propagation of the Peripatetic philosophy. He manifests a remarkable taste for natural science, in which respect he anticipates Roger Bacon, Raymundus Lullus, and the scientific Renaissance. We see how dangerous the Peripatetic alliance proved to the Church! The Franciscan John of Fidanza, known as ST. BONAVENTURA, is less learned and less interested in nature, but more speculative than Albert. He admires both Aristotle and Plato, rational philosophy and contemplative mystieism, piety and knowledge, thus uniting in his person two elements which were growing farther and farther apart. The Church recognized his services by canonizing him, and the School bestowed upon him the title of doctor seraphicus. Finally, two illustrious rivals complete the Peripatetic galaxy of the thirteenth century and finish the work of conciliation between the Church and the Lyceum: the Dominican St. Thomas of Aquin and the Franciscan Duns Scotus. § 39. St. Thomas of Aquin THOMAS OF AQUIN 2 (Aquino), the son of a noble family in the kingdom of Naples, preferring the peaceful pleas 1 Died 1274. Author of a Commentary on the Sentences of the Lom bard, of an Itinerarium mentis in Deum, conceived in the spirit of the mystics of St. Victor, etc. Edition of Strasburg, 1482, Rome, 1588, ff., etc.; [K. Werner, Die Psychologie und Erkenntnisslehre des Bonaventura, Vienna, 1876.] 2 Opera omnia, Rome, 1570 (18 folio vols.); Venice, 1594; Antwerp, 1612; Paris, 1660; Venice, 1787; Parma (25 vols.), 1852-71; [Thomas Aquinatis opera omnia jussu impensaque Leonis XIII., P. M. edita, vols. I. & II., Rome (Freiburg i. B.), 1882, 84]; Ch. Jourdain, La philosophie de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Paris, 1858; Cacheux, De la philosophie de Saint Thomas, Paris, 1858; [Karl Werner, Der heilige l'homas von Aquino, 3 vols., Regensburg, 1858 ff.; Z. Gonzales, Estudios sobre la filosofia de S. Tomás, 3 vols., Manila, 1864 (German translation by C. J. Nolte, Regensburg, 1885). — TR.] He was called doctor angelicus. ures of study to the adventurous life of a feudal lord, entered the order of St. Dominic, in spite of the formal protests of his father. On the eve of his departure from Italy to Paris, he was kidnapped by his brothers and imprisoned in the paternal castle, from which he managed to escape two years later. Taking up his abode at Cologne, he became an enthusiastic disciple of Albert the Great and a profound student of Aristotle. Henceforth all his efforts were directed towards acquainting the Christian Occident with the Aristotelian philosophy as set forth in the Greek text, particularly with the Physics and Metaphysics, of which only Latin translations made from Arabian translations were known. He afterwards returned to the Peninsula, where he died in 1274, scarcely fifty years of age. Philosophy is indebted to him for a series of treatises bearing on the metaphysics of Aristotle (Opuscula de materiæ natura, de ente et essentia, de principiis naturæ, de principio individuationis, de universalibus, etc.). His Summa theologia, which gradually eclipsed the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, forms the basis of the dogmatic teachings of the Church. The philosophy of St. Thomas has no other aim than the faithful reproduction of the principles of the Lyceum. We are therefore interested, not so much in the contents, as in the Neo-Latin form in which the ideas of the Stagirite are expressed. Our modern philosophical vocabulary is in part derived from the system of St. Thomas. Philosophy proper or the first philosophy has for its object being as such (ens in quantum ens rò ôv ov). There τὸ ᾗ are two kinds of beings (entia): objective, real, essential beings (esse in re), and beings that are mere abstractions of thought or negations, such, for example, as poverty, blindness, and imperfection in general. Poverty, blindness, and privation exist; they are entia (övra), but not essen tia (ovo lai). Essences, substances, or beings properly so called (essentiæ, substantia) are, in turn, divided into simple or pure essences, and essences composed of form and matter. There is but one simple essence or pure form: God. All the rest are composed of matter and form. Matter and form are both beings (entia); they differ from each other in that form is in actu, while matter is as yet merely in potentia. In a general sense, matter is everything that can be, everything that exists in possibility. According as the possible thing is a substance or an accident, metaphysics distinguishes between materia ex qua aliquid fit (potential, substantial being, -example: the human seed is materia ex qua homo fit, a potential man) and materia in qua aliquid fit (potential accident, -example: man is materia in qua gignitur intellectus). Materia ex qua does not exist in itself; materia in qua exists as a