treat of knowledge and will (for knowing is in the knower and willing in him who wills); and then of God’s power, which is regarded as the source of the divine action passing out into external effect. Then, since knowing is a kind of living, after considering the divine knowledge, the divine life will be considered. And because knowledge is of the true, there will be need to consider truth and falsity. Again since every cognition is in the knower, the rationes (types, essential natures) of things as they are in God the Knower (Deo cognoscente) are called ideas (ideae); and a consideration of these will be joined to the consideration of knowledge.”[594]
Thus clearly laying out his topic, Thomas begins his discussion of God’s knowledge (scientia Dei); of the modes in which God knows and the knowledge which He has. In God is the most perfect knowledge. God knows Himself through Himself; in Him knowledge and Knower (intellectum and intellectus) are the same.[595] He perfectly comprehends Himself; for He knows Himself so far as He is knowable; and He is absolutely knowable being utter reality (actus purus). Likewise He knows things other than Himself. For He knows Himself perfectly, which implies a knowledge of those things to which His power (virtus) extends. Moreover, He knows all things in their special natures and distinctions from each other: for the perfection, or perfected actuality, of everything is contained in Him; and therefore God in Himself is able to know all things perfectly, and the special nature of everything exists through some manner of participation in the divine perfection. God knows all things in one, to wit, Himself; and not successively, or by means of discursive reasoning. “God’s knowledge is the cause of things. It stands to all created beings as the knowledge of the artificer to the things he makes. God causes things through His knowledge, since His being is His knowing (cum suum esse sit suum intelligere).” His knowledge causes things when it has the will joined with it, and, in so far as it is the cause of things, is called scientia approbationis. God knows things which are not actually (actu). Whatever has been or will be, He knows by the knowledge of sight (scientia visionis, which by implication is equivalent to scientia approbationis). For God’s knowing, which is His being, is measured by eternity; and eternity includes all time, as present, and without succession; so the present vision (intuitus) of God embraces all time and all things existing at any time, as if present. As for whatever is in the power of God or creature, but which never has been or will be, God knows it not as in vision, but simply knows it.
God also knows evil.
“Whoever knows anything perfectly should know whatever might happen to it. There are some good things to which it may happen to be corrupted through evils: wherefore God would not know the good perfectly, unless He also knew the evil. Everything is knowable so far as it is; but the being (esse) of evil is the privation of good: hence inasmuch as God knows good, He knows evil, as darkness is known through light.”
Thomas now takes up a point curious perhaps to us, but of importance to him and Aristotle: does God know individuals (singularia), the particular as opposed to the universal? This point might seem disposed of in the argument by which Thomas maintained that God knew things in their special and distinct natures. But he now proves that God knows singularia by an argument which bears on his contention that man does not know singularia through the intelligence, but perceives them through sense; and as we shall see, that the angels have no direct knowledge of individuals, being immaterial substances.
“God knows individuals (cognoscit singularia). For all perfections found in creatures pre-exist in higher mode in God. To know (cognoscere) individuals pertains to our perfection. Whence it follows that God must know them. The Philosopher (Aristotle) holds it to be illogical that anything should be known to us, and not to God.... But the perfections which are divided in inferior beings, exist simply and as one in God. Hence, although through one faculty we know universals and what is immaterial, and through another, individuals and what is material; yet God simply, through His intelligence, knows both.... One must hold that since God is the cause of things through His knowledge, the knowledge of God extends itself as far as His causality extends. Wherefore, since God’s active virtue extends itself not only to forms, from which is received the ratio of the universal, but also to matter, it is necessary that God’s knowledge should extend itself to individuals, which are such through matter.”
And replying to a counter-argument Thomas continues:
“Our intelligence abstracts the intelligible species from the individuating principles. Therefore the intelligible species of our intelligence cannot be the likeness of the individual principles; and, for this reason, our intelligence does not know individuals. But the intelligible species of the divine intelligence, which is the essence of God, is not immaterial through abstraction, but through itself; and exists as the principle of all principles entering the composition of the thing, whether principles of species or of the individual. Therefore through His essence God knows both universals and individuals.”[596]
With these arguments still echoing, Thomas shows that God can know infinite things; also future contingencies; also whatever may be stated (enuntiabilia). His knowledge, which is His substance, does not change. It is speculative knowledge, in so far as relating to His own unchangeable nature, and to whatever He can do, but does not; it is practical knowledge so far as it relates to anything which He does.
Thomas concludes his direct discussion of God’s knowledge, by an application of the Platonic theory of ideas, in which he mainly follows Augustine.
“It is necessary to place ideas in the divine mind. Idea is the Greek for the Latin forma. Thus through ideas are understood the forms of things existing beyond the things themselves. By which we mean the prototype (exemplar) of that of which it is called the form; or the principle of its cognition, in so far as the forms of things knowable are said to be in the knower.”
There must be many ideas or (as Augustine phrases it) stable rationes of things. There is a ratio in the divine mind corresponding to whatever God does or knows.
“Ideas were set by Plato as the principles both of the cognition and the generation of things, and in both senses they are to be placed in the divine mind. So far as idea is the principle of the making of a thing, it may be called the prototype (exemplar), and pertains to practical knowledge (practicam cognitionem); but as the principle of cognition (principium cognoscitivum), it is properly called ratio, and may also pertain to speculative knowledge. In the signification of exemplar, it relates to everything created at any time by God: but when it means principium cognoscitivum, it relates to all things which are known by God, although never coming into existence.”[597]
Such are the divine modes of knowledge. Thomas proceeds to discuss other aspects of the divine nature, the life and power, will and love, which may be ascribed to God. He then passes on to a discussion of the Persons of the Trinity. This completed, he turns to the world of created substances; into which we will follow him so far as to observe the forms of knowledge and ways of knowing proper to angels and mankind. We shall hereafter have to speak of the divine and angelic love, and of man’s love of God; but here, as our field is intellectual, we will simply recall to mind that Thomas applies a like intellectual conception of beatitude to both God and His rational creatures:
“Beatitude, as has been said, signifies the perfect good of the intellectual nature; as everything desires its perfection, the intellectual [substance] desires to be beata. That which is most perfect in every intellectual nature, is the intellectual operation wherein, in a measure, it grasps all things. Wherefore the beatitude of any created intellectual nature consists in knowing (in intelligendo).”[598]
IV
Thomas regards the creation as a processio, a going out of all creatures from God. Every being (ens) that in any manner (quocumque modo) is, is from God.