relatively-independent subject (subjectum). The form is what gives being to a thing." According as this thing is a substance or an accident, we have to deal with a substantial form or an accidental form. The union of matter (esse in potentia) and form (esse in actu) is generatio (yíveolaı), which is, in turn, substantial generation or accidental generation. All forms, God excepted, are united with matter and individualized by it, constituting genera, species, and individuals.8 Only the form of forms remains immaterial and is subject neither to generation nor decay. The more imperfect a form is, the more it tends to increase the number of individuals realizing it; the more perfect a form is, the less it multiplies its individuals. The form of forms is no longer a species composed of separate individuals, but a single being within which all differences of person are constantly merged in the unity of essence. Since God 1 Opusculum de ente et essentia. 8 Id., c. 3. alone is pure form (actus purus), without matter and consequently without imperfection (matter being that which does not yet exist, or the lack of being), God alone is the perfect and complete knowledge of things.1 He possesses absolute truth because he is absolute truth. Truth is the agreement of thought with its object. In man, there is more or less agreement between thoughts and objects; they are, however, never identical. God's ideas not only exactly reproduce the things, they are the things themselves. Things first exist, and then man thinks them: in God, thought precedes the things, which exist only because and as he thinks them. Hence there is no difference in him between thought and being; and, since this identity of knowledge and its object constitutes truth, God is truth itself. From the fact that he is the truth it follows that he exists; for it is not possible to deny the existence of truth; the very persons who deny it assume a reason for doing so, and thus maintain its existence.2 The demonstration of the existence of God is the first and principal task of philosophy. Philosophy could not, however, perform this task, or even have a conception of God, had not the Creator first revealed himself to man in Jesus Christ. In order that the human mind might direct its efforts towards its real goal, it was necessary for God to point it out, that is, to reveal himself to humanity at the very beginning. No philosophy is legitimate that does not take revelation for its starting-point and return to it as its final goal: it is true only when it is ancilla ecclesiæ, and, in so far as Aristotle is the precursor of Christ in the scientific sphere, ancilla Aristotelis. The Church of God is the goal towards which all things tend here below. Nature is a hierarchy in which each stage is the form of the lower stage and the matter of the higher stage. The 1 Summa theologiæ, I., question 4. Id., question 2, article 1. hierarchy of bodies is completed in the natural life of man, and this life, in turn, becomes the foundation, and, in a certain measure, the material for a higher life, the spiritual life, which is developed in the shadow of the Church and nourished by its Word and its sacraments, as the natural life is nourished by the bread of the earth. The realm of nature is therefore to the realm of grace, the natural man to the Christian, philosophy to theology, matter to the sacra ment, the State to the Church, and the Emperor to the Pope, what the means are to the end, the plan to the execution, the potentia to the actus. The universe, which consists of the two realms of nature and of grace, is the best possible world. For God in his infinite wisdom conceived the best of worlds; he could not have created a less perfect world without detracting from his wisdom. To say that God conceived perfection and realized an imperfect world would presuppose an opposi tion between knowledge and will, between the ideal principle and the real principle of things, which contradicts thought as well as faith. Hence the divine will is not a will of indifference, and the freedom of God, far from being synonymous with caprice and chance, is identical with necessity. In spite of seeming contradictions, the same is true of the human will. Just as the intellect has a principle (reason) which it cannot discard without ceasing to be itself, the will has a principle from which it cannot deviate without ceasing to be free: the good. The will necessarily tends to the good; but sensuality tends to evil and thus paralyzes the efforts of the will. Hence sin arises, which has its source, not in the freedom of indifference or of choice, but in sensuality. There is moral predestination, but not arbitrary predestination, for the divine will itself is subordinated to reason. Determinism extended 1 Summa theologiæ, question 82; Contra gentiles, IIL |