“God is the prima causa exemplaris of all things.... For the production of anything, there is needed a prototype (exemplar), in order that the effect may follow a determined form.... The determination of forms must be sought in the divine wisdom. Hence one ought to say that in the divine wisdom are the rationes of all things: these we have called ideas, to wit, prototypal forms existing in the divine mind. Although such may be multiplied in respect to things, yet really they are not other than the divine essence, according as its similitude can be participated in by divers things in divers ways. Thus God Himself is the first exemplar of all. There may also be said to be in created things certain exemplaria of other things, when they are made in the likeness of such others, or according to the same species or after the analogy of some resemblance.”[599]
God not only is the efficient and exemplary cause, but also the final cause of all things (Divina bonitas est finis omnium rerum). “The emanation (emanatio) of all being from the universal cause, which is God, we call creation.”[600] God alone may be said to create. The function pertains not to any Person, but to the whole Trinity in common. And there is found some image of the Trinity in rational creatures in whom is intelligence and will; and in all creatures may be found some vestiges of the creator.
Thomas, after a while, takes up the distinction between spiritual and corporeal creatures, and considers first the purely spiritual, called Angels. We enter with him upon the contemplation of these conceptions, which scholasticism did not indeed create, but elaborated with marvellous logic, and refined to a consistent intellectual beauty. None had larger share in perfecting the logical conception of the angelic nature, as immaterial and essentially intellectual, than our Angelic Doctor. A volume might well be devoted to tracing the growth of these beings of the mind, from their not unmilitant career in the Old Testament and the Jewish Apocrypha, their brief but classically beautiful mention in the Gospels, and their storm-red action in the Apocalypse; then through their treatment by the Fathers, to their hierarchic ordering by the great Pseudo-Areopagite; and so on and on, through the earlier Scholastics, the Lombard’s Sentences, and Hugo of St. Victor’s appreciative presentation; up to the gathering of all the angelic matter by Albertus Magnus, its further encyclopaedizing by Vincent of Beauvais, and finally its perfect intellectual disembodiment by Thomas;--while all the time the people’s mythopoeic love went on endowing these guardian spirits with heart and soul, and fashioning responsive stories of their doings. For men loved and feared them, and looked to them as God’s peculiar messengers. Thus they flash past us in the Divina Commedia; and their forms become lovely in Christian art.
As we enter upon the contemplation of the angelic nature, let us not as of course regard angels simply as imaginative conceptions of Scripture and of the patristic and mediaeval mind. Thomas will show his reasons for their necessary existence, which may not convince us. Yet we may believe in angels, inasmuch as any real conception of the world’s governance by God requires the fulfilling of His thoughts through media that bring them down to move and live and realize themselves with each of us. Who, in striving to express, can do more than symbolize, the ways of God? What symbols truer than angels have been devised?
“It is necessary,” opens Thomas,[601] “to affirm (ponere) that there are incorporeal creatures. For in created things God chiefly intends the good, which consists in assimilation to Him. Perfect assimilation of the effect to the cause is seen when the effect resembles the cause in that through which the cause produces the effect. God produces the creature through intelligence and will. Consequently the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures. To know cannot be the act (actus) of the body or of any corporeal faculty (virtus); because all body is limited to here and now. Therefore it is necessary, in order that the universe may be perfect, that there should be incorporeal creatures.”[602]
Thomas then argues that the intellectual substance is entirely immaterial. “Angelic substances are above our understanding. So our understanding cannot attain to apprehending them as they are in themselves; but only in its own fashion as it apprehends composite things.” These immaterial substances exist in exceeding great number, and each is a species, because there cannot be several immaterial beings of one species, any more than there could be separate whitenesses or many humanities. Angels in their nature are imperishable. For nothing is corrupted save as its form is separated from its matter. But these immaterial substances are not composed of matter and form, being themselves subsisting forms and indestructible. Brass may have and lose a circular shape; but the circular shape cannot be separated from the circle, which it is.
Thomas next shows (Pars prima, Qu. li.) that angels have no bodies by nature joined to them. Body is not of the ratio of intellectual substances. These (when perfect and not like the human soul) have no need to acquire knowledge through sensation. But though angels are intellectual substances, separate (separatae) from bodies, they sometimes assume bodies. In these they can perform those actions of life which have something in common with other kinds of acts; as speech, a living act, has something in common with inanimate sounds. Thus far only can physical acts be performed by angels, and not when such acts essentially belong to living bodies. Angels may appear as living men, but are not; neither are they sentient through the organs of their assumed bodies; they do not eat and digest food; they move only per accidens, incidentally to the inanimate motion of their assumed bodies; they do not beget, nor do they really speak; “but it is something like speech, when these bodies make sounds in the air like human voices.”
Dropping the sole remark, that scholasticism has no sense of humour, we pass on to Thomas’s careful consideration of the angelic relations to space or locality (Qu. lii. and liii.). “Equivocally only may it be said that an angel is in a place (in loco): through application of the angelic virtue to some corporeal spot, the angel may be said in some sense to be there.” But, as angels are finite, when one is said, in this sense, to be in a place, he is not elsewhere too (like God). Yet the place where the angel is need not be an indivisible point, but may be larger or smaller, as the angel wills to apply his virtue to a larger or smaller body. Two angels may not be in the same place at the same time, “because it is impossible that there should be two complete immediate causes of one and the same thing.” Angels are said, likewise equivocally, to move, in a sense analogous to that in which they are said to be in a place. Such equivocal motion may be continuous or not. If not continuous, evidently the angel may pass from one place to another without traversing the intervening spaces. The angelic movement must take place in time; there must be a before and after to it, and yet not necessarily with any period intervening.
Now as to angelic knowledge: De cognitione Angelorum. Knowing is no easy thing for man; and we shall see that it is not a simple matter to know, without the senses to provide the data and help build up knowledge in the mind. The function of sense, or its absence, conditions much besides the mere acquisition of the elements from which men form their thoughts. Thomas’s exposition of angelic knowledge and modes of knowing is a logical and consistent presentation of a supersensual psychology and theory of knowledge.
Entering upon his subject, Thomas shows (Qu. liv.) that knowing (intelligere) is not the substantia or the esse of an angel. Knowing is actio, which is the actuality of faculty, as being (esse) is the actuality of substance. God alone is actus purus (absolute realized actuality), free from potentiality. His substantia is His being and His action (suum esse and suum agere). “But neither in an angel, nor in any creature, is virtus or the potentia operativa the same as the creature’s essentia,” or its esse or substantia. The difficult scholastic-Aristotelian categories of intellectus agens and possibilis do not apply to angelic cognition (for which the reader and the angels may be thankful). The angels, being immaterial intelligences, have no share in those faculties of the human soul, like sight or hearing, which are exercised through bodily organs. They possess only intelligence and will. “It accords with the order of the universe that the supreme intellectual creature should be intelligent altogether, and not intelligent in part, like our souls.”
Quaestio lv., concerning the medium cognitionis angelicae, is a scholastic discussion scarcely to be rendered in modern language. The angelic intelligence is capable of knowing all things; and therefore an angel does not know through the medium of his essentia or substantia, which are limited. God alone knows all things through His essentia. The angelic intellect is made perfect for knowing by means of certain forms or ideas (species). These are not received from things, but are part of the angelic nature (connaturales). The angelic intelligence (potentia intellectiva) is completed through general concepts, of the same nature with itself (species intelligibiles connaturales). These come to angels from God at the same time with their being. Such concepts or ideas cover everything that they can know by nature (naturaliter). And Thomas proves that the higher angels know through fewer and more universal concepts than the lower.
“In God an entire plenitude of intellectual cognition is held in one, to wit, in the divine essence through which God knows all things. Intelligent creatures possess such cognition in inferior mode and less simply. What God knows through one, inferior intelligences know through many; and this many becomes more as the inferiority increases. Hence the higher angel may know the sum total of the intelligible (universitatem intelligibilium) through fewer ideas or concepts (species); which, however, are more universal since each concept extends to more [things]. We find illustration of this among our fellows. Some are incapable of grasping intelligible truth, unless it be set forth through particular examples. This comes from the weakness of their intelligence. But others, of stronger mind, can seize many things from a few statements” (Qu. lv. Art. 3).
Through this argument, and throughout the rest of his exposition of the knowledge of God, angel, and man, we perceive that, with Thomas, knowledge is superior and more delightful, as it is abstract in character, and universal in applicability. By knowing the abstract and the universal we become like to God and the angels; knowledge of and through the particular is but a necessity of our half-material nature.
Thomas turns now to consider the knowledge had by angels of immaterial beings, i.e. themselves and God (Qu. lvi.): “An angel, being immaterial, is a subsisting form, and therefore intelligible actually (actu, i.e. not potentially). Wherefore, through its form, which is its substance, it knows itself.” Then as to knowledge of each other: God from the beginning impressed upon the angelic mind the likenesses of things which He created. For in Him, from the beginning, were the rationes of all things, both spiritual and corporeal. Through the impression of these rationes upon the angelic mind, an angel knows other angels as well as corporeal creatures. Their natures also yield them some knowledge of God. The angelic nature is a mirror holding the divine similitude. Yet without the illumination of grace the angelic nature knows not God in His essence, because no created likeness may represent that.
As for material things (Qu. lvii.), angels have knowledge of them through the intelligible species or concepts impressed by God on the angelic mind. But do they know particulars--singularia? To deny it, says Thomas, would detract from the faith which accords to angels the ministration of affairs. This matter may be thought thus:
“Things flow forth from God both as they subsist in their own natures and as they are in the angelic cognition. Evidently what flowed from God in things pertained not only to their universal nature, but to their principles of individuation.... And as He causes, so He also knows.... Likewise the angel, through the concepts (species) planted in him by God, knows things not only according to their universal nature, but also according to their singularity, in so far as they are manifold representations of the one and simple essence.”
One observes that the whole scholastic discussion of universals lies back of arguments like these.
The main principles of angelic knowledge have now been set forth; and Thomas pauses to point out to what extent the angels know the future, the secret thoughts of our hearts, and the mysteries of grace. He has still to consider the mode and measure of the angelic knowledge from other points of view. Whatever the angels may know through their implanted natures, they know perfectly (actu); but it may be otherwise as to what is divinely revealed to them. What they know, they know without the need of argument. And the discussion closes with remarks on Augustine’s phrase and conception of the matutina and vespertina knowledge of angels: the former being the knowledge of things as they are in the Word; the latter being the knowledge of things as they are in their own natures.[603]
V
That the abstract and the universal is the noble and delectable, we learn from this exposition of angelic knowledge. We may learn the same from Thomas’s presentation of the modes and contents of human understanding. The Summa theologiae follows the Scriptural order of presentation;[604] which is doubtless the reason why Thomas, instead of passing from immaterial creatures to the partly immaterial creature man, considers first the creation of physical things--the Scriptural work of the six days. After this he takes up the last act of the Creation--man. In the Summa he considers man so far as his composite nature comes within the scope of theology. Accordingly the principal topic is the human soul (anima); and the body is regarded only in relation to the soul, its qualities and its fate. Thomas will follow Dionysius (Pseudo-Areopagite) in considering first the nature (essentia) of the soul, then its faculties (virtus sive potentiae), and thirdly, its mode of action (operatio).
Under the first head he argues (Pars prima, Qu. lxxv.) that the soul, which is the primum principium of life, is not body, but the body’s consummation (actus) and forma. Further, inasmuch as the soul is the principium of mental action, it must be an incorporeal principle existing by itself. It cannot properly be said to be the man; for man is not soul alone, but a composite of soul and body. But the soul, being immaterial and intellectual, is not a composite of form and matter. It is not subject to corruption. Concerning its union with the body (Qu. lxxvi.), “it is necessary to say that the mind (intellectus), which is the principle of intellectual action, is the form (forma) of the human body.” One and the same intellectual principle does not pertain to all human bodies: there is no common human soul, but as many souls as there are men.[605] Yet no man has a plurality of souls. “If indeed the anima intellectiva were not united to the body as form, but only as motor (as the Platonists affirm), it would be necessary to find in man another substantial form, through which the body should be set in its being. But if, as we have shown, the soul is united to the body as substantial form, there cannot be another substantial form beside it” (Qu. lxxvi. Art. 4). The human soul is fitly joined to its body; for it holds the lowest grade among intellectual substances, having no knowledge of truth implanted in it, as the angels have; it has to gather knowledge per viam sensus. “But nature never omits what is necessary. Hence the anima intellectiva must have not only the faculty of knowing, but the faculty of feeling (sentiendi). Sense-action can take place only through a corporeal instrument. Therefore the anima intellectiva ought to be united to such a body, which should be to it a convenient organ of sense” (Art. 5). Moreover, “since the soul is united to the body as form, it is altogether in any and every part of the body” (Art. 8).
It is a cardinal point (Qu. lxxvii.) with Thomas that the soul’s essentia is not its potentia: the soul is not its faculties. That is true only of God. In Him there is no diversity. There is some diversity of faculty in an angel; and more in man, a creature on the confines of the corporeal and spiritual creation, in whom concur the powers of both. There is order and priority among the powers of the soul: the potentiae intellectivae are higher than the potentiae sensitivae, and control them; while the latter are above the potentiae nutritivae. Yet the order of their generation is the reverse. The highest of the sensitive faculties is sight. The anima is the subject in which are the powers of knowing and willing (potentiae intellectivae); but the subject in which are the powers of sensation is the combination of the soul and body. All the powers of the soul, whether the subject be soul alone or soul and body, flow from the essence of the soul, as from a source (principium).
Thomas follows (Qu. lxxviii.) Aristotle in dividing the powers of the soul into vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, motor, and intellectual. In taking up the last, he points out (Qu. lxxix.) that intelligence (intellectus) is a power of the soul, and not the soul itself. He then follows the Philosopher in showing how intelligence (intelligere) is to be regarded as a passive power, and he presents the difficult Aristotelian device of the intellectus agens, and argues that memory and reason are not to be regarded as powers distinct from the intelligence (intellectus).
How does the soul, while united to the body (the anima conjuncta), (1) know corporeal things which are beneath it? (2) how does it know itself and what is in itself? and (3) how does it know immaterial substances which are above it? The exposition of these problems is introduced by (Qu. lxxxiv.) a historical discussion of the primi philosophi who thought there was nothing but body in the world. Then came Plato, seeking “to save some certain cognition of truth” by means of his theory of Ideas. But Plato seems to have erred in thinking that the form of the known must be in the knower as it is in the known. This is not necessary. In sense-perception the form of the thing is not in sense as it is in the thing. “And likewise the intelligence receives the species (Ideas) of material and mobile bodies immaterially and immutably, after its own mode; for the received is in the recipient after the mode of the recipient. Hence it is to be held that the soul through the intelligence knows bodies by immaterial, universal, and necessary cognition.”
Thomas sets this matter forth in a manner very illuminating as to his general position regarding knowledge:
“It follows that material things which are known must exist in the knower, not materially, but immaterially. And the reason of this is that the act of cognition extends itself to those things which are outside of the knower. For we know things outside of us. But through matter, the form of the thing is limited to what is single (aliquid unum). Hence it is plain that the ratio (proper nature) of cognition is the opposite of the ratio of materiality. And therefore things, like plants, which receive forms only materially, are in no way cognoscitivae, as is said in the second book of De anima. The more immaterially anything possesses the form of the thing known, the more perfectly it knows. Wherefore the intelligence, which abstracts the species (Idea) not only from matter, but also from individualizing material conditions, knows more perfectly than sense, which receives the form of the thing known without matter indeed, but with material conditions. Among the senses themselves, sight is the most cognoscitivus, because least material. And among intelligences, that is the more perfect which is the more immaterial” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 2).
Then Thomas again differs from Plato, and holds with Aristotle, that the intelligence through which the soul knows has not its ideas written upon it by nature, but from the first is capable of receiving them all (sed est in principio in potentia ad hujusmodi species omnes). Hereupon, and with further arguments, Thomas shows “that the species intelligibiles, by which our soul knows, do not arise from separate forms” or ideas.
To the converse question, whether intelligent cognition comes from things of sense, Thomas answers, following Aristotle: “One cannot say that sense perception is the whole cause of intellectual cognition, but rather in a certain way is the matter of the cause (materia causae).” On the other hand,
“it is impossible that the mind, in the state of the present life, wherein it is joined to the passive body (passibili corpori), should know anything actually (actu) except by turning itself to images (phantasmata). And this appears from two arguments. In the first place, since the mind itself is a power (vis) using no bodily organ, its action would not be interrupted by an injury to any bodily organ, if for its action there was not needed the action of some faculty using a bodily organ. Sense and imagination use a bodily organ. Hence as to what the mind knows actually (actu), there is needed the action of the imagination and other faculties, both in receiving new knowledge and in using knowledge already acquired. For we see that when the action of the imaginative faculty is interrupted by injury to an organ, as with the delirious, the man is prevented from actually knowing those things of which he has knowledge. Secondly (as any one may observe in himself), whenever he attempts to know (intelligere) anything, he forms images by way of example, in which he may contemplate what he is trying to know. And whenever we wish to make any one else understand, we suggest examples, from which he may make for himself images to know by.
“The reason of this is that the knowing faculty is suited to the knowable (potentia cognoscitiva proportionatur cognoscibili). The appropriate object of the intelligence of an angel, who is separate from all body, is intelligible immaterial substance (substantia intelligibilis a corpore separata); through this kind of intelligible he cognizes also material things. But the appropriate object of the human mind, which is joined to a body, is the essence or nature (quidditas sive natura) existing in material body; and through the natures of visible things of this sort it ascends to some cognition of invisible things. It belongs to the idea (ratio) of this nature that it should exist in some individual having corporeal matter, as it is of the concept (ratio) of the nature of stone or horse that it should be in this stone or this horse. Hence the nature of a stone or any material thing cannot be known completely and truly, unless it is known as existing in some particular [instance]. We apprehend the particular through sense and imagination; and so it is necessary, in order that the mind should know its appropriate object, that it should turn itself to images, in order to behold the universal nature existing in the particular. If, indeed, the appropriate object of our intelligence were the separate form, or if the form of sensible things did not subsist in the particular [instances], as the Platonists say, our mind in knowing would have no need always to turn itself to images” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 7).
It is next queried whether the judgment of the mind is impeded through binding (per ligamentum) the senses. In view of the preceding argument the answer is, that since “all that we know in our present state, becomes known to us through comparison with sensible things, it is impossible that there should be in us perfect mental judgment when the senses are tied, through which we take cognizance of sensible things” (Qu. lxxxiv. Art. 8).
This entire argument shows in what firm Aristotelian manner, scholasticism, in the person of Thomas, set itself upon a basis of sense perception; through which it still pressed to a knowledge of the supersensible and abstract. In this argument we also see, as always with Thomas, that knowledge is perfect and blessed, the more immaterial and abstract are its modes. All of which will continue to impress us as we follow Thomas, briefly, through his exposition of the modus and ordo of knowing (intelligendi) (Qu. lxxxv.).
The first question is whether our mind knows corporeal things by abstracting the species from the images--the type from the particular. There are three grades of the cognizing faculty (virtutis cognoscitivae). The lowest is sensation, which is the act of a bodily organ. Its appropriate object is form as existing in matter. And since matter is the principle of individuation (i.e. the particularizing principle from which results the particular or individual), sense perception is confined to the particular. The highest grade of the cognitient faculty is that which is independent of bodily organs and separate from matter, as the angelic intelligence; and its object is form subsisting without matter. For though angels know material things, they view them only in the immaterial, to wit, themselves or God. Between the two is the human mind, which
“is the forma of the body. So it naturally knows form existing individually in corporeal matter, and yet not as form is in such matter. But to know form, which is in concrete matter, and yet know it not as it is in such matter, is to abstract it from this particular matter which the images represent. It follows that our intelligence knows material things by abstracting them from images; and through reflecting on these material abstractions we reach some cognition of the immaterial, just as conversely the angels know the material through the immaterial” (Qu. lxxxv. Art. 1).
It is next proved that the soul, through the intelligible species or forms abstracted from particulars, knows things which are outside the soul. In a way, intellection arises from sense perception; therefore the sense perception of the particular precedes the intellectual knowledge of universals. But, on the other hand, the intelligence, in coming to perfect cognition, proceeds from the undistinguished to the distinguished, from the more to the less general, and so knows animal before it knows homo, and homo before it knows Socrates. The next conclusion reads very neatly in scholastic Latin, but is difficult to paraphrase: it is that the intelligence may know many things at once (simul) per modum unius, but not per modum multorum; that is to say, the mind may grasp at once whatever it may grasp under one species, but cannot know a number of things at once which fall under different species.
Next as to what our mind knows in material things (Qu. lxxxvi.). It does not know the particular or singular (singularia) in them directly; for the principle of singularity in material things is the particular matter. But our mind knows by abstracting from such the species, that is, the universal. This it knows directly. But it knows singularia indirectly, inasmuch as, when it has abstracted the intelligible species, it must still, in order to know completely (actu), turn itself to the images in which it knows the species.
How does the anima intellectiva know itself, and those things which are in it (Qu. lxxxvii.)? Everything is knowable in so far as it is actually (in actu) and not merely potentially. So the human intelligence knows itself not through its essence, which is still but potential, but in so far as it has actually realized itself; knows itself, that is, through its actuality. The permanent qualities (habitus) of the soul exist in a condition between potentiality and actuality. The mind knows them when they are actually present or operative.
Does the human intelligence know its own act--know that it knows? In God, knowing and being are one. Although this is not true of the angelic intelligence, nevertheless with an angel the prime object of knowledge is his own essence. With one and the same act an angel knows that it knows, and knows its essence. But the primal object of the human intelligence is neither its knowledge (knowing, intelligere) nor its essence, but something extrinsic, to wit, the nature of the material thing. Hence that is the first object known by the human intelligence; and next is known its own actus, by which that first object is known. Likewise the human intelligence knows the acts of will. An act of will is nothing but a certain inclination toward some form of the mind (formam intellectam) as natural appetite is an inclination toward a natural form. The act of will is in the knowing mind and so is known by it.
So far as to how the soul knows material things, which are below it, and its own nature and qualities. It is another question whether the soul knows those things which are above it, to wit, the immaterial substances. Can the soul in the state of the present life know the angels in themselves? With lengthy argument, differing from Plato and adhering to Aristotle, Thomas proves the negative: that in the present life we cannot know substantias separatas immateriales secundum seipsas. Nor can we come to a knowledge of the angelic substances through knowing material things.
“For immaterial substances are altogether of another nature (ratio) from the whatnesses (quidditates) of material things; and however much our intelligence abstracts from matter the essence (quidditas) of the material thing, it will never arrive at anything like an immaterial substance. And so, through material substances, we cannot know immaterial substances perfectly” (Qu. lxxxviii. Art. 2).
Much less can we thus know God.
The discussion hitherto has been confined to the intellectual capacities of souls united to their bodies. As to the knowledge which the “separated” soul may have, other considerations arise akin to those touching the knowledge possessed by the separated substances called angels. Is the separated soul able to know? Thomas has shown that so long as the soul is joined to the body it cannot know anything except by turning itself to images. If this were a mere accident of the soul, incidental to its existence in the body, then with that impediment removed, it would return to its own nature and know simply. But if, as we suppose, this turning to images is of the nature of the soul, the difficulty grows. Yet the soul has one mode of existence when united to the body, and another when separated, but with its nature remaining. Souls united to bodies may know through resort to images of bodies, which are in the bodily organs; but when separated, they may know by turning to that which is intelligible simply, as other separate substances do. Yet still this raises doubt; for why did not God appoint a nobler way for the soul to know than that which is natural to it when joined to the body? The perfection of the universe required that there should be diverse grades among intellectual substances. The soul is the lowest of them. Its feeble intelligence was not fit to receive perfect knowledge through universal conceptions, save when assisted by concrete examples. Without these, souls would have had but a confused knowledge. Hence, for their more perfect knowledge of things, they are naturally united to bodies, and so receive a knowledge from things of sense proper to their condition; just as rude men can be led to know only through examples. So it was for a higher end that the soul was united to the body, and knows through resort to images; yet, when separated, it will be capable of another way of knowing.[606]
Separated from the body, the soul can know itself through itself. It can know other separated souls perfectly, but the angels, who are higher natures, only imperfectly, at least through the knowledge which the separated soul has from its nature; but that may be increased through grace and glory. The separated soul will know natural objects through the species (ideas) received from the inflowing divine light; yet less perfectly than the angels. Likewise, less universally than angels, will separated souls, by like means of species received from the divine light, know particular things, and only such as they previously knew, or may know through some affection or aptitude or the divine decree. For the habit and aptitude of knowledge, and the knowledge already acquired, will remain in the separated soul, so far as relates to the knowledge which is in the intellect, and no longer in the lower perceptive faculties. Neither will distance from the object affect the soul’s knowledge, since it will know through the influx of forms (species) from the divine light.
“Yet through the cognition belonging to their nature, separated souls do not know what is doing here below. For such souls know the particular and concrete (singularia) only as from the traces (vestigia) of previous cognition or affection, or by divine appointment. And the souls of the dead by divine decree, and in accordance with their mode of existence, are separated from the intercourse of the living and joined to the society of spiritual substances. Therefore they are ignorant of those things which are done among us.”
Nevertheless, it would seem, according to the opinions of Augustine and Gregory, “that the souls of the saints who see God know all that is done here. Yet, perfectly joined to the divine righteousness, they are not grieved, nor do they take part in the affairs of the living, save as the divine disposition requires.”
“Still the souls of the dead are able to care for the affairs of the living, although ignorant of their condition; just as we have care for the dead, though ignorant of their state, by invoking the suffrages of the Church. And the souls of the dead may be informed of the affairs of the living from souls lately departed hence, or through angels or demons, or by the revealing spirit of God. But if the dead appear to the living, it is by God’s special dispensation, and to be reckoned as a divine miracle” (Qu. lxxxix. Art. 8).
VI
We have thus traced Thomas’s view of the faculty of knowledge, the primary constituent of beatitude in God, and in angels and men. There are other elements which not only supplement the faculty of knowledge, but even flow as of necessity from a full and true conception of that faculty and its perfect energizing. These needful, yet supplementary, factors are the faculties of will and love and natural appetite; though the last does not exist in God or angel or in “separated soul.” The composite creature man shares it with brutes: it is of enormous importance, since it may affect his spiritual progress in this life, and so determine his state after death. Let us observe these qualities in God, in the immaterial substances called angels, and in man.
In God there is volition as well as intelligence; for voluntas intellectum consequitur; and as God’s being (esse) is His knowing (intelligere), so likewise His being is His will (velle).[607] Essentially alike in God and man and angel are the constituents of spiritual beatitude and existence--knowing, willing, loving. From Creator down to man, knowledge differs in mode and in degree, yet is essentially the same. The like is true of will. As to love, because passion is of the body, love and every mode of turning from or to an object is passionless in God and the angels. Yet man through love, as well as through willing and through knowing, may prove his kinship with angels and with God.
God is love, says John’s Epistle. “It is necessary to place love in God,” says Thomas. “For the first movement of will and any appetitive faculty (appetitivae virtutis) is love (amor).” It is objected that love is a passion; and the passionless God cannot love. Answers Thomas, “Love and joy and delight are passions in so far as they signify acts (or actualities, actus) of the appetitus sensitivi; but they are not passions when they signify the actus of the appetitus intellectivi; and thus are they placed in God” (Pars prima, Qu. xx. Art. 1).
God loves all existences. Now all existences, in so far as they are, are good. For being itself (esse) is in a sense the good of any thing, and likewise its perfection. It has been shown that God’s will is the cause of all things; and thus it is proper that a thing should have being, or good, in so far as it is willed by God. God wills some good to every existent thing. And since to love is nothing else than to will good to something, it is evident that God loves all things that are, yet not in the way we love. For since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by an object, our love by which we will good to anything is not the cause of its goodness; but its goodness calls forth the love by which we wish to preserve and add to the good it has; and for this we work. But God’s love imparts and creates goodness in things.
The divine love embraces all things in one and the same act of will; but inasmuch as His love creates goodness, there could be no greater goodness in one thing than in another unless He willed greater good to one than to the other: in this sense He may be said to love one creature more than another; and in this way He loves the better things more. Besides love, the order of the universe proves God’s justitia; an attribute which is to be ascribed to Him, as Dionysius says, in that He grants to all things what is appropriate, according to the dignity of the existence of each, and preserves the nature of each in its own order and virtue. Likewise misericordia is to be ascribed to God, not as if He were affected by pitying sadness, but in that He remedies the misery or defects of others.
Thus far as to will and love in God. Next, as to these qualities in Angels. Have angels will? (Pars prima, Qu. lix.). Thomas argues: All things proceed from the divine will, and all per appetitum incline toward good. In plants this is called natural appetite. Next above them come those creatures who perceive the particular good as of the senses; their inclination toward it is appetitus sensitivus. Still above them are such as know the ratio of the good universally, through their intelligence. Such are the angels; and in them inclination toward the good is will. Moreover, since they know the nature of the good, they are able to form a judgment as to it; and so they have free will: ubicumque est intellectus, est liberum arbitrium. And as their knowledge is above that of men, so in them free will exists more excellently.
The angels have only the appetitus intellectivus which is will; they are not irascible or concupiscent, since these belong to the appetitus sensitivus. Only metaphorically can furor and evil concupiscence be ascribed to demons, as anger is to God--propter similitudinem effectus. Consequently amor and gaudium do not exist as passions in angels. But in so far as these qualities signify solely an act of will, they are intellectual. In this sense, to love is to will good to anything, and to rejoice (gaudere) is to rest the will in a good obtained. Similarly, caritas and spes, in so far as they are virtues, lie not in appetite, but in will; and thus exist in angels. With man the virtues of temperance and fortitude may relate to things of sense; but not so with angels, who have no passions to be bridled by these virtues. Temperance is ascribed to them when they temper their will according to the will divine, and fortitude, when they firmly execute it (Qu. lix. Art. 4).
In a subsequent portion of Pars prima (Qu. cx.) Thomas has occasion to point out that, as in human affairs, the more particular power is governed by the more universal, so among the angels.
“The higher angels who preside over the lower have more universal knowledge. It is likewise clear that the virtus of a body is more particular than the virtus of a spiritual substance; for every corporeal form is form particularized (individuata) through matter, and limited to the here and now. But immaterial forms are unconditioned and intelligible. And as the lower angels, who have forms less universal, are ruled by the higher angels, so all corporeal things are ruled by angels. And this is maintained not only by the holy Doctors, but by all philosophers who have recognized incorporeal substances.”
Next Thomas considers the action of angels upon men, and shows that men may have their minds illumined by the lower orders of angels, who present to men intelligibilem veritatem sub similitudinibus sensibilium. God sends the angels to minister to corporeal creatures; in which mission their acts proceed from God as a cause (principio). They are His instruments. They are sent as custodians of men, to guide and move them to good. “To every man an angel is appointed for his guard: of which the reason is, that the guardianship (custodia) of the angels is an execution of divine providence in regard to men.” Every man, while as viator he walks life’s via non tuta, has his guardian angel. And the archangels have care of multitudes of men (Qu. cxiii.).
Thus Thomas’s, or rather, say the Christian doctrine as to angels, becomes a corollary necessary to Christian theism, and true at least symbolically. But--and this is the last point as to these ministering spirits--do the angels who love without passion, grieve and suffer when those over whom they minister are lost?
“Angels grieve neither over the sins nor the punishment of men. For, as says Augustine, sadness and grief arise only from what contravenes the will. But nothing happens in the world that is contrary to the will of the angels and other blessed ones. For their will is entirely fixed (totaliter inhaeret) in the order of the divine righteousness (Justitiae); and nothing takes place in the world, save what takes place and is permitted by the same. And so, in brief, nothing takes place in the world contrary to the will of the blessed” (Qu. cxiii. Art. 7).
We come to man. He has will, and free will or choice, as the angels have. Will is part of the intellectual nature: it is as the intellectivus appetitus. But man differs from the angels in possessing appetites which belong to his sense-nature and do not perceive the good in its common aspects; because sense does not apprehend the universal, but only the particular.[608] Sometimes Thomas speaks of amor as including every form of desire, intellectual or pertaining to the world of sense. “The first movement of will and of any appetitive faculty (virtus) is amor.”[609] So in this most general signification amor “is something belonging to appetite; for the object of both is the good.”
“The first effect of the desirable (appetibilis) upon the appetitus, is called amor; thence follows desiderium, or the movement toward the desirable; and at last the quies which is gaudium. Since then amor consists in an effect upon the appetitus, it is evidently passio; most properly speaking when it relates to the yearning element (concupiscibile), but less properly when it relates to will” (Pars prima, Qu. xxvi. Art. 2).
Further distinguishing definitions are now in order:
“Four names are applied to what pertains to the same: amor, dilectio, caritas, et amicitia. Of the three first, amor has the broadest meaning. For all dilectio or caritas is amor; but not conversely. Dilectio adds to amor a precedent choice (electionem praecedentem) as its name indicates. Hence dilectio is not in the concupiscent nature, but in the will, and therefore in the rational nature. Caritas adds to amor a certain perfectionem amoris, inasmuch as what is loved, is esteemed as very precious, as the name shows” (Ibid. Art. 3).
Moreover, amor may be divided into amor amicitiae, whereby we wish good to the amicus, and amor concupiscentiae, whereby properly we desire a good to ourselves.
The Good is the object and, in that sense, the cause, of amor (Qu. xxvii.).
“But love requires a cognition of the good which is loved. Therefore the Philosopher says, that bodily sight is the cause of amoris sensitivi. Likewise contemplation of spiritual beauty or goodness is the cause of amoris spiritualis. Thus, therefore, cognition is the cause of love, inasmuch as the good cannot be loved unless known.”
From this broad conception of amor the argument rises to amor in its purest phases, which correspond to the highest modes of knowledge man is capable of. They are considered in their nature, in their causes, and effects. It is evident whither we are travelling in this matter.
“Love (amor) may be perfect or imperfect. Perfect love is that by which some one is loved for himself, as a man loves a friend. Imperfect love is that by which some one loves a thing, not for itself, but in order that that good may come to him, as a man loves the thing he desires. The first love pertains to caritas which cleaves to God (inhaeret Deo) for Himself (secundum seipsum).”[610]
Caritas is one of the theological virtues, and as such Thomas treats it. To it corresponds the “gift” of sapientia, likewise a virtue bestowed by God, but more particularly regarded as the “gift” of the Holy Spirit. Caritas is set not in the appetitus sensitivus, but in the will. Yet as it exceeds our natural faculties, “it is not in us by nature, nor acquired through our natural powers; but through the infusion of the Holy Spirit, who is the amor Patris et Filii.” He infuses caritas according to His will; and it will increase as we draw near to God; nor is there any bound to its augmentation. May caritas be perfect in this life? In one sense it never can be perfect, because no creature ever can love God according to His infinite lovableness.
“But on the part of him who wills to love (ex parte diligentis), caritas is perfect when he loves as much as he is able. Which may be taken in three ways. In one way, as the whole heart of man is always borne toward God; and this is the perfection of the love of home (caritas patriae), unattainable here, where because of this life’s infirmities it is impossible always actually to think upon God, and be drawn toward Him by voluntary love (dilectione). In another way, as a man may strive to keep himself free for God and things divine, laying other matters aside, save as life’s need requires: and that is the perfection of caritas, possible in this life, yet not for all who have caritas. And the third way, when any one habitually sets his heart on God, so that he thinks and wills nothing that is contrary to the divine love: this perfection is common to all who have caritas.”[611]
The caritas with which we love God, extends to our neighbours, and even to our enemies, for God’s sake; also to ourselves, including our bodies; it embraces sinners, but not their sinfulness. It embraces the angels. There is order and grade in caritas, according to its relationship to God, the source of beatitude and voluntary love (dilectionis). God is to be loved ex caritate above all; for He is loved as the cause of beatitude, while our neighbour is loved as a participant with us in the beatitude from God. We should love God more than ourselves; because beatitude is in God as in the common and fontal source of all things that participate in beatitude.
“But, after God, man should love himself, in so far as he is spirit (secundum naturam spiritualem), more than any one else. This is plain from the very reason of loving. God is loved as the principle of good, on which the dilectio caritatis is based. Man loves himself ex caritate for the reason that he is a participator in that good. He loves his neighbour because of his association (societas) in that good.... Participation in the divine good is a stronger reason for loving, than association in this participation. Therefore, man ex caritate should love himself more than his neighbour; and the mark (signum) of this is, that man should not commit any sin barring his participation in this beatitude, in order to free his neighbour from sin.... But one should love his neighbour’s salvation more than his own body.”[612]
We may love some of our neighbours more than others; for those bound to us by natural ties and proximity can be loved more and in more actual ways. The order and grades of love will endure when our natures are perfected in glory.
Love (caritas) is the supreme theological virtue. It comes to us in this life through grace; it can be perfected only when grace is consummated in glory. Likewise the highest knowledge possible in this life comes through grace, to be perfected in glory. All is from God, and that which, of all the rest, seems most freely given is the divine influence disposing the intelligence and will toward good, and illuminating these best God-given faculties. This, as par excellence, through the exceeding bounty of its free bestowal, is called gratia (grace). It is a certain habitual disposition of the soul; it is not the same as virtus, but a divinely implanted disposition, in which the virtues must be rooted; it is the imparted similitude of the divine nature, and perfects the nature of the soul, so far as that has part in likeness to the divine: it is the medial state between nature and that further consummation of the grace-illumined nature, which is glory; and so it is the beginning, the inchoatio, of our glorified beatitude. Clearly, grace is no part of our inborn nature, and does not belong to our natural faculties. It is a divinely bestowed increment, directing our natural faculties toward God and uplifting them to higher capacities of knowing and loving.
To follow Thomas’s exposition of grace a little more closely:[613] man, through his natural powers, may know truth, but not the highest; and without grace, our fallen nature cannot will all the good belonging to it (connaturale), nor love God above all else, nor merit eternal life. “Grace is something supernatural in man coming from God.” It
“is not the same as virtue; and its subject (i.e. its possessor, that in which it is set) cannot be a faculty (potentia) of the soul; for the soul’s faculties, as perfected, are conceived to be virtues. Grace, which is prior to virtue, is set, not in the faculties, but in the essence of the soul. Thus, as through his faculty of knowing (potentiam intellectivam), man shares the divine knowledge by the virtue of faith, and through the faculty of will shares the divine love by the virtue of caritas, so by means of a certain similitude he shares in the divine nature through some regeneration or recreation” (Pars I. ii., Qu. cx. Art. 4).
Grace may be conceived either as “divine aid, moving us to willing and doing right, or as a formative and abiding (habituale) gift, divinely placed in us” (Qu. cxi. Art. 2). “The gift of grace exceeds the power of any created nature; and is nothing else than a sharing (participatio) of the divine nature” (Qu. cxii. Art. 1).
So it is clear that without grace man cannot rise to the highest knowledge and the purest love of which he is capable in this life; far less can he reach that final and perfected blessedness which is expected hereafter. For this he must possess the virtue of Faith, which comes not without grace.
“The perfection of the rational creature consists not only in that which may be his, in accordance with his nature; but also in that which may come to him from some supernatural sharing in the divine goodness. The final beatitude of man consists in some supernatural vision of God. Man can attain to that only through some mode of learning from God the Teacher, and he must believe God as a disciple believes his master” (Pars II. ii., Qu. ii. Art. 3).
Within the province of the Christian Faith “it is necessary that man should accept per modum fidei not only what is above reason, but also what may be known through reason.” (Art. 4). He must believe explicitly the prima credibilia, that is to say, the Articles of Faith; it is enough if he believes other credibilia implicitly, by holding his mind prepared to accept whatever Scripture teaches (Art. 5).
“To believe is an act of the intellect (actus intellectus) as moved by will to assenting. It proceeds from the will and from the intellect.... Yet it is the immediate act of the intellect, and therefore faith is in the intellect as in a subject [i.e. possessor]” (Qu. iv. Art. 2).
And Thomas, having shown the function of will in any act of faith, passes on by the same path to connect fides with caritas:
“Voluntary acts take their species from the end which is the object of volition. That from which anything receives its species, occupies the place held by form in material things. Hence, as it were, the form of any voluntary act is the end to which it is directed (ordinatur). Manifestly, an act of faith is directed to the object willed (which is the good) as to an end. But good which is the end of faith, to wit, the divine good, is the proper object of caritas. And so caritas is called the form of faith, in so far as through caritas the act of faith is perfected and given form” (Qu. iv. Art. 3).
Thomas makes his conclusion more precise:
“As faith is the consummation of the intellect, that which pertains to the intellect, pertains, per se, to faith. What pertains to will, does not, per se, pertain to faith. The increment making the difference between the faith which has form and faith which lacks it (fides formata, fides informis), consists in that which pertains to will, to wit, to caritas, and not in what pertains to intellect” (Qu. iv. Art. 4).
Only the fides which is formed and completed in caritas is a virtue (Art. 5). And Thomas says concisely (Qu. vi. Art. 1) what in many ways has been made evident before: For Faith, it is necessary that the credibilia should be propounded, and then that there should be assent to them; but since man, in assenting to those things which are of the Faith, is lifted above his nature, his assent must proceed from a supernatural principle working within him, which is God moving him through grace.
It is not hard to see why two gifts (dona) of the Holy Spirit should belong to the virtue Faith, to wit, understanding and knowledge, intellectus et scientia. Thomas gives the reasons in an argument germane to his Aristotelian theory of cognition:
“The object of the knowing faculty is that which is.... Many kinds of things lie hidden within, to which the intellectus of man should penetrate. Beneath the accidens the substantial nature of the thing lies hidden; beneath words lie their meanings; beneath similes and figures, lies the figured truth--veritas figurata (for things intelligible are, as it were, within things sensible); and in causes lie hidden the effects, and conversely. Now, since human cognition begins with sense, as from without, it is clear that the stronger the light of the intellect, the further it will penetrate to the inmost depths. But the light of our natural intellect is of finite virtue, and may reach only to what is limited. Therefore man needs the supernatural light, in order to penetrate to the knowledge which through the natural light he is not able to know; and that supernatural light given to man is called the donum intellectus” (Qu. viii. Art. 1).
This gift follows grace. Grace is more perfect than nature. It does not abrogate, but perfects the natural faculties. Nor does it fail in those matters in which man’s natural power is competent (Qu. ix. Art. 1). So, besides the donum intellectus, to Faith belongs the donum scientiae also, which brings and guides knowledge of human things (Art. 2).
And now we shall not be surprised to find sapientia, the very highest gift of the Spirit, attached to the grace-given virtue caritas. For caritas is the informing principle of Faith, and the highest virtue of the grace-illumined will. The will, be it remembered, belongs to man’s intellectual nature; its object is the good which is known by the mind (bonum intellectum). “Sapientia (wisdom, right knowledge as to the highest cause, which is God) signifies rectitude of judgment in accordance with the rationes divinae,” the ideas and reasons which exist in God. Rectitude of judgment regarding things divine may arise from rational inquiry; in which case it pertains to the sapientia which is an intellectual virtue. But it may also spring from affinity to those things themselves; and then it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (II. ii., Qu. xlv. Art. 2).
Says Thomas:
“By the name beatitude is understood the final perfection of the rational or intellectual nature. This consists for this life in such contemplation as we may have here of the highest intelligible good, which is God; but above this felicity is that other felicity which we expect when we shall see God as He is” (Pars I., Qu. lxii Art 1).
But mark: the perfection of the intellectual nature does not consist merely in knowing, narrowly taken. The right action of will is also essential, of the will directed toward the highest good, which is God: and this is caritas, of which the corresponding gift from the Spirit is wisdom. In accord with this full consummation of human nature, comprising the perfection of cognition and will, Thomas outlines his conception of the vita contemplativa, the life of most perfect beatitude attainable on earth:
“The vita contemplativa is theirs whose resolve is set upon the contemplation of truth. Resolve is an act of will; because resolve is with respect to the end, which is the object of will. Thus the vita contemplativa, according to the essence of its action, is of the intelligence; but so far as it pertains to what moves us to engage in such action, it is of the will, which moves all the other faculties, including the intelligence, to act. Appetitive energy (vis appetitiva) moves toward contemplating something, either sensibly or intellectually: sometimes from love of the thing seen, and sometimes from love of the knowledge itself, which arises from contemplation. And because of this, Gregory sets the vita contemplativa in the love of God--in caritate Dei--to wit, inasmuch as some one, from a willing love (dilectio) of God burns to behold His beauty. And because any one is rejoiced when he attains what he loves, the vita contemplativa is directed toward dilectio[614] which lies in affect (in affectu); by which amor also is intended” (II. ii., Qu. clxxx. Art. 1).
The moral virtues, continues Thomas, do not pertain essentially to this vita. But they may promote it, by regulating the passions and quieting the tumult of outside affairs. In principle it is fixed upon the contemplation of truth, which here we see but in a glass darkly; and so we help ourselves along by contemplating the effects of the divine cause in the world.
Thus final beatitude, and its mortal approach in the vita contemplativa of this earth, is of the mind, both in its knowledge and its love. Immateriality, spirituality, is with Thomas primarily intellectual. Yet his beatitude is not limited to the knowing faculties. It embraces will and love. The grace of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit touch love as well as knowledge, raising one and both to final unison of aim. Thus far in this life, while in the life to come, these grace-uplifted qualities of knowledge, and that choosing love (dilectio) which rises from knowledge of the good, are perfected in gloria.
Further than this we shall not go with Thomas, nor follow him, for example, through his exposition of the means of salvation--the Incarnation and the sacraments. Nor need we further mark the prodigious range of his theology, or his metaphysics, logic, or physics. To all this many books have been devoted. We are but seeking to realise his intellectual interests and qualities, in such way as to bring them within the compass of our sympathy. A more encyclopaedic and systematic presentation of his teaching is proper for those who would trace, or perhaps attach themselves to, particular doctrines; or would find in scholasticism, even in Thomas, some special authoritativeness. For us these doctrines have but the validity of all human striving after truth. Moreover, perhaps a truer view of Thomas, the theologian and philosopher, is gained from following a few typical forms of his teaching presented in his own exposition, than by analyzing his thought with later solvents which he did not apply, and presenting his matter classified as he would not have ordered it, and in modern phrases, which have as many meanings foreign to scholasticism as scholasticism has thoughts not to be translated into modern ways of thinking